This update is titled: “I

This update is titled: “I think I can finally die a happy man.” or “Isn’t this one of the signs of the Apocalypse?” or “Oops!…I did it again.” The official Britney Spears Web site uses Silkscreen quite a bit for titles and navigation. Besides the obvious irony of the situation, there’s one good thing that will come of all this: I’m going to get lots of hits from people searching on “britney+apocalyse”. Thanks to Edd for passing this along.

Stupid power outage. I’m two

Stupid power outage. I’m two and a half hours late for work and I’ve got much to do. Guess I need to get a battery powered alarm clock…or start using my Palm V’s alarm to wake me.

“So it’s nine o’clock on

“So it’s nine o’clock on a Saturday night and I’ve got an entire box of Marshmallow Alpha-Bits spread out on the kitchen table.” So now, when I’m home on a weekend evening with nothing better to do than read or sit in front of my computer, I won’t feel so bad because at least I’m not analyzing letter frequencies in breakfast cereal. On the other hand, in a way, aren’t we all just wondering where all the Gs are?

Yessir, you betcha, we’ve got

Yessir, you betcha, we’ve got some of the dumbest people ever living right here in Minnesota. Did you come for the Star Wars exhibit there, Earl? Have a seat, you big freaking knob.

One more site worth your

One more site worth your while: Wireframe. Tasty Flash goodness that left me wondering how they did some of it (specifically how it was all aliased and without that diffuse “Flash glow” that everything else seems to have). Found at kiiroi.

On my walk to and

On my walk to and from the parking lot at work, I pass by this dead squirrel lying on the grass. Each time I pass it, the squirrel looks a little more dead fer. You know, “that squirrel looks like it’s been dead fer 3 months.” “That squirrel looks like it’s been dead fer 6 months.” And so forth. (cue laugh track)

I’m just warning you in

I’m just warning you in advance: prepare to spend at least an hour surfing the following links.

The results of I.D. magazine’s 2000 Interactive Media Design Review are out (I’d throw in a link here, but the results are not on their Web site yet…tsk tsk) and there are a few sites of note on the list:

Willing to Try, a site previously featured on kottke.org, is one of the neatest interactive sites I’ve seen in a long while and is very deserving of its award.

I’m sure the stuff at Jump Stuff, a silver winner, is quite nice, but I found their site confusing. Very pretty, but confusing and poorly organized.

Chat circles is an interesting chat app that uses distance to control your interaction with others in the room.

Newsmaps.com presents information in the form of topographical maps. To try it out, click on the “Global News” link on the left sidebar.

The World’s Smallest Web Site reminds me a little of the 5K contest. It’s surprising what can be communicated in a 100x100 pixel space.

Google got a silver for their “clean good looks, straight answers, and no advertising”. While I admire the judges’ focus on the utility of the site (which is unusual because eye candy usually wins out in publications like this), I’m frustrated that their less-than-perfect design (and I’m not talking solely about the visual design here) got such high marks. BTW, the credited designers are co-founders Larry Page, CEO and Sergey Brin, president. That explains a lot.

Some other sites featured are TEXT.URE, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Lufthansa Systems Network, a presentation on the Principles of Graphic Design, and the Smile Project.

Update: I did a little URL hacking and it turns out ID does have the results on their site…it’s just not linked in from the front page.

Ok, exploring the results on the ID site has turned up several other goodies from a chap @ MIT named Golan Levin: ribble, floo, splat, blebs, meshy, dakadaka and streamer. Wonderful stuff.

I apologize for all the links, but they were all so good that I couldn’t help myself. Feel free to pass them on to other folks.

Happiness is my federal tax

Happiness is my federal tax refund in my mailbox today.

A couple of weeks ago,

A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out that these Hanson fans had “borrowed” my kottke.org design for their own purposes. I went back last night to see if they had changed it…they had not. However, the leading vote-getter in their search for a site tag line is now “The fan files page layout was stolen from kottke.org”. Hee hee.

Amused that people write serious

Amused that people write serious reviews of Burger King, I wrote my first Epinion in months: Burger King review title (insert bad pun here). When you’re done reading the review, you can post or read some comments about it…something I find even more amusing: people reviewing a review of Burger King. When will it end?

Rumor has it that kottke.org

Rumor has it that kottke.org was on CNN yesterday, something about my emoticons poll. Weird.

