B-links, May 27

(Same-language) subtitles and the future of reading: Spinning that into an E-book angle is a bit of a stretch, I think. And where are the results of the WGBH accessibility project?

Hell freezes over and I quote the Pied Piper of Ajax, Jason Fried, who apparently ignores my research:

Another thing I find interesting is that when big groups really want to get things done, they don’t make the group bigger, they make the group smaller. For example, when Lockheed wanted to design the Stealth [bomber], they didn’t scale up the team, they scaled the team down. When Congress really needs to consider something important, they form committees. When the military needs to conduct an operation with absolute precision, they usually call on the best small team they have.

Hence the WCAG Samurai. But I digress

The Elements of Style Manuals, Part One: Isn’t the problem that most Web sites do not have “design” directors who are able to articulate design standards in the first place? (I’m in favour of style manuals, by the way. I do, however, find it a bit of an albatross that they are always called “style” manuals, as if they documented fripperies or decoration. They are, in fact, design manuals)

Further evidence that South by Southwest has jumped the shark: They’re staggering the release podcasts of the 2006 conference throughout the year. Why the fuck should we wait? This isn’t going to do anything to entice doubters to attend the conference

Movie about Adrian Frutiger, who is a type designer, should you be unaware

Service design principles of TiVo: Note that accessibility simply isn’t in there. TiVos are, in this way, no better than off-brand digital video recorders

CBC.ca editorial director Jonathan Dubé prepares to overhaul the mother ship’s Web site for its tenth anniversary, apparently using tables for layout

Sign language in the Icelandic Parliament: “Sigurlín Margrét Sigurðardóttir, substitute MP for the Liberal Party, is going to be the first deaf MP in Iceland.” Paging Gary Malkowski. (She runs a Weblog, too)

“Putting the Story on the Screen: How do you meet the challenge of designing a PDF page for comfortable reading of a long piece of fiction onscreen?”

Canadian Census controversy continues: Certainly not platform-neutral or standards-compliant, but also not so accessible?

DHTML Accessibility for Web Applications: Another IBM sell job about its nonstandard Ajax/tabindex implementation

Les Tours Aillaud, Paris apartment blocks in camouflage motif (via DPM)

Flickr: Newspaper typography. I believe there are books and articles Malarkey can consult (also the Society for News Design).

Undermotivated young woman in Canadian captioning

“My friend Trese Hopper works in the closed-captioning department” at CITY-TV

On peut tous rêver: Manau came out with an album in 2005?

Limitations of rel="tag" microformat

Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese

Flickr: Toronto Urban Decay; Toronto Urban Exploration; Signs; Half-Lost Signs; Toronto Transit; Got Rice? Rice Police; Toronto's Little Cities

(Common fonts to all versions of Windows) & (Mac equivalents) (now, there’s a deep structural ambiguity I had to fix)

Why doesn’t Google validate?

CSUN 2006 conference proceedings: For some reason, unlike in preceding years, full articles are not yet available (or not commonly so). What gives?