Author: brandt

I suppose a reasonable question here would be “how do you distinguish between overthinking the architecture vs. architecting for extensibility?” That would be a good question; I frequently think my own questions are good questions, and I’ll try to come back to it in a follow-up post.

We are not ready to teach everyone to write programs because we must first teach everyone to read programs.

There are many technical barriers to success – the state of the art of source code technology is still too primitive.

We await the equivalent of the Carolingian Renaissance.

A bunch of startups have launched over the last year to provide cheaper and more flexible alternatives, including open source “clones” of WebEx functionality. Teamslide, DimDim (open source), 1videoconference (open source), Vyew, Live Meeting and SlideShare are all competitive with WebEx in one way or another, and all are better at cross platform collaboration.

In 1928, Eric Gill set about to improve on Edward Johnston’s type for the London Underground. The result was Gill Sans. In a piece for Singapore’s designer magazine, Ben Archer argues that Gill failed…

when you find yourself laughing out loud at an encyclopedia, it’s either time to call the encyclopedia something else, or […] it’s time for a rewrite.

The Face2Face project is to make portraits of Palestinians and Israelis doing the same job and to post them face to face, in huge formats, in unavoidable places, on the Israeli and the Palestinian sides.