Month: August 2007

SF Future

I think everyone would agree that this is a compelling new vision for San Francisco

EU threatens visa limits

The question is whether it unnecessarily hinders legitimate travel or aids it or enables us to enhance security

whether? the nerve, seriously.

Use RELAX NG

I have recently recommended to a large publishing client that they adopt RELAX NG as the basis of the formal definitions of their content, in preference to W3C XML Schema Definition Language (WXS). There are lots of individual bits of information on why RELAX NG should be preferred all over the web. Here is an attempt to condense some of the key information into 10 points

A better spec means better interoperability

Availability of a compact syntax

The specification is a stable ISO standard

No PSVI

No content defaulting

Better datatyping support

More sophisticated modelling

More sophisticated grammatical validation

Instances have no dependency

Growing consensus

now hopefully kml will get cured of the XSD disease

XHTML over Jabber

maybe the first useful application of xhtml

iPhone and Open Standards

I was a little nervous to look at iPhone for Web Developers from the Apple Developer Connection; with a splash as big as the iPhone, it seemed inevitable that they’d cut corners when it came to support for open standards. Surely the Use Standards and Tried-and-True Design Practices heading was a tease. But then… wow… The first surprise was support for the tel: URI scheme

then again, apple does NOT hate the web on the iphone. these are incredibly well done

Google Docs good enough

Then I saw “Open as as a Google Document” and I tried and, you know, it’s Good Enough. And snappy. And free. And internationalized. And I’m not the only person having this experience.

Intersex Dolls

People demand to ban those dolls from being sold on the territory of Russia and claim that it maybe done on purpose by some evil forces from outside of Russia in order to form a bad perception of female/male orientation from the early age.

eh? clearly this is to save production costs. such gullible people

Virgin America

Much of the suck you’re familiar with on other domestic airlines is absent, and there are a lot of nice little details that add up to a pleasant, smart experience. For instance: no harsh lighting. Cabin interior feels like a big happy iPod. White round plastic edges, metal surfaces and black mesh stowaway dividers. Sleek without feeling cold.

is there hope for airlines? maybe

Apple hates the web

But on the web, Apple still suck. The new galleries are Korea-sized half-megs of Javascript, designed to look and feel like computer software rather than native to the web.

enthusiastic +1

Wine Color Guide

While judging a wine for taste, ’smelling bouquets’ and spitting wine out can seem a little bit backwards (because, after all, isn’t wine for drinking?), it’s really about appreciating different aromas and tastes without being totally smashed. color can tell us a great deal about a wine before we raise our glasses. Tilt them instead. Pouring a small amount of wine and tilting the glass at (approx.) 45º will spread the wine enough for us to observe a span of its color… and to determine the quality of a wine in the white, blush, or red families… where trees have rings, wines have color.

Not sure how serious that is.. 🙂