Steeler Ladies (interrupting our regularly scheduled programming)

Ok, so this isn't exactly design related, but...

My sister recorded a parody of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" named "Steeler Ladies" which she co-wrote with Christine Nangle. This was recorded and produced by Sean G. Donaldson.

Check it out.



Steeler Ladies.

LaCie flat cables

LaCie has introduced a series of 7 different computer cables designed to help minimize cable clutter and make your life more colorful.

The cables roll up neatly and can be stacked on top of each other, nicely banded together, and even come with 24 labels so you can keep track of which device you're plugging in while maintaining total order of your desktop.

LaCie lists the cables at $13 a pieces. That's a bit more expensive than your run of the mill cables. And they're just under 4' long so don't plan on running one of these across the room. But until everything is completely wireless...

via Core77

For the mobile designer - really time for mobile CSS?

I try to build all of my websites without contingent code* unless the case calls for it. I actually don't think I've built a site with contingent code since some time early in the 2000's (well, early in the first decade of the 2000's; aren't we still early in them otherwise?). Those were the days of emerging (and diverging) browsers, Netscape's death, AOL and all the other things that made designing for the interwebs challenging in their own way.

To over-simplify, cascading style sheets - CSS - can be used to control the appearance (and some light behavior) of websites. They provide form to the content on many websites and I use them all the time in my web development process to do just that. One of the options for web designers is to set up different style sheets for different browsing platforms.

A good application of this could be telling a website to use a different style sheet for displaying a website when it's viewed on a desktop machine vs a mobile device such as a cell phone, blackberry, or iphone. This is technology I know about and choose to ignore frequently enough because I set up the site to degrade "gracefully" when browsing technology isn't quite what I had in mind, such as a slow connection, no flash, or maybe -ahem- a cell phone.

With mobile computing emerging as a serious platform it might be time for me to rethink my strategy for some sites. It might be time for me to set up a mobile CSS for websites so when someone browses a site with a mobile device they get a design tailored for them, rather than sloppy seconds... or in my case, at least thoughtfully considered leftovers.

A List Apart, one of my favorite web design reads, features an article on this topic. If you design for the web a lot, this is a decent read: Return of the Mobile Style Sheet

*by contingent code I mean setting up code that will do thing in one environment (such as firefox) but a separate piece of code that will do the same thing or something gracefully equivalent in another (such as internet explorer). this is required frequently when using javascript, as an example, but can also be done in CSS. That's oversimplified but should be adequate explanation of what I mean.

Recently Launched: Bea2b.com

I recently launched Bea2B.com.

This is one of several sites I should be making live within the first two months of 2009.

Beatrice Weiss, who runs Bea2B, is a wonderful business process consultant who worked with one of the business I was first employed at as a designer in Chicago. She worked closely with our president and bookkeeper to help us improve our accounting practices, among other things. She is a wonderful person and if you ever need services she provides, drop her a line

Back from the holiday

Ok, it's been a while. What, about two weeks?

I return today with not as exciting posts for some but I found a new website I really dig.

I came across MetaEfficient while I was reading another blog. You should check it out if you're interested in efficient ways of doing things, if you consider yourself environmentally friendly (or wanting to be), or you're interested in emerging, more efficient technologies. Check it out!