∅ the empty set

ø 10 tips for designing mobile websites

A nice and clean compilation of what you should know and take care of when designing or `mobilizing` a web site, by Keegan Street. The article includes many relevant links to other resources on the web. Via @zeldman Thursday...

ø How to Check if Your Gmail Account Has Been Hacked

If you’re worried about email security, Friedbeef's tech offers a step by step guide to help you check and determine if your Gmail account has been hacked or compromised in any way. The guide is detailed and comprehensible, and...

ø Reclaimprivacy.org

@Yannis_ brought this tool to my attention via Twitter. Reclaimprivacy.org provides an independent and open tool for scanning your Facebook privacy settings. A javascript bookmarklet scans your privacy settings and displays your current public status. Tips are provided to...

Kick Ass

Formidable. From: Kickstarter <no-reply@kickstarter.com> Subject: Update: Life In Perpetual Beta by Melissa Pierce Date: 21 mai 2010 21:00:05 HAEC Kick Ass And I can say that because Life In Perpetual Beta is over 100% funded and premieres in a mere...

ø Our Solar System

Our Solar System is an amazing experiment with CSS3 border-radius, transforms & animations....

Disappointing iPad 3G data plans in Switzerland

Swisscom published its iPad 3G data plan yesterday. The basic entry is a CHF 5.-/day (100Mb cap), followed by CHF 19.-/month (300 Mb cap) and CHF 39.-/month (2Gb cap). Disappointing when you compare these figures to their existing mobile offers...

Lift 10 — The redefinition of Privacy

liftconference on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free Warning: the following notes were live blogged on Wednesday by session, so please forgive the typos and semantic errors, I'll brush it up later and break it up ion separate posts. Some day....

Lift 10 — Wed afternoon sessions

Back at Lift. This is my 4th edition and the vibes are still as good. The workshop formula has changed this year: instead of concentrating the workshops over the Wednesday preceding two days of conferences, they are spread out...

Safari for iPhone ignores viewport settings on .mobi domains

While working on the redesign of a client's website, I ran into a weird issue with Safari for iPhone: whatever device-width I specified in the viewport meta tag, the web site would render at 100%. The viewport For Safari...

ø HTML5 presentation (in HTML5)

“HTML5 - Web Development to the next level” is a nifty presentation of HTML5 and other next generation technologies of the web development stack. Javascript new APIs are brilliantly presented complete with inline examples, as are HTML5's new semantic...

ø HTML5 and CSS3 readiness

A cool visualisation of browser support per HTML5/CSS3 feature. Each browser is represented with a tile on the bar and gets an equal width of space, so if you see a bar that is full, that means that feature...

ø The HTML5 test

How well does your browser support HTML5? http://html5test.com/ An interesting browser tester that complements nicely findmebyIP....

Parov Stelar | Coco

Parov Stelar is an Austrian musician and DJ located in Linz, to who's music I have really taken to since discovering his album “Shine” last year. Like Waldeck, his music is smooth and silky, and entices you to listen...

ø Steve Jobs’ response on Section 3.3.1

“Crappy developers will make crappy apps regardless of how many layers there are”

ø Life in Perpetual Beta

Number nine

Emma turned nine at 10:52 this morning. Happy birthday Emma, my precious little dancing princess. Currently playing in iTunes: Love by Térez Montcalm...

The State of the Internet

JESS3 designed and animated this for the JESS3 lecture at AIGA Baltimore in Feb 2010....

Using Tumblr as a travel log

The Empty Set has been on the back burner for a little while now, one reason being that we travelled back to India this winter for a little under a month. Add to that the end of year rush...

The mists of time

I woke up this morning to find myself wrapped up in an old friend's arms: Mist. There was something comforting about the way it dampened reality by overlaying a softness filter inside and out. Focus was on my immediate...

My favourite IM abbr

In my daily chats or tweets, I often get asked the question “What does XXX mean?” or receive the bare question mark suite “???” following the use of an abbreviation. A side effect of today's prevalence of text messaging,...

Nouvelle Vague in concert in Lausanne

Last night was magical. We were teleported to Les Docks in Lausanne to listen to Nouvelle Vague in concert. It was my first time at Les Docks and I found the place very friendly and well laid out. The...

I ♥ my {international} Kindle

I received my International Kindle last Wednesday, and have been playing around with it since. As we've set the clock back an hour today, I'll take the opportunity to post my 2¢ worth of initial Kindle thoughts and how...

Mail 10.6 “Copy Address” fix

I stumbled on a welcoming Mail fix this morning which restores Leopard's (Mac OS 10.5) “Copy Address” behaviour. In Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6), Mail's “Copy Address” contextual menu command copies the name and enclosed the address in angle...

