Gale force winds applied directly to people’s faces. (via @itscolossal)
An excellent, must-read treatise by Stijn Debrouwere about how journalism is slowly being replaced by other services which perform journalistic duties (inform, entertain, etc.) without being journalistic entities unto themselves. Examples include Netflix reviews, Quora Q&A threads, and the like:
There are organizations and websites everywhere that are taking over newspapers’ role as tastemaker and watchdog and forum. These disruptors don’t replace investigative reporting, but they replace the other 95% of what made professional news organizations important.
Fascinating article about how memories work and how we are very close to being able to biologically destroy them.
“Memory comes with a natural updating mechanism, which is how we make sure that the information taking up valuable space inside our head is still useful. That might make our memories less accurate, but it probably also makes them more relevant to the future.”
This is the best article about the Huffington Post that’s ever been written. If you care at all about business or the news industry, it’s an absolute must read. Whether you love or hate HuffPo, the story of how they rose to prominence is fascinating and instructive. When you’re done, also make sure to check out this 1983 New York Magazine article about Arianna (then) Stassinopoulos.
The “worst” baseball cards in history… which of course means they’re the best. The Bill Pecota one is particularly great. Thanks Fleer! (via @gruber)
Using OpenStreetMap data, Stamen Design has taken map design to a new level. I love these. Goodbye Google Maps? (via jasonsantamaria)
A fascinating story about the Samwer brothers and their lucrative-but-icky-feeling business model: identify American internet companies right after they become successful in America and then clone them internationally, to great financial success.
In today’s episode of Our Stadium is Better than Your Stadium… play this full-screen with the volume cranked.
Children’s Classics as Minimalist Posters: These are amazing. I particularly like the Princess and the Pea poster.
This is a really great post; one of the clearest, most concise, and personally important ones I’ve read in a long time. It’s important to understand that the reason most people consume news is in order to entertain themselves. This isn’t the aspirational reason… it’s just the true reason, in most cases. If you can get your news consumption refined to the point where you are staying amply-informed without being overwhelmed, you stand to be a lot more productive.
NFL Logos Redrawn with Manningface. This is fantastic.
Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think.Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information…
Takes a little while to get going, but overall a great article about the virtues of seeking solitude from distractions in order to develop your own original thoughts.
“I think you’ve got a pretty good imagination, despicability-wise!”
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I’m not so sure I mind. I imagine there might be alternative (perhaps slightly more subtle?) ways to do this, but I still see this as reasonably good design.
Not only is it conventional, but it communicates without using any words at all. It’s about the most minimalist way to convey the “hey, this is a video you can play” message… no?
It seems Amazon has got it right on their new Kindle2 page: http://tinyurl.com/dbv6ym
As long as a video does NOT autoplay, I’m fine with whatever.
Ryan: Yeah, it’s definitely effective, but I wonder how much less effective (if at all) it is when it’s slightly off-center, or at the bottom-center like in Andrew’s example. I would love it if YouTube had a parameter you could pass in which offset the button by X and Y pixels.
I hate the Youtube player. It looks horrible, pops things up in the way all the time and makes the video tiny prematurely in order to advertise more videos you don’t want. Yuck.
Vimeo (www.vimeo.com)on the other hand has it sorted. They use a custom designed player with play button bottom left, very simple video controls and up to 4 buttons for sharing and the like. All this fades away to leave HD video in it’s place with no border, no controls, no distraction. It doesn’t auto-play but it does load very quickly. That’s how video should be in my opinion.
I kind of like Cyborg Alex Rodriquez.
But the font that Youtube is using these days to embed the title and # of stars in the video before you play is just horrifying. It looks like something straight out of 1997. Get a little anti-aliasing or transparency or something in there stat.
What you call the play button is just the graphic or label on the button, with the real button being the whole video frame. Since when is it a good idea to not center a label on a button? If I look at my remote control, the play label is centered, too.
I hate the you tube player.. I don’t want to see the play buttons and at the bottom – i would like it to disappear and only appear on hover.
the play button in the middle needs to be smaller and less obtrusive…
i hate the new title thing they have now…
Julian: If it already doesn’t look like a button, then why should we treat it like one, with conventional judgements about where to put the label?
Sorry but I think it works, and there isn’t a better option. there is no conventional way to frame a video to make it ‘video’ without using screen real estate, and any change to the main image (like a transparent tint) would affect the comprehension. maybe as time goes on, the play button will get more transparent? Centering allows you to more easily discern the boundaries of the video on a busy page.