I turned on the teevee

I turned on the teevee yesterday afternoon and saw a rock band playing on Pamela Anderson’s ass. Perplexed, I shut it off and went about my day. I swear I’m not making this up.

As I said a few

As I said a few days ago, I’m really pleased with the use that people have gotten out of Silkscreen. I made it because I needed it, and it’s nice that it was able to fill a need for others as well. For the last couple months, I’ve seen it used on at least one new site a day. The week before last, I discovered it on this part of the Volvo site, which was cool. I’m thinking they should send me a Volvo for my troubles. ;)

Then just the other day, I was glancing at Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, which I am just beginning to read after much prompting from friends and acquaintances, and wondered if Gladwell had a Web site. Zipping over to Google, I punched in his name, and up came gladwell.com. To my surprise and delight, the site uses Silkscreen. Small world.

Jim has made some very

Jim has made some very nice tweaks to The Obscure Store and Reading Room, including organizing the stories by date. Previously, I found it difficult to determine how fresh the stories are…now I know.

In general, I’m impressed with how effectively Jim organizes the information on OSRR and MediaNews; it’s the newspaperman in him I would suppose. The links are very easily read, the headlines & copy are concise, and the use of bold in the copy allows for skimming without interfering with reading. Especially nice is the use of bold for the main links and plain text for other links as well as the use of a different, more subtle link color for the less-important items on the left-hand side of the page on OSRR.

I wish more sites on the Web paid that much attention to how information is displayed, particularly news sites and weblogs. This site, I think, is pretty readable (save for the small font size) but only because there are very few types of information being displayed with each entry (only a date, the copy, links, and the permanent bookmark graphic). The other day, while surfing a few sites I hadn’t been to in a while, I came across Michelle’s nifty redesign of sapphireblue. The design is visually quite nice and the ability to sort entries by date & category is done very well. My only complaint is that I couldn’t read the entries very well because of the white-colored link/date text combined with the black-colored copy. A link/date text color closer to black would improve readability quite a bit, I think. Additionally, moving the category information from the top of the post to the bottom and choosing a different link color for it (like that of the left sidebar items on OSRR) would aid readability as well.

Factovision is another site with good content on which the readability could be improved with a few minor changes. Setting off the date from the main copy by putting it in its own column works well, but sifting through the category, author, and the comments text (all of which are linked and therefore visually highlighted) to read the copy and find the links is difficult. For a post that includes these types of information, the hierarchy of information is roughly:

1. links within the post
2. main copy
3. date
4. category
5. # of comments
6. post author

Your mileage may vary with numbers 3 thru 6, but the links and main copy should be numbers 1 & 2.

To help illustrate what I am talking about, the post style on Metajohn is a good example of how to present many different types of information related to a post (each post actually contains 8 or 9 different types of information) while ensuring that the post copy and links are the focus. About the only complaint one can come up with for Metajohn’s post style is the overly bright link color, but that is easily excused because it helps establish the visual style of the site, which is important as well (although you may think it isn’t).

Hmmm….writing about all this has me thinking about how I can improve things on kottke.org. Perhaps some slight tweaks of my own are in order.

New content at 0sil8? Nope,

New content at 0sil8? Nope, it’s just a front page change. 0sil8, now with a splash of color! Bees! &c.

Photoshop 6 is in beta.

Photoshop 6 is in beta. Improvements include better text tools (text wrapping!), unlimited layers, better layer organizational tools, and a smarter toolbar. Sixtacular! *ahem*

I feel so violated. Meg

I feel so violated. Meg snuck into my apartment and stole my bathroom mirror’s soul for Heather’s benefit. I hope both of you are satisfied…my mirror has been wandering around the apartment ever since, wailing uncontrollably, looking for what it has lost but can never again regain.

The teevee has been telling

The teevee has been telling me that the upcoming US Open is, and I quote, “Golf’s Greatest Championship.” In the past, that same television has told me that the British Open, the PGA Championship, and the Masters are each, and again I quote, “Golf’s Greatest Championship”. What am I, a simpleton when it comes to golf (among other things), supposed to believe? Will I ever be able to trust my teevee again? Well, word comes from Dack, the only golf enthusiast I know, that “Most Yanks would probably argue that the US Open is the greatest championship, but any golf fan living outside the US would argue that it’s the British Open. The [British Open] is truly the *world’s* golf championship.” Now I can sleep once more and watch teevee without impunity.