Before we dive in though, I’d like to welcome our newest publisher, Keir Whitaker!

Birds, Ducks and Robots

What an excellent article on Carpeaqua:

Where does that leave us? For many of you, you’re doing great. You have found a client for your device that works exactly how you want it to. Others like myself, however, will keep searching and hoping that someday someone will come forward and build that mythical perfect client.

The year in design, 2011

I always find it interesting when publishers and websites do a round-up post to highlight the great content they published in the past year – this post is no exception.

Pseudonyms

Interesting thoughts (and excellent article too):

Anonymity online produces interactions that are free from the interpersonal protocols that regulate society, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.

Handling CSS Transitions with prepareTransition

Jonathan Snook released an awesome jQuery plugin to help with CSS transitions called ‘prepareTransition’. Definitely check it out.

Fine Goods Market

After about a year of hard work, Rogie King launched Fine Goods Market. Not only is it a gorgeous website design, the goods for sale there are awesome! Make sure you grab yourself a T or an icon set.

That Pesky Mute Button

Always make sure your alarms and timers are turned off before your enter a courtroom. Always.

[…] in court electronic noises are frowned upon. Some judges are legendary for their disdain for things that go beep and buzz. There is one judge that has a sign prominently displayed in his courtroom explaining that any electronic noise results in a $500 fine, payable immediately.

Interview with Andy McMillan

Method & Craft published a great interview with Andy McMillan:

The web has always been about telling stories. I was only able to successfully teach myself HTML and CSS because of the vast amount of resources shared freely online. Web design is a fast-moving and complex beast, and the reason we’ve all been able to keep up is because we create, collaborate, and share unlike any other design discipline.

So true.

iOS search fields as buttons

Gotta love it when you come across something like this—buttons that look like search fields and obvious inconsistencies in the user experience. This post is a must read by Neven Mrgan. Point is, if a search field looks like a search field, it should also behave like one.

IE10 supports OpenType features via CSS

IE10 will support OpenType font features. Tim Brown, Type Manager at Typekit, points us to some very interesting demos.

Internet Explorer 10 has joined Firefox 4+ in supporting OpenType font features via CSS vendor prefixes. To explain how these features work, Microsoft commissioned demo pages from Font Bureau, Monotype, and FontFont.

A Design Primer for Engineers

Very interesting and in depth article on Rands in Repose (as usual). Read, bookmark, share with colleagues and then read it again.

Stop Looking for a Co-founder

Excellent article. Finding the right people to partner with can be a very tedious task. Finding a co-founder is equally difficult. Instead why not consider finding freelancers to work with at your startup? It may prove to be a very cost-effective and reliable option.

It’s Just Stuff

Things are just things. People now define themselves by the things they own. You can easily go and a judge a book by its cover, but you gain a lot more if you actually go ahead and read it. Same with people.

Small images, big layouts

Making big images smaller is definitely easier than the other way around.

I’m sure we’ve all mailed a client asking for bigger photos than the 400*300, grainy photos they have only to be told that’s all that is available.

Countless time!

Vertical Media Queries & Wide Sites

I’ve used vertical media queries on a couple of projects over the past months and it is indeed a very nice technique. It may be something to consider when dealing with advertising where ‘the fold’ is a greater concern.

Animals Get Haircuts for Braun

New Publishers

Over the Holidays we added many new publishers. I’m sure you already know most of them. It’s a real pleasure to welcome 512 Pixels, Carpeaqua, Compass, MacSparky, Nice Web Type, Sacha Greif and Fraser Speirs.

Dust

This post by Greg on Airbag Industries was a very pleasant surprise. After a blogging hiatus that lasted over a year, Airbag is back – and it’s awesome.

Announcing Insites: The Book

Print isn’t dead:

Insites: The Book will be truly special. In terms of production values, think 8 Faces on acid.

Ketchup Bottles & The Physicality Of Design

Mike Rundle wrote this excellent article on Flyosity. I tend to agree, it’s all in the little subtleties.

The pixel-perfect emulation of physical surfaces and lighting in a digital interface is the secret weapon of interface designers.

Backups, Networks and a Digital Home

Loosing data because of hardware failure is a pain and it can get costly if the data lost is your client’s data. It’s even worse when you loose data you can never get back like photographs and videos for example. Mark Boulton details his Digital Home and Backups setup. Worth a read.

