Welcome to the beta of the new saila.com. Send in your bugs.
Briefly Noted in date
Quick links not blogged but blogmarked
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Online news demographic not the newspaper’s
Some stats to back-up a lot of anecdotal evidence. Those under 40 read online news, not newspapers.
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Canvas in IE
Emulating canvas in Internet Explorer.
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Ajax link tracker
This is a very elegant way to do this, a much cheaper than some offerings.
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Khoi Vinh becoming Design Director for NYTimes.com
His minimal, grid-heavy look could slowly bring some needed improvements to the Grey [sic] Lady’s site.
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Greg Linden’ 2006 predictions
Mainly search related, but still relevant to the general online world.
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The future of new is people
Hypergene MediaBlog disects tthe latest Niewman Report on citizen journalism.
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How to reimagine a newspaper
Although The Globe and Mail got some ribbing about it, this is exactly its doing.
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Outings’s resolutions for newspapers online
Most Canadian ones are doing one or two, but none are doing all nine, yet.
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E-paper a reality in 2006
I saw a demo of iRex Technologies’ reader (which uses e-Ink) and it is impressive. The business model, though, sucks.
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CSS bar graphs
Eric Meyer shows another way to create semantic bar graphs.
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Ingram’s Web 2.0 report card
Overall it gets a C, with eBay seen struggling.
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Firefox for music
Rob Lord planning potential iTunes-killer to be based on Mozilla
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Media levy to stay
The tax on recordable compact discs and other recordable media will stay until 2006 at least.
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RSS icon
Now that Microsoft has adopted the Mozilla RSS icon, Matt Brett has created a graphic template of it for everyone to use.
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Yahoo! JavaScript Developer Center
Great collection of articles, resources, and tutorials on Yahoo’s products and on JavaScript itself.
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Designing outside the grid
Molly encourages designers to go beyond the table-inspired grid.
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CanvasGraph.js
Another nice demo what can be done with the canvas element.
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thestar.com does GoogleMaps
Not quite ChicagoCrime, but this map of toronto homicides is a start.
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thestar.com removes registration
Though I have no love for registration, I can’t see any business reason for doing this other than regrouping after some negative results.
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thestar.com: webmaking
The Toronto Star has launched a ne wblog to speak to its reader about its Web site. Very smart.
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Toronto gets some real power
The Ontario government finally allows T-dot to make its own decisions.
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Calling all Canadian Web workers
Kim Seiver and Jay Gilmore have sparked a passionate discussion about creating a Canadian-based Web design conference.
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Newspapers are mainframes
Interesting comparison of the newspaper business to what has happened to the computer since the mainframe.
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Improving the blog interface
Luke Wroblewski and Jed Wood come up with intelligent ways to improve the findability of content in blogs.
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The ultimate Web 2.0 offering
WebTwenny will revolutionize user-focused experiences.
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What CSS browsers support
Covering IE 6, Firefox 1 and 1.5, and Opera 8.5
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The Anatomy of Web Fonts
An comprehensive guide to what makes some fonts better online.
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The Elements of Web Typography
Richard Rutter unveils a beautiful resource about displaying words and letters online.
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Pulitzer will accept online journalism
Online journalism will not compete on par with printed newspapers articles for the first time.
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Journalism ethics around the globe
The University of British Columbia’s journalism school launches an ethics watchdog Web site.
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Podcast is the word of the year
No surprise as almost anyone whose anyone is doing it. Bird flu, lifehack, and sudoku were among the runners up.
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E-rights make it to the Supreme Court
Freelance writer Heather Robertson’s case against The Globe and Mail over electronic rights, finally makes it to the Supreme Court.
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Ajax mistakes
Mistakes in code and design the one can make while building Ajax-based apps.
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Mobile Web development in Japan
Andreas Bovens argues for Web standards on mobile sites.
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Community authorship still has hope
The Wikiepedia is under attack; Web 2.0 is under a backlash, but masionneuve argues there is still hope.
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Mary Meeker on global tech and Net trends
Lots of data crunched into some nice slides. Worth browsing.
