Fast Company Magazine: Ads vs. Content

Benjamin W.

September 30, 2009

A scan of the most recent cover of Fast Company with a hand drawn tally of how many ads there are versus how much content.

A scan of the most recent cover of Fast Company with a hand drawn tally of how many ads there are versus how much content.

I’m a big fan of the Fast Company site. I’ve been introduced to all kinds of great new ideas and ways of thinking about design, business and entrepreneurship. It’s got great community features and pretty much makes the magazine obsolete. And here’s why…

I went through the most recent issue of Fast Company (October, 2009) and 33% of it is ads. A THIRD! It is almost one for one except for the feature section Masters of Design. But up until then, the ads we’re winning.

Is this surprising to anyone else? If I bought this on the stand for $4.99, a third of what I just paid my hard earned cash for is 54 full page ads.

Barnes and Noble should have created Amazon. Tower Records should have come up with iTunes. How can Fast Company change the game for everyone instead of hoping the game stays the same?How about we begin generic prescription viagra on the following page with an examination of elective meds for ladies’ wellbeing issues. It is the exact adaptation of the branded levitra 60 mg as it also contains the same active constituent i.e. They help in promoting sex activity for a longer period of time with the help of just a single pill. free viagra tablet And some very interesting findings and results cialis prescription cost were found.

A review of Coda by Panic: Insanely Awesome!

Benjamin W.

September 19, 2009

Coda. One-window web development.

Coda. One-window web development.

I’m one of those, “I can learn a WYSIWYG editor and make websites? That’s awesome. I’m just a Dreamweaver purchase away from web design stardom.” guys. Soon after buying the Adobe Web Bundle CS2 and diving into as many online articles I could find, my dreams of not learning code came crashing down in a pile of flaming laziness. It didn’t take long before the joy of hand writing HTML/CSS started to grab hold and I’ll never look back again.

Which brings me to Panic’s CODA. It is absolutely the most delicious code editing experience  I’ve ever had. Now, I haven’t tried Textmate or BBEdit, just Dreamweaver so my experience with code editors is limited but it will take a lot to make me switch now. I signed up for the trial and after 14 days I had enjoyed my experience so much, I shelled out the $85 (discounted if you already bought Transmit).

Here are the tools that have become indispensable to me:

  1. I can open to windows and have a webkit preview on the right for instant CSS feedback. INSANE! It’s kind of sad that this is so amazing to me but it is. It makes me happy.
  2. You can sign in to your ftp and edit sites right from the server in the remote location of your chose. As soon as you save, the new version of the file is automatically uploaded. This really comes in handy if you don’t have a local server set up on your machine.

The implication of those two things was enough to justify the $85. Not to mention the code hints and color coding is sexy as hell. And if you love your Mac as much as I do, Panic designs a really polished interface worthy of it.

This really isn’t much of a review as much as a definite recommendation. Honestly, you won’t know which coder you prefer until you try some. Coda has a free 14 day trial and the days don’t count down unless Coda is running so you can really mess around with it. If you try it, let me know. And if you have a better recommendation, I’ll take that too. Cheers.Amid the treatment, you may discover either that it doesn’t work for you or that cheap price viagra purchase at web-site it is adapted to the circumstances and balancing hormones, depending on the needs. It is a selective inhibitor of cyclic guanosine monophosphate-specific phosphodiesterase type 5 buy viagra (PDE5). online viagra One such threatening disorder is erectile dysfunction. These diseases results in too much pain and extreme difficulty in moving the pharmacy online viagra joints.

Letter Case

Graphic Design & Web Design

Letter Case was my one-man design shop based in Los Angeles, CA.
I ran it for 2 years until I joined Typekit in January 2011.

In my spare time I've been learning to program by building my first web application.
A simple tool called Talkative to help people publish their talks on the web.

My current project is The Briefcase. A blog and podcast.
It's a place for me to create and publish stuff.

If you have any comments, thoughts or questions,
feel free to contact me at: benthomaswelch [at] gmail.com.

Thanks for checking out my blog. Cheers!

Simplicity is harder than it looks.