While I’ve never put pen to paper with it, I do have a mental list of rules I go through when deciding what to purchase or wear. I have to remind myself regularly that the things that grace AFT are al

(Image via Wikipedia) "Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made." -- John Godfrey Saxe The other day, I came across a post by a young journalist and rec

What do you do for lunch every day? Where do you eat it? With whom? I’ve been on teams that eat together every day, and it’s awesome. I’ve been on teams that don’t, and lunch every day is, at best, lo

Townies is a series about life in New York, and occasionally other cities. I’ve done it on the subway and at the Museum of Modern Art, in Prospect Park, Tompkins Square Park and leaning against the lo

As a kid, I spent hours drawing and sketching ideas that popped into my head. I used drawing as a primary language for capturing thoughts, exploring ideas, and then sharing those ideas. Teachers and m

If you watch enough television shows and movies, then you might even start to notice that a bunch of the same props are used over and over again. I first noticed this with a magazine prop in various t

I like to pay for things I use, even if I get no benefit out of paying — I like to pay. It wasn’t always that way for me, as most of my life was years of trying to find, and trying to use, nothing but

In my post yesterday about instructional screens , those meta-states that apps sometimes use to literally explain how their functionality works, I said that if an interface has to be explained, then i

This past year, we brought you stories on everything from tweeting toddler toys and streamlined ATMs to news-reading apps and remote controls that magically change channels with a wave of the hand. Th

36 Answers 36 Sorted by: Reset to default 45 ctrl + F2 : Access the menu via the keyboard (Windows alt + space equivalent). 10 40 Typing / on any file dialog will give you a "go to folder" dialog, whi

Feedback is an essential part of software user interface design. It’s especially true when designing applications for current mobile devices. Tapping a touch screen is less precise than clicking with

Today I wanted to show my jacket to a friend, so I looked it up on the manufacturer’s website. They make quite a few products and I, naturally, don’t remember the jacket’s “name”, so I figured I’d bro

Printed media used to allow us to read in the places we found most comfortable. When you imagine yourself reading the newspaper it’s probably in your favorite chair, at the breakfast table, or at the

Disclaimer: I hesitate to call myself an “Expert” unless we’re talking about one of my trivial preoccupations (mid-90s comic book prices, tycoon-era American History, or other frumpiness). If you’re l

Feb 7th, 2011 C.J. Chivers recently wrote about ditching all digital task management tools for paper. This type of insight in another person’s process always interests me — I often feel the pull to go completely to paper. I mean, that’s obvious , right? But every time I’ve tried using only paper to…

Whenever I’m using my Mac, iChat is open and visible. The amount of screen real estate it occupies is important. Each additional window adds clutter to my workspace. With all the service buddy lists a

Welcome back. Have you thought about subscribing? It's free. seths.blog/subscribe Yes, you shouldn't text while driving, or talk on the cell phone, or argue with your dog or drive blindfolded. It's an

The creative professional community is full of independents. And the best content, apps, and services are increasingly coming from independent writers, developers, and entrepreneurs. I want this quali

Ian Hines [posted an idea to Twitter](http://twitter.com/#!/ianhines/statuses/30308166600237056) earlier this week: > Thought: it would be nice to be able to input content on the desktop, without havi

Over the last two months we have been working on several iPad projects: two news applications, a social network, and a word processor. We worked on iPad projects without ever having touched an iPad. O

Smarter Than You Think Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic Dmitri Dolgov, a Google engineer, in a self-driving car parked in Silicon Valley after a road test. Credit... Ramin Rahimian for The New

[Simplenote](http://simplenoteapp.com/) is a note-taking app for your iPhone and iPad that syncs with the Web. It is the sort of app adored by those who pride themselves in their use of beautiful and

“When I take people out here in the winter, sometimes we just lie down on it,” says Susan Thoman. She’s gesturing to a mound of rich black organic matter the length and height of a warehouse at the Ce

What message length gets the best response? OkCupid Follow Sep 3, 2009 · 5 min read Picture this online dating scenario: You see someone you like. You read their profile, and wow. You send them a long

Here’s a full transcript of my interview with John Sculley on the subject of Steve Jobs . It’s long but worth reading because there are some awesome insights into how Jobs does things. It’s also one o

We had many requests for the same-sex equivalents of last post ’s charts, and we’d like to take a moment to discuss those. We didn’t include them in the original because they would’ve doubled the data we presented, which in our opinion would’ve made for an overwhelming number of charts and figures.…