How to fix a Nik Software plug-in crash in Snow Leopard

Since I installed Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6) one of my Aperture plug-ins stopped working, crashing Aperture when launched (a horrible experience). I have several of Nik Software's plug-ins installed, but only Dfine 2.0 stopped working properly. Nik Software's...

Needles and haystacks and such

I love this one. The same curve applies to age vs wisdom. Enjoy. Orig. Jessica Hagy's This is indexed dated October 9th, 2009. Happy birthday little sis....

Warm solitude

“There is little more beautiful than sitting sheltered from an oncoming storm, with the light of day dimmed to an early evening. And the cool of a summer breeze easing the moisture out of a hot day. And me...

Yahoo! Meme

Yahoo! seems to be launching a Twitter/Tumblr service call Meme. Yahoo! has been very quiet about this and seems to be experimenting it in Portuguese and Spanish first. Found the new Internet hit? Send it to your Meme. Everyone...

Happy bday James!

Just a few lines before the day comes to a close to send you all my good vibes. I am sure the months ahead will reveal to be a turning point to brighter horizons. It might seem all uphill...

All else being equal

Another great doodle from Jessica Hagy that says it all. Enjoy. Orig. Jessica Hagy's This is indexed dated August 26th, 2009....

Gentle upgrade to Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6)

It's a slow starter today, so while Snow Leopard gently installs on Jigme, my Mac Pro workstation, I thought I'd share my 2¢ worth of Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6) experience. The upgrade was as smooth as can be...

Defrag

Time for my yearly summer family break. I'm off to Cornwall with the kids for a week to catch up with the family, the ocean breeze and the softness of the Cornish landscape. I'll catch up with you once...

Regina Spektor | Far

I must be one of the last to have discovered Regina Specktor, but lucky enough to stumble upon Laughing With earlier this month. My curiosity was tickled and let me to her latest album Far and to realise she'd...

Tango Boo

We enjoyed Lalo Zanelli & Ombù Sextet at the Parc des Eaux-Vives last night, and I took the opportunity to play around with AudioBoo. Lalo Zanelli - former pianist of the Gotan Project - and his sextet gave the...

iPhone battery packs: Mophie Juice Pack Air vs FastMac iV

The iPhone is a great smartphone in numerous ways, except for its battery life which is under par for normal usage. Over the course of a normal day, I dock my phone at work, in the car and at...

Quadcam for iPhone OS 3.0 still unavailable

July 28th: QuadCamera v1.95 compatible iPhone OS v3.0 was released today. Hurray! iPhone OS v3.0 has been release for a month now, and most of the apps I use have been updated to run on this latest release. Except...

Information overload and/or closet organizers

So true. Orig. Jessica Hagy's This is indexed dated July 8th, 2009....

Tweet push

I've been playing around with a number of Twitter clients which offer push notification in one way or another, and the the closest I got to finding what I'm looking for was Tweet Push. Tweet Push isn't a Twitter...

Short

I've been playing around with Shorty recently, Khoi Vinh's simple tool for creating shorter, human- readable links from long URLs. Like tinyurl or tr.im but hosted on your own server. The problem I was running into was my long...

Prowl, a Growl Client for iPhone

I discovered Prowl over breakfast this morning and couldn't resist trying it out. Prowl is a Growl client for iPhone. Notifications from your Mac can be sent to your iPhone over push, with a full range of customization. With...

Web Trend Map goes dot com

Earlier this year I mentioned that Information Architects Japan (iA) had published their annual Web Trend Map (v4) onto the Tokyo Metro map. Well, currently iA is building an interactive version of the Web Trend Map under webtrendmap.com which...

Homebound

Waiting in lounge at London City Airport. @media 2009 came to a close yesterday with Patrick announcing he's retiring from web design, development and conference organising. I'm feeling a little emotional, but I wish to thank Patrick for what...

Do you wonder?

I love Jessica Hagy's doodles and couldn't resist sharing with you her last one which happens to be very relevant on a personal level. Enjoy. Orig. Jessica Hagy's This is indexed dated June 23rd, 2009....

The widest smile

It was last Wednesday, around six thirty in the afternoon. Mathias had left for his camp early Monday morning, and was scheduled to call in early evening. Emma had been sleeping in his bed and wearing his swimming trunks...

iPhone v3.0 OS MMS and tethering

A quick post to share with you how I managed to activate tethering (Swisscom) on my iPhone 3G running iPhone OS 3.0 (build 7a341). The 3.0 update was seemless. I downloaded my developer's copy and updated the iPhone via...

