Andrew Wirtanen is a usability specialist in Cary, NC More »

Bill Gates on innovating to zero CO2 emissions

TED 2010 was held on February 9th-13th this year. To attend TED, you have to fill out an application and be invited for the privilege to pay and $6000 to spare (a tax-deductible donation, but a heavy one). Luckily for us normal people, all of the talks from the conference are posted online.
For the [...]

Video: The Decade in Seven Minutes

Transitioning online from printed journalism isn’t easy. Most companies saw this coming 30 years ago, so recent newspaper circulation trends weren’t exactly a surprise. Some companies have figured out how to survive in the age of digital journalism. One that I really enjoy is Time Video (see my previous post on Ze Frank’s video series [...]

Ze Frank on Labor Day and Socialism

Ze Frank is probably my favorite Internet celebrity, and you should check out his weekly show “That Makes Me Think Of” on Time Magazine’s website. The show is kind of like a modern Andy Rooney, but Frank’s segues make a lot more sense. In his latest episode, he ties together Labor Day, socialism and the [...]

Redesigning an ineffective healthcare flowchart

Republican John Boehner recently presented a very ugly chart that outlined the Democrats’ health plan. From a graphic design standpoint, it is a disaster. Intentional or not, the chart clearly evokes negative feelings into the reader who most likely will be overwhelmed by words in ALL-CAPS, different and competing colors, shapes, and sizes.
Over on Flickr, [...]

Illustrating reCAPTCHA Phrases

The reCAPTCHA Project takes words from books that computers can’t read (via OCR) but humans (hopefully) can. For more info, see my overview of reCAPTCHA back in 2007. Well, this weekend, the folks at Something Awful and Buzzfeed are having some fun with the random phrases that are generated… here’s my contribution to the party:

Original [...]