Writing.
Essays since 2006, plus a few things first published at USV. Occasional by design. The podcast lives on its own page.
- Scribefire is so awesome
I can’t say enough about ScribeFire. It’s a Firefox add-on that gives you an in-window blogging client. Here are just a few reasons why it’s awesome: You’re blogging from within Firefox, and you can move among webpages while keeping your blog post editing window open. This comes in really handy w...
- Transit: uniter or divider?
Today’s post on Infrastructurist about the D-Train Murder had a line that caught my eye: Cramming the population of a city like New York into a maze of underground cars creates a forced melting pot that’s a perfect breeding ground for class and race divisions. There’s no question that the NYC subway...
- New theme, and it's slightly less simple
During Theo’s morning nap today, I updated this blog’s theme. I’m going to attempt to start using the blog more regulalry, as sort of an “open lab notebook,” and (in the true spirit of procrastination) figured I’d start by updating the theme. So here it is; I’ve ditched by previous Undesign for mo...
- Melkjug Fluid Icon
If you use Melkjug as a Fluid app, like I do, then you’ll love this: (Melkjug fluid icon) Continue reading
- The Perfect Conference Format
I’ve been attending a lot of events lately, and one thing that keeps coming up for me is that the multi-day conference / workshop format is a bit broken. My main beef: by day two (or god forbid, day three) the audience has petered out and whatever energy was there on day one has been… Continue readi...
- Silenced!
Today, I got my first dose of Twitter smack down, as my account was suspended along with a bunch of others following yesterday’s Gov 2.0 Expo. Ouch! Well, at least I’m in good company. As one of the commenters on the Tech Crunch article noted, a situation like this is definitely a bit of a… Contin...
- Help! Can't drop
When I couldn’t sleep the other night, I started mocking up a zippy drag-n-drop front end for Trac, based on the snappy UI of tools like Things (working title is FasTrac). Then, bam! Bitten by a weird, seems-like-a-bug w/ jQuery UI drag and drop. It appears that droppables aren’t discoverable by d...
- Welcome Theo
Introducing the newest member of the clan: Theo. It’s now been nearly two weeks since Theo joined us, and it’s been pretty amazing (and tiring) thus far. I’ve been intentionally keeping him off of the public intertubes, but figured one cute “hello, world” shot was safe enough. I am enjoying every...
- Introducing The Board
A few weeks ago, I created a small web app for scheduling project teams at TOPP Labs. At any given time, we’ve got anywhere between 10 and 20 active projects, so keeping track of it all is difficult, and planning ahead requires a good clear overview of everything that’s happening. Why create someth...
- Crowdsourcing my schedule
I had a great crowdsourcing experience yesterday. Here at TOPP Labs, we’re doing a 6-month check-in on our annual employee reviews. What that means for me is a 30-minute interview with each of the folks on my team (about 20 in total), where we look back on the past six months to see how we’re… Cont...
- Map drawing UX is still too hard
At work today, we are exploring the process of drawing routes on a map, thinking ahead to a few upcoming projects involving bike planning. So Sonali set up a Google MyMap and asked a few of us to mark our routes to work. In a nutshell, it was basically a flop, with two out of… Continue reading
- Backpack TOC Greasemonkey Script
Hot off the presses: Backpack TOC Greasemonkey script. Continue reading
- Chandler and Constraints
I spent most of this morning looking back through old posts about the Chandler Project and OSAF. I’ve thought about this a lot, due to the many parallels with my work at The Open Planning Project. For newcomers, those parallels are: Massive funding from a visionary with a dream (in OSAF’s case, Mi...
- 'Do You Know Me?' Authentication
For a recent personal project (I won’t say which since that would defeat the purpose), I was in need of a new kind of authentication. My wife and I wanted to create a website where we could post photos and news for our family and friends, while keeping that information off of the broader intertubes....
- New App Idea: Dude, Where's My Car?
Even though I shouldn’t own a car, I do, and as every car owner in NYC knows, dealing with alternate-side parking is a hassle. That, combined with my recent itch to write a small mobile app, has lead me to the following idea: the “Dude, Where’s My Car?” app for mobile. Here’s what it will… Contin...
- Getting My Transparency On
This past weekend, Phil Ashlock and I headed down to DC to participate in TransparencyCamp, a BarCamp event put on by the Sunlight Foundation. We spent two days with ~200 open government and transparency advocates from all sectors — government, non-profit, tech, etc. All in all, it was a pretty ...
- Too much structure makes for useless data
Over at TOPP, we’ve been talking recently about the “spectrum of engagement” — in other words, providing a variety of ways that people can engage with a website, ranging from quick & easy (e.g., thumbs-up-ing something) to slow and involved (e.g., writing a blog post or signing up for an account). ...
- TOPP @ Green Desk
This week, TOPP moved into additional, (maybe) temporary office space, to alleviate some of the crowding at our office in the West Village. We were looking for a place that was convenient, comfortable, and most of all, available immediately (backstory is that we’ve been basically sitting on top of ...
- Goldilocks and the RSS Theme
For your reading pleasure, the Broadsheet Wide theme for the Vienna RSS reader. Continue reading
- Happy Halloween
It’s really amazing how walking down the street with a funny hat on puts smiles on people’s faces. Today, I’m going to pretend I’m not wearing a viking hat. I only wish I had bought the hat before I got on the subway this morning. Happy Halloween! Continue reading