• A Map-Based Approach to a Content Inventory - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design
  An interesting approach to site mapping inspired by the Tube Map (via O’Reilly Radar)
  (tags: ia sitemap)
• The Exciter: CouchDb and CouchObjects
  The first attempt I’ve seen to map CouchDB to ruby model objects. Looks interesting, though I wonder if technology like CouchDB will lead to a change in how we understand models.
  (tags: couchdb databases json models)
• Why we need standards support in HTML email - Campaign Monitor Blog
  Seems the folks at CampaignMonitor are planning an HTML email equivalent to the initial Web Standards Group push. About time too!
  (tags: email html mime newsletters webstandards)
• SanDisk | Multi Card ExpressCard Adapter
  Finally something I might want to use my macbook pro’s expresscard slot for.
  (tags: cardreader expresscard)

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• Wildbit » Email delivery for developers – Social Networking and Subscriber-based Services.
  A nice overview of issues involved in sending out lots of email
  (tags: distribution email mta)
• UnitRecord: disconnecting unit tests from the database
  Looks useful for apps with large numbers of unit tests. I’ll be trying this out next time I need to speed up some tests
  (tags: plugins rubyonrails unittesting)
• CouchDB: distributed document database system with bi-directional replication
  Everyone seems to be talking about it. While I’m waiting for my new laptop to arrive I only have time to linkblog it. But CouchDB, and its JSON over REST approach, really does seem to be a fascinating development.
  (tags: couchdb databases json rest)
• Clickatell Ruby API
  Nice looking gem for sending SMS from a ruby app
  (tags: gems ruby rubyonrails sms)

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Thanks to some hard design work on the part of Rob Vander Giessen-Reitsma I was able to launch a new look for the website of singer/songwriter Sarah Masen a week or so ago. Sarah’s recently released three new EPs (her first releases since 2001, and all with hand made packaging) and it was high time the site got a new lease of life.

At heart, the site is a simple rails application, and we’re still making frequent updates as we let the new design settle in and begin to hook the site together with the new web world that has sprung up since it was last given any real attention. One of the latest changes is the use of the flickraw gem to pull in photos from gigs. We’re using last.fm’s machine tags to identify events, which may not be the best route as we build out the archive but for now provides a nice way to disambiguate events on flickr, with the fringe benefit that the photos show up on last.fm too.

Look out for more updates soon and give the EPs a listen!

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I am not a visual designer. That’s a statement that’s probably obvious to anyone who’s spent much time on one of the sites for which I am solely responsible. Thankfully I have numerous friends and colleagues who are designers and thanks to them there are a number of projects which have come out looking good.

For a long time I’ve been wanting to redesign this site. To give it more presence, to make it a bit friendlier, but mainly to make it neater. I’ve had numerous ideas, but always lacked either the time or the skill to make them a reality. But today, finally, I have at least achieved the third of my aims. It’s all thanks to the CSS framework of the moment, blueprint, and a little free time to work on it.

I’m not really a fan of the various toolkits for grid-based design. I don’t like presentation-focussed class names cluttering my HTML. But they do help in getting a clean design out the door quickly, and so I’ve conceded in this case to use blueprint and hope that the microformats included alongside it redeem the use of class names like ‘column’ and ’span-10′.

If I had still more time I’d like to write a parser that will use those class names as a base and generate stylesheets that apply the same styling to the more appropriate class names the HTML already holds. But I don’t, so for now, things are as they are. Please let me know if you spot any glitches—I’m sure there are some I’ve yet to spot—and hopefully the new design will make this site a little easier to follow.

Next I need to take the blog’s look and apply it across the rest of the site.

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