Domain harvesting and the Twitter long game in retrospect
If you have a website that gets steady but diminishing traffic, and whose domain registration dates back at least a decade, you may encounter offers to buy your domain. These used to come mainly from...
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Valediction.
I started using Twitter before the dawn of the iPhone. Back then, in 2006, it was a fun, funky, fully functional (if barebones) beta messaging service used mainly by The People of the Web—the kind of...
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My weekend project
It’s Sunday; I’m playing with my music collection, content as a fed-and-burped babe. Let me explain. I realized last night that, in tracking my shifting musical tastes via my Last.fm Pro account, I’m...
View ArticleFar from the bullying crowd
The bullies who beat and mocked me in eighth grade were cruel and stupid. They despised intelligence and worshipped violence, although they would settle for athletic ability. The school blessed their...
View ArticleA Jewish Joke
Two Jews are standing in an open cattle car en route to Auschwitz. The train pauses on a bridge overlooking a river. Directly below them is a transport ship. “Look!” the first Jew excitedly tells his...
View ArticleMy Glamorous Life: The Unexpected Samples
A whinnying horse. A blaxploitation sample. A female instructor saying Chinese is the easiest language to learn. These three brief audio samples regularly interrupt my late-night headphone music...
View ArticleYour opt-innie wants to talk to your opt-outtie.
Here’s a fact: “Opt-in” is great for programs a platform controls, but meaningless when that platform has no control. Take, for example, oh, I don’t know, let’s say AI companies scraping web content...
View ArticleThis Years Model
There’s a new AI model that can render photorealistic people and products, including text and logos. Geisha With Walkman is something I tried to draw 40 years ago, but my rendering skills were simply...
View ArticleWho turned off the juice?
Beloved reader, I spent 90 minutes on hold with Con Edison yesterday, getting my power turned back on after a billing contretemps. The whole 90 minutes, my brain’s shrieking, “You’re having a panic...
View ArticleForever
The first website my colleagues and I created was for “Batman Forever” (1995, d. Joel Schumacher), starring Val Kilmer. That website changed my life and career. I never saw “Top Gun,” but Val Kilmer...
View ArticleMy father, Maurice Zeldman, and his ZGANNT software
My father, Maurice Zeldman, was a giant in the field of project management, though I suspect few in my world of web standards and design would recognize his name. Dad consulted for over 180...
View ArticleWeb typography: a refresher and history
Many designers still think in px first when creating baseline styles. But we know intellectually that various relative typography approaches are better suited to our medium in all its complexity....
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Writing in WordLand
This is a test. This is only a test. I’m using WordLand to write this post to my WordPress website. It’s a new, stripped-down writer’s tool for bloggers. Think of it as a frill-free writer’s frontend...
View ArticleA morning’s tale
Editor’s Note || Our New York apartment is home to three humans and three cats: Snow White, Mango, and young Jasper. Woke to pee 2:00 am. Entered bathroom. Narrowly avoided slipping on a small lake of...
View ArticleMy Glamorous Life: broken by design.
Debt brought on by large, unexpected expenses caused me to lose access to my credit card. I’d put a close friend’s storage unit in my name and on my credit card while they relocated and job-hunted. So...
View ArticleAccessibility 101
A11y 101: How to test manually The post Accessibility 101 appeared first on Jeffrey Zeldman Presents.
View ArticleThe eye of God
My doctor sends me to Brooklyn for an abdominal aortic aneurysm screening. As instructed, I fast for six hours beforehand. I don’t even brush my teeth, for fear of swallowing toothpaste and screwing...
View ArticleProject 2026
Starting today, file suits to prevent biased gerrymandering. Fight harder for the right to vote than the GOP has fought to suppress the votes of Americans MAGA dislikes. Craft a Democratic party...
View ArticleStaying relevant
Or not. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation. It had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant...
View ArticleToo many meetings?
At Automattic, we know our time is finite and precious. Here are the questions we ask ourselves before agreeing to any meeting: Am I investing time toward the things that are doing the most to help me...
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