Wanna Do Web Design?
Lately, I've had a handful of younger people ask for advice on pursuing a career in design. With a blind inefficiency, I hammered out numerous lengthy emails, realizing only afterward that I have this fabulous forum here, where I can share my amazing genius with the entire world! Mwah ha ...
Fixpert Wayback Machine
I think most creative folks have this desire to redesign their own web site about once every five seconds. I've managed to move to the other end of the spectrum and actually really neglect some core features and enhancements that this site has been needing for umm, a couple years ...
Whatchoo Know ’bout a Blue Beanie Fool?! (and other lamentations about Fixpert.com)
It's Blue Beanie Day. Let someone else explain what that means:
"Monday, November 26, 2007 is the day thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content. … Don a Blue Beanie and snap a photo. Then on ...
Does Anyone Else Get Depressed Reading Their Comment Spam?
I have this awesome Wordpress plugin called Akismet that helps trap a lot of comment spam on this site. However, I noticed that occasionally a real (non-spammy) comment gets trapped in the Akismet queue, so every so often I have to scroll through the list of trapped comment spam to ...
Man, Voice-Operated Phone Menus are No Good
I guess this is an Interaction Design thing. Have you ever called a company, let's say...Orbitz...to have a customer service issue sorted out? And once you hit their phone's menu system, you are prompted to say a number of choices outloud? I can see the value of this in certain ...
Gravatars on Fixpert Comments?
Ok, now that you guys solved the question of changing the background color on my comments after posts, I was wondering if I should also add gravatars to the comments? Do you guys have gravatars? Just curious if you use them, like 'em, etc.
Thanks again guys!
Using DOM Scripting for Fixpert Comments
I want to be all spiffy and change the background color on my comments on Fixpert so that when I'm scanning the comments on a post, it's easier for me to skip over what I said. Seems like it will be helpful for my readers too, I don't expect that ...
It’s De-Lurking Day, So Leave a Comment!
What is De-Lurking Day? Today is the day that I encourage all of my site visitors to go ahead and leave a comment. Say whatever you want. If your mind is blank, say hello, who you are, where you're from, and what type of content you enjoy on the site ...
Fixpert is Fixed Now?
Um...hi. I guess my site fixed itself. What the hell? That was weird. I was poking around in my WordPress admin interface. I switched the themes back and forth from the old school Fixpert theme to this new one, and now the posts have re-appeared out of the blue? Either ...
Somebody Help, My Whole Site is Busted!!
Update: Fixpert now appears to be fixed, thanks for your moral support!
Friends of Fixpert, I beseech you! What the hell is going on with my site? Only the homepage works, everything else apparently doesn't exist anymore?! Clicking through to any category or article you get an error page from my ...
More Stringent Comment Approval
Well, sorry everybody, lately I've been getting so much obnoxious comment spam, I've had to make the standards by which comments are automatically approved a bit more rigorous. In the last month, I've been getting a lot of these fake compliment comments, so now if you use certain complimentary phrases ...
Interesting Book: Designing for Interaction
Peachpit Press's upcoming book Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices by Dan Saffer is due to hit the shelves August 2006. It looks like it's going to be a great read for both junior and senior-level Interaction Designers and Information Architects.
Here is a nice excerpt that ...
Agile Development in Interaction Design…Too Many Meetings?
One of the biggest challenges in my professional life has always been trying to keep up with my workload while spending so much time in meetings. Take a look at the week I just had:
The white areas are time that I have to actually produce work. I tend to work ...
War 2.0
Hi dudes, it's been a while. I usually don't discuss anything related to the news or politics here on this site, but I just had a thought. The war in Iraq is very Web 2.0. All this news is floating around about Al-Zarqawi's death and the idea that it won't ...
Nerds in Denial
Before I start this post, I want to make sure that everyone knows that I try my best to steer clear of rants on my site. I noticed that I don't like to read blogs that are regularly negative. I won't make a habit of this I promise. With that ...
I Heart CarbonMade
It's been far too long since I decided I was going to write this post. If you're looking for a quick, easy way to set up an online portfolio, I highly recommend CarbonMade. Creating a nice, clean portfolio has always been a bit of a chafe for me. This Winter ...
If Fixpert Looks Bare…
That's because it's CSS Naked Day. I feel so...naked! So far the list of participants is at 545 people. That's awesome! Everyone has turned off their styles and is baring nothing but pure xhtml markup for all the world to see. Hmm...methinks I need to change my markup to offer ...
No Etech 2006 Podcasts?
Umm, wtf? Last year, IT Conversations had full coverage via glorious podcast upon podcast of Etech 2005. I can't find any podcasts of the presentations for 2006 anywhere though. Maybe they're still working on getting them uploaded, if not I am seriously bummed. Etech 2005 was the best set of ...
Hello to my SXSW Friends
Hi everybody. I'm back from my trip to Austin for SXSW. I'm happy to be back in Virginia, though I must say I was shocked and disappointed to discover that Winter is still going on here.
There are, however, the very first signs that spring is on the way -- ...
Trusted Filters, del.icio.us, and RSS
Remember when the internet used to be slow and frustrating to navigate? Remember when it was hard to find any useful content online? Me too.
For better or worse, lack of good content and slow connections don't seem to be issues anymore. These days I can easily flush an hour ...