Nameless

Up too early again. Literally with the birds and my thoughts, not knowing which awoke me. Probably my thoughts. There is quite a bit going on lately, on all fronts. Professionally, several dormant projects have bounced back to life...

Twitterverse

Discover the twirl of services and applications that gravitate from or around Twitter. Twitter by all means is a micro social network, but I was surprised to discover a wealth of macro services I had never heard of. I...

Last Day Dream

Last Day Dream [HD] from Chris Milk on Vimeo. "Last Day Dream" a man watches his life pass before him Produced for the 42 Second Dream Film Festival Beijing China 2009 www.42x42.com Shot entirely on Lensbaby Lenses and Canon 5D...

“Taking Your Talent to the Web” is now a free downloadable book

This book was initially published in 2001, and it took me ages to find a copy as it was out of print when I discovered its existance. Eight years later, most of the advice and vision remains true and spot-on.

The iTunes Store's missing songs

The iTunes Store introduced variable pricing and states it is 100% DRM free since last Tuesday. Maybe. Maybe not. I have regularly updated my iTS purchases to the 256kbps ACC/DRM free versions as they became available, so I naturally...

What are web standards?

An interview of Jeffrey Zeldman on web standards by Big Think. Found in the daily report on zeldman.com. Just under ten minutes with the man without whom the web standards would probably not have taken off. Author of “Designing...

Web Trend Map v4

Information Architects Japan (iA) have published their annual Web Trend Map (v4) which lists the top 50 most influential domains (333), and the people (111) associated with them onto the Tokyo Metro map. The domains and people are selected...

Coeur à Choeur

Last night I discovered the Chorale des Bains' new show named “Choeur à Coeur” at La Traverse in the Paquis. So much more than a traditional choir, the Chorale des Bains delivers a full fledge show, tied up in...

I Can Make You A CSS Zen Master

I Can Make You A CSS Zen Master from Andy Clarke on Vimeo. LOL Ori: For a Beautiful Web Blog...

Volchok

Last night I lived one of those magical moments life is punctuated with. We walked down the road to the place Audéoud, at Chêne-Bougeries, to take part of the Festival des 20 ans du Théâtre-Cirqule. Three circus tents, a friendly...

Microsoft Sustainability

May 2009: Apparently this video has been pulled off Vimeo. You can find it in the Work section of Oh, Hello. Microsoft Sustainability from Kray Cédric on Vimeo. This is a cool presentation that would have found its place at...

Ten

Ten. It has always been a special number to me. In a decimal or binary system. It is the first two digit number you learn. Ten years. Intimately linked to a gap. Things must happen in ten years. Things must...

Emilíana Torrini | Me and Armini

I made this happy discovery while couch-browsing the iTunes Store the other evening: Emilíana Torrini's new album Me and Armini. Emilíana Torrini is half-Icelandic, half-Italian, lives in living in Brighton, UK, and has already published a number of albums...

Get your MacBook to sleep smart

I almost never shutdown my MacBook Pro, I always send it to sleep. Faster wake up time, this behaviour makes sense on a laptop. Only, it can take ages for the MacBook to actually go to sleep. Check how long it takes between the moment you close the lip, and the power led start pulsing. Ages.

Farewell Dean

Cornishmen do it dreckly. The wind will guide you The sun will warm you The moon will energize you The water will cleanse you The Universe will shelter you...

An evening with Violeta

I discovered Violeta Parra, a Chilean poet and visual artist, through an remarkable performance of Michèle Millner together with Yves Cerf, Paco Chambi and Sylvain Fournier last might at the AMR. Michèle Millner interprets Violeta Parra with her heart...

Snowy break in Champéry

Waow. Get the goggles out kids… and see you the other side pals....

Mobile Aperture

As much as I like Aperture, one of its annoying wekanesses is the lack of support of multiple librairies, or network based librairies. Yes, you can have multiple librairies per se, but you can only open one at a...

Revisited

“Stop all the tweets, power off the phones, Prevent Mail from beeping with its shiny tones, Silence the podcasts, put up the black sail, Close the weblogs, and let the silence prevail. Let the webcams' white noise crackle ahead...

Faut-il

“ Faut-il saupoudrer un peu de pardon sur la haine afin de la dissoudre Faut-il mélanger les circonstances atténuantes aux injures pour les délayer Comment stopper l'hémorragie de mots rageurs Comment contenir toutes ces questions qui pondent des oeufs Et voir à...

