It has been a busy week: I celebrated my birthday, went to a Mos Def concert, made some new friends, started getting over a new crush, had some old friends visit, and spent too much money shopping on M Street. I think it’s time to have a relaxing few days catching up on some reading.

Some really great articles in this week’s edition of the Weekender, but if you read only one, check out the second link — Paul Graham’s What You’ll Wish You’d Known — because it is one of the most important pieces of writing I’ve read since Merlin Mann’s Better.

Good Design in Ten Commandments

A product is bought in order to be used. It must serve a defined purpose – in both primary and additional functions. The most important task of design is to optimise the utility of a product.

What You’ll Wish You’d Known

If I were back in high school and someone asked about my plans, I’d say that my first priority was to learn what the options were. You don’t need to be in a rush to choose your life’s work. What you need to do is discover what you like. You have to work on stuff you like if you want to be good at what you do.

How The Internet Is Wrecking Society

Human beings crave social contact and connection. We want to talk to people face to face, or at least hear their voice. Not just for the joy of it, but because we look for vocal and facial queues about how the person we are talking to feels.

Is Genius Born Or Can It Be Learned

For most of its history, the debate over what leads to genius has been dominated by a bitter, binary argument: is it nature or is it nurture — is genius genetically inherited, or are geniuses the products of stimulating and supportive homes?

People I Wish I Knew

Getting to know one another is tricky. There are a number of hurdles, various stages of awkwardness, and a bunch of baggage brought to the community table. Even friendships can be difficult, but if you’re lucky, you make it through to the other side and soon you’re splitting popcorn.

How to Present While People are Twittering

Now, audience members don’t have to wait to clarify things they don’t understand. They can tweet their question and another audience member will tweet back with the answer. Audience members who tuned out because they didn’t understand now stay engaged.

What’s Cooking?

Cooking is a human universal. No society is without it. No one other than a few faddists tries to survive on raw food alone. And the consumption of a cooked meal in the evening, usually in the company of family and friends, is normal in every known society. Moreover, without cooking, the human brain could not keep running.

The Science of Smooching

Kissing is just the tip of the iceberg of understanding all of the biological mechanisms that are involved for mate choice.

Always on the side of the egg

Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you.

Replacing Things Lost

I still find disfigurement hard, and I feel the loss of my right, normal body every day. I sometimes catch a glance in the mirror after a shower and think sadly, “Really?”

That’s it for this weekend. If you want to keep on top of what else I’m reading or enjoying on the web during the week, check out my tumblelog Squandrous, my Google Reader shared items, or my Times People profile.

The web is a great tool for discovery, and an even better tool for sharing. In that light, I wanted to share with you some of my favorite sites on the web I’ve discovered this year — sites that I hope will pique your interest as well:

• The Big Picture: I’ve always been a huge fan of photography, and this site is not only a remarkable showcase of photos, but an excellent site for visual news reporting as well.
• Swiss Miss: I’m not sure why I hadn’t discovered this site before, but if you’re looking for links to all sorts of well-designed fun things, Tina’s site should be your first stop.
• Blank is Like Blank: Obscure similes and metaphors make me smile, especially when they’re also funny. This site hasn’t been updated in a few months, but browse the archives, there’s a lot of gems in there.
• Textism: I used to read Dean Allen’s site a few years ago before it disappeared. This year, it came back, and the content is just as beautiful as the minimal design.
• The Art of the Title: A great title sequence design has always been the first sign of a good movie or television show. This site showcases some of the best title art out there. Design geeks everywhere rejoice.
• 1001 Rules for my Unborn Son: You may not agree with all of them (though I do agree with most) but this list of rules and accompanying photos and quotes is definitely an excellent conversation starter.
• Give Me Something To Read: There’s a lot of information out there on the web, hidden in well-written but hard-to-find articles. If you’re ever stuck in front of your screen, looking for some mental nourishment, this site presents five or six links each day to some of the best writing on the internet.

That’s a quick look at some of the sites I discovered this year (check out last year’s list for the sites I discovered in 2007) that have kept me entertained over the past twelve months. Have some suggestions for new sites I’m not visiting just yet and might make it on to my 2009 list? Leave them in the comments!