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Eolas patent forces Internet Explorer changes
Microsoft will be changing the way its browser handles embedded multimedia within a few months.
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Where to use DOM scripting
THough Alex Bosworth says Ajax, and means DOM scripts, his advice is solid.
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Do you prefer Internet Explorer or Firefox?
Rocketboom asks New Yorkers which they prefer — its charming and quirky.
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iPod Zepto
Capable of holding 12 million songs and only one-tenth the size of the head of a needle, the iPod Zepto is a revolution in sound.
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WebDrive
WebDrive claims its an FTP client that acts like a virtual drive. Nice.
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Ingram on the Bell Globemedia deal
Mathew Ingram sounds off on a deal that he feels leaves the company in continued limbo.
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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Woodbridge and Torstar are buying Bell Globemedia — I woulda thought the former would have got The Globe, the latter CTV.
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Web design trends for 2006
All of the predictions are safe, although some are a bit dated.
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Ricky Gervais podcasts
The twelve weekly shows will be available through Guardian Unlimited starting December 5.
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Running two versions of Firefox
With Firefox 1.5 out, it’s a bit tricky to run an instance of version 1.0, too. But there is a way (hint: profiles).
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Top 10 JavaScript functions
Use all but the last “bonus” function ” but I may soon.
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Firefox 1.5 released
And the improvements over version 1.0 are well worth the download.
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Mozilla.com
The commercial site for Mozilla has launched (in time for the 1.5 releases of Firefox)
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Tantek on CSS filters and hacks
The man who popularized CSS workarounds sounds-off on the current state of affairs.
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CSS beyond the Web browser
Bert Bos and Håkon Wium Lie use CSS to create a printed book.
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The 33 hottest bands in Canada
Canada’s music bloggers, writers and critics pick the hottest in 2005. No real surpises, but all quite genuine.
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Really reimagine a newspaper
Ethan Kaplan reimagines a newspaper as a dot-com shop. Radical, but real (for some papers).
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Really reimagine a newspaper
Ethan Kaplan reimagines a newspaper as a dot-com shop. Radical, but real (for some papers).
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Web 2.0 Bingo
Buzzword bingo for the new boom.
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Web 2.0 Checklist
It’s funny ’cause it’s true!
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Journal of Usability Studies
A peer-reviewed online journal about, well, usability.
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Instant filler text, improved
Now you can specify the number of words or type of elements to be automatically created.
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mashingtonpost.com
Adrian Holovaty makes his mark (again) by open-sourcing the washingtonpost.com site.
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Oh the irony: AOL selling online ads for CBC
Canada’s national broadcaster will enlist America On-Line to become the exclusive seller of advertising to former’s Web site.
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Realignment: CBS and Google dance
Network may use search engine to distribute video.
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Paying Visa bill in pennies
Protest over privacy threat results in a nearly 10-metre long credit card statement.
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del.icio.us does command line
A newish feature makes the breadcrumb/page title/navigation bar act like a command line. Not completely intuitive, but works.
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Survey of online journalism skills
The Medill School of Journalism is conducting a brief survey on about the skills that online journalists and producers ought to have.
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Is Google the next Wal-Mart?
Robert X. Cringely speculates about the future of Google, its strengths, and why everything may just work out.
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WebPatterns
John Allsop continues his noble efforts to bring patterns to the wild Web.
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Batelle on a better Boom
John Battelle opines in The New York Times on how to do Web 2.0 right.
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Tab in a textarea
Tabinta lets Firefox users use the tab key within a textarea.
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Anti-gravity spaceship patented!
No joke: The U.S. Patent Office approved Boris Volfson’s “concept.”
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Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 delayed?
Rumour has it Windows Vista’s Beta 2 is being delayed, meaning the new browser version may be, too.
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Innovation with corporations
Why big companies have a hard time innovating, and how that can be fixed.
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CSSVista
In one app, preview and edit CSS in two browsers.