Shazam wins the 2008 Best App Ever award

Winners of the 2008 Best App Ever Awards (according to 148apps.com and their nomination committee) were announced at the 2009 MacWorld Expo in San Francisco on January 7th, 2009. Shazam won big in the “Best Overall”, “Most Innovative”, and...

Animoto for the iPhone

As a followup to the Animoto's post, I have just discovered the Animoto iPhone application (iTS link). A nifty little application that lets you build free 30 seconds long videos from images stored on your iPhone. Select 8 or...

The MacBook Wheel

Only minutes before Apple's last MWSF Keynote. These guys are sooooo good. Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard By the Onion News Network (Thanks Andy!)....

Versions

I've used a fair number of Subversion clients for the Mac but have always reverted back to the command line or to TextMate's build-in svn support. Although most of them did the job, none of them were polished enough to give the user experience I expect from a Mac application until I discovered Versions last August.

Gap

gap | gap | noun 2 an unfilled space or interval; a break in continuity Between oneself and yourself. Between what one is and what one seems. Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for...

Animoto - clever slideshows

I have just discovered animoto, a different way of creating slideshows from local or online stored image files. Basically, it's a nifty online Flash app that lets you create a free 30 seconds long slideshow video from your photos....

Hasta la vista, baby

… and the moral of the story: it takes 4 Macs to overtake a PC running Windows (sic!) Where's the Linux bot? Somewhat inspired from the Transformers, I, Robot and Terminator. Orig: YouTube...

Visual Web Design Master Class

Here are a few notes I took during the “Visual Web Design Master Class” by Andy Clarke on December 1st, 2008. I had an inspiring day listening to Andy Clarkeand Brendan Dawes. After a bumpy start, the day turned...

We're not friends

No. We're not friends. Anymore. We been best of pals for so long now, it is not easy to write these lines. More than one won't understand my stand, but I've been let down just this once too many....

A West African storytelling Sunday afternoon

Almost a year ago day for day, I wrote about the enchanting Moroccan tales of Hamed Bouzzine and how we all got wrapped up in them. Yesterday, it was two West African storytellers, or “griots“, that brightened up my...

VisualHub discontinued

I first heard about Techspansion closing through lynxman's Twitter feed before reading the notice that is displayed when you launch the application. ...After much soul-searching (it's not you, it's me), for personal reasons, Techspansion is closing its virtual doors....

Geneva Apple Store is open

The Geneva Apple Store opened yesterday at 17:00 CET. It is Apple's 242nd store worldwide. I wasn't sure to attend, but curiosity got the best of me. Not curiosity of the store itself as I was very much sure...

Worn to a frazzle

Having a long breakfast today while trying to catch up with the endless unread items of my RSS feeds which are well into the four figures. Just thought I'd say hi somewhere in between . I'd love to have...

Social unnetworking

I have a strange relationship with technology lately. Things tend to break, malfunction, bug more often than usual. My levels of electrostatic fluid must be high. Anyway, with the summer closing in and automn's cold lick too close to...

+24d

Monday morning 0630a.Showered. Sun is rising.Time for printer lifting. Let's make this week smoother than the previous one....

Lost my sunshine

Gosh it's wet out there. Wet and humid. It's been raining buckets ever since I got up earlier on. The kind of weather that entices you to snuggle up in bed and forget about the outside world all together....

Waiter Rant

I haven't posted many book reviews since I relaunched this weblog. Not that I didn't want to, or was at a loss. Quite the contrary. I have a number of books I would { have } like{ed} to talk...

For a beautiful web

Yesterday, Andy Clarke launched For A Beautiful Web!, a site presenting a series of master classes and workshops on creative design and training for the web. The initial master class "Visual Web Design Master Class For A Beautiful Web"...

Ctrl-P-Print

Eddie Izzard's Encore on Computers - just for a 7' laugh… Orig: YouTube...

90 days

It's been almost 90 days since my last post. Whoosh. It's not like nothing happened, or that I haven't written anything, or felt, reflected, pondered or brainstormed. No. It's just that I haven't published anything. I have a number...

My 2 cents worth of iPhone tips for Switzerland

Important note: please bear in mind that this post relates to a first generation iPhone running 1.x software. It's almost a month now that I've received my iPhone, and I thought it might be time to share a few...

Serenity

Grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference. Come back later to read a tale of failing hardware and unwilling people. Currently playing...

Soulmate

A different reality. A state of mind. A new colour. A direct line. A stateless presence. A broader horizon. A free thinker. A cloudless sky. Now and here. soulmate (also soul•mate) noun a person ideally suited to another as...

Just for you

These few lines are for a friend in need. This is one of thoses times when you feel something as been ripped out of you. Something so deep and vital, that you are left utterly stunned and empty. What...

