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I want to give a shout out to Squarespace, the new hosting provider for my portfolio, The Combustion Chamber.

I launched The Combustion Chamber in 2001. Over the last 11+ years I’ve always done my own updates and redesigns to the site. I’ve written my own Actionscript in Flash and my own HTML & CSS.

This current iteration is the first time I’ve used third-party tools to create and administer my portfolio. I’ve been tinkering with with Squarespace since I signed up a few months ago and I’ve found it to be great for both geeks and non-geeks alike. It’s intuitive but lets you get into the code if you want to.

If you want to support this site and are interesting in Squarespace, click on the link below. Try it out for 14 days, no credit card is required.

Squarespace 6

Note to Geeks: Squarespace, as it stands now, is intended for managing one domain (or multiple domains resolving to one). I would love if they provided the ability to administer multiple domains from their awesome configuration area. This doesn’t seem to be part of their business model nor something they’re interested in. I still love the service, but my use of it as a web designer and part-time developer will be limited to just one domain (for now). Also check out their Developers Area.

News Corp. Shuts Down The Daily.

Rock on with your disruptive, subcompact publishing, Marco.

A beautifully-designed site by TMC for their Summer Under the Stars showcase.

Beautifully laid-out type over large photographs will never get old. Add a sharp use of masks and motion to it and it’s even better. HTML and Javascript are really starting to grow up.

Thanks, Jory.

Another solid post by Drew Breunig on tablets, faster horses, cars and tablets:

But tablets are more dynamic than cars, whose use case is relatively clear, and their flexiblity allows for much habitual misuse. Some are not sure what the iPad is used for and are engaging it like a netbook. Others create apps to emulate existing tools. It’s as if the Model T was released and people kept adding carriage components.

No surprise I’m a fan of this line of thinking.

Chase Jarvis gave a great talk at the PSFK Conference in SF recently where he talked about career as self-taught photographer (his portfolio), as a photo app creator (his app is Best Camera) and as a live creative education site launcher (his site is CreativeLIVE).

via PSFK

Scriptkit an iPad app that allows you to create prototype iPad apps by simply dragging and dropping code snippets from a library of code and APIs.

The demo version of the app is free, but I just upgraded to the full version ($11.99) which allows you to save your prototype apps.

Pretty badass.

Scriptkit gets me excited about coding the same way Macromedia Adobe Flash used to get me excited about coding. I would never call myself a programmer, but I got to point with Flash where I was doing things like parsing XML and talking with PHP and databases. Flash empowered me to make websites and widgets without being an advanced programmer.

When you give artists and designers the ability to easily work with code amazing things can happen.

via Co.Design

Ever wonder how differentials work in cars? I thought so.

General Motors made an great little film back in the 1930’s on the topic. Surprisingly, most of it is still relevant to cars made today.

via Just A Car Guy

Nice Wikipedia find by Drew Breunig on the topic of quotation marks in relation to periods and commas:

Before the advent of mechanical type, the order of quotation marks with periods and commas was not given much consideration. The printing press required that the easily damaged smallest pieces of type for the comma and period be protected behind the more robust quotation marks. The typesetter’s rule was standard in early 19th century Britain, and the U.S. style still adheres to this older tradition both in everyday use and in non-technical formal writing.

The older I get, the more interesting and useful I find history.

The Silverlight plug-in is required to watch videos on the product page for Surface.

Microsoft is like those Japanese soldiers from World War II who thought the war was on long after it ended.

You didn’t get paid, but you had a place to work.

—Woody Allen, commenting on The Bitter End during the 1960’s

via Woody Allen: A Documentary on Netflix

Dear third party iOS developers,

Every native iOS application autofocuses. While it’s small detail, it’s still a detail and they add up to being important.

(Giving how consistently absent this is, I’m wondering if developers even have the ability to instantiate a focus action when spawning an email message window within an app.)

Update: via Twitter, Bryan Clark and Arnold Sakhnov confirmed my suspicion third party developers have no way to focus on input fields, but there appears to be a hack.