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Access Copyright: keep your hands off my Web
The non-profit agency that collects royalties on behalf of copyright holders wants to you to pay-to-surf to compensate select copyright holders.
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Digital Think
I think it’s a book supported by a Flash Web site with a McLuhan-follower’s-esque penchant for newspeak. Intersting, though.
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130,000 actively pay for TimesSelect
In the first two months, the number of people paying to read nytimes.com is huge (even after newspaper subscribers are substracted).
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Newsvine
Mike Davidson’s new project could explode (in a good or bad way) — it has some very smart grounding.
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Selling TV episodes
As predicted, more networks are selling old shows on-demand, for cheap. Are you listening, CBC?
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Canada gets m-commerce
The three national wireless service providers have a agreeded to support a standardized system of wireless payments.
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The Rabble Podcast Network
Politically progressive webzine rabble.ca launches a hub for like-minded podcasts.
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Instant filler text
A clever little script automatically loads up waiting elements with some generic text.
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The Web browser market as a high school party
Maybe it’s jsut funny because I don’t use Opera or maybe it’s perfect satire.
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Use Internet Explorer’s rendering engine in Firefox
Netscape 8 did it first, but now Firefox can, too. With IETab, you can view pages in Firefox the way Internet Explorer would show them.
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Common class and id values
John Allsop crawls the Web and finds some truly odd choices for class and id values.
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Sonic Youth gets its gear back
Punk broke in 1991, and eight years later, Sonic Youth’s sound was broken when their equipment was stolen. Now it’s coming back.
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The Ultimate getElementsByClassName
Not sure if it is “the ultimate” but it seems quite comprehensive to me.
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BBC podcasts with video
This is a smart move, and will be the big trend in media for 2006.
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The Truth about Internet Explorer 7
Via, via, via, Chris Wilson repsonds bluntly about the expectations around IE 7.
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The new Yahoo! Maps
THe Flash-based map tool is pretty impressive, but the zoom tool (at a certain level) looks like the CN Tower.
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Worst breadcrumb ever
The Kingston Whig-Standard’s breadcrumb trail has a nice symmetry. (Thanks Angus)
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CBC Radio 3 plans
The details about the pay-radio satellite service are coming out, as is the little detail about the Web site relaunch being delayed until next year.
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Gomery: Latest developments
Blog-like updates at The Globe and Mail.
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Gomery lays blame
Gomery assigns blame (in Chapter 16 of his first report) to Guité as well as Chrétien, Pelletier and Gagliano. Martin cleared.
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Wan-sabi fundamentals
Yes, it’s another “Eastern philosophy” swallowed by pop culture, but it’s one that reflects Web design’s best practices.
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Brin talks to Battelle
Listen to the half-hour talk which took place during Web 2.0.
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CBC Radio One going Top 40
To those in charge: CBC Radio is not a commerical enterprise, it is a public broadcaster.
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The Gomery Report coverage
This is it — coverage of a so-called scandal that will be the cause for the next election.
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PM²’s first podcast
Yes, the Prime Minister of Canada is doing a weekly podcast, though they don’t dare call it that. When’s the mash-up appear?
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Canadian Web design salaries and rates
Joe Clark opines on a recetn salary survery for Canadian and Torontonian Web folk. Given my experience, the rates seem about right.
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JavaScript libraries
A good overview of the popular Web 2.0 JavaScript libraries (formerly known as DHTML libraries).
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“I’ve fallen and can’t get up”
CBC president Robert Rabinovitch falls during his Heritage Committee testimony.
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Eye redesigns
For its fourteenth birthday (has it been that long?), Eye gets a full-colour redesign (but the site is awful).
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Searching of the “one true layout”
Alex Robinson tackles CSS layouts using floats and builds a totally flexible layout.
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On Montreal and Broken Social Scene
Douglas Bell provides a beautiful takedown of a hilariously misinformed The New York Times review of Broken Social Scene’s latest release.
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Canadian Magazines blog
Yes, a blog about the small, crazy magazine industry in Canada.
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Opera 9 preview
Lots of nice little fixes across the board, with the browser moving closer to the Firefox app behaviour.