Fractal raindrops

One story is told of how John W. Gates, John W. Drake, and John W. Lambert, another associate, were watching a heavy rainstorm come up. It was thundering and lightning terrifically. Gates stood in front of the window and...

Wet

I don't know about you, but here you are better off staying at home, snuggling up in front of a warm chimney (if you have one - wish I did), listening to the wind blowing and the rain falling...

Burned

It's a bright new day. I remember this day, nine years ago as if it were yesterday. Some events just burn into your memory cells forever. More than a turn in my life, it was an opening. An opening...

iPhoned 10 years after

Gee. I've just realised it will be 10 years this spring that I've owned a cellphone. Well, several would be more accurate. While my iPhone was being knocked about in a UPS van somewhere, I began to try and...

Snow today?

No snow here - yet but windy has hell. Felt like the tires of my bike were glued to the road. No iPhone either. Brr. Grr....

Thin line

Early rise again. Black coffee and code for breakfast. I should be use to these events by now, but there's always the dreaded hardware failure, or worse, software failure, that looms in the back of my mind as the...

Early ramblings

Up early today. Euphemism. Up in the middle of the night rather. 5:30am. Even the birds haven't started to sing yet. I hear the wind blowing. I feel can it. A warm sort of wind. Outside, I can only...

In sync

As March looms in once more with its load of festivities, rejoicing (and workload), Emma will turn 7 and Mathias 9 over the following couple of weeks. Birthday parties are being organised, birthday invitations designed and printed, wish-lists amended....

Feeling chirpy @16:43

Didn't get half of I wanted to do this week, but the spirits are high at the week-end's dawn. The sun is out, the air is almost warm. I'm working with the windows open. Everything has a warm goldy hue...

10.5.2 freezes

When an update makes you feel sick. This is what the latest Mac OS 10.5.2 update makes me want to do. It is a sad world when you start to loose trust in what use to be a flawless...

LIFT 2008 afterthoughts

Once again, here I am in a post-conference-blues mood after LIFT 2008 ended yesterday. As Laurent mentionned, in 2006 we had a conference, in 2007 an event, and in 2008 a community. It felt like that this time. At...

LIFT08 - Foresight and wrap up

Warning: the following notes were live blogged on Friday by session, so please forgive the typos and semantic errors, I'll brush it up later and break it up ion separate posts. Some day. Maybe. - I slowed down on...

LIFT08 - Web and entreprises

Warning: the following notes were live blogged on Friday by session, so please forgive the typos and semantic errors, I'll brush it up later and break it up ion separate posts. Some day. Maybe. Watch the videos. The purpose...

LIFT08 - Gaming

Warning: the following notes were live blogged on Friday by session, so please forgive the typos and semantic errors, I'll brush it up later and break it up ion separate posts. Some day. Maybe. Watch the videos. Robin Hunicke...

LIFT08 - New frontiers

Warning: the following notes were live blogged on Friday by session, so please forgive the typos and semantic errors, I'll brush it up later and break it up ion separate posts. Some day. Maybe. Watch the videos. This track...

LIFT08 - A glimpse of Asia

Warning: the following notes were live blogged on Thursday by session, so please forgive the typos and semantic errors, I'll brush it up later. Some day. Maybe. Watch the videos. With LIFT going to Asia, we want to share...

LIFT08 - Stories

Warning: the following notes were live blogged on Thursday by session, so please forgive the typos and semantic errors, I'll brush it up later. Some day. Maybe. Watch the videos. This track is aimed at hearing the stories of...

LIFT08 - User experience

Warning: the following notes were live blogged on Thursday by session, so please forgive the typos and semantic errors, I'll brush it up later. Some day. Maybe. Watch the videos. Younghee Jung Anthropologist at Nokia Tokyo. Telecommunications have been...

LIFT08 - Online Environments

Warning: the following notes were live blogged on Thursday by session, so please forgive the typos and semantic errors, I'll brush it up later. Some day. Maybe. Watch the videos. Bruce Sterling The first I heard of Bruce Sterling...

LIFT 2008

Back to the LIFT conference for the first day of conferences. As last year, I dodn't manage to attend the workshops, or at least not in a serious fashion, but I'm here for the full two days of conferences...

Rainy Monday iMix

A whipped iMix of the tunes & vibes which kept me going on this cold and rainy February Monday morning. Just like that. ADD? Naahh…...

Earth Hour 2008

A couple a days ago, a tweet from my friend Madhava attracted my attention: I followed it and discovered the Earth Hour project. Last year, Australian WWF organized the original Earth Hour during which over 2.2 million residents of Sydney...

