Trevor Gerzen's Blog

Right now if you buy a computer system and you want to solve one of your problems, we immediately throw a big problem right in the middle of you and your problem; which is how to use the computer.

I think Apple has as chance at solving that problem because Apple is founded on one principle… There is something much different when you have one person and one computer…

I know it’s one of the most overly talked about companies but this caught my attention. This level of focus on the user is what made Apple stand out and is still making Apple stand out from everyone else. It didn’t make them instantly successful in the beginning, but they are now. They are successful because they care about the user, and the principle of the company (not just the product) is one-to-one.

instagram:

How I Shoot is a series where we ask Instagrammers to tell us about their photo-taking process.

Pei Ketron (@pketron) is a San Francisco-based photographer whose symmetrical compositions of everything from escalators to tombstones have caught our eye. We wanted to find out what’s…

Completely agree here.

I was looking at Google Checkout on my iPad recently and noticed I couldn’t see everything I expected to see and the text was super small. I quickly realized they were treating the iPad the same as the iPhone. Stripping away features because the iPhone is so small.

Bully!

Responsive Web Design is about formatting information correctly, not hiding it. Don’t just take away things because the device has a smaller screen.

I think Vimeo is an awesome example of doing what makes sense. They have an iPhone app and they’re serving up video with HTML5 so on the iPad you don’t need an app. Just go to there website and watch the videos there.

reusablebits:

One of the great recent additions to modern browsers is the <canvas> element. The <canvas> element enables a whole new world of client-side scripting awesomeness by allowing you to draw graphics into an HTML element via JavaScript.

That’s awesome!

However, a popular misconception¹…

Super useful post that, in my opinion, is totally poignant when talking about RWD and designing for not only multiple screen sizes but multiple resolutions.

John Gruber nails why I loathe the back button on Android. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lost a text message, new email, tweet, Facebook post, etc, etc because of the confounded back button and my reliance on it WORKING

bobulate:

Some little-discussed history of the traveling library:

One day in 1905, an Allegheny farmer was hoeing a garden patch near the road of his farm when he heard the sound of wheels and hooves behind him. Turning around, he was amazed to find a large and foreboding black wagon drawn by two horses. He was certain it was a hearse.

Indignantly, the farmer waved it on, shouting, “You needn’t stop. We’ve no use for that death wagon around here.” The driver, however, paid him no heed and continued right on up to the barnyard where he stopped, introduced himself, and presented America’s first traveling library.

See also:
Takin’ It To The Streets: The History of the Book Wagon

Mary L. Titcomb, who sent out that first traveling library in 1905, popularized it evidenced via all kinds of metrics. In fact today, all 50 U.S. states still have traveling branch library services. “They’re traveling cathedrals of beauty and truth and peace,” says Anne Lamott.

[Image: Sixteen views of library patrons, adults and children, entering or leaving Brooklyn Public Library bookmobile in various Brooklyn locations.]

But to me, nothing is more powerful than this insight by a 1930s rural Illinois teacher who watched her class pay their first visit to the bookmobile:

As I watched the children it struck me with force: you cannot measure the value of the bookmobile in dollars and cents, any more than you can measure the value of a new scientific discovery, or a new system of philosophy, or the life of a good man or woman. These good, new, attractive, interesting books that the little ones were picking out for the first time and the eager smart minds — they would fuse, strike, fire, open a new vista, and bring deeper ambition and greater awareness to life and people.

Great things, attractive things, remarkable things, then, can only be understood not by what they have already made possible, but what is yet to come.

[Image: Lake Macquarie Shire mobile library, 20 October 1950, by Sam Hood, via Maria Popova]