joshuago’s Bookmarks

A good conversation thread about how programmers can produce great visual design, inspired by the results of Rails Rumble 2010.

People are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more. Don’t let knowledge blind you.

The social value of tags on Del.icio.us is only a happy side-effect. Even though most of the ink spilled about Del.icio.us is about the social value, it’s really not the reason why people use it.

I bet there are some high-income taxpayers whose services you enjoy.

Business is about creating something of value to other people, and selling this thing to the people. Do not get sidetracked by the dream of fast money and fast fame.

There is no one thing to blame. There is no one fix we can make. It really is multifactorial.

A really great introduction to awk for anyone who only uses sed and grep.

News can no longer be (only) about the mass update. Stories need to be targeted to those who might be able to improve the situation. And journalism’s products — which are more than its stories — must be designed to facilitate this.

We find ourselves in a moment at which the freedoms our forefathers intended for us are endangered by the very government meant to secure those freedoms.

Homeownership contributed to the hollowing out of cities and kept renters out of the best neighborhoods. It fed America's overuse of energy and oil. It made it more difficult for those who had lost a job to find another. Perhaps worst of all, it helped us become casually self-deceiving: by telling ourselves that homeownership was a pathway to wealth and stable communities and better test scores, we avoided dealing with these formidable issues head-on.