2003

March 12, 2003

morning

"morning" is the title of my entry into the ten second film contest, which closed entries on Monday. Watch it in either Windows Media or Quick Time format. Go ahead. It only takes 10 seconds.

While I'm pretty happy with how it turned out for a 20 minute shoot and 30 minute edit, it doesn't hold a candle to The Quickie, which is brilliant.

[link]

March 3, 2003

Coming Soon

In the next few days I'll be moving the warlog off to its own domain and mothballing this site (again) while I get settled in my new digs. I've no illusions about the new site being anything as good as, say, Cursor, but I'm planning on offering more news articles covering a wider variety of topics, regular multimedia links, and occasional commentary and news analysis. Watch for it on a browser near you.

[link]

February 17, 2003

He's Back.

Since fading from the scene in the early '80s, Atari 2600 Golf Guy has made a comeback, with an impersonation of Scott Hoch on the 10th green at the 1990 Masters, as a guide for how to play Amen Corner at Augusta, and most famously as Tiger Woods' ball-bouncing equal. Now he's even got his own t-shirt.

[link]

February 10, 2003

J.Crew Spring 2003 Catalog

"Now let's remove those Montana pull-on boots (p. 64; $168; 20% off!), that high-twist lace-front tee (p. 99; $28), those stretch hip bootcut jeans (p. 98; $68), and screw. Please keep the South Carolina hat (p. 71; $28) on."

[link]

February 4, 2003

Tiffany Dumps Flash

A long time ago I usability tested the HTML version of tiffany.com with the Flash version, and the HTML version beat down the Flash version in nearly every objective and subjective measure. It was Reagan vs. Mondale, LA cops vs. Rodney King, rock vs. scissors.

It took them a little while -- well, about 2½ years actually -- but Tiffany finally wised up and dumped the Flash version of their site in favor of good ol' HTML (with a few DHTML bells and whistles).

Tiffany Bubbles ring: $7,200 Shipping/Handling: $19.95 A URL to link to this item: priceless

[link]

January 27, 2003

Big In Japan, China Not So Much

Friends and consultant co-workers occassionally tell me they can't access this site because their companies' site blocking software has labeled dack.com as appropriate for "mature audiences" only. I guess because I like the word "bullshit" and sometimes drop an f-bomb, I'm now in the same boat as playboy.com and gangbang.com. Oh well.

But today I learned that dack.com, along with latimes.com, redlobster.com, npr.org, and the site for the 1998 film Deep Impact, is banned in China.

[link]

January 9, 2003

Steal This Book

Last fall I was at Borders flipping through a good-looking web design book called "The Design of Sites" when I stumbled across a very close copy of my amazon.com tab parody, which was being used as an example of the limitations of tab-based navigation. But there was no citation. I wrote the publisher and essentially said, "You stole my shit." After a few friendly email exchanges with a deeply apologetic editor from Addison-Wesley, we agreed to keep the example in the next printing, but with a citation. And she agreed to make dack.com her home page forever.

Separated at birth? The original (top) and the other original.

Even though the authors are thieving bastards (just kidding, fellas!), I highly recommend this book for both new and experienced web designers, especially those designing e-commerce applications. It's a little like a "best practices" manual for the design of shopping carts and checkouts, account creation and management, search interfaces, and much more.

[link]