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Dean Edward’s addEvent
Don’t really get what’s going on here yet, but others think it rock solid.
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Saturday Night done, again
The magazine that always seems to die, only to be reborn, is dead again.
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The new “addEvent”
Haven’t played with it at all, but will be using this new way to add events universally.
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Doing sidenotes
A better solution to presenting footnotes can be easy in CSS.
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Longing for the World Without Web
Some days, I must admit, I agree with Mr. Ford’s stated sentiments.
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The Globe and Mail a top Google News source
According to survey of Google News, The Globe and Mail is the top Canadian news source, and the 22nd top source overall.
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Support the right-of-way for streetcars on St Clair
The Save our St Clair lobby group succeeded in shutting down the construction of a dedicated right-of-way for streetcar; this petition aims to get theproject back-on-track.
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Oh, the irony
IEBlog asks CSS developers to stop using hacks, but the logic seems a bit fuzzy.
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iPod Video
Figures; buy a Nano, and a new iPod comes out. Still not solid on portable video, but buying TV shows for $2 ’ brilliant move that will save movies and TV.
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Canada wants to wiretap the Net
A new bill could allow the government to eavesdrop on the email, Net and/or phone use of
more than 8,000 simultaneous interceptions around the clock, every day of the year.
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Does this mean the tide is turning?
This Free iPod banner doesn’t want you to hit the monkey — it invites you to sound of on the war in Iraq.
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Newspapers need their iPod
The music industry benefitted from the iPod — now its the newspaper that needs a hot gadget to help its survival.
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The Blooker Prize
The world’s first literary prize devoted to “blooks”: books based on blogs or websites [sic],
says the site. -
New Toronto blog: Paved
Marc Weisblott finally convinced the Toronto Stat to do a real blog covering the city.
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CSS: Specificity Wars
Andy Clarke simplifies CSSselectors for Star Wars fans.
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The expanding box problem
Another Internet Explorer CSS bug explained and fixed. Posting mainly for its suggestion of word-wrap: break-word.
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Economist redesigns with standards
Also offers a day pass. Interesting stuff.
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CBC back to work Oct. 11
CBC will return in all its beaten glory next Tuesday. Hockey Night in Canada will be back for Saturday, though.
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How to describe Web 2.0
Steven Johnson uses a very apt metaphor to describe the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.
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Yahoo buys Upcoming
Andrew (Waxy) Baio announces Yahoo’s purchase of the event site.
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Judith Miller freed
Her source (U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff) “voluntarily and personally” released her of her promise of confidentiality.
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Brandless icons for documents
Hate seeing a branded icon for your HTML or MP3 files? Try these.
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Wireless VoIP
Use a “softphone” to transform almost any device into a telephone.
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A List Apart on columns
Examines how to support CSS3’s multicolumns using JavaScript and how to split lists.
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In the Hot Zone
Kevin Sites is a one man reporter whose wat coverage has garnered him a lot of well-deserved respect. Now he’s doing it for Yahoo!
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2005 Online Journalism Awards Finalists
Good range of nominees, including work by The Globe and Mail’s Stephanie Nolen and Joel Corda.
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Solving the onload dilemma
Dean Edwards has crafted a clever way to initialize events before “onload.”
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PHP Canadian?!
This I did not know: PHP was apparently created by a Canadian (as was Java).
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Screen reading and line lengths
Joe Clark digs up some research that says longer may be better.
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Axing journalists
The New York Times is cutting at least 100 journalist from its payroll. This is not the direction the industry should be going (even if we all secretly feel it is).
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Opera is free
Looks like the trial free registration was no trial. Opera is free, including its newest version, 8.5.
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Improving printed Web pages
Aaron Gustafson riffs on how best to display URLs in a printed Web page.
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Indie Fantasy League
Don’t know which non-music blogger mentioned this, but it was funny then. Pitchfork’s take is scary brillant.
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Truly randomizing a playlist
Dan Goodin explores what random playlists really mean, and whether that’s what we actually want.
