By John Gruber
Mux — Video for developers
Linked List: September 25, 2008
Thursday, 25 September 2008
- A New Interrobang Design!? ★
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Stephen Coles:
I submit that the reason the interrobang didn’t catch on is due mostly to its design. The smashing of straight and curved vertical strokes atop each other is hardly a graceful combination, and it gets especially messy at text sizes (‽). Were it drawn more thoughtfully like those of Christian Schwartz’s Amplitude and Fritz, the interrobang might be part of our standard punctuation today, a member of the basic Latin character set, and common in our written vernacular.
I’ve never been a fan of the interrobang, but Schwartz’s designs for it are so clever that they might change my mind. I think Coles is right that the problem with the interrobang as we know it is that it’s ugly. To my eyes, in most typefaces that have an interrobang glyph, it always looks better to just use adjacent exclamation and question marks — ‘!?’ rather than ‘‽’.
- ‘Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours’ ★
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Joe Clark’s new e-book, subtitled “How to Feel Good About Canadian English”. $17.83 (CAD, of course). Just bought my copy.
- Lightsaber Unleashed ★
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Finally, some good news regarding an app that had been removed from the App Store. The Mac Box’s PhoneSaber was a fun little accelerometer-based lightsaber simulator — fire it up, wave your iPhone around, and it made lightsaber sounds. The developers pulled it from the App Store shortly after release, however, due to licensing concerns.
As of today, it’s back, renamed Lightsaber Unleashed, as a free (and apparently licensed) promotion for the new Force Unleashed game.
- Third, Never-Aired Seinfeld Ad for Microsoft Was Filmed? ★
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Asher Moses, reporting for the Sydney Morning Herald:
Microsoft has already run two ad spots featuring Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld awkwardly meeting in a discount shoe shop and attempting to reconnect with real people by moving in with a normal family.
But even though a third ad featuring Seinfeld was filmed, Microsoft dumped the comic last week in favour of new ads featuring more current celebrities such as actress Eva Longoria, singer Pharrell Williams and even author Deepak Chopra declaring “I’m a PC”.
But all three are Mac fans, Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag revealed.
I don’t care about the fact that the ads themselves were produced on Macs. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any major ad agency that doesn’t produce their creative work on Macs. Making fun of Microsoft for this would be like making fun of Apple because they use Windows PCs for things like SAP.
What’s interesting to me is the report of a third, never-aired Seinfeld spot. I heard the same thing last week, privately, from a friend in Seattle. But now here it is in print. If true, it’s proof that Microsoft’s claim that they’d only ever planned to run two Seinfeld ads and for just two weeks is, in fact, a crock.
- Head of Skate ★
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Apropos given the previous link.
- Sarah Palin on Russia ★
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Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, in her own words, on her previous claims that Alaska’s proximity to Russia lends her foreign policy experience:
“It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia, as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, right next to our state.”
You really need to watch the video to get the full effect. Taken at her word, she seems to believe that Vladimir Putin is preparing to launch an air strike against the United States, and that she as governor of Alaska would play a role in our response.
- Designing the UI of Things for iPhone ★
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I don’t agree with all their decisions, but I do love the way the Cultured Code guys are so willing to share their design iterations.
- The Dark Bailout ★
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“Why don’t you call me when you want to start taking things a little more… seriously.” (Via Rands.)
- Bad Satire ★
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P.Z. Myers on Roger Ebert’s attempted satire of young-earth creationism (the belief that the entire universe is just 6,000 years old):
But Ebert is no Jonathan Swift. Imagine if, in 1729, there had been a number of letters to the editor by various authors proposing that Irish children be exterminated and eaten. Imagine that laws of that nature were being seriously debated in Parliament, and that one of the parties had made it a part of their platform. While the laws were being regularly defeated, opponents still had to stand up and seriously debate why it was unethical to eat babies. Imagine that a candidate for prime minister actually solemnly suggested that we ought to at least consider the merits of eating Irish children.
In that context, Swift’s essay would have fallen flat as a cowflop dropped from the Tower of London.
To satirize the creationism movement, you’d have to, say, posit that the earth is just 60 years old.
- W. ★
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You got to admit it’s a good title.
- LetterCult ★
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New web site dedicated to custom letter design, from Ray Frenden and Brian Jaramillo. First up: an interview with Doyald Young.
Update: Alas, popularity has knocked LetterCult temporarily offline.
- Now This Is How You Make a TV Commercial ★
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Fantastic. (Via Andrew Sullivan). Update: Changed the link to a higher-quality version hosted by Hovis.
- T-Mobile Lifts 1 GB Bandwidth Cap for Google Phone ★
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That didn’t take long.
- David Letterman Reacts to John McCain Suspending Campaign ★
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Highlights from last night’s show. Very funny.