The events of Donglegate don’t add anything to a very real discussion about gender equality in the IT workforce.

The tweet that kicked off Donglegate. Photo by https://dailymail.co.uk.

I’m going to be very upfront about my stance on the issue of ‘Donglegate’ and spell it out right here in my opening paragraph, because at the risk of mixing metaphors I fully realize how much of a tightrope I’m walking by even dipping my toes into this issue: Adria Richards is the only person whose firing was justified. Now that you’ve let the hate flow through you, allow me to explain my position, and why I believe that sexism, while certainly a factor, should not be the dominating theme of whatever lesson we as an industry choose to take away from the Donglegate incident. More

We don’t type “http://” in our browsers anymore, so why use “www”? Let’s make the traditional URL syntax sandwich more noticeable, by turning it open-faced.

Source: tasteofhome.com

Once upon a time, if you can believe it, web surfers who wanted to visit a site needed to enter in the entire URL into their browser before hitting Go. Not just the “www” prefix, but the entire line of a standard URL: http://www.sandwich.com/. Back in the nineties, browsers didn’t have autocomplete functionality, they didn’t have search engines built into the Address Bar, they only had barebones Bookmarking and History functions; they were primitive, to say the least.

Most importantly, the functionality known as “commercialization”, “.com”-ification, or “cannonicalization”, which allows browsers to essentially guess the remaining portions of a given URL based on trial-and-error, was in still its infancy. It was also extremely bandwidth-intensive on dialup modems of the day, making incomplete address entry unpalatable to users. More

It’s not often I get worked up enough about a product to want to review it. It’s even less often I feel compelled to write a negative review. But after picking up the Skullcandy 50/50 Earbuds w/ Inline Mic late last year, that’s exactly where I find myself. Here’s why you should avoid making my mistake.

Photo from www.skullcandy.com

Maybe the reason I’m so bitter is because up until I bought my Skullcandy 50/50 buds, I had nothing but great things to say about the company. My previous earbuds had been from Skullcandy, and when I bought them I had been blown away by the quality of their 11mm drivers’ sound compared to the stock Apple in-ears. The lows were rich and full, and the highs were crisp with no noticeable clipping. I heard plenty of bang for my buck. Plus, the buds were comfy.

Hell, I even had a pleasant experience with their Customer Service people. When the wire snapped near the inline mic thanks to my fidgeting with it, I emailed them and they simply had me send in the broken buds, then emailed me a voucher for a new pair (complete with hilarious redeem code). That new pair never gave me an ounce of trouble in the two years I owned it. In fact, I was so impressed with Skullcandy that I bought my cousin an identical pair as a birthday present, and she too was impressed with the quality of the sound and the product build.

Fast-forward to a few weeks ago, when my trusty buds finally gave out after a tragic vinegar spill. Naturally, I went out and bought new Skullcandy buds to replace them. I didn’t even look at what was on the shelf; I just went straight for whatever their updated offering of my trusty buds was. What I walked away with was a pair of Skullcandy 50/50 Earbuds w/ Inline Mic, for roughly the same price I had paid last time. Unfortunately, it turned out the 50/50’s were comparable to my old buds by name and price only. More

 As a consumer, I’m outraged; yet as a designer/ developer, I’m tempted to stand up and slow clap. Aussie online retailer Kogan has imposed a 6.8% tax on all purchases by visitors who view their site on Internet Explorer 7. Customers who do choose to visit Kogan’s site via IE7 are greeted with a blatant, slightly snarky popup explaining that if they proceed to make a purchase they will incur an extra 6.8% fee on their goods.

It’s actually a fairly ingenious way to get around having to deal with the grueling process of cross-browser compatibility for those who insist on using outdated software (or are too computer-illiterate to know better). More importantly, if Kogan’s idea catches fire and other sites begin adopting similar policies, that could potentially accelerate the glacial rate of adoption for new browser versions across the web- and with the exciting features of HTML5, WebGL and other new web tech moving painfully slowly towards mainstream adoption, I for one am excited to see someone finally taking a real stab at browser standards enforcement.

Besides, every browser’s updates are free, and for those too inept to figure out how to do it themselves, the site’s popup contains handy links to the latest versions of the most popular browsers, so the tradeoff between disrupting customer satisfaction and working with outdated technology is pretty well balanced in this case. And doesn’t it make sense to encourage everyone to update who still runs a browser not capable of doing so itself? There’s virtually no way that those who update from IE7 would see any meaningful drawbacks from a newer browser, at least not in the long run, and doing so just once makes the entire web an easier place to build for.

After all, a rising tide raises all boats (except, ironically enough, for Netscape Navigator).

Kogan imposes world’s first Internet Explorer 7 tax.

A few days ago one of my old professors gave a shout-out to Clipboard, which she praised as having the functionality of Pinterest coupled with superior aesthetics and a broader feature set. Now I’ve never tried Pinterest as I’m not really big into sharing webpages in general; in fact I only really use my Tumblr for images and music. But my interest was piqued when she mentioned the unique way Clipboard had of grabbing live “clips”, i.e. articles, images, or videos or even complete chunks from a site by copying and pasting the site’s code, and then taking that clip and displaying it in an aesthetically pleasing “at-a-glance” view along with other clips. Throw in a tag-based cataloguing system for these digital clipboards, and you’ve got a robust brainfart collector there. More