The 2008 Toronto International Film Festival is but a week away, and I’m getting excited.

Most of you that know me well are aware that TIFF-time in Toronto is my favorite time of year.

Armed with my press pass, I watch between 30-40 films, interview dozens of actors and filmmakers, and hang out at a few parties as well — all in a span of ten days.

Despite my obsession with film and the festival, I tend to stay away from reviewing the actual movies and instead cover industry news and filmmakers. There’s a part of me that shies away from trying to judge the passions and efforts of a fellow creator. There’s a fantastic quote in Ratatouille (one of the best films to be released this decade) that explains this sentiment well:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

I do, however, love exploring the work of new filmmakers, particularly those that make short film. Much of the excitement in that comes from the ability to discover new talent at its ground level, and to help foster that talent by telling the world about it. Yet again, a quote from Ratatouille comes to mind:

There are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends.

If you’re coming to TIFF this year, do me a favor and watch some Canadian short films and support our next generation of filmmakers. And if you haven’t watched Ratatouille just yet, do that now. Right now.

Are you coming to TIFF08? What are you excited to see at the festival?

I’m not only saying that Jez Burrows was robbed because Bronwyn (my hero) said it first. (Or because everyone else on the web seems to think so.)

I’m saying that Jez Burrows was robbed because this is one of the sexiest book covers I’ve seen all year:

That being said, this post is not about Jez Burrows or the fact that he was robbed. (After all, Jenna Jones’ submission was also great, as were most of the submissions that made the shortlist.) Instead, I want to congratulate Penguin for continuously pushing the envelope when it comes to cover design.

In my previous ruminations on book cover design, I gushed about Penguin’s Great Ideas series and the remarkable work they have done in fostering excellent cover art. The Great Ideas series and the Penguin Design Award are just two manifestations of the importance the publisher places on the design of their work.

What Penguin seems to understand more than many other publishers is that stories are not just told in the text of their books; cover art, typography, and even the shape and size of the published work are integral to enhancing the overall story.

Storytelling through design

A good storyteller doesn’t just tell you a tale. Instead, he or she creates an environment where you can be immersed, enraptured, and enthralled by the contents of the story. For a good storyteller, it’s not enough that you hear the story: you have to believe it, feel it, and live it.

As a publisher, Penguin Books is a phenomenal storyteller. They know that the power of the story is not in its content, but in its experience, and subsequently make all the right design choices to make that experience come alive.

You know all those predictions that say that the “book” as a format for consuming text is going to disappear? What they forget is that the book is not just a format for consuming text; instead, it is a physical artifact that serves as a reminder of a personal experience, a story lived. The book isn’t going to die anytime soon.

And I thank Penguin and their design team for helping to ensure the medium’s longevity.

On a total side note, the website for the Penguin Design Awards is gorgeous. Yet another example of great Penguin design.

Henna Singh over at Canadian Beauty (if you like fashion, you should definitely be reading Canadian Beauty) tagged me as the only guy in her You Make My Day Awards post, so I thought it was only fair that I carry on the meme.

The rules go like this:

Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on.

Simple? Not really. I subscribe to over 500 blogs and tumblelogs, so picking just ten that make my day was incredibly difficult. I’m going to give it a try though, and I apologize to anyone I may have left out:

• nostrich: I may have just discovered this blog over a month ago, but already I’ve gone through the entire archive because of the hilarity of the content and amazing writing.
• The Sartorialist: Call me superficial, but well-dressed people make me smile. I love the stories people can tell with the clothes they wear.
• What I Learned Today: We all learn something every day. Diana shares her questions and knowledge with all of us so that we can learn with her.
• meish dot org: It’s no secret I’m in love with fantastic writing, and Meg Pickard has a command of the English language that is downright inspirational.
• dokoohakoo’s loft: Tina has always been an inspiration in my life, and this tumblelog lets her share her wisdom with all of you as well.
• Anil Dash: He’s an influential man in the web/tech world, he loves Prince, and he’s remarkably astute. He’s super funny too.
• xkcd: There really isn’t much to say: xkcd has proven to be the most engaging, relevant, and hilarious comic on the web today.
• Ill Doctrine: He bills his site as a hip-hop video blog, but Jay Smooth’s site is much more than that: it’s an exposition of truth.
• 5ives: If you haven’t got enough laughs simply following Merlin Mann’s Twitter updates, then 5ives is guaranteed to give you a chuckle to start your day.
• cubicle 17: He’s smart, astute, has fantastic design sense, and likes his coffee strong. What isn’t there to like about Bill?

