David Emery OnlineElectronic Envelopes
HTML email is not what I would traditionally call a thrilling and exciting topic for a blog post, but I would like to think that – as readers of this site – you’re not really expecting much in the way of thrills anyway.
So, HTML email then.
I – probably like you, if you care enough still to be reading – was utterly unconvinced by HTML email at first. “HTML email is all spam” I thought. “Email should all be plain text…” I swore “it’s just the way it was designed to be”. Notice the utter lack of actual reasoning here, just a slightly odd dislike of something for no apparent reason.
After a while I started getting a bit of pressure. “Ooohh, look at this nice email I just got from xyz – can we do something similar?” they would say and, quite frankly, they were right. It was nice. Of course, the rod for my back was duly made and now we churn out 2 or 3 HTML emails a week (thank god I don’t have to make them all these days).
They really are better though.
In fact, they are better in every way which makes me wonder why on earth there...
Read more ➔Talented
Continuing the rather bitter and grumpy witterings of last week today I’m going to make the rather bold move of talking about music.
Not talking about things about music, or the industry, or the future – none of that.
Just the music.
It’s what it’s all about at the end of the day, after all.
Last Thursday I attended a gig quite unlike any other I’ve been to in quite a while. For a start the tickets said in – rather large pink letters, nestling up to the hologram – ‘Will Young’. And the person on before him was Newton Faulkner. Luckily for my reputation (and everyone else concerned) before him was the utterly stunning Adele, who I’ve written about before but was astonishingly good.
The venue really sealed the deal, as it all took place in London’s Union Chapel which – as you may have guessed – is a church and rather beautiful inside to boot. The acoustics and setting could not have been more perfect for Adele, who live is quite possibly the most talented individual I’ve ever seen. She puts you completely off guard as her pre-song banter is quite loud and brash – in an exceptionally endearing way, I must...
Read more ➔Friday Links XXXIX
OmniFocus Public Beta
Quite interesting looking, and it’s good to finally have a go at playing with it after all the hype, but I wish it wasn’t quite so tied into the whole GTD thing. Making it a more abstract task manager without all the inbox and context rubbish would be really nice.
My Favorite Book Covers of 2007
I like the one for “One Red Paperclip”.
Micromarketing on micromedia
I really like this concept of micromarketing – it remains to be seen if it can really work, though (I hope it does).
Taking the canvas to another dimension
I do quite like the idea of native 3D in the browser, but I think this is far too complicated. We should treat 3D models like we do images, and be able to embed them easily then control them with JS. Also, it’s worrying that even at this early stage we have two different implementations from Opera and Mozilla.
PayPerPost Bloggers Get Slammed By Google
I don’t think the PayPerPost situation is quite as clear cut as Duncan makes out here, and I don’t think Google should have removed people from their search index. Penalise them, sure, but removing them...
BSP
I haven’t linked to anything work related in a fair while, which is probably down to doing far more non-work work – strategizing, planning et al – then previously. It’s not a bad thing, of course, and big things are afoot but it does lead to less thing I can show you all. Anyway, we’ve just launched the new site for the wonderful British Sea Power:
I’m really quite happy with the way this one has turned out – it’s a real privilege being able to work on a band of BSPs stature. I’m much more used to working on people right at the start of things, which comes with its own benefits – seeing Jack Peñate rise from a virtual unknown a year ago to having a top 10 album in October has been a lot of fun (and very rewarding) – but it’s nice to be able to have such involvement with someone that a lot of people hold so dear.
As ever it’s all based on Textpattern, which is still just about serving all the needs nicely (although it could do with an admin interface overhaul). It’s nice that by using Textpattern we can get features like...
Read more ➔Spade
One thing I’ve noticed recently is an increasing trend of ignoring the obvious. Focusing on the nuts and bolts of things is easy – the numbers, the statistics, the things you can quantify – but frequently misses the point entirely.
Yesterday’s Amazon Kindle announcement is a perfect case in point. I’ve seen a huge amount of all different kinds of discussion, nicely summed up by this line by John Gruber:
“I say the difference is that the iPod allowed you to easily play the music you already owned, and that you could (and can to this day) buy music to play on iPods in an open format.”
The reason that Amazon Kindle will fail (and I’m pretty certain of it now I’ve seen videos of it in action) is that the hardware is terrible. It’s really pretty simple. No amount of looking at the specifications, weighing up the pricing models and looking at the potential competitors will transcend the fundamental fact that Kindle – as a physical object – is appalling, from its low-rent design to its not-ready-yet e-ink screen that requires a strange separate scroll-bar because it can’t refresh quickly.
Sometimes the flaw can be so glaringly obvious that it’s almost as...
