Today in Design - Top Articles RoundUp 13 April 2015

The day’s best and most impor­tant design- and design business-focused arti­cles, tuto­ri­als, and resources hand-picked by Pariah Burke.

  • How an in-store Apple Watch demo will make you a believer

    It’s an amaz­ing piece of engi­neer­ing. Made of seg­ment­ed leather, the strap is amaz­ing­ly flex­i­ble and artic­u­late — I laughed out loud when it mag­i­cal­ly closed around my wrist.


    Inside each leather seg­ment is a tiny mag­net that holds the clasp closed. It’s a great piece of tech­no­log­i­cal magic.

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  • Should Clean Reader Be Allowed to Censor eBooks?
    Clean Reader, which automag­i­cal­ly cen­sors eBooks, has kicked up a firestorm of ide­o­log­i­cal debate, and nei­ther side is back­ing down. So, who’s right? And what’s at stake?

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  • LinkedIn CEO Says Lynda​.com Deal ‘Last Piece of Puzzle’ – Bloomberg Business
    Jeff Weiner, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of LinkedIn Corp., talks about the $1.5 bil­lion pur­chase of online-education com­pa­ny Lynda​.com. He speaks from Carpinteria, California, with Bloomberg Television’s Cory Johnson. (Source: Bloomberg)Tags: Lynda​.com L…
  • First ver­sion of SpecimenDropper for InDesign – cre­ate font specimens
    With SpecimenDropper for Mac* you can auto­mat­i­cal­ly cre­ate mul­ti­ple type­face spec­i­mens: Drop one or more fonts onto the app. It builds a specimen-file for every font and opens it for you in InDesign.Tags: InDesign Typography
  • A Social Network Designed to Combat Depression
    Robert Morris is tak­ing the oppo­site approach. Starting with the desired effect of help­ing peo­ple deal with depres­sion, he devel­oped Panoply, a crowd­sourced web­site for improv­ing men­tal health. The site, which was the focus of his doc­tor­al the­sis at MIT Media Lab, trained users to reframe and reassess neg­a­tive thoughts, embed­ding an estab­lished tech­nique called cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py in an engag­ing, unthreat­en­ing inter­face. After a study con­firmed the site’s effec­tive­ness, Morris formed a com­pa­ny and is now work­ing on turn­ing the idea into a pol­ished con­sumer app.

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  • Sign Electronic Documents with Your Own Handwritten Signature
    Digital sig­na­tures are a legal­ly bind­ing way to affirm your agree­ment to PDF doc­u­ments. They can include your name, your orga­ni­za­tion infor­ma­tion, your e‑mail address, and the date and rea­son you signed the doc­u­ment. Typically, though, dig­i­tal signatu…
  • Google Purges Hundreds of Maliscious Extensions from Chrome
    Tens of mil­lions of users who vis­it Google sites use a brows­er loaded with mali­cious add-ons, research suggests.Tags: Google Chrome spy­ware malware
  • The Shut-In Economy — Medium
    In the new world of on-demand every­thing, you’re either pam­pered, iso­lat­ed roy­al­ty — or you’re a 21st cen­tu­ry servant.

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  • Working with Adobe Slate – a mini guide for teachers
    So how might a teacher like me use Slate to tell my story?Tags: k12 edu elearning
  • How to Hire Freelancers Who Make Your Content Better
    Finding free­lancers isn’t dif­fi­cult; but hir­ing good free­lancers can be. Read these tips to hir­ing qual­i­ty con­trac­tors – Content Marketing Institute.

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  • Inside Manhattan’s Adorable New Pencil Shop
    “My love for pen­cils stems from many things. I was def­i­nite­ly influ­enced by my moth­er’s obses­sion with nice pen­cils but most­ly I just grew to appre­ci­ate them on my own. In school it’s cool to use a mechan­i­cal pen­cil, but most of them are cheap, the lead breaks and they’re gen­er­al­ly just tru­ly awful. I made it a point to always have an arse­nal of fresh­ly sharp­ened pen­cils with me from a young age and grew to appre­ci­ate the feel­ing of writ­ing with some­thing so tac­tile. The smell of the wood, and the sen­sa­tion of sharpening—nothing beats it, really.”

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