Comments Still Off

A blog without comments? Yes, that’s right. Matt Gemmell turned off comments on his blog a little over a month ago and it looks like it was a good decision. Hey, we don’t have comments enabled on the Fusion blog either, and life’s good :)

Give Me Something To Read

Living inside a comfort zone is dangerous, and turns you into an uninteresting human being fed by other people’s opinions. Broaden the topics of things you read and learn how to have your own opinion.

Amen to that.

Announcing Front End Upload, a New WordPress Plugin

Jonathan just released a new WordPress plugin called Front End Upload—a must have for all WordPress developers.

Downloaded.

Embrace distractions

Distractions are a part of the game. Great article by James Young:

Typically I work very quickly in stints. Like most designers and developers I’m sure I’m not alone in getting some music on and losing track of time if there’s work to be done but while I like being “in the zone” as much as the next person, I’m also open to distractions.

The Decay Of City Life Tree Trunk Installation

Before we dive in I’d like you to join me and welcome our brand new Fusion publishers, James Young (@welcomebrand) and Mark Otto (@mdo)!

2012 Fusion Lineup

If you’ve been thinking of advertising on Fusion Ads, wait no longer! We’ve already started working on next year’s lineup, so make sure to drop us an email to discuss booking 2012 placements.

8 Faces #4

Lovers of fine typography rejoice! Elliot recently released #4 of the very popular 8 Faces magazine. Looks like there might still be copies left, grab one while they’re hot!

The Wall

Great thought-provoking article by Frank Chimero:

What’s on the wall is all there is. When we publish, we open a line of engagement where criticism is an option, so we must learn to not only receive the feedback of others, but learn to give it in a civil, articulate, and helpful way.

CSS commenting strategy

In this post, Mark Otto shares his own CSS commenting strategy—definitely worth reading (and remembering) for all developers out there:

After running into problems of our own with mysterious or vague code, I figure I’ll share my general set of quick and flexible guidelines for commenting in CSS.

Cinemascapes – Google Street View Edition

Beautiful images, ’nuff said.

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your wallets!

I’ll be reaching for my wallet for sure when Jon Hicks’s Icon Handbook comes out. The Icon Handbook will be available to pre-order on December 20th, 2011. Don’t miss this.

The twelve days of design: 2011 holiday gift guide

The folks at idsgn.org got twelve superb design gifts for the holidays.

Tools & Toys Christmas Catalog

Since we’re talking about Christmas gifts, don’t forget to have a look at the selection found on Shawn Blanc’s Tools & Toys!

Design Compromise

Great article from one of our most recent publishers, Mark Boulton:

My experience in design is that there’s a lot of grey. Nothing is ever cut and dry. People are complicated. Perception and behaviour is difficult to account for

Dear TextMate

Macromates just released an Alpha version of TextMate 2.0 (which I very much like so far) and Matt Gemmell wrote them an open letter. An absolute must-read.

iOS grippers

It’s no secret that a lot of our publishers have a thing for Apple, Mac and iOS devices. Neven wrote an interesting post about the ‘grippers’ you can find in iOS 5. I have to say I much prefer Neven’s version.

Responsive Web Design in Sass Part 2: Media Queries in Sass

Here’s an excellent tutorial on The Sass Way about responsive web-design and Media Queries in Sass—worth a bookmark for sure.

Backpacks and Messenger Bags

I’m pretty sure I own at least 10 bags myself, mostly messenger bags. It’s great to know I’m not alone in that situation. Ben Brooks wrote a great (and lengthy) post about messenger bags and backpacks.

Expo 67 Montreal Post Cards

Fusion’s parent company, BuySellAds, is based in Boston, MA. I’m a couple hours away in Montreal, Canada. And it was nice to see my hometown on Wanken with these beautiful postcards from Expo67.

Happy Holidays – All The Best In 2012

To conclude, I’d like to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas and a happy Holiday season. All the best in 2012. A very special thanks to our publishers, advertisers and supporter for making Fusion such an incredible network!

Oh and did you know Twitter redesigned? :)

Let’s get to it!

New Publishers

Since BuySellAds acquired Fusion, we’ve been looking to add even more awesome publishers to the already amazing line-up. I’d like you to join me in welcoming Deallocated Objects (by Jake Marsh) as well as Mark Boulton—I don’t think these guys need any introduction :)

Viewport Industries

Elliot Jay Stocks and Keir Whitaker will be working together. They went and formed Viewport Industries—I can’t wait to see what they have cooking.