Read more ➔Kindling
Just breaking last night – and to be the star of a press conference later today – comes the news that Amazon is going to jump in with both feet into the ebook market, with something called Kindle. A fairly extensive write-up can be found on Newsweek, and I’m guessing their aren’t too many more surprises that aren’t in that (really quite interesting) article.
First impressions? Interesting, but ultimately flawed in all sorts of ways.
Obviously, the hardware is the first thing that shouts “I’m going to fall on my ass”; what were they thinking? It looks like what we all thought ebooks would look like in the 90s; all cheap and nasty plastic, and far too large. What you want is something that looks sophisticated and about the size of a paperback, which surely everyone agrees is the right size for carrying around versus the trade-off of readable area. Not only that but it also has an odd, slanted keyboard that surely in everyday use is completely unnecessary. I guess that that couldn’t manage to implement an on-screen touch keyboard on the fancy e-ink screen.
Other then the looks and the failure in interaction design, the hardware brings a couple...
Read more ➔Friday Links XXXVIII
N.A.D.D.
Rings so unbelievably true it makes me slightly sad that I can so easily be summed up.
Stacks Overlays
Stack icons (or the lack of consistent ones) in the dock is pretty much the only feature in 10.5 I don’t like.
Disabling Deprecated HTML Using CSS
Cunning. Very cunning.
Design doing
The key point here is that web design is not just design nor is it just codeing – it’s both. That’s what makes it special.
Why I love Textpattern
Hear hear! I utterly agree, obviously.
O2 on iPhone: 8,000 activations on day one, 5-year contract
8000 doesn’t really strike me as being all that much, really.
Gibson gets official with the self-tuning Robot Guitar
While I rarely play anymore, that doesn’t stop me from really, really wanting one of these.
Failure Happens: An SLA is just a contract & Data Centers are single points of failure too
There is nothing you can do to prevent things going tits up, so prepare for when it does. It probably doesn’t matter as much as you think it does, though.
The official ‘In Rainbows’ cover
Reminds me of a lot of the artwork v23 do for 4AD – very nice.
NT RCRD LBL
RCRD LBL is not a Record Label.
It’s a music blog.
As much as they try and make out that it’s a radical new take on a record label, it really isn’t – it’s just a slightly less radical take on a traditional music site. Sure, they have a lot of bluster about doing things like A&R and all that kind of thing, but in reality they haven’t signed any artists, they just have exclusive tracks from established acts on existing labels.
No artists = not a record label.
Now, all of this should come as no surprise as the main founder of RCRD LBL is Peter Rojas, formally of both Gizmondo and Engadget two of the largest blogs around. He’s certain good at a bit of spin, and this one has been spun mightily well – I haven’t really seen many people pointing out the utter false-ness of the core concept. I assume that’s why the called it RCRD LBL, as no one would have thought it was one otherwise.
Now that we’ve established what RCRD LBL isn’t lets talk about what it is – while it’s not a record label, it is something that is very interesting. The main trust behind...
Read more ➔Apple Still Wins
As promised Google have released the Android SDK so we now know a lot more then we did last week.
What we know is that Google have spent the last 11 months copying the iPhone.
What we also know is that all the hype last week wasn’t quite as much vapourware as it looked like at the time.
Finally, we now know how Apple will conquer the mobile market, and do it in a very un-Apple way.
Lets take these points in turn. Firstly, have a watch of the video tour, which is complete with Sergey Brin doing his best Steve Jobs impression. There is no doubt that the interface as taken several major cues from the iPhone, including the touch (not stylus) interface. The web browser demo is pretty much identical (bar a noticeable speed deficit) to the web browser on the iPhone, and the maps demo really is exactly the same (both being Google Maps based).
In fact, you know what the Android interface reminds me of? It reminds me of Windows 1.0. It’s stolen most of the obvious surface interface elements like animated transitions and a finger-touch interface, but missed all the bits that make it truly great like...
Read more ➔Paperback Writer
What is the point of CDs these days?
I don’t mean this in a “what’s the point in music” way, but in the “what’s the point in buying (and selling) music on small bits of shiny plastic” way.
That is, of course, not to say that physical product is dead in the music industry; vinyl is going from strength to strength (especially for singles) and there is obviously a demand for something you can buy in a shop made of bricks and concrete and glass. The ‘deluxe’ edition is making an ever greater presence, and frequently utilises vinyl and the large artwork and packaging opportunities it brings. Witness – of course – the Radiohead In Rainbows discbox which is probably the ultimate expression of the deluxe album format, coming with both vinyl, CD and download formats and packaged in hardback book and slipcase weighing in at £40.
At this juncture I think a lot of people would through in a couple of paragraphs about how rubbish CDs are, and how foolish the industry was for adopting the format. Which is – of course – a load of cods wallop. CDs, while obviously not being as beautiful as their vinyl brethren are a packaging...
Read more ➔