Flyover Country

As this year draws to an end, I wanted to offer a few predictions for what I think 2007 will bring:
1. Apple will release a new UI with Mac OS X 10.5 that is reminiscent of iTunes 7, and I will spend the rest of the year slagging it.
2. The word [...]

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GQ has an article about Rahm Emmanuel, Illinois Congressman and one of the architects of the Democratic Party’s November triumph, and the state of histrionics the party elite found itself in during the waning weeks of the campaign:
Rahm delivers a tongue-lashing [to Adam Nagourney, Chief Political Correspondent for the NYT] unlike anything I’ve ever heard [...]

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My web browser’s home page is set to MSN.com, and I just noticed an interesting-sounding article on the main page, entitled Designing for the Visually Impaired. As I have a fairly keen interest in this topic, I opened the link to discover a beautiful Flash-based website entitled Open for Design, which appears to be curated [...]

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I spoke too soon the other day when I complained about the Geek Squad’s new automated phone system. I received an email from Robert Stephens, the company’s founder, earlier today informing me that he had read my blog, and was indeed fixing the problems I had outlined. Robert wants to hew to the gethuman standard [...]

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Helen, my girlfriend, received a new endtable from overstock.com today. It turned out that the metal frame was physically warped, and she spent 15 minutes trying to track down Overstock’s phone number in order to request an RMA number without success. This whole episode reminded me of the single-most popular article I’ve ever seen on [...]

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I get a lot of email everyday. And by a lot, I mean that it totals into the thousands of items*. Seriously. Much of this is addressed to various internal mailing lists to which I subscribe, such as an Xbox Discussion alias, or Visual Studio UI discussions. But, even then, I probably get a few [...]

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Imagine working for a company that is tolerated, at best, in many social circles. Imagine being a computer science graduate, going to a class reunion, telling people you work for Microsoft, and watching your former classmates slowly back away as if you’d just told them you had a venereal disease.
- Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller [...]

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I simply cannot stress enough that you. must. use. the. <label>. tag. when. creating. forms. ARGH! What brings this up for me today was a Digg link to a website entitled ObscureTags.com. The site is really quite funny, I’ll admit, but it’s always frustrating to discover that more web developers are not aware of <label>.
[...]

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Apple Gazette, a heretofore unknown Mac rumors site, claims that Apple will replace Aqua with a new look-and-feel codenamed Illuminous in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, scheduled for release sometime in 2007.
The conjecture states that:
What will Illuminous look like? That’s anybody’s guess at this point, but we might be seeing some hints of what Illuminous [...]

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Blurbomat has a fantastic advanced Photoshop tutorial on retouching your photos without doing anything that that might “look like ass. Avoid looking like ass.”
Jon Armstrong, the tutorial author and husband of the chicken-hating Heather Armstrong, really published an amazing tutorial. The final product looks like an eerie, super hi-res image from Half-Life 2.

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