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[Screens Around Town] Cognition, Erskine Design, Monoprice, and Axis Maps

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Cognition
tweet Cognition (Happy Cog’s blog) lets you use Twitter to leave comments.

dropdown
And the dropdowns there are nicely designed too.

Erskine Design
ed
Erskine Design’s case studies page has thumbnails of each case study page on its own website. Those thumbnails aren’t website designs, they are the actual case study pages shrunken down. It’s like you can see all their pages from far away and then you click on one to see it up close.

Monoprice
monoprice
SvN reader Jonathan Sato wrote in about this alert message on the Monoprice home page.

I thought this was a nice way of owning up to a problem. A description of the site error is displayed at the top of the homepage to all visitors.

Although I wasn’t affected by the error, in a strange way it actually gives me more confidence in buying from this company online.

Typographic Map
map
Typographic Map of Chicago.

These unique maps accurately depict the streets and highways, parks, neighborhoods, coastlines, and physical features of the city using nothing but type. Only by manually weaving together thousands upon thousands of carefully placed words does the full picture of the city emerge. Every single piece of type was manually placed, a process that took hundreds of hours to complete for each map.

We just ordered one for the office.

This week in Twitter

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A few of this week’s 37signals staff posts at Twitter.


Jason Fried@jasonfried: Just used https://rightsignature.com for the first time. Impressed.


Jason Zimdars@JZ: Photo: I love well-designed toys(I always have). These beautiful characters by London’s Yum Yum are… http://tumblr.com/xqhkx1flb


Ryan Singer@rjs: “I don’t try to convince people anymore . . . I’m eager to share what I’ve learned.” – @KentBeck http://bit.ly/aB3t39


Matt Linderman@mattlinderman: Main lobby of Hotel Okura in Tokyo looks really gorgeous. http://bit.ly/dm5Rz8 Sample shots: http://bit.ly/9MWB5d and http://bit.ly/bcGdQi


Jamis Buck@jamis: Apple’s OS, mobile, and desktop software are top-notch. Their web-apps, on the other hand, leave a bit to be desired.


Jason Zimdars@JZ: Video: Homemade Spacecraft (by Luke Geissbuhler) Video from a camera attached to a weather balloon that rose… http://tumblr.com/xqhknqlei


Jason Fried@jasonfried: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” -Charles F. Kettering


DHH@dhh: Remember when we used to talk about Java? Now it seems it shares the same fate as lots of MS tech. A shrug and a meh. http://bit.ly/92Opkm


Sam Stephenson@sstephenson: Magit is awesome: http://zagadka.vm.bytemark.co.uk/magit/magit.html#Staging-and-Committing


Q: What advice you have for somebody who wants to get started in programming?

A: Pay attention to that need of really doing something that interests you and solving a problem and using the programming language as a tool to solve that problem.

Something that I’ve seen among new programmers is dancing around that central piece of problem solving with the tool and worrying more about the libraries you choose or the tools that you ought to be using. It’s like going out to do carpentry and spending most of your time worrying about the tool belt you pick and the kind of screwdriver. Those are kind of irrelevant. If you’re into problem solving, solve the problem and just practice doing that.

Basecamp on Oct 6 2010 10 comments

Interview from Prague with Ryan. He discusses the creation of Basecamp, how designers/programmers at 37signals work together, where inspiration comes from, and more.

Basecamp on Oct 5 2010 4 comments

This week in Twitter

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A few of this week’s 37signals staff posts at Twitter.


Jason Fried@jasonfried: Mike Rohde (@rohdesign) played with chalk at our office yesterday: http://bit.ly/9kOUDo


Jeffrey Hardy@packagethief: I was wondering why I felt so calm today. Then I realized Mail.app wasn’t running.


Matt Linderman@mattlinderman: How to Cook Everything iPhone app. “Mark Bittman’s bestselling cookbook w/ 2,000 recipes & 400 how-to illustrations.” http://bit.ly/dvcZg8


Jason Fried@jasonfried: Did you know Kingsford-brand charcoal briquets were a by-product of the Model T? http://bit.ly/bKAEwR


Jamis Buck@jamis: “Catalog Living” is one of the funniest blogs on the Internet: http://catalogliving.net/


DHH@dhh: Facebook is supposedly worth more than FedEx, Dell, Capital One, Sony, Lockheed Martin, and MasterCard. #whatajoke


uptonic@uptonic: Man, I wish I had a Swiss Army knife to open this Swiss Army knife package.


Jason Fried@jasonfried: There’s great copywriting all over this site: http://optimohats.com


DHH@dhh: Secondary Suckers: http://bit.ly/aiLbYb—What if you.. pushed it to the extreme: a small float with nearly no reliable information?


Product Blog update: New extras for Basecamp, WebGreek's use of Highrise, and more

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Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Basecamp
Web and print design Extras for Basecamp
We’ve added a new section to the Basecamp Extras page: Design Tools For Web And Print.

