Had the chance to borrow a great book from a coworker recently, called “Ambient Findability“. It’s a great look at the way people find information in the modern world, with an emphasis on how the internet has changed findability, and how a constant connection to the web will further expand and change the way we retrieve information in the future.

As a developer, I always find it helpful to temper the skills we gain from technical manuals covering topics like javascript and css with books that examine not just how we can do things, but also why. A front-end web developer can be a master of DOM scripting, but if they ignore semantics or information architecture, they’re only getting half the job done.

So if you’re interested, take a look at Ambient Findability: you’ll learn what areas of your layout can be thought of as push vs. pull, as well as why those crazy colored lines on the floor of a library are so terribly helpful.

Every year in August a peculiar event occurs outside of Detroit Michigan. A heard of ancient automobiles take to the street to parade themselves up and down the thoroughfare that is Woodward Avenue. It’s a strange kind of carnival atmosphere that surrounds what’s called the “Woodward Avenue Dreamcruise”, as it’s not an official event per-se: one moment you’ll see cruisers showing off their pristine 57 Chevy, while the next you’ll see an unfortunate family driving a late 90s minivan who have simply gotten caught up in it all.

I was struck by the variety and detail that used to be put into the logo badges that were placed on cars from this era, and I decided to put together a quick photo set showing off some of the more impressive samples. Enjoy!

Looks like Facebook may be launching an iPhone specific version of their successful webapp, if you believe the folks over at mashable. Too early to tell if this is a hoax or not in my opinion, but I hope it’s real: I’m no huge Facebook fan, but I am a fan of seeing what other developers come up with for iPhone interfaces.

As a web standards developer, I still have some qualms about going back to old fashioned browser detection, but I’m hoping this time around the industry will keep the the specter of browser code forking under control, and use it as a tool only when really necessary.

Let there be… the phatest of beats! The memories of most sites I’ve developed have been flavored by the music I listened to as they were built. The soundtrack for the fifth version of Crashpod was especially robust, as it was marked by new releases from several of my favorite bands. It’s hard to overestimate the importance music plays to me in developing pet projects like Crashpod: web development is what I do 40 hours a week at work, so it’s all too easy to use that excuse to put off working on my own personal webspace.

Queueing up a new album by a favorite artist really affords me a kick in the pants, making the fact that I’m at home doing exactly what I was half an hour ago at work much less noticeable. But what bands saw the Crashpod through the twilight of its development? Read on dear mam/sir/googlebot, read on, and learn!

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