nikf:
I’ve been testing the new Nike+ Running site over the last couple of weeks. The big news is that the previously Flash-powered site has been totally re-written. The new site goes live in June, but if you’re wanting to see what’s coming this FAQ from Nike has the details.
While I am a fan of the Nike+ iPhone app, the site has long felt neglected and is consistently unreliable. Features like importing your Gmail contacts or searching for/adding a friend work inconsistently or not at all. And Coach is unavailable in the app and on the mobile site making it kind of useless.
I am at once excited and skeptical about the new site. I can’t decide whether it is a good sign or not that the current Goals, Challenges, or Coach features are not being rolled over into the new version. And I can only hope that they don’t remove the color-based levels because I really want to reach black. I guess I’ll find out in June.
Posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
I overheard a conversation in the elevator at work yesterday where a guy was talking about how their website is just about to launch, but since the cheap 3rd party vendor they used took so long they already are thinking about a redesign since “the world has changed.”
This reminds me of this crazy thing with MySpace recently where to recover your account you can email them a photo of yourself holding holding up a piece of paper with your profile URL.
The web changes fast enough that looking back on a project that started even a year ago can look so quaint and dated. The guy in the elevator’s company website probably looks neglected and old even though it is launching this week.
Posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
Thinking about users with JavaScript disabled is unhelpful. Sure, some of those exist, but they’ve largely opted into that.
It’s more helpful to think about designing a site to work robustly for the situations in which JavaScript doesn’t successfully run. There could be reasons from aggressive firewalls blocking scripts, to slow or broken network connections, where the user might not get your JavaScript along with the page.
Many browsers halt all JavaScript execution on a script error. All it takes is a badly coded third-party ad on your page, or a typo in your own code to stop all JavaScript on the page from running.
Is it right that your page or app should completely stop functioning at that point? The web is a brittle platform. Things break all the time, but our technology stack of HTML, CSS and JavaScript can be exceptionally robust when used in the right way.
Build your site with HTML. Make it look much better with CSS. Make it work much better with JavaScript. Be prepared that CSS or JavaScript may not load at any point, with the reassurance that plain old HTML has got your back.
Sure, it takes a bit longer. Doing a good job always does.
Drew McLellan killing it on Hacker News
Posted on Friday, April 13th, 2012
As I see it, Instagram users have enjoyed an experience that felt like being stuck on a small, hidden island. It was private, initially unknown and thus enabled new social connections with zero embarrassment. And it was also non commercial.
The first breach began with the launch of the Android app, which made Instagram less exclusive in the eyes of iOS users.
The vibe I catch from Instagram veterans is that their island is now sold to a large real estate company, which is going to start building skyscrapers there. Their main fear is probably the commercialization and the privacy settings that are now subject to changes.
Facebook-Instagram Acquisition (April 2012): What explains the negative reaction of Instagram users to their acquisition by Facebook? - Quora
Posted on Monday, April 9th, 2012
I tried the disputed 75¢ slices of the pizza war today for lunch. I have to say, 75¢ is novel, but neither tops my personal favorite cheap slice at 99¢ Fresh Pizza on Lexington and 43rd.
One of the most important factors to trying cheap pizza is going when it is really busy so as to not get a solidified grease chewy reheated slice. The 2 Bros. was super packed and the pizza was pretty fresh. The Bombay Fast Food was not as packed and not as exciting. Their pizza dough was bland.
My snap judgement is that 2 Bros. is better. The Bombay Fast Food slice was fine and given different circumstances I would totally have it again. But since there is a better slice next door, I don’t think I would go there again. Sorry bros.
Posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2012
My goal is to be more efficient, to have and use less, and to downsize what i already have, so my dream setup would involve having fewer things.
An interview with Dan Benjamin
Posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2012
Life is for participating:
I saw him just before he pounced, and let me tell you, I was scared to death. He was out of control. I jumped away from him as he grabbed for me, but he caught me by the shoulder and spun me around, and screamed, ‘Get the hell out of my race and give me that race number.’ I tried to get away from him but he had me by the shirt. It was like being in a bad dream. Arnie tried to wrestle Jock away from me but was having a hard time himself and then Tom, my 235-pound boyfriend came to the rescue and smacked Jock with a cross body block and Jock went flying through the air. At first, I thought we had killed him. I was stunned and didn’t know what to do, but then Arnie just looked at me and said, ‘Run like hell,’ and I did as the photographers snapped away and the scribes recorded the event for posterity.
Posted on Friday, March 30th, 2012
To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that’s pretty cool. This doesn’t mean you have to make something. If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that’s pretty cool. What there has to be is a test.
Paul Graham
(Source: swiss-miss.com, via skillshare)
Posted on Friday, March 30th, 2012
And yet, at the exact moment when an education has never been more necessary, education is increasingly out of reach. From 1980 on, the price of attending a four-year college has risen by 128 percent. While the price has spiked, the quality has tanked. Students at college in 2003 did two-thirds the homework that students in 1961 did. In a survey published in 2011, 45 percent of students showed no improvement in “critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing” after two years of college. You did not read that incorrectly: That’s no improvement. None. And how could the results be any different? Three decades ago, 43 percent of professors were adjuncts. Now, with colleges bloated by older, tenured professors who take up huge slices of academic budgets while teaching crumbs of courses, the vast majority of classes are taught by adjuncts. On college campuses, the supposed hotbeds of liberalism, the young are instructed primarily in the mechanics of crony capitalism.
The War Against Youth
Posted on Friday, March 30th, 2012
Money is a natural byproduct of doing something valuable – so why not focus on doing something you love, that is valuable to you, and I think you’ll be surprised to see how valuable it is to others.
Kill the Blockbuster
Posted on Friday, March 30th, 2012