Those are just the first ten that popped into my head, but there are so many other blogs that keep make me smile every morning. So instead of just thanking them, I want to thank everyone that creates content on the web, everyone that makes my morning surfing a much more pleasant experience.

Happy New Year everyone! On today, the first day of 2008, I want to thank you all for coming back and reading this site and the many other places I write on the web. I also want to thank the people behind the following websites that I discovered this year and just had to visit every day.

I don’t have time to write much, but here’s a quick taste of my ten newly-discovered must-visit sites I frequented in 2007:

• Ill Doctrine: Jay Smooth is not only a natural in front of the camera, but he’s also one of the most insightful video-bloggers I have ever seen. And he’s a really nice guy too.
• xkcd: By now, everyone is reading Randall Munroe’s hilarious web comic, so there’s not much more I can say than it is definitely good for a laugh even on the darkest days.
• Sufficient Thrust: Marina Martin knows efficiency and knows the web, and she shares her thoughts on both of them on her blog. She’s also one of my favorite Twitter buddies.
• tumbl.us: There are so many tumblelogs that I completely adore, but I can always count on Matt McInerny to share the most exciting links.
• Do You KNOW Clarence: Clarence writes articulately, but the true gem of his site is the podcast where he shares life experiences in his smooth and captivating voice.
• Indexed: Jessica Hagy has managed to spin her amazing index card blog into a book, and I’m really glad that her creativity is being rewarded.
• Reel Fanatic: Keith Demko watches as many movies as I do, he’s just a lot more eloquent and interesting when he writes about them.
• The Serif: This site presents design inspiration that isn’t just limited to the web, allowing all of us to appreciate beautiful design of all types.
• Spacing Wire: There isn’t a single site that deals with urban issues, politics and public space in Toronto better than Spacing.
• WTFCNN?: You can always count on CNN to make some gaffes on their front page. This site finds those hilarious mistakes and highlights them for all of us.

There were a ton of other great sites I visited regularly (over 500 in my Google Reader right now!) so I want to thank all of you that are constantly creating fantastic content for the web. Keep up the fantastic work in 2008, and if you know of a great site I’m not reading yet, let me know!

I’m not going to try and hide it anymore: I’ve been in the thrall of a torrid love affair for the past year, and it has been consuming every moment of my day, every single inch of my personal fabric. I’ve been so wrapped up in this new affair that my first love of my life—this blog here—has suffered and has even gone through periods of long neglect.

So today, I’m doing the morally correct thing and coming out with the details of my more-than-year-long affair with Twitter, with hopes of making amends with all the other web properties (Flickr, Upcoming, Squandrous, Last.fm, blogTO, and Eloquation to name a few) that I have been ignoring over the past several months.

I’ve spoken about Twitter before here on Eloquation, but was afraid to profess my undying love out of fear of repercussions. At that time, the world wasn’t yet ready to embrace my love of Twitter, but I now feel like the time is right to introduce my web mistress

Twitter has succeeded in bringing me pleasure unlike any other web application has before because of the low barrier to entry, the high value of return for time spent, and its ability to sit in the background until I really need to get some tweet lovin’. Unlike the other web applications I have been involved with, Twitter doesn’t keep me chained to my browser, but instead gives me my freedom to explore by staying with me through SMS messages on my mobile phone. With the help of Twitter, I have been able to express myself in a more lucid, concise manner, and Twitter has also helped me increase the quality of my conversations with some of the people around me.