Days like this

Days when things just go wrong, haywire, off target, awry, out of order. Murphy is never far, add a pinch of procrastination and the day has come and gone. The Todos remain, the sun sets and it's time to...

.Mac calendar synchronisation problem in Leopard

I've been having synchronisation issues with .Mac services recently related to my iCal calendars. Usually, resetting the .Mac copy with a local copy from one of my computers solved the problem. But not this time. The SyncServer was generating...

Mon•day

This week will see my To Do list shrink down to 1 digit numbers…...

Belleruche | Turnable Soul Music

Another smooth discovery I made while browsing Asa' "Listeners also bought" section of iTS. Belleruche is a well-crafted mix of bass & drums with a sensual, smoky, sexy female vocalist, together with funky guitar moments. Pure soulful jazz under...

Asa | Asa

Here's music to start your week with: Asa's (pronounce Asha which means eagle in Nigerian) self named debut album. An album full bright colours, heights and perspective. Rythms that callback long gone memories of Jamaican evenings, rythm & blues,...

Raspberry sky

Woke up to the most beautiful sky this morning. Shades of pink, orange, magenta all harmoniously gathered and delicately intermingled to wish us a raspberry week. Wish I had my Ricoh GRD. And apparently, I wasn't the only one to...

Backup revisited

I've recently fine tuned my overall backup strategy and finally found a balance between efficiency, security and ease of use that suits me. As you may or may not know, I'm a paranoid sucker when it comes down to...

Wrapped up in Hamed Bouzzine's Moroccan tales

We spend an enchanting moment Saturday afternoon listening to Hamed Bouzzine wrap us up in his Moroccan tales. It was part of «Les Nuits du Maroc» festival (Oct 4-13th) organised by the Ateliers d'ethnomusicologie, and took place at the...

Trusting a Certificate with Keychain Access

This is by no means mission critical, but I have been plagued with a keychain certificate glitch ever since I migrated to my Mac Pro in August. Each time I opened Mail.app it warned me that the certificate for one...

Thoughts on Web Strategy

Regularly, I get asked about the future of the web, or what is the next big thing?, what is all this Web 2.0 buzz? or I get called in to talk about web strategy in general or in particular. My...

KT Tunstall | Drastic Fantastic

Like many I suppose, I discovered KT Tunstall during her live session at the Apple Special Event on September 5th (Tip: scroll to 01:14:30 of the webcast to view her performance). I thought she gave a stunning performance in...

iPod Touch first impressions

My iPod Touch was delivered yesterday around 3pm, and I've been playing with it since. The iPhone hasn't reached Europe yet, and isn't announced in Switzerland at al for the moment, so it was my first contact with the...

Apple Store web standards savvy

This might be old news to some, but I was pleasantly surprised this morning to discover that the Apple Store had been redesigned to become a big step closer to web standard compliance and has improved its accessibility. Apple's...

Bear with me

Please bear with me while I fool around with the markup and the css of this website. A revamp is on the way. Things might look weird, things might break, things might simply not show up. I know. It's...

Watch that trailing slash

The trailing slash on URLs referencing directories has always bugged me because it doesn't look good. I am a bit of a URL fetishist, I like URLs to be simple and clear and without a trailing slash. But that...

Embracing iTunes Plus, or from LPs to MP4a, or some 32 years of music

Apple launched their DRM free music (256kbps AAC) last Tuesday by creating a new entity of the iTunes Store called iTunes Plus. All of EMI's catalog was to be offered in DRM free form sometime in May, and user...

Spaces matter in IE 7's conditional statements

This might not be news for you, but it came as a surprise to me when I recently tested a website under Internet Explorer 7 and discovered that nothing showed up, although it displayed normally under IE 6. The...

Hot in Geneva

I love it and not thinking about Monday....

A bird's eye view

There are times when I get a glipmse of my broader me in the big picture. Not the big picture of course, but a wider perspective from a few steps back, something a little bit more global. In time and...

Twitter cleanup

Spent the last 10 minutes cleaning up my Twitter follower's list. Twitter has just introduced a new feature called "block": We've introduced a new feature lots of folks requested called "block." Blocking someone means that you (and your pic) will...

Sunny at seven

The sun is shining at seven o'clock. Temperatures are rising again. Public outdoor swimming pools open after tomorrow. At lunchtime I'll only have another three lectures to give before the summer break. It's going to be a full day....

The clouds are back

Back blogging at the Mouton Noir. It was blue in the west and grey in the east when I left home this morning. Seasonal weather seems to have caught up with us this last week. Temperatures have dropped, it...

