CrashSplat, BANG!

Today was Blue Beanie Day on the web. I hope that you all donned your beanies, I know I did.

Adam Keys’ recent post on micro-apps is a great read. It’s inevitable that we’ll continue to see a rise in the number of “micro-apps” as developers leverage rich API functionality in mashups.

Over the last several weeks there has been an interesting debate/discussion/conversation brewing related to the current state of web design. Some lament the absence of truly great work on the web. Some seem to agree with these conclusions, and a number of others do not. As a developer, and not a designer, I tend to agree more with the second set of folks. Either way though, I would highly recommend reading all of these posts to anyone who is involved in web design/development or interested at all in the subject.

I have been trying to get a little more disciplined about keeping track of web sites that I find inspiring. I spend so much time building web applications that I often find it necessary to step back and refresh myself a bit with others work. I’m NOT a designer, but I appreciate great design. I’m more of a nuts and bolts guy that spends a lot of time working on the plumbing of highly interactive and dynamic web applications. Anyway, here are some sites that I stumbled across this week that I think look fabulous (you can also find these in my delicious bookmarks).

Lokesh Dhakar’s new blog is beautiful. I love the simple elegance. I also really love that the navigation on the right remains in place as you scroll the page.
(via SimpleBits)

The following two links are evidently some mockups that were done for The Internet Movie Database. It is always refreshing to see such great layout when there is actually a lot of stuff to put on a page. I also really like the contrast between rounded and non-rounded corners. (via thebignoob)

http://justwatchthesky.com/imdb/

http://justwatchthesky.com/imdb/profile.html

This past Sunday, for the second year in a row now, I ran the OBX (that means Outer Banks) 1/2 marathon. The major treat this year was that my wife ran it with me. She was awesome. She trained for the last year and ran the entire race without stopping. The weather was much nicer this year than last year (when it rained). It was a little cold at the start, but turned out very nice a few miles in. If you are looking for a great race in an awesome location, check out http://www.obxmarathon.org.

Paste Magazine has a limited time, “Name your own price” subscription offer going. I guess this is in the spirit of the recent Radiohead “In Rainbows” release. Paste is a great magazine if you are into music at all, and the sampler CDs are worth the cost of the subscription themselves. Anyway, go grab a subscription. (via the big noob)

I love music. Listening to it. Playing it. But for some reason I have never been good at talking extensively about it, or for that matter reviewing it, but I want to get better.

Last night I had the privilege of seeing Josh Ritter play at The Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro/Chapel Hill. I first started listening to Ritter last year when his album, The Animal Years hit, so I am pretty new to his stuff, but I’ve fallen in love pretty fast. His current tour is in support of his latest album The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter.

Ritter typically gets dumped into the generic “Pop” genre. This label is probably as good as anything seeing as I typically find most of the genre distinctions these days useless. In the past I would have labeled Ritter as more “Folk” but his latest album probably pushes that. His song writing is incredible whether you label it “Pop” or “Folk”. I think he is a bit Dylan-esque, but with a better voice (hoping not to get struck by lightening). Listening to his music makes me want to sit down with him over coffee or a beer and talk with him about life.

As for the show, it was pretty incredible. The Cat’s Cradle was packed. There was a very wide age range present, which is a bit unusual for The Cat’s Cradle, but speaks to Ritter’s wide appeal. Both opening acts were actually good (one of them was REALLY good). I find that this is usually not the case, but it was a pleasant surprise, and worth getting there on time. Ritter took it to the next level, though. From the very start he exudes an energy that infects the crowd. He never stops smiling, and genuinely seems delighted to be performing. I got the feeling that the guy LOVES what he is doing. He looks like a kid in a candy store. His band is awesome. They move from song to song in almost one continuous stream. Ritter seems intent upon giving the audience a good show. To quote him, he said, “We live for these 2 hours every night”, and I believe him. I loved it. I would go see him again in a heart beat.

So, check him out. Grab his latest album, and if you get a chance GO SEE HIM; he won’t disappoint!

For some reason Twitter has come up in conversation quite a bit lately. Each time it has been with people that don’t use the service. Not that I’m an expert, but it is quite obvious in listening to these folks that they just don’t get it, which I think is probably understandable. So I thought I might try to “talk” through it here.

Twitter asks you the question, “What are you doing”? You can answer that question using any number of input mechanisms, the web, text message, im, a twitter client, etc… When people first hear about twitter, they think, “Well that can’t be all that interesting.” I actually had someone ask me the other day, “So, do people twitter when they are about to go to the bathroom”? He actually phrased it a little differently, but I’ll leave that up to your imagination. The answer is no, well nobody that I follow does anyway. Which leads me to my next point…

A core concept in Twitter is that of “following” people. Which simply means that you are interested in keeping up with “What they are doing”. Every time they post to twitter you’ll be notified. This might only mean that you see the update in your web browser, but you can also get updates via text message on your phone (assuming you want that), or through some other client.

Obviously the people that post the most interesting tweets (that’s what an individual twitter post is called) tend to get lots of followers. As well as folks that are regarded as experts in their communities. Twitter is also great for helping friends and family that might be separated geographically keep up with each other.

I like to think of Twitter as “mini/micro blogging”. You only have 140 characters per post, so you can only say so much, but you can post interesting stuff. You might post about new music you are listening to, or some news story you found interesting, etc… In general it is a great “low bandwidth” way of keeping up with what is going with people and the world.

Check it out. If you are using a Mac I highly recommend the Mac Twitter client Twitterrific.

Not that you’ll find it interesting, but here is my twitter page.