View.js

Rogie King launched a new jQuery plugin called View.js – it’s slick and it’s worth every penny.

Maxvoltar Redesign

Not so long ago, Tim Van Damme redesigned his blog. It’s simple, elegant and absolutely gorgeous (oh and it’s responsive, too).

Shit-ass Websites

Load time is a very important thing to keep in mind when designing and developing for the web—The Loop loads quite fast and that is great, we’re happy about that (and I’m sure you are too).

Copycats

Matt Gemmell wrote an excellent article on copycats:

As with any industry you care to look at, the technology industry is awash with copycats. A copycat, of course, is someone or something that deliberately mimics a successful person or product, hoping to obtain some portion of that success.

A must read.

This Post Won’t Take Long To Read

Many websites try to answer questions we don’t actually have—Mark Boulton wrote a great post about this:

What a presumptuous statement. How do you know how long it will take me? Do you know my first language isn’t English? Do you know that have learning difficulties? Do you know I’m sitting in a public place and will likely be interrupted frequently?

Food for thought.

jQuery & Responsive Web Design

Responsive web-design is all the rage these days (and with good reason). Make sure you check out this presentation by Dave Rupert on Note & Point called jQuery & Responsive Web Design

The 2011 Designer’s Wishlist

Shelby White has a great list of things to get to your designer/creative friends this Christmas.

I sure wouldn’t mind that Leica M9 Camera.

Fusion Pubs,

We’re excited to announce that BuySellAds has acquired FusionAds from Chris and Michael. By now, you probably already knew this. However, I’d like to take a few lines here to explain why we did this and what our plans are for Fusion. We’re also hosting a live chat on LiveStream right now if you’d like to meet us and will be on here for about another hour until 5pm EST to help answer any questions: http://livestream.com/fusionads

#1 We did this because we love one-ad-per-page networks. We run a couple ourselves, AdPacks (http://adpacks.com) and Yoggrt (http://yoggrt.com).

#2 The name of our company, BuySellAds, probably makes us sound larger, generic, and more bureaucratic than we really are. The truth is that we got our start in the web design/development community and that is our largest vertical at BuySellAds. Sure, many of the sites within this inventory on our site have a completely different approach than a network like Fusion, but that’s why we plan to keep Fusion as-is and not change than great thing you guys have going. I still do all of our front-end design and html/css/js work, and I’m more of a front-end UI person that a business person.

#3 We bought Fusion because we admire the network, it members, and we believe that putting BSA behind a network like Fusion will not only ensure it’s continued success, but also bring with it a team of people very similar to Chris and Michael who thoroughly enjoy working with publishers just like you.

There’s a good chance that you won’t really notice much change. You’ll get paid the same day Chris used to pay you, from the same PayPal (or wire) account, and you’ll notice the same constant flow of highly relevant advertisers on your websites. You’ll have 3 people with whom you can voice any concerns, ask questions, and work with in myself, Jon, and Matthew. We’re not changing the name of Fusion, we’re not folding the website into BuySellAds, we’re not going to do anything like this that would risk the great brand, reputation, and consistency that Chris and Michael have created with Fusion.

Your primary contact for Fusion will be Matthew Kammerer and he can be reached at matthew@fusionads.net. Matthew will also have the support of Jon Phillips (jon@fusionads.net) and myself (todd@buysellads.com). If you’re not sure who to email, we’ll also be checking the hello@fusionads.net email the same as we check our personal emails.

In addition, you can call me anytime on my cell phone with any questions whatsoever: 207-229-8348.

Thanks for your time, and we look forward to getting to know you all better and continuing to make Fusion the great network that it already is.

Cheers,
Todd

As of today, Fusion Ads is now under the ownership of BuySellAds. This is a very bittersweet moment … it’s not every day that you are able to come up with an idea, launch it, and have it be a success. Building a brand from scratch is not something you hand over lightly.

But, without sounding too cliche, every good story has an ending. Both Michael and I are ready for a new page in our lives and careers. We had no specific plans in this vein, but when Todd Garland came expressing interest in adding Fusion to BuySellAds, we were both surprised and intrigued.

Fusion has always been three sided. We tried always to make a pleasurable experience for readers via attractive and relevant ads. We enable publishers to earn some income for their great work. And we bring the great products and services of discerning advertisers in front of the right eyeballs. BuySellAds works a little differently, so I was a little unsure of the idea at first.

But Todd and his team quickly showed that they value the same things we do. Above all, the community. They plan to run Fusion as it is and I’m confident that the vision will carry on.