I’m not the only person that has been caught up in a love affair with Twitter, but I don’t get jealous when I learn of other people involved with the application. In fact, I encourage other people to tryst with Twitter so that I can learn from their experiences and share in their thoughts.

Other lovers on the web have written odes to Twitter: some say that an affair with Twitter can make you smarter and more productive, while others claim that Twitter will drastically improve your life. They’re both true. Here’s a short list of what Twitter has brought me in the past year alone:

• Web application help;
• A confession booth;
• Political opinion;
• Social drinks;
• A web developer;
• Cheap stuff;
• A few dates (no link for those);
• Design inspiration;
• Breaking news;
• A good laugh;
• More blog visitors;
• Time management;
• Happiness.

As much as Twitter has given me, it has taken some things away as well, as any mistress is wont to do. After all, I know spend much less time doing other things on the web: I could argue that Twitter is ruining my blogging. My mobile vibrates with Twitter updates dozens of times an hour, sometimes disturbing social engagements. There are times where Twitter is so smothering that I think “I love Twitter, but I have to quit it.”

Those thoughts pass quickly. Any good relationship is able to realize its faults and work through them, and Twitter and I have a lasting, fulfilling relationship that can persevere through absences and adversity.

So I’ve come clean and professed my love for Twitter. There is no reason for it to hide in the corner of my web life anymore, and I’m letting Twitter come center-stage. I’ll keep blogging, linking, opining, and taking photos, but if you’re really looking for me, I’ll be with Twitter.

Are you a fellow lover of Twitter? We adorers must stick together: let me know and I’ll follow you on Twitter as well.

I’ll admit that I’m not a developer, so I may be a bit clueless when it comes to the intricacies of web application development. I am, however, a voracious user of web apps of all types and kinds, so I figure I do have every right to comment on the state of web apps as I know them, and why so many of them are going wrong.

Of course, this post was inspired by the fact that the Future of Web Apps conference just wrapped up in London yesterday. I wasn’t there to attend the conference—and being someone that doesn’t really develop web apps, I’m attending the Future of Web Design conference instead—so I apologize to anyone if a lot of this repeats things you have heard incessantly over the past few months, but I have compiled my thoughts and thought I’d share them with you.

Basically, I’ve come up with four key points, and I’ve got examples for each one of them. There are tons of other things that need to go right when building a successful web application, but these are the four that stand out in my mind. Here goes.

Your app doesn’t have to be social

I’m not going to be crazy like Steve Ballmer and say that social networks are a fad; after all, these same networks have helped me make contacts for both friendship and for employment. I will, however, claim that a web app doesn’t need to be social in order to be successful.

I’ve found that some applications, in their rush to add ‘social functionality’ instead of being inherently social, have lost the core reason for their existence, and therefore fail to garner critical mass. There are, however, some applications that have done the complete opposite: instead of rushing to try and become social, application developers have created solid, value-adding applications that appeal to the end-user.

There are a few examples that illustrate this point quite effectively. The first is My Mile Marker, an application developed by Sidebar Creative that allows you to track gas expenditures and mileage for your automobile. It seems as though Sidebar has forgotten about this application—there hasn’t been any changes or features added to the site in over two months—but M3 is now indispensable for me. Instead of tracking my mileage on a spreadsheet, I now have an application with an easy-to-use data entry interface and robust charting systems to help me manage my automobile expenditures. Tracking your automobile mileage is not an inherently social activity, and Sidebar Creative hasn’t tried to pretend that it is; instead, they’ve created an interface for a simple solitary activity, and have done so in a fantastic way.

Another web app that I’ve been using quite often these days is Jumpchart, an online interactive sitemap tool by Paste Interactive. Now, of course, Jumpchart is a collaborative tool at its core, but it is not inherently social: I’m not on Jumpchart to make friends, I’m there to create excellent websites using the ideas and skill set of other selectively-chosen collaborators. The folks at Paste Interactive, instead of trying to create a tool where information architects and web designers can hang out and talk about sports, have created a web application where collaboration can occur seamlessly and effectively. By focusing on making their tool set relevant and useful for the end-user rather than attractive to the social network junkie, Jumpchart has created a tool that is a must-have in the arsenal of any information designer.

