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↪ Introducing knowable.org's advisory board.
It’s a big day for us! I’m really excited to introduce the first members of our advisory board to you.
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Makeshift is a quarterly magazine and multimedia website about creativity in unlikely places, from the favelas of Rio to the alleys of Delhi. These are environments where resources may be scarce, but where ingenuity is used incessantly for survival, enterprise, and a self-expression. Makeshift is about people, the things they make, and the context they make them in.How would knowable.org look like, if it would be a magazine? Probably a lot like makeshift.org.
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↪ Spotify Rivale "Rdio" in Deutschland gestartet
Your move, Spotify.
(You can find some of my thoughts about Rdio vs Spotify here)
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Storing thoughts and code with DayOne.
During the last days I have been playing around with the journal app “Day One” a bit and found it quite useful for two of my daily needs: Storring quick thoughts and saving useful code snippets for later reference or refinement.
DayOne collects all these little bits of information and displays them in the nicest way possible. I haven’t found any other journal or note taking app that worked that well and looked that gorgeous.
The latest version (1.5) finally adds Markdown editing and Monospace Fonts. You know, that kind of stuff that makes my geeky heart happy. Also, there is now an option to sync your entries across your iDevices via iCloud – but I’ll stick to the Dropbox Sync solution.
The only thing missing are tags for better differentiation between post types. But the developer already promised to add that feature soon.
So if you’re into that kind of thing and need a fast, beautiful note taking app that has all the bells and whistles you’ve come to expect, I highly recommend getting Day One in the Mac App Store now.
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Oh, how I dig Nicoals Jaar’s tunes. And his latest single “And I Say” (ft. Scout Larue and Will Epstein) is quite lovely, too. As Pitchfork notes, it is “in spirit [of] the shuffling, slinky rhythms of last year’s Space Is Only Noise full-length.” That of course, is a very good thing.
(via)
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↪ Twitter Developer Teatime in Berlin
The Berlin tech and start up scene is really thriving at the moment. If you need another proof: Twitter is holding a first developer session in Berlin this month. Check the link for details.
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Beautiful song by Caribou (and a great mellow remix by Four Tet). It’s already more than four years old, but still incredibly nice. Perfect for my mood today.
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↪ "Instagram adds full-size image posting to Facebook"
Finally. Until now I used a hack from ifttt to achieve the same effect. Good to see that there is now an “official” way.
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New Year’s Resolutions.
As many other people I start every year with reflecting on the things I want to achieve, become better in or change during the course of the days and months ahead. I was pretty good in putting last year’s resolutions - learning how to build websites (check) and starting my own company (check) – in effect. But of course new personal challenges await!
Here are my new year resolutions for 2012:
1) Write better code
I started learning how to code nine months ago. Mainly because I’ll always wanted to have my very own website – not only in terms of design, but also in terms of self written code.
I managed to pick up HTML and CSS very fast and thanks to a lot of practice became fairly good at writing basic markup. But let’s be honest: There is still so much to learn! In 2012 I want to build better sites faster. As simple as that. I’m not satisfied – and probably never fully will - with the stuff I put out there. That doesn’t mean my sites are bad (compared to a vast majority they are not) – it is just that I want to become better.
So if you have any tips, lessons or fun challenges – send them my way!
2) Build a game
I love video games. I spend a fair amount of my time in digital dungeons, I value their cultural impact and growing importance; heck, I even wrote my bachelor thesis about them.
And I would love to build my own indie game. That, of course, involves more coding. Serious coding. Thus I expect nothing super fancy before the end of the year, but I want to have at least a working prototype of a game like iOS program before 2013.
I’ll discuss some of my game ideas here in the coming months. It will be a rather transparent journey and I’d love to get some input and feedback from you guys!
3) Become a better photographer
Last year was not a good year in terms of photography for me. So this year I want to carry my camera around more often, practice more and maybe participate in some fun projects. I think Martin’s guidelines are a good advise and rule to follow for me as well. And as always I’ll document my progress on pinnwand.emanuelschwarz.com.
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To do the right thing means to recognize that the business-user relationship is joined by a thrid axis. Great products also meet the needs of society as a whole. So we should design for the good of the web, for the good of design, for the good of the world. Successful web business echo the philosophy behind the web, using open standards and APIs to allow people build great things on top of their products. Designers have a powerful opportunity to bring the open, collaborative mindset of the web into commerce, working together toward a higher goal of profit through shared prosperity.Cennydd Bowles, The Manual Vol. 2
