The Web site of Alex S. Jones, community catalyst, user advocate, Web technologist, barbecue acolyte & information junkie

Category Archives Marketing & PR

This Ain’t Right: Fight the Orphan Works Act

Jeffrey Zeldman pointed out the dangerous Orphan Works Acts making their way through Congress. This act has far-reaching implications for everyone, but the impact is even larger for those who work or publish on the ‘Net. Ultimately Congress is attempting to reduce your…

Non-linear Scheduling

Muji Chronotebook Non-linear Day Planner
Photo from the Muji Web site

LifeHacker points to the yet-to-be-released Muji Chronotebook Non-linear Day Planner, which provides an interesting way to plan your day. Gone are the normal grids and standard sequence of hours and dates. They have been replaced…

Spec Work, Pixish, Design Contests and Unicorns

Adam Howell sums up my thoughts on Pixish quite succinctly. Sure, the concept sounds great at first, as noted on the Pixish site, the community is set up as “a way to engage creative people online to submit, judge, and source amazing…

Slanty Design in the Real World and on the Web

Architectures of Control, which provides some very interesting analysis of products that are “designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave” in order to encourage the user to follow certain practices and behaviors, has posted Slanty…

How it Works

People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it…

The Urban Cup Holder

Urban Cup Holder, image taken from swissmiss.typepad.comThe Urban Cup Holder by Up to You is an amazing idea that transforms your environment on the go. In a large metropolis, it could shift the usual travel patterns, hopefully slowing life down by encouraging people to use the space around…

What We Talk About When We Talk About Design

You tell him I said to take a long unstructured walk around his city. Talk to strangers. Take pictures. Visit at least one museum. Pretend like he’s from somewhere else for an hour. Stop in a park to read Raymond…

John Wayne, Fish Scales and Type

I recently discovered a great link in my design feeds, pointing me to the site I Love Typography, which is well on its way to becoming a great resource for designers and all those with an interest in type The…

Kuler Dashboard Widget

Kuler Desktop WidgetAdobe has released a Dashboard widget for Kuler, it’s beautiful, and very useful Web-based color picking app. The widget consumes RSS feeds from the site to display the most downloaded, highest rated and newest color schemes. In addition to the abiliy…

Photoshop CS3 Beta

Adobe has announced that they will release a beta of Photoshop CS3 today (Dec. 15). Needless to say I am awaiting the release with high levels of anticipation as it will come out as a Universal Binary on the Mac, which means…