David Emery Online

Content Design

There’s been a lot of talk recently over the inevitable meeting of something akin to traditional art direction and the (not so) humble blog post. Smashing Magazine – in a brief foray into something that wasn’t a list-based post – coined it the ‘blogazine’ which is a bit nasty but I guess will do for these purposes.

As that article name checks (and rips off) and I’ve mentioned before on these pages this whole thing (movement? Fashion?) was really spearheaded by Jason Santa Maria – although Khoi Vinh paved the way with A Brief Message – and has now spawned all sorts of great looking sites. I don’t think anyone is going to argue that it’s really nice to see a bit ‘design’ being integrated into online content, rather then the steady march of templated content that we normally see.

However, one thing I’ve being trying to experiment with recently is trying to pull some of this layout experimentation of out of the confines of the blog – where it seems to have stayed, to a certain extent (more on that later) – and into non-article, non-personal content. Not to say that it’s necessarily up to the...

Apple Strikes Deal to Buy the Music Start-Up Lala

In the most recent sign that Apple is looking at alternative ways for people to store and play their digital music, the company has agreed to buy Lala, a four-year-old start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., a person with knowledge of the deal said Friday.

Everyone had assumed for a while that Apple was going to get into streaming music at some point, but this is the first actual sign it might be happening.

I wonder if Lala is to their forthcoming streaming product as SoundJam was to iTunes back in the day?

Efterklang - Modern Drift

For some reason I thought Efterklang sounded completely different then this – no idea why. Luckily though they do sound like this, where ‘this’ is something really quite special:

My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement

But there’s another possibility – one I don’t necessarily subscribe to, but one that could be avoided entirely by humoring pests like me. There’s a theory that labels and publishers deliberately avoid creating the transparent accounting systems today’s technology enables. Because accurately accounting to my silly little band would mean accurately accounting to the less silly bands that are recouped, and paying them more money as a result.

I’d chalk it down to sheer volume of numbers – number of digital services x number of new digital services every month x number of artists x number of releases. Maybe with a dab of evil and a dash of laziness on the side, of course.

Well worth a read though if you have even a vague interest in how artists actually get paid (or not, in reality) by record labels.

Socialite - All your social networks in one application

Socialite is a beautiful Mac OS X application, designed to make it easy to stay in touch with the social networks and services that matter to you. From news on Digg, photos on Flickr, statuses and photos on Facebook and Twitter updates, to full Google Reader RSS syncing, Socialite keeps all your social networks in one convenient place.

Socialite – which used to be called EventBox – is easily the best Mac twitter client, with a nice Mac-like UI and support for all the bells and whistles like multiple accounts, retweet support, lists, searches etc. If that wasn’t enough though, it also supports Facebook, Flickr, RSS and Google Reader, all going into one combined feed so you can stay up-to-date with everything.

It’s a must have app – I have 5 apps I always have running on every Mac I use: Mail, Adium, Safari, Quicksilver and Socialite.

(Full disclosure – back in the day, Eventbox was kind-of my idea)

Dear Taylor Swift

But I’m sad that your web site lets some of your most important fans — those who have special needs — down, in ways that you might not realise. Not that I blame you, you’re an artist, not a web designer or developer.

To be fair, yours isn’t the only country artist site that is inaccessible to people with disabilities. Both Shania Twain’s and Dolly Parton’s also make it either very difficult or impossible for some people to access their content. So I would like to show you how your site could be improved in small ways that would make a huge difference to a lot of people, with or without disabilities.

Always good to be reminded about these things; it amazes me, though, that people are still making nasty all-flash sites like this…

Rupert has balls

Companies that are ruled by task forces don’t act like him; they overthink to convince themselves they’re making smart decisions. News Corp. underthinks.

‘Overthink’ can be such a killer; you think you’re doing the right thing by planning, more planning and lots of research but you end up spending all of your time planning and no time actually executing. Sure, some planning is needed but not too much.

And for the record I’d be surprised if News Corp. removed themselves from Google, and their pay-wall strategy isn’t going to work (for news, at least).

iTunes LP and iTunes Extras for Developers

Here’s everything you need to know to create a rich, interactive experience around your music and movies. All right in iTunes.

Apple have released all the specs, templates and a load of documentation for the iTunes LP format, which is nice. Skimming through them I see lots of “don’t use JS for animation, use CSS” – nice to have a HTML5 + CSS3 based platform to develop for…

Bauhaus Ideology and the Future of Web Design

What follows is a frankly massive essay in note form. These are the notes I made to justify the aims of Bauhaus Ideology and the Future of Web Design – a presentation I did for the FOWD Tour in Leeds, September 2009. Thus, there is a vast array of ideas, conclusions and speculations with regard to the future of our industry. Take it with a pinch of salt, and think of this as a conversation, and not a manifesto.

Very interesting stuff – well worth a read.

The future of audio: The UK Radioplayer

It’s a really exciting development and a result of focussed, collaborative thinking within the radio industry. It’s a simple, compelling proposition for listeners, and I would welcome any comments on the project.

This looks pretty interesting – an standards-based, multi-station online radio player. Basically like the iPlayer Radio, but open to other stations. What I’d really like to know, though, is whether it’s open to people that aren’t radio stations – could Hype Machine have a station on this, for example?