As for me, the future is a little uncertain. But the past is not. It’s been the people that have made working for Fusion so amazing. I am so incredibly thankful to have been blessed with the opportunity to get to know the amazing folks who make up Fusion. The talented publishers, the loyal customers and the readers.

Thank you!

Method & Craft

There were two great interviews from the folks at Method & Craft last week. One was with the talented Shyama Golden and the other with Greg Lutze. Both were great.

Sorting a Mass

Frank Chimero had some interesting thoughts on curation to share. A very provoking read, especially if you care about this subject and the work many folks perform thanks to the Internet.

Intake, Creative Output and Intake Fields

Yours truly wrote a meandering piece on ingestion of content, protecting your time in order to create, and create habits.

Google+

The big news this past week was all Google (apologies to the TouchPad). Google released a new product that — a little surprisingly — looks to be very nicely designed. Not only that, but they began rolling out some updates to the interfaces of most of their products. These changes are also very positive and well designed.

Ben Brooks is one person who will not be using Google+, as he states in Google+ (-Me). Elliot Jay Stocks did sign up to check it out, then shared his early impressions.

Shawn Blanc

Shawn Blanc was focused on the new TouchPad from HP this week, and he penned a nice, short piece that touches on why the iPad has been successful in Likability.

On a completely other note, he also shared a great little applescript that may be of interest to OmniFocus users.

I’ve Written a Book

Congratulations to Lukas Mathis, who has finished writing his first book, which is now available for purchase. He shares a little of how the book came about and what it entails.

How to Childproof Your iPhone

Dave Caolo shared some tips on how to let your kids use your iPhone without worrying about losing sensitive information or having them purchase unwanted apps or in-app items.

The Setup

Mr. Bogan featured a couple more folks this week. First up was Pablo Barquín, co-founder of Physalia. He also had a look at the setup of Jessamyn West, the community manager at MetaFilter.

Note & Point

There were some killer slide decks on Note & Point this week.

Design for Software by Erik Klimczak.

A Dialect of Our Own Design by Simon Collison.

The Power of Social Influence by Harp Advertising and Interactive.

WANKEN

Lake Forest Park House

Australian Pretty Beach House

Thirteen Thousand

We’ve long had the privilege of offering our clients the option to have us create the ad graphic for them for a campaign. Pat Dryburgh has been the man behind the scenes, crafting witty, attractive ads that communicate the brand being promoted. Pat wrote about his goal’s when creating each graphic and the constraints in place when creating such a small piece of work.

A great read — thanks Pat.

Matt Gemmell’s Resources

This past week saw Matt Gemmell publish a couple of great posts that are chock full of good information. These are the kind of posts you save in Yojimbo, tag carefully, and return to often. His first was a piece on manually migrating to a new Mac. If you ever have the urge to start fresh when you purchase a new machine, this post is a fantastic resource for doing a thorough job of it.

He quickly published a second piece on using a SSD in combination with a larger HDD in OS X, which is a very relevant topic for this day and age.

Free HTML/CSS for Type & Palette Proposals

Elliot Jay Stocks shared some code this week and wrote about it. It’s a small bit of HTML and CSS for testing out various typefaces and color palettes.

I love it, and I’ll be making use of it too.

Shawn Blanc

Mr. Blanc posted a really good read this week titled A Tale of Two Inboxes: RSS and Twitter. He argues against the concept that “RSS is dead”, stating that Twitter has changed how we get our news, but it hasn’t gotten rid of the usefulness of RSS. It was a good read for anyone who puts some thought into where they get their news.

He posted another good piece on the Mac App Store and the convenience it offers us. But he argues that it’s the price of the software that really gets us nerds to use the MAS.

The Storm and The Line

Frank Chimero graced our feed reader’s with another fantastic post this week. In it, he shares how he was personally affected by the earthquake/tsunami in Japan this year, as well as the more recent tornado in Joplin, Missouri. But this description does not do he post justice; it’s better if you just read it yourself.

The Brooks Spot

It was another busy week for Ben Brooks. He started off with a guide for giving advice when family or friends ask about buying computers. He later had a nice review of Agenda, a new calendar app for iOS. Lastly, he shared some thoughts on the ‘mobile’ web and how businesses can and should present their sites or services on devices like the iPhone.

