Trim the fat

I went to Seth Godin‘s blog this morning. I liked what I read so I decided to add his RSS feed to my NewsFire application. When I clicked on the RSS feed icon in Firefox I got this:
screengrab: RSS feed icon in Firefox
I don’t care which type of RSS feed I get. Good design is not only visual, but technical as well. Design involves removing unnecessary complexity.
Don’t show me 3 options when 1 is sufficient.
XML is XML. Just give me a feed.

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Uncategorized

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Mail – Specify Folders

Microsoft doesn’t always produce crap. Entourage is actually a pretty good email application and I’ve been using it for years now.
But I’ve decided to revisit Mail.app and it’s also a great e-mail application, but one of the reasons I’ve never used it was because I could never figure out how to tell the application to use my IMAP folders (on Dreamhost) for specific functions like using my IMAP “Trash” as the real Trash, etc.
Thanks to my buddy dalematic, I’ve found the solution:
OS_X_Mail_sent_sync.gif
note: this problem was previously solved using this method.

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Technology

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Embrace the Crap

Let me clarify. Through word of mouth someone found me and asked for help on their website. I visited their existing site and it’s horrendous. It’s just plain 1997-old-stale-HTML nasty. My gut said, delete this email now and move on.
Then I decided not to do this. I wrote a quick, blunt email back to this person on where their site is failing. Just quick bullet points. It was harsh, but it was meant as constructive criticism and I told them that.
They heard me, and wanted to talk on the phone. We talked, I told them how I work, what you get for when you hire me – the whole process.
The bottom line is, if you’re a designer, you want success stories in your portfolio. Nothing says success more than taking lead and turning it into gold. This isn’t always easy. I let my clients know that I demand quality on both sides my projects. I will listen to them if they listen to me. Clients need to understand how to heed to design – and I’m not talking about fonts or grids. I’m talking about why I did certain things. How what I’ve done to their site will impact their business.
So next time a poorly designed site comes your way… consider it. If the client is on board with your vision, make some gold.

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Image

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Start MOSHing!

Hey, after almost 5 months, Nokia MOSH is finally live to the public (we initially had the Alpha version open to a small group of testers). You can upload your own content, or collect other peoples’ and have it immediately available for your phone via the mobile version of the site (you don’t need a Nokia phone).
This site is the result of a lot of hard work by both Nokia and Schematic New York. For as much art direction and design I did, it wouldn’t be worth anything if it weren’t for all the hard backend and client-side development from my Nokia team at Schematic. We also had great project management (thanks Eoin).
Big ups to Ian, Vinny, Wes, Maggie, Emily, Andrew, Jason, Brian, Eoin, David, JP, Del, Chris, Ben, Kevin, Karolina, Pablo and everyone else who contributed!
screengrab: Nokia MOSH homepage

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Technology

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Kick it over here baby pop!

So I downloaded my first DRM-free album from iTunes – The Beastie Boys, The Mix-Up. The album is entirely instrumental jams – the kind of tracks you’d be familiar with if you have Ill Communication, The In Sound From Way Out!, or Hello Nasty. The album is great and it shows that The Beastie Boys are talented musicians off the mic.
Once I got the album, I decided to check out their website. On their website I discovered that they have a Flickr album:
Whaat?

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Technology

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Where do i go?

I’m been using Dreamhost for my site hosting, as well as my clients, for over 5 years now. The problem is, in the last year or so, our relationship has been getting strained. Dreamhost doesn’t give me the kind of attention and uptime I need. My sites are down or slow all the time.
In the afternoon today, if you went to this site, you would get a message saying “bad_httpd_conf”.
So I Googled bad_httpd_conf.
The first 4 entries were from Dreamhost.
That’s not a good sign.
I know I need a dedicated box for my sites. Now I just need to get the budget to afford one. If anyone has any recommendations, let me know at michael [at] thecombustionchamber [dot] com

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Technology

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