Damp and powerless

1st of May 8:00a. The sun is still shy, but shines through a blue water washed sky with the last yesterday's scattered clouds running away. I'm writing this post from the Mouton Noir with 12 wireless access points around...

Use Apache's mod_rewrite for beautiful MovableType URLs

If you are an URL fetishist like me, you certainly have been bugged by the fact that MovableType's installation URL kicks in when you need to use MovableType's search function. Eventhough MovableType can host multiple weblogs each with their...

Airport Disk hangs logout if not unmounted

I've setup my brand new Airport Extreme base station with success about ten days ago, and was excited to test out the new Airport Disk feature. I intended to transfer my iTunes library onto an external disk, and share...

Winter hits back with a revenge

With Spring less than two days away, Winter hits back with a revenge (• • • • •)...

Safari UTF-8 rendering glitch fixed in WebKit nightly build

Safari v2.0.4 (419.3) and previous versions have this annoying habit of not displaying utf-8 encoded characters properly under certain conditions: If you use the css 'content' property to display an utf-8 encoded string, it won't be properly rendered in...

MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo WEP problems fixed?

Apple released an Airport Update 2007-002 that fixes connection problems that were nagging MacBook and MacBook Pro users ever since the release of the MacBook Pro C2D. Contrary to the previous one released earlier this year. This update also...

On hardware failures

There are days when the hardware lets you down. I've noticed a significant increase in the frequency of hardware failures these last years, part of them related to quality control (see below). More personally, I've been experiencing a hardware...

Swiss french speak French

Why can't web app developers embrace the idea that language should be assigned as an array and not a single variable to a country? Switzerland has 4 official languages plus English. Defaulting to German is plain shortsighted. I learned...

Turned six

Emma turned 6 on Saturday. The events and their build up, that took place almost 2'200 days ago are still cristal clear. It was a Saturday when we shifted from a couple with a child to a family of...

Bloc Party | A Weekend in the City

I discovered Bloc Party's first album Silent Alarm back in April 2005 while spending a weekend in Berne at Laurent's house. I still remember my surprise and amazement at hearing that spiky guitar rock and Kele's voice that recalled...

Wardriving in the Heathrow Express

On our way home from FoWA London 2007, I connected to the internet at Paddington waiting for the train to leave. I kept iStumbler open as we left the station expecting to see the number of access points fade as...

After FoWA London 2007

Heathrow Airport, gate 19, waiting to board the plane back to Geneva with Mathias and Enrique. The Future of Web Apps 2007 conference wrapped up yesterday for us as we didn't attend today's workshops. I'm flying back with mixed...

Ayo | Joyful

I discovered Ayo (Joy in Yoruba) quite by chance just before leaving for Leysin last week. I was following a trail of "you bought this - see what others bought" on the iTS when I fell on Ayo's first...

Sunny melting hot in Leysin

Waow. The snow will definitively melt today.....

Unplugged in Leysin

Leysin. Just past 10pm, we're back from a lovely diner in the Fromagerie and we're all in bed, the kids having finally surrendered to a long day worth of excitement. I'm still fiddeling with my wifi connection, attempting to...

Carla Bruni | No Promises

We waited two years for Carla Bruni's second album, and here it is at last. First impression is that it is short - 35" minutes max. - and entirely in English this time. The texts are old American and...

Multiple iTunes librairies

I've been playing around with iTunes 7 multiple librairies function, and I must admit it works as advertised. I've been looking for a solution that enables me to share a library among multiple Macs, along with its copy protected...

My short Lift 2007

The Lift Conference 2007 is wrapping up while I write these lines. I didn't manage to attend it as I initially planned to. I was going to spend Thursday and Friday following the conferences and socialising. The reality turned...

Your latest t-shirt

Do you buy t-shirts on internet?. I do. Essentially geeky and crypted branded one (gibberish for some). My latest acquisitions are from A List Apart and Insanely Great Tees. Good quality cotton, nice colours and nice prints. As a...

WWDC07

Whoosh, I received a Time Machine Leopard teaser styled invitation in my mail today. Now, what does that tell us on 10.5 UI? Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference will be help on June 11-15th, 2007 in San Francisco....

Movable Type in the fast lane

One of Pronet's latest weblog posts entitled "Make Movable Type 15 times faster!" attracted my attention a few days ago, and I decided to give it a try over the weekend. It turns out that the latest version of...

Apple UK ads

The Get a Mac adverts are available on Apple's UK website with new actors. I find them funnier than the original ones. It must be that English dry humour touch.....

What is your notepad bag?