Wren for Twitter is Nearly Perfect

Over on 52 Tiger, Dave Caolo shared his thoughts on a new Twitter client for OS X, named Wren. I agree with Dave’s thoughts and Wren has become my new client of choice for when using a Mac.

Five Details

It’s always a pleasure to see how a master craftsmen handles his work. That’s what we got to a little bit of when Jon Hicks shared some of his recent work for Five Details. He shares some insider information on the creation of the logo for Seamless as well as the site design.

The Setup

I love how there has been a recent trend on The Setup of featuring folks who don’t sit in front of a computer all day. The week past featured a cool look at James Freeman, the founder of Blue Bottle Coffee. This is a must read for coffee lovers. There was also a feature on Shawn Thorson, a costume designer who mentions a computer in passing, but focuses on the tools of his trade.

We Are the Makers of Things

Note & Point featured a nice slide deck from Hannah Donovan, titled “Designing Without the Browser: We Are the Makers of Things”.

Simple Desktops

Home

Option + Shift

Vienna Way Residence

Post Artifact Books & Publishing

Craig Mod has written some absolutely fantastic essays this year. Last week he shared his thoughts on content, or, as he puts it, “Digital’s affect on how we produce, distribute, and consume content”.

Shawn Blanc

This week, Shawn wrote and linked a lot more as he got back into routine after WWDC. On that note, he gave some good insight into his experience of physically attending WWDC, without actually participating in the conference. Sounded like a good time.

He also gave a nice review of several online backup services.

Ben Brooks

Ben Brooks also had a lot to say this week, which is no different from any other week. He had a good analysis of what it means for Apple to get rid of the iWeb + MobileMe combination. He seems to think that this will leave a gap for the non-technical folks who want to share. I’m not sure I agree, with tools like Dropbox, Facebook and Blogger giving the non-nerds easy tools to share info. In fact, I personally don’t know of anyone who used iWeb at all.

Ben also shared his experiences with Comcast and wrote about the cable internet racket and his ongoing fascination with iOS app icons.

Method & Craft

Phil Coffman’s project had some good content last week. First there was an interview with John Passafiume, who specializes in hand-lettering. Later on, there was a nice tip from Erica Schoonmaker on some of the options available for working with Photoshop’s layers panel.

Keep Calm and Read On

Or, Keep Calm and Carry On … we’re probably all familiar with this mantra from the WWII era. But the good folks at idsgn posted an interesting look at the slogan’s history and all the modern adaptions of it.

Commodotize Your Complements

Neven Mrgan gave a great argument on app pricing, referencing iA Writer in the process.

nvALT Is My Database for Everything

Dave Caolo posted some details on how he uses nvALT (a spin off of Notational Velocity) and Simplenote. Good tips for the nerds out there.

Dave also pointed out at what a good impression iOS5 will give new consumers. It looks like quite an improvement over the current setup for iOS devices and has the usual fantastic unboxing experience you get with all Apple products.

iOS5

Speaking of iOS5, Lukas Mathis also shared some of the highlights from the newest version of Apple’s mobile OS. It’s a more in-depth look at the changes.

The Setup

Lastly, the Setup had a couple of good features this week. First up was Jon Tan, then Nate Bolt.

Webpop at the Future of Web Design Conference

Simple Desktops

Periodoc

Apple

WANKEN

Spiekermann Residence

Habitable Polyhedron

On WWDC

On location, although not in official attendance, Shawn Blanc got to spend a lot of time with indie devs and other Apple fanboys. He wrote a short, initial post with his thoughts on this year’s WWDC keynote.

Ben Brooks did the same, the followed it up with another piece. And so did Patrick Rhone on Minimal Mac. Twice.

The Setup

Daniel Bogan’s blog had a few interesting spotlights this week. First up was Jon Hicks from across the water. Second, there was a look at the setup of Katie O’Shea — this one was original in that Katie is a barista (at Intelligentsia no less) and a cycling enthusiast and her setup consisted of equipment for both, but there was nary a mention of a computer to be found.

Refreshing.

Ten More Things

Frank Chimero was having some issue getting writing one day this week. He attempted to kickstart things by writing down all the things that were going through his head instead. Then he shared them with the rest of us.

Javascript Questions

Lastly, Nathan Smith had answered some questions on Javascript a couple of years back, just for kicks. If you’re into that sort of thing, Nathan’s post are a great read.

WANKEN

Whistler Compass Pointe House

Bryden House in Queenslad Australia

Simple Desktops

Blue Crystal

Retro Much

Solar System