DefinitiveInk

Welcome to TypePad Micro! For Free!

That's right! TypePad! For free!

TypePad has made a lot of changes over the past year, but the one that's coming next will be the biggest of them all! SixApart is rolling out a whole new, free-of-charge level of TypePad service: TypePad Micro!

One of the coolest things that Micro users who are new to TypePad will discover is Chroma.  Chroma is a theme that was released for Beta members in late October, and it will be included with TypePad Micro. Wondering why you shouldn't just stick to Blogger or the free vesion of WordPress? Well, Chroma is one good reason why:

This is the default Chroma banner screen. Chroma allows for super-simple banner switching, but it does a lot more than that. Note that the recommended size for the banner image is listed, right there in the upload panel. Note also that the image is small (300 x 225). This allows for greater flexibility in selecting an image to use -- it's easier to reduce an image than to enlarge one, and still keep the image's quality -- but to take the convenience just a little bit further, these dimensions exactly match the default dimension of images from my digital camera. This makes life much easier for bloggers who know photography better than they know image editing programs.

But wait! There's more!

When you upload a new banner image for your Chroma theme, three color schemes are automagically selected for you! This takes any and all guesswork out of working with CSS and hexadecimal codes, but, if you're so inclined, you can still tweak the CSS to your heart's desire!

If you've actually looked at this blog, and looked at the image above, then compared the two, you can see that the color scheme I'm using isn't among the options presented for my banner image. CSS, of course, blows color-scheme options wide open, but there's actually a way for the less technically-inclined to get the colors they want:

When you upload a banner image that includes the colors you want in your scheme, click the scheme that you want, then click save. Then upload the image that you actually want to use on your blog, and your previously-chosen scheme, the "existing color scheme", will be presented as an option, along with the three newly-generated schemes.

Easy-peasy, no?

And if Chroma doesn't convince you to give TypePad Micro a try, here are a few more reasons:

1. Reblog. A brand new feature for TypePad. This allows other bloggers to quickly grab your content and re-post it on their blogs, with links back to your original posts.
2. In addition to posting via the dashboard, you can post via e-mail, text messaging, or the Blog It bookmarklet.
3. TypePad is socially-integrated, with optional automatic cross-posting to both Facebook and Twitter, and it's own in-house system that allows members to follow one another via the TypePad d

via www.sharondawoodfin.net

Typepad Micro is here. Which is great because I hate keeping secrets! Rebloging a great post about it.

That's right! TypePad! For free!

TypePad has made a lot of changes over the past year, but the one that's coming next will be the biggest of them all! SixApart is rolling out a whole new, free-of-charge level of TypePad service: TypePad Micro!

One of the coolest things that Micro users who are new to TypePad will discover is Chroma.  Chroma is a theme that was released for Beta members in late October, and it will be included with TypePad Micro. Wondering why you shouldn't just stick to Blogger or the free vesion of WordPress? Well, Chroma is one good reason why:

This is the default Chroma banner screen. Chroma allows for super-simple banner switching, but it does a lot more than that. Note that the recommended size for the banner image is listed, right there in the upload panel. Note also that the image is small (300 x 225). This allows for greater flexibility in selecting an image to use -- it's easier to reduce an image than to enlarge one, and still keep the image's quality -- but to take the convenience just a little bit further, these dimensions exactly match the default dimension of images from my digital camera. This makes life much easier for bloggers who know photography better than they know image editing programs.

But wait! There's more!

When you upload a new banner image for your Chroma theme, three color schemes are automagically selected for you! This takes any and all guesswork out of working with CSS and hexadecimal codes, but, if you're so inclined, you can still tweak the CSS to your heart's desire!

If you've actually looked at this blog, and looked at the image above, then compared the two, you can see that the color scheme I'm using isn't among the options presented for my banner image. CSS, of course, blows color-scheme options wide open, but there's actually a way for the less technically-inclined to get the colors they want:

When you upload a banner image that includes the colors you want in your scheme, click the scheme that you want, then click save. Then upload the image that you actually want to use on your blog, and your previously-chosen scheme, the "existing color scheme", will be presented as an option, along with the three newly-generated schemes.