Your app doesn’t have to be productive

This second point might baffle a few people: after all, what is the point of creating a web application if there is, actually, no point to it? What I’d like to point out, however, is that I am not denying the fact that web apps need to add value. What I am saying is that this value doesn’t have to be rooted in productivity and efficiency. Sometimes you just need to be entertained.

The best example I can find in order to illustrate this fact is the highly entertaining Twitter Blocks. When it was first introduced, it received many accolades for its visual aesthetic, but was largely panned for its utility. Popular web personalities like Dave Winer and Russell Heimlich were quick to brand the application as useless or pointless. On the other hand, I thought Twitter blocks is (and continues to be) one of the most engaging ways to kill some time on the web.

In response to the criticism, Tom Carden made an excellent point:

It’s fine to ask “what’s it for?”, especially of new tools or things that aim to improve the efficiency or effectiveness of this or that. But why not also accept that some things might just be for entertainment and ask “am I having fun” once in a while instead of looking for a problem to be solved or an important statement to be read? Some things just are.

Tom’s exactly right: Twitter Blocks’ utility is in its entertainment value rather than its productivity value. I agree with Jim Bumgardner when he says that “wonder and delight is all we should require of our toys, and it is all we should require of our art.” If you spend even thirty seconds being delighted by the great things you learn on Twitter Blocks, it has been successful.

Then again, the application does serve some purpose as well. When it comes to visualizations, Twitter Blocks has to be one of my favorites: it takes the frivolous-yet-engaging element of Twitter (the often seemingly un-purposeful status updates) and blends it with discoverability, one of the best parts of the world wide web. Letting me discover new people and new things is at the core of the social web, and Blocks is doing that quite effectively. If that’s not useful, then I don’t know what is.

Your app doesn’t have to be comprehensive

I call it the Facebook curse: everyone these days wants to create the one web app that does everything. Sadly, in the effort to create an application that does everything, a lot of developers fail to make their app do anything well. Sure, Facebook seems to be able to do it, but I’d have to remind people that Facebook has been adding features slowly: when I first joined the popular social networking site about two years ago, it did very little but maintain a virtual address book.

The ideal web app doesn’t try and do everything. Instead it does one thing very well—better than anyone else, in fact—and allows other apps to interact with it or allows its data be exported and shared in various platforms. By making this kind of information exchange possible, we ensure that developers can work on making their apps amazing in their niche area instead of trying to be everything to everyone. Social network portability may be a dream right now, but Brad’s thoughts on the social graph definitely show how it could be a reality.

Whether or not the social graph does end up coming to life, it still makes sense for web app developers to concentrate their efforts on attaining excellence in one area rather than trying to do everything wrong. One site that does a fantastic job in its niche area is Dopplr. There is only one thing you can do on Dopplr: share your upcoming travels with other people. There is no messaging service built-in, no poking, no event management, and no blog service. You share your trips, other people share their trips, and you can connect with people you know as you travel. Simple.

Dopplr is one of the most intriguing applications on the web today, not only because it is so simple, but also because it is so useful in its simplicity. It doesn’t try to do everything, but everything that it does do is done perfectly.

Your app has to add value

I’ve repeated one term quite often in the paragraphs above: value. No matter how pretty your interface may be, or how robust your technology may seem, the only thing that matters for your web app is the amount of value it adds to someone’s life. Users are drawn to applications that offer an experience that makes their day better in some way (whether that be through entertainment, productivity, etc.), and they return to applications that offer experiences that make their lives better. Your flashy widget may seem cute, but if it doesn’t add value, it shouldn’t be in your web app.

I really love Steve Spalding’s example he states in his post on ‘how to invent’ about the VCR:

Many millennia ago when people still owned VCRs, no one ever set the timers on them. Why? It was a pain and the value that you got from doing it wasn’t worth the hassle.

I still own a VCR, and because it’s a relatively new VCR, there is no clock or timer on the unit. It looks like VCR-makers learned that if there is no value in a particular feature, there is no point in including that feature in their product. Some web app developers, sadly, haven’t understood this concept just yet.

