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Linked List: March 31, 2009

Tuesday, 31 March 2009

Jacek Utko: Can Design Save the Newspaper? 

Fantastic design work followed by fantastic increases in newspaper circulation, by Polish newspaper designer Jacek Utko. His advice: “Give power to designers.”

Reprinted from the now-defunct Sync Magazine:

The fruit of his labor: a simple 2-D monochromatic apple, with a healthy bite taken from the right side. Jobs loved the conceit — only he suggested it be more colorful. Janoff’s boss disagreed, insisting the logo be made all black to save on printing costs. “But Jobs was resolute, arguing that color was the key to humanizing the company,” says Janoff. “So I just put colors where I thought they should be, not even thinking about a prism.”

William Zinsser on Keeping ‘On Writing Well’ Up-to-Date 

Speaking of excellent writing books, here’s a nice piece by William Zinsser regarding his excellent On Writing Well:

But when I analyzed White’s book, its terrors evaporated. The Elements of Style was essentially a book of pointers and admonitions: Do this, don’t do that. As principles they were invaluable, but they were only principles, existing without context or reality. What his book didn’t teach was how to apply those principles to the various forms that nonfiction writing can take, each with its special requirements: travel writing, science writing, business writing, the interview, memoir, sports, criticism, humor. That’s what I taught in my course, and it’s what I would teach in my book. I wouldn’t compete with The Elements of Style; I would complement it.

iPhone Pirates Turn Against Each Other 

There is no honor among thieves.

Changes 1.5 

Nice round of improvements to Skorpiostech’s excellent $50 folder and text-file comparison/diff tool. Includes built-in integration with popular editors such as BBEdit, TextMate, Coda, and Espresso. Check out developer Ian Baird’s screencast showing off the new source-control HUD feature. DF readers can save $10 through April 15 with coupon code “DFCHANGES15”.

Get Satisfaction as a Protection Racket 

Jason Fried looks at Get Satisfaction from the perspective of a company that already has their own customer support infrastructure:

They also have a certificate-like customer-company pact agreement that they’d like you to sign. And if you don’t, they’ll make an outlandish claim about your lack of commitment to your customers. [...]

Can you believe that language? “37signals has not yet committed to open conversations about its products or services.” WHAT?! We haven’t committed to open conversations about our products or services because we haven’t signed Get Satisfaction’s pact on Get Satisfaction’s site which generates Get Satisfaction’s income? That’s awfully close to blackmail (or a shakedown or a mafioso protection scheme).

‘Rebecca’ — An Excerpt in Seven Parts 

Beautiful six-years-in-the-making-and-still-going series of portraits by George Del Barrio. As he says: “Always; from so little grows so much.”

Email Addresses It Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone 

A McSweeney’s classic by Michael Ward.

Developer Notebooks 

Gus Mueller:

I learned a long time ago that the two best debugging tools I own are a nice piece of paper, and a good pencil.