Easy-peasy, no?

And if Chroma doesn't convince you to give TypePad Micro a try, here are a few more reasons:

1. Reblog. A brand new feature for TypePad. This allows other bloggers to quickly grab your content and re-post it on their blogs, with links back to your original posts.
2. In addition to posting via the dashboard, you can post via e-mail, text messaging, or the Blog It bookmarklet.
3. TypePad is socially-integrated, with optional automatic cross-posting to both Facebook and Twitter, and it's own in-house system that allows members to follow one another via the TypePad d

NiemanLab on McSweeney's San Francisco Panorama

And that’s the most interesting aspect of Panorama. What we all once viewed as a temporary container with a 24-hour expiration date is now being reborn in souvenir form. It makes sense. We seem hardwired to connect memories and physical products. Just look back to November 2008, when the U.S. presidential election gave newspapers a one-day reprieve from the economic apocalypse. Or consider the long history of front-page reprints. Newspapers and collectibles are already entwined. But with Panorama, perhaps we’re seeing the broadsheet format, with its hundreds of pages and multiple inserts and various content forms, re-imagined as a sort of long-form, luxurious physical good. It’s not just a frame-worthy memento. It’s the leather-bound first edition of the newspaper business.

via www.niemanlab.org

Kottke on Megan Fox's toe thumb

If she's so manufactured, shouldn't she do something about that toe thumb of hers? (Sorry Fox fans, once you see the toe thumb, it's impossible to unsee.)

Someone had to ask. Glad it was Kottke so I could reblog it. Just devastating when combined with the headline.

Chris Dixon on Pitching Yourself And The Importance of Building Things

The reality is ideas don’t matter that much.  First of all, in almost all startups, the idea changes – often dramatically – over time. Secondly, ideas are relatively abundant. For every decent idea there are very likely other people who’ve also thought of it, and, surprisingly often, are also actively pitching investors. At an early stage, ideas matter less for their own sake and more insofar as they reflect the creativity and thoughtfulness of the team.

What you should really be focused on when pitching your early stage startup is pitching yourself and your team.  When you do this, remember that a startup is primarily about building something.  Hence the most important aspect of your backgrounds is not the names of the schools you attended or companies you worked at – it’s what you’ve built.  This could mean coding a video game, creating a non-profit organization, designing a website, writing a book, bootstrapping a company – whatever.  The story you should tell is the story of someone who has been building stuff her whole life and now just needs some capital to take it to the next level.

via cdixon.org via www.businessinsider.com

I'm really enjoying his blog lately.

The Greenest - “Nanofarming” with Artist Bryony Romer

I asked her why Nanofarming was an art project rather than a science experiment.  ”Nanofarming is both an art and a science.  What artists bring to the dialogue is a visualization of the impossible.  That’s not what most scientists do.  Maybe physicists.”

via thegreenest.net

Really nice article in a new blog called The Greenest, about my wife Bryony's "nanofarm" installation at The Old Stone House Park in Park Slope. Tonight we will be eating the mustard greens that were growing on one of the lampposts.

Mel Brooks & Carl Reiner Discuss Great Movie Rentals

Q. Sixty years later it seems you see a lot of each other now.
REINER Yeah, we got that big screen [gestures to incredibly large flat-screen monitor] to look at television.
Q. So you come here, Mel, and you watch TV together?
BROOKS Almost every night. He’s got a wonderful housekeeper-cook and we decide on a menu and a movie.
Q. What did you watch most recently?
BROOKS We watched last night “The Peacemaker.” With Nicole Kidman and, come on. [He gestures to Mr. Reiner.]
REINER George Clooney.
BROOKS Right. It was two and a half stars at the most. Good performances, very silly, you know.
REINER We look for movies with the line “Secure the perimeter.”
BROOKS Yeah, we like movies that say, “Secure the perimeter” and/or “You better get some rest.”
REINER “Lock all doors!”
BROOKS “I want a five-block seal!”
Q. What’s the key to 60 years of friendship?
REINER Our wives liked each other.

via www.nytimes.com

I LOVE the 2,000 year old man records and have nice memories of listening to them with my father when I was a kid. This NYT interview with Brooks and Reiner along with its audio clips just made me smile. It is also worth reading because in a more serious vein it touches on the nature of the Jewish experience in the 1950's when a "...a Jewish accent was not always a good thing."

