Any person, group, or business which creates or manufactures a product for mass consumption — or offers a wide-spread service (such as a utility company) — is potential target for public scrutiny and criticism. Any noticeable flaws quickly rise to the top, providing fuel for the most outspoken critics. The larger the distribution and dependence on the good or service, the larger the target, and louder the criticism. continued

Spawned by recent conversations with friends, I’ve been thinking about people who are known for designing and working with web standards. Specifically those who have a strong interest in CSS or are already using style sheets to compliment or construct beautiful design. In these conversations, we’ve noted that this space seems heavily dominated by men. This concerns me. continued

World AIDS Day

2002-2003 campaign: Eliminate stigma and discrimination.

(Post time modified to move this entry to the top.)

Luck and some last-minute arrangements have me on the opposite coast right now. I’m in New York, in the middle of a whirlwind trip which only removes me from San Francisco for a span of about 48 hours. You do the math. Figure about a five hour direct flight each way, and time to get in and out of each city via train, and it doesn’t amount to much time here.

Trips to New York are always like this for me. This is only the third time I’ve been here, but each time, my visit is extremely limited, no doubt confining my experience of the Big Apple to portions that I can see in such short time. continued

Frank Leahy is a friend and former-colleague from Wired. He was responsible for creating one of the primary Content Management Systems used at Lycos, and made significant contributions to the engineering effort when we redesigned Wired News last year. Frank left Wired a couple months ago, and he and his family of four recently picked up their lives and moved to England, settling temporarily in what looks like an amazing location: Cornwall. Understandably, Frank immediately has more time, and so much to write about that he’s started his own weblog, titled “A Year in Cornwall“. continued

In remembrance of the 3,016 lives we lost that day…

Via Paul Boutin, an interesting read from Peter Maass over at Slate. “Salam Pax Is Real” tells an inside story of Driving Mr. Pax, discovering his musical and literary tastes, and taking advice on buying Persian rugs — all without ever realizing this hired interpreter was the Iraqi star of the Web and burdened by huge ISP costs:

He usually drifted off to one of the few Internet cafes in town. I assumed he was just writing e-mails to friends, though he often complained about the high cost of downloading and uploading. This struck me as odd, because sending and receiving e-mail shouldn’t require a lot of bandwidth–unless, of course, you are posting photos to your blog and receiving more e-mail than Bill Gates.

I’ve posted a set of pictures from South by Southwest last week in Austin. I was slightly disappointed I didn’t snap more pictures, despite the fact that I had a really small camera which went everywhere with me. I was more disappointed in the quality of photos from the Sony Cyber-shot U20. Particularly with color and an over-emphasized red-eye effect in low-light conditions. Thus, the reason for playing around with the color for each of the SxSW thumbnails.

Most everyone seems to agree, despite the economic downturn and possibly a smaller attendance at the Interactive portion of the conference, this year was definitely a fun one.

As SXSW Interactive wraps up today, I find myself feeling like a kid again. A kid at the amusement park who realizes there’s only an hour left until the place closes, the rides stop, and everyone goes home. It feels like depression. But I know it’s only because the high is coming to an end, and reality will soon slip back into place. continued

At the very last minute, I gave in to an urge to head down to tonight’s monthly BayCHI program. Ironically enough, I ended up driving down to Palo Alto with Peterme of Adaptive Path and Erika Hall from Mule Design. I had just spent some time visiting Mule’s site last night for the first time. Some of Erika’s simple, to-the-point writing helped spawn yesterday’s post about simplifying writing style. continued