This is an amazing article from thenextweb.com! A must read for any designer. Apps embedded in paper are making print interactive!

A list apart’s website has a great article on this new problem with pixels and pixel based screen designs. As if designers didn’t have enough to worry about trying to cater to 500+ screen resolutions and devices, we now have a number of different types of pixels to measure by. Hardware pixel or reference pixel? To find out what the difference is and how to use media queris to fix this – read the full article here: www.alistapart.com/articles/a-pixel-identity-crisis/.
This made me want to scream & pull my hair out – and you may have the same reaction. But keep in mind we live in exciting times with design and technology. We are creating the future of how people will interact. These are obstacles we need to overcome and standards that need to be built for us to move forward

Well it’s a new day… And a new year! Perhaps the last year according to the Mayans(?!!)…

I love the year end lists of the “best of” this and that collections that pop up at the end of the year. Here are a few favorites that I’ve come across over the last few weeks that I thought I’d share with you.

Best visualizations

From visual.ly blog here’s an article on some of the best visualizations of 2011. I really have fallen in love with infographics, but I really like this list because it also includes some interactive information (http://cnn-ecosphere.com/ was my favorite for sure – zoom in and check out the tweets around the world!) as well as some great videos that are packed with interesting and useful information. I hope you enjoy these as much as I did! Another wonderful couple resources for infographics are Good magazine’s infographic page here: http://www.good.is/infographics and http://visualjournalism.com/

http://blog.visual.ly/20-great-visualizations-of-2011/

Best typefaces

Coming from venturebeat.com – here is a decent short list of  the best web and mobile typefaces of 2011:

http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/22/best-2011-fonts/

Best cheat sheets

The best wordpress cheat sheets that I’ve found this year are from wptuts+ (love all the tuts+ sites!)

http://wp.tutsplus.com/category/articles/cheat-sheets/

Best movies???

The best movie list of the year – errrrrrr… I have yet to find one that I totally agree with.

Rolling stone has a decent list here: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/lists/10-best-movies-of-2011-20111207 but there are for sure a few in their list that I would swap out. They don’t really have foreign films or any documentaries listed. I could probably make a list of 10 top documentaries because I watch so many… One of my favorites from this year was Waiting for Superman. If you are a student, or work in any part of education – or if you have children or are the least bit interested in education as a whole it’s a must-see.  The hangover 2 and Sherlock Holmes were quite good, and Drive – although it was nicely done was a bit too slow for me – artistic and beautiful yes but also slow. The Tree of life was again beautiful but I like it more as a visual background than a story.

Best music!? Ahhhh that’s always a list too long and complex…

Read this article from netmagazine.com to get 10 great steps to living a long lasting design career.
# 10 is one of my favorite tips here – “be forever curious”, and a great conclusion as well. Remember to live life. I think it’s very important to get out and get inspired in this industry. Travel, meet interesting people, see and do interesting things and do whatever you need to do to be and stay inspired…

A great article here from Ultranoir on the basics of how Google Panda will be changing the searchability of web sites and why.
How you can use a few basic rules to make sure your site still gets a high search ranking… Read the full article on their site www.ultranoir.com.

THE PRINCIPLES BEHIND PANDA

Nearly 12% of searches will be affected by the introduction of this new algorithm, but what will be the impact? Quite simply some sites will be taken off the list of results, which will lower their ranking. This will also lead to more pertinent sites appearing on the same results lists