Design_tools

Time Hawk adds timekeeping framework for logging and tracking time to Basecamp
“With Time Hawk™, your employees and vendors easily track time invested to specific project tasks. Your Project Managers can turn a keen eye to details, monitoring budgets in real-time, entering project estimates and billable rates, and generating comprehensive reports — all easily exported directly to Excel. No installation is required. Time Hawk™ is easy to use and requires little to no training…Users are assured a secure network for all data, with backups daily. Time entries are also pushed directly into users Basecamp accounts.”

Time-Entry

Roadmap is a strategic reporting engine for your Basecamp account
“Roadmap is the most complete portfolio management tool for Basecamp. Interactive Gantt charts, programs, drag-and-drop dates, custom reports…”



UK-based flight simulation business takes off with Basecamp
Virtual Aviation is a UK-based flight simulation specialist, operating a fleet of $20-million Boeing and Airbus full-motion flight simulators from bases at London Heathrow and London Gatwick. “We’ve just developed a new product called ‘Mayday’, which is a talent development course for business people, and Basecamp has been invaluable throughout the year-long development process. It has allowed the numerous people involved with developing Mayday to share messages, ideas files, and documents. Without Basecamp, I doubt we would have been able to complete the project so quickly and efficiently.”

Continued…

Q: What testing frameworks and processes do you use?

A: It’s really interesting that it’s such a common question, testing frameworks as opposed to many other tool choices you could make. I’m not sure why that is. It might be because it’s such an aesthetic choice and also such an unimportant choice. Ultimately, it’s that you’re testing at all, that you have an idea of what your software is supposed to do and that you’re writing it out so you can programmatically test it. So it becomes a place that’s just primed for bikeshedding. There are so many different possibilities, and it’s such a programmer-friendly kind of thing to work on, that there are tons of different libraries scratching everybody’s individual aesthetic itch. It becomes a question of whether you like periwinkle blue versus cornflower blue. In the end, you’re testing.


Jeremy during 37signals Podcast Episode #20: Programming roundtable (Part 1 of 3) (the transcript for this episode is now available)
Basecamp on Sep 20 2010 7 comments

This week in Twitter

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A few of this week’s 37signals staff posts at Twitter.


Ryan Singerrjs: “Most writers try to take their personality out so it sounds proper. I like the goofy ones better.” http://bit.ly/dC9NTl


uptonicuptonic: When you buy something from the cheapest source, be prepared for subpar customer service.


Matt Linderman@mattlinderman: According to cookbook I have, “macaroni” used to be slang for cool. Way better than “bananas” I think. Gonna try to bring it back.


Sam Stephenson@sstephenson: If you’re not working on the problem, you don’t have all of the information.


DHH@dhh: Great ad for the Kindle: http://bit.ly/aAJrXR—I’ve tried to use the iPad in direct sunlight, it’s completely useless.


Jason Fried@jasonfried: There are examples of everything.


Ryan Singerrjs: Amazon should show the spines of books beside the covers so you can easily judge how fat or thin they are.


Sam Stephenson@sstephenson: All this energy spent obsessing over the tools used by successful people would be better directed towards studying their successes instead.


New jobs on the Job Board and web design firms on Sortfolio

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View all of the jobs and internships at the 37signals Job Board.

Programming Jobs

Match.com is looking for a Senior Application Engineer in Dallas, TX.

Apple Inc. is looking for an Applications Software Engineer in Cupertino, CA.

Vimeo is looking for a PHP Developer in New York, New York.

SoundCloud is looking for a Back-end Developer in Berlin, Germany.

View all Programming Job listings.

Design Jobs

Etsy, Inc. is looking for an Interaction Designer in Brooklyn, NY.

Groupon is looking for a UI Designer in Chicago, IL.

(mt) Media Temple is looking for a Creative Director in Culver City, CA.

OkCupid.com is looking for a Web Developer / Designer in New York, NY.

View all Design Job listings.

The Job Board also has iPhone Developer Jobs, Customer Service/Support Jobs, Business/Exec Jobs, and more.

Sortfolio Web Designers

Wakefly is headquartered in Boston and has a typical project budget of $10,000-$25,000.

Modal, Inc. is headquartered in Washington, DC and has a typical project budget of over $50,000.

bolton design, inc. is headquartered in Los Angeles and has a typical project budget of $10,000-$25,000.

Koombea is headquartered in San Francisco and has a typical project budget of $10,000-$25,000.

View all Sortfolio listings.

The idea that you could make a website and not know HTML blows my mind because it’s like building a building and not knowing what a brick is…You can be a CSS wizard or you can know the basics, but you should at least have some foundational knowledge of what your building material is.


Ryan during the 37signals podcast Design roundtable – Part 3 (transcript to Part 3 now available).
Basecamp on Sep 13 2010 31 comments