Friday Links: What bad habits has programming given you?
- What real life bad habits has programming given you? – Stack Overflow: One of my favorites: "Fairly often when typing in normal conversation I will end my sentences with semicolons;"
- Nonprofit Conversation: Using Nerdy Powers for Good
- Pantone Kicks: One of the nerds here has one of those awesome Pantone coffee cups, these shoes are even cooler
- BrandFreak: Alpo will get dogs to the poker table if it's the last thing it does“Having just landed the Nestlé Purina pet-food portfolio, which includes the top-shelf Alpo brand, Fallon director of brand innovation John King said in a statement yesterday, "We've all seen the picture of the dogs playing poker. That was our brief." King went on to say: "That photo represents the Alpo brand and the Alpo dog. … Alpo is going to call a timeout and give permission for dogs to be dogs again." Kudos to King for at least freshening up the business wire with forthright talk and colorful imagery.”
- 10 things a web designer would never tell you : Boagworld web design podcast
- Design Observer: Paper, plastic or canvas? “Comparing a plastic bag to a paper bag it is easy to see why: the ultra thin plastic bag is a vastly superior design. It consumes 40 percent less energy, generates 80 percent less solid waste, produces 70 percent fewer atmospheric emissions, and releases up to 94 percent fewer waterborne wastes. A plastic bag costs roughly a quarter as much to produce as a paper bag and is substantially lighter so it takes a great less more fossil fuel to transport. Plastic bags are among the most highly reused items in the home and are just as recyclable as paper. The problem is that what is marvelous about an individual plastic bag becomes menacing when multiplied out to accommodate a rapidly growing global economy.”
- Using services to compensate for product weaknesses.
- Paul Buchheit: Communicating with code: “The first version of Gmail was literally written in a day. It wasn't very impressive — all I did was take the Google Groups (Usenet search) code (my previous project) and stuff my email into it — but it was live and people could use it (to search my mail…). From that day until launch, every new feature went live immediately, and most new ideas were implemented as soon as possible. This resulted in a lot of churn — we re-wrote the frontend about six times and the backend three times by launch — but it meant that we had direct experience with all of the features.” via Daring Fireball
- Free Quarter Pipe Plans: I think a few of the nerds are trying to start a petition to get permission to build a half-pipe in The Nerdery. We will keep you posted on how the negotiations go.
- How to film customer case study videos – (37signals)
- The New Lifestyle Marketing.
- 140 Characters » How Twitter Was Born
