The Insider News

Smashing Magazine[^]:

What do games have that we miss in UX and Web design? Games have stunning graphics, missions, high scores, etc.. But adding any of those to our designs does not necessarily provide a better user experience — in many cases they’re frippery. What we are really looking for is what those elements bring to the games.

Code rant[^]:

When all you know is SQL Server, it’s tempting to try and solve every problem with a relational database, but often it’s not the best tool for the job. Today I want to introduce you to an excellent example of this, the ‘Database As Queue’ anti-pattern. It’s a common specimen that you’ll find in the wild in many enterprise development shops.

Pixelstech.net[^]:

A hacker can put a lot of code together in a hurry but if a change is needed the code has to be completely rewritten. A programmer may take a little longer but if changes are needed they are more quickly and easily installed without the need for a complete rewrite. But is that the only way to express the difference? Or is there a real difference at all?

Armed and Dangerous[^]:

Hacking on the C code of giflib after an absence of nearly two decades has been an interesting experience, a little like doing an archeological dig. And not one that could readily be had elsewhere; nowhere other than under Unix is code that old still genuinely useful under any but carefully sandboxed conditions.

Windows Store for developers[^]:

When it comes to building a Metro style app for business users, the first thing you should consider—whether you are a developer or an IT admin—is how you'll deploy the app. The information you find here should be helpful to you, whether you're a developer writing an app targeting business users, or an IT admin responsible for deploying the app throughout your company.

iFixit[^]:

The iPad’s light, sleek, simple construction belies its complex origins. There’s a lot of stuff in the iPad: aluminum and glass, of course, but also other heavy metals and toxic chemicals. And manufacturing each 1.44-pound iPad results in over 285 times its own weight in greenhouse gas emissions. The manufacturing of and material used in the iPad are two reasons why the iPad must be made in China—and not just in the ways you’d expect.

Popular Mechanics[^]:

Your phone's or computers' battery drains over the course of a day, but its effectiveness also wears down over the course of weeks, months, and years. We explain why, and the best way to do long-term battery storage.

The Setup[^]:

Best known for authoring one of the very first web browsers, Lynx, and being a founding engineer at Netscape. I helped create many of the foundational technologies for the web: HTTP, HTML, SSL, Cookies, Proxies and others. Here's the software and hardware Lou uses to get stuff done.