Nietzsche + Family Circus

 

The Nietzsche Family Circus

Randomized Family Circus cartoons and random Nietszche quotes create some nice pairings.

Facebook Alibi

"Wherer (sic) my IHOP"

via www.businessinsider.com

Translated by the ever helpful slang experts at the NYT into "Where's my pancakes" A tee-shirt in the making? An auto-tune?

New York to Buy 7 Acres in Coney I., With Eye on Revival

via www.nytimes.com

Wow what a nice deal for the developer and destroyer of Astroland. He gets to unload land that he can't develop for a great price. Then he gets to reap the benefit of the city improving the land he sold to make hos land more valuable. What a scam and a sham.

One MILLION Strollers!

via daddytypes.com

Twitter fave to TV

via www.hollywoodreporter.com

So blogs get made into books and then maybe evolve into movies ie Julie & Julia but Tweets go straight to TV maybe it is easier to convert 140 characters into sitcoms.

nice flowchart

via www.jish.nu

via Rebecca's Pocket

Fucked in Park Slope Loves Me (for now)

via www.fuckedinparkslope.com

The Coop tees got a tremendously nice compliment from the genius snarkmeisters of Fucked In the Slope. I love their blog though I am a stroller pushing coopretard and for now (probably until they read this) they are my new blog bffs too. I think the Suspended at The COOP line could break out. I've added some kids sizes and a tote bag.

proof - a photo of me actually working

via hello.typepad.com

A rare sighting of me at work captured live by an iPhone.

Got Kombucha? Tee

New Shirt up on Definitive Tee's. Also slightly Park Slope Food Coop oriented but really who doesn't love Kombucha? Available in brightly colored small sizes and onesies too. Profits (if any?) will go to hunger relief and not my growing habit for the sweet-tart tea.

A Cool Shoe?

via www.uncrate.com

A converse Chukka boot mash-up. Thoughts?

Texas Tribune launch looks well thought out

via www.niemanlab.org

Nieman has a really nice post up about the new Texas Tribune site. They tour the features which look like a great combination of news you need now and informational utitliy areas.

Hello Kitty Skeleton Drawing

via www.etsy.com

When Willa is (much) older I hope she is the kind of kid who appreciates this without being too goth. I used to (and fact still do) love books that had plastic overlays that peel back to display the foundations of things. via Kottke

Perhaps Newspapers Are Dying Because Our Sense Of Place Is Too.

We no longer imagine the newspaper as a city or the city as a newspaper. Whatever I may say in the rant that follows, I do not believe the decline of newspapers has been the result solely of computer technology or of the Internet. The forces working against newspapers are probably as varied and foregone as the Model-T Ford and the birth-control pill. We like to say that the invention of the internal-combustion engine changed us, changed the way we live. In truth, we built the Model-T Ford because we had changed; we wanted to remake the world to accommodate our restlessness. We might now say: Newspapers will be lost because technology will force us to acquire information in new ways. In that case, who will tell us what it means to live as citizens of Seattle or Denver or Ann Arbor? The truth is we no longer want to live in Seattle or Denver or Ann Arbor. Our inclination has led us to invent a digital cosmopolitanism that begins and ends with “I.” Careening down Geary Boulevard on the 38 bus, I can talk to my my dear Auntie in Delhi or I can view snapshots of my cousin’s wedding in Recife or I can listen to girl punk from Glasgow. The cost of my cyber-urban experience is disconnection from body, from presence, from city.

via www.harpers.org

From - Final edition: Twilight of the American newspaper—By Richard Rodriguez (Harper's Magazine) which reads like a Walter Benamin-like meditation on place and printed news. Unfortunately for linking purposes Harper's is behind a subscriber wall.

For Gillian Welch Fans Orphan Girl 10 Ways via Cover Lay Down

via coverlaydown.com

I really love this blog.