Nerdery Primer: Responsive Design Webinar, May 22 & 24

In our next Nerdery Primer we explore the versatility of responsive design and how it can help you future-proof websites across viewing platforms. Nerdery principal software engineers Tony T and Dan P pool their collective front-end experience to lead our discussion on what responsive design is, how it works and when it’s best used. Additional topics include:

• Why you should be using responsive design
• Best practices when designing content
• How to implement
• Beards and hats (time permitting)

If you’d like to join us, please RSVP for one of our two free webinars Tuesday, May 22 at 10:15 a.m. CDT or Thursday, May 24 at 3:15 p.m. CDT.

FileMaker Pro user group at The Nerdery

Last week The Nerdery hosted the very first meeting of the FileMakers Pro Users Group of Minnesota (http://fmpug-mn.com/). Check out the video above to hear the group introduce their purpose and organization to an audience of around 60 in our Nerditorium. If you know anybody interested in learning more about FileMaker Pro get in touch with Tim Cimbura or Jim Medema to learn how.

How Yahoo Killed Flickr & Lost the Internet

Grab yourself a cold beverage, a comfy seat, and settle in for this long read from Gizmodo about how Yahoo killed Flickr and lost the Internet. While short on named sources and long on a childish and gratuotious use of the F-word, it’s an interesting piece about how far ahead of the social game Flickr/Yahoo was back in 2005 and how they let it all slip away.

It’s hard to remember, but back in 2005, Yahoo seemed like it had its game on. After losing out on search dominance to Google, it snapped up a bunch of small-but-cool socially oriented companies like Flickr (social photos), Delicious (social bookmarking), and Upcoming (social calendaring). There was a real sense that Yahoo was doing the right thing. It was, to some extent, out in front of what would come to be widely known as Web 2.0: the participatory Internet.

Also interesting is the discussion thread in the comments about how Flickr hasn’t died but instead morphed into a site where actual photographers (as opposed to iPhone snapshot takers) share photos.

The day they almost lost Toy Story 2

This 2-minute video about the day Pixar almost deleted Toy Story 2 is making the rounds today. Definitely amusing, since we’ve all done something totally stupid without a backup before.

Friday Links: Motivational posters for timesheet slackers

• Get your weekend started off right with greatest animal photobombs of all time.
• For the billable amongst us, Colle+McVoy created motivational posters for timesheet slackers.
• For you skater/designers try Skateipsum for all your ispum dolor needs: “Skate ipsum dolor sit amet, masonite hand rail bone air snake hang-up transition. Full-cab late melancholy manual full pipe Mike Taylor noseblunt slide.”
• If you like your Fridays with a little schadenfreude ten mistakes from the Copyediting newsletter.
• Mike Birbiglia’s short film from This American Life LIVE. Recommended for fans of Terry Gross, NPR, or funny things
• The Politics of Competitive Board Gaming Among Friends is a short documentary (10 minutes) about a group of people who play Settlers of Catan.
• Do you like baseball or hotdogs? Then you might like this slideshow of the craziest major league baseball hot dogs.
• Turning kids’ art into plush toys is pretty rad.
• Infographic: ad people are hopeless social media addicts.
• A thorough (and ridiculously engrossing) history of “The Animaniacs.”

The 10 Commandments of Pointless Office Meetings

McSweeney’s has the 10 Commandments of Pointless Office Meetings, a few of which I’m sure you can relate to, including:

8. Thou shalt not look at the clock every three minutes or any comparable interval thereof lest thou discover time passes much slower when its passing is consulted.

Super Potato Heads may make you squeal a little

Spotted on The Mary Sue, these SuperPotatoes are just about the cutest things ever. Sure Marvel has The Avengers making $200 million in a weekend and confirmed a sequel, but do they have adorable potato people? I mean, aside from Spiderman.

Nerdery Primer: Rich Internet Applications

Our next webinars will cover Canvas, HTML5 and WebGL as mediums for Rich Internet Applications. As we dig through this toolbox of RIA technologies, we’ll help you understand their respective pros and cons to provide a Nerd’s eye view on:

• designing RIAs for interactivity
• video, audio and other media tools
• browser capabilities
• budget considerations
• preparing files for a seamless handoff to developers

We’ll address the immediate and the long-term benefits of using HTML5, including what creative directors and designers need to know about progressive enhancement. We’ll also get into how Canvas is like Flash (the other F-word, to some), only not.

RSVP for one of two free primers, Tuesday, May 15 at 10:15 a.m. and repeated with polish Thursday, May 17 at 3:15 p.m.

How good are you at matching colors?

This color game reminds me a lot of the the Kerning Game, because it causes just as much anxiety and refreshing to get the best score possible. For the color game you have to match hue, saturation, complementary, etc. colors.

My best was a 7.0. Ternary colors are a mystery to me.

Friday Links: Happy StarWars Day & Free Comic Book Day

• Don’t forget tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day! Find a participating store near you. Speaking of, The Mary Sue, points out that between StarWars Day, The Avengers’ opening, and Free Comic Book day this weekend is like nerdvana.
• Betsy the KegDroid beer dispenser.
• Want to intern at The Nerdery this summer? You can win a postion by apply at The Intern Game.
• Anil Dash on why you can’t trust the tech press to teach you about the tech industry.
• This Advertising Life: emotions from advertising life represented by animated gifs.
• Wil Wheaton on why he left StarTrek: The Next Generation.
• The iPhone may be the best thing for the blind since Braille.
• Use a Mac power adapter to open your beer.
• Attracting more women to computer science requires shattering the brogrammer culture.
• LEGO wigs.