If you own a notepad (aka laptop) computer you care for, you probably own a well designed, strong and sturdy laptop bag, with all the appropriate protection your investment requires. I get the impression people aren't that worried about...

Nina Simone | Remixed and Reimagined

I've been listening to this album for the last couple of days, and I must admit that it was just what I needed. It's energy and soulful vibrations fill the space up. Remixing can be a daunting experience and...

Interarchy, old friend

I received Peter N. Lewis' last "Total Interarchy" issue today. He announces that Interarchy's lead developer Matthew Drayton has formed a new company, Nolobe Pty Ltd, and acquired Interarchy and that he is retiring from its development. As of...

Mint v2.0

Shaun Inman has just released Mint v2.0. A major update to what has become an invaluable website usage stats tool. UI aside, I noticed the following enhancements, full support for IE6+ including admin (lots of clients asked for this);...

Dingalingaling

I've just been given one of the funniest ringtone I've happen to hear since I own a mobile phone. Thanks Sergio. MP3 Flash Player courtesy of dewplayer. It come as an MP3 file (a little over 2Mb): 07_Radjiv_07.mp3. I have...

Enlightened

His Holiness the Dalai Lama using a Mac. A happy picture picked this up on Digg....

Cold here too

Yes, it's cold here too....

Norah Jones | Not too late

I downloaded the pre-release of Norah Jones' latest album "Not to late" from the iTunes Store this morning. It is her third album, and I was waiting for it since "Feels like Home" in 2004 and hoping it would...

Yet another WiFi network (yawn)

Another WiFi network appeared in iStumbler this morning, which brings the total to ten. There were two (mine included) back in 2001 when I moved in, and four last summer. I'm actually hooking into private networks from across the...

My backup paranoia

There's been a fair bit of talk on backup strategies, hardware and software around me lately, so I thought I'd add my two cents worth. I guess I'm a sort of paranoid backup freak. So don't take too literally...

Open lines

Long overdue....

Stopdesign is back. Just write.

I was pleased to discover that Douglas Bowman (Stopdesign) has resumed writing again after a pause of a year or so. I particulary enjoyed the reasons why he stopped and why he is resuming. So I stopped using my feed...

Getting GrowlMail to work

Leopard 10.5 update: Mac OS X 10.5's Mail.app requires bundle version 3 or greater. See comment below. I've been fiddling around to get GrowlMail to work with the latest version of Growl. Installing the GrowlMail bundle went fine, but...

@media 2007 London

Yes! I've just booked my seat to the third edition of @media conference. I'll be attending the European edition in London on June 7th. This edition offers transcontinental editions: Europe, Asia and America. Woaw. I have a soft spot...

Learning Aperture 1.5

DHL delivered my copy of Aperture 1.5 Beyond the Basics edited by Lynda.com early this morning. Can't wait to listen to Scott Bourne explain how to organise my photo workflow with Aperture. I love to listen to him, Leo,...

Bulletproof Ajax

Jeremy Keith has just announced the sequel to DOM Scripting: Bulletproof Ajax (I picked it up on Twitter actually). It borrows the adjective (and the background image) from Dan Cederholm's Bulletproof Web Design. It is announced as available on...

Do you tweet?

I have just discovered Twitter and must confess it is kind of sticky. I especially enjoy the ability to post through via mobile phone. Unlike other IM, your message || status || tweet remains there when your computer is...

What about the Mac?

Now the reality distortion field has faded a little since Steve Jobs' keynote, a few observations materialised in my early morning dreaming. The iPhone announcement and presentation was a bomb. An investor's bomb, not necessarily a Mac loyal bomb....

An Event Apart 2007

Waow. I've just discovered An Event Apart through an ad on A List Apart. The list of speakers left me drooling with envy. Steve Krug Cameron Moll Andrew Kirkpatrick Dan Cederholm Molly Holzschlag Ethan Marcotte Jason Santa Maria Eric...

Transcending CSS

This is the kind of book I love to discover. The last time I got so excited by a book on CSS was when I read Jeffrey Zeldman's Design with Web Standards back in 2003. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen...

Welcome to 2007

Another reboot, another go, another cycle, another round, another song, another day, another year. I wish you a healthy and harmonious one to you all....

Empty set symbol

Oddly enough, I'm having trouble finding a way to display a empty set symbol that works on Internet Explorer (7 included). The symbol ∅ doesn't display correctly. It shows up as a square. Converting it to its HTML entity &empty;...

Welcome to the empty set

Welcome to the Empty Set [∅]. In mathematics and more specifically set theory, the empty set is the unique set which contains no elements. Wikipedia Multiple personalities Basically, this weblog is all about solving a case of multiple personalities. The...