Whether that value comes from communication, entertainment, efficiency, productivity, or problem-solving, it is that value which is the core of your web application, not the technology that you used to build it. Give me a reason to come in the first place, and give me a reason to keep coming back, and maybe your web app will succeed.

A recent post on Torontoist about the The Art of Dose, where they feature a interview with former Editor-In-Chief of Dose Pema Hegan. For those of you who have been tracking my various blogs for a long time, you know how enamored I was of Dose’s design — not only their covers, but their page layouts and their graphics — and how sad I was that the print version of the newspaper had to be discontinued. I have tried to continue visiting the Dose website, but the effect is completely different: I didn’t pick up Dose everyday for the content, but for the fantastic aesthetic presence it had, a sensibility that isn’t adequately conveyed on the website.

Speaking about cover design to Torontoist editor Marc Lostracco, Hegan said:

We believed the cover was our single biggest opportunity to introduce new readers to Dose. It needed to reach out to people walking past the box, and that is hard to do with a busy front page full of stories. We thought the best approach was to focus on a single issue/idea and find a smart and visually interesting way to communicate it.

Hegan gets it right: while more and more newspapers are trying to crowd more and more stories onto their front pages, Dose realized that people’s attention spans don’t have the time to digest all that text. Instead, people want a front page that speaks to them, that speaks to the issues that are on their mind, and that appeals to their visual tastes.

Of course, great cover design needs to be backed up by great content, and that may have been the cause of Dose’s demise. One newspaper I have been following quite regularly (other than The Guardian, The Toronto Star, and The New York Times, of course) has been the The Independent out in the UK. Ever since they ran that absolutely stunning infographic about a Middle East ceasefire last year, I’ve been completely enthralled by the way they present cutting news and pressing information on their front pages. Unlike Dose, however, The Independent has done a great job of marrying fantastic design with insightful content inside the newspaper. While it may not have the journalistic cachet as a paper like The Guardian, for example, The Independent still stands out as a premier newspaper available in the United Kingdom because of the issues it addresses, but mainly because of of the way it stands out in the newsstands by its design.

I’ve written about cover design before on this weblog, but most of my insight on the topic has been limited to the crafting of book covers. While I will admit that good cover design might be a bit more important for books which don’t have serial subscribers in order to buoy their sales, it is undeniable that periodicals need to embrace the importance of front page design in a world where people don’t have time to examine before they make the decision to purchase. Malcolm Gladwell said it in Blink, and he was absolutely correct: the decision to pick up that newspaper or that magazine is made in your first glance. And while it is clear that some publishers realize this and put the necessary resources into styling their covers, I have yet to see any kind of periodical achieve the kind of brilliance that George Lois created for Esquire in the 1960s.

I put a quick message up on Twitter yesterday asking for suggestions of other newspapers that have great cover design, and here’s a quick list of a few that were recommended to me: Chicago Sun-Times, Hamilton Spectator, Houston Chronicle, Publico Lisboa and Rocky Mountain News. I haven’t been following all those papers regularly, so I can’t vouch for their quality, but if you’re interested in seeing what kinds of newspapers my Twitter friends like to read, check out their websites or search for them at the Newseum.

And of course, you can’t forget the excellent sites Newsdesigner and Best Front Design. They say everything I’ve said here with examples, every day.

So while I’m out here in London, Astral Media Outdoor is holding an open vote on designs for a billboard that illustrates what Toronto means to its residents. I’m quite impressed that Astral Media went to OCAD students and is willing to donate a good chunk of its advertising space in the city to celebrating Toronto, but as one commenter on blogTO said: “how about no ads?”

They bring up a good point. While it is valiant of Astral Media to try and push residents to think about the sentence “My Toronto Is,” it would be nicer if there were fewer ads — whether for the city or not — that littered our public spaces. Another blogTO commenter finished the sentence as: “My Toronto is… covered with billboards.”

I voted for this design, which speaks to me a lot more than any of the other designs, but don’t let my opinion color your vote. The way I see it, if Astral Media is going to be littering our public space with ads, they might as well be ads that promote our city.