Acts of Volition

After getting some great feedback (and some really nice compliments) about my recent article, The Rise of Interface Elegance in Open Source Software, I was asked if it could be re-published at the O’Reilly Network site, OSDir.com.  •  I’ve always enjoyed O’Reilly publications, so it’s a cool …

Open Source software is regularly criticized, often fairly, for lacking in ease-of-use and polish. When a developer wants a new feature - he can add it to the software, and if it gets checked-in by the project owners, it will be there for all to use. The obvious fault with this model is the now …

I wrote last year about the fuel economics that lead me to lease a 2004 Toyota Echo Hatchback. While I don’t have any new info on the fuel economy, I’ve had a few requests since to post an updated review now that I’ve had the car for a while. With the new silverorange stuff website all about …

Working in a place were the peer pressure to purchase new stuff is overwhelming, we have finally found a way to capitalize on our reluctant materialism. The silverorange stuff website is a collection of reviews of stuff that we at silverorange have owned and used.  •  As the “about silverorange …

This video has been linked all over the place, but it is worth it.  •  It appears to be a demo for a visual effects company. The video is a commercial for an imaginary robotic police officer. It is one of the best produced visual effects shorts I’ve ever seen. The entire video has the feel of …

Following the updated artwork for the Mozilla Firefox browser, the Mozilla Visual Identity Team has finished new artwork for the Mozilla Thunderbird email client.  •  Again, the icon was based on sketches by Stephen DesRoches and ideas from the rest of the team and drawn by the talented Jon Hicks …

It is generally understood that sometime in the next few months, our new Prime Minister will call a federal election here in Canada. We’ll have a bit of variation on our standard political fare this time around. The Liberal party is wrapped up in financial scandal, the Conservative party is a …

The new Amazon search site, A9 (based on Google search results) is all the buzz today. You can read about it at kottke.org, metafilter, and John Battelle's Searchblog.  •  For any Firefox users those interested in trying it out, I have put together a quick A9 search plugin for Firefox …

I wrote a little over three years ago about some strange things afoot at the CBC. I was impressed at the time by their experiments in new media, and I remain so. In particular, I’ve been enjoying the many live concerts and studio sessions recorded for CBC Radio. Many of these sessions end up on …

As with many other curious webloggers today, I tried out Kinja, a new web-based RSS aggregator tool. It is intentionally simple, not offering the power of most other aggregators in favour of being more palatable to new users.  •  After trying it out, I was a bit surprised to see that my list of …