blog.rightreading.com

I might be without internet for about a week. I haven’t built up a reservoir of posts because I’ve been working on other stuff, so posting will be light. Be back soon.
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Leila and Massimo Vignelli on living by design

Massimo Vignelli has been an influential promoter on Swiss industrial graphic design [...]

We all know we should keep our webware up to date to avoid security vulnerabilities. But some of us get careless sometimes and let things slide.
Bad idea. Hackers entered this site through my publishing wiki. The wiki had not been very active lately (it’s hard to get a gaggle of publishing people together on anything), [...]

The free market isn’t really free.
But it’s not worth much.
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Kontrapunkt typefaceMost free typefaces are worth about what you pay for them. But the Danish design firm Kontrapunkt (I…Market testing book covers

Book publishing has always been a little backward in some aspects of marketing. For example, whi…Friday Roundup | Duly QuotedLinks

Absolute [...]

If Folly link with Elegance no man knows which is which … – William Butler Yeats

Fauxcabulary : It’s megagaltastic
How to Say Nothing in 500 Words : A step-by-step guide
Second-guessing Borges’s translation of Woolf : From a feminist pespective
Radar launches : Geo-based aggregator
Society of Authors lists top translations of past half century : We’re no. 36 [...]

Huge, aren’t they? See them at the National Building Museum.
Kind of a random post, but I’m on the road and don’t have a lot of time for internet. Here’s another view of this remarkable building:

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Poor, poorer, porous

Some pretty porous copy on this text panel about porous paving at the National [...]

Links

Absolute or Relative URLs?
Borders Eliminates 274 Spots
Using Amazon sales ranks for market analysis
Which cover is better?
Lexicographie is online …
… but who owns French?
Coming soon: Typeface, the movie

Duly quoted

“Harry Potter had more problems dealing with Voldemort than what we have dealing with the media and the Celtics.” — Kobe Bryant

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Friday roundup [...]

Mr. Wright Reading has a lot on his plate. He’d better get a grip soon.
Photo from FlickrJunkie’s photostream.
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No related posts

Now they can take a little piece of their work home with them in the form of this lovely comma pendant.

(Just don’t correct that “they” to “he or she.”)
(And no, I don’t want the post recast in the plural.)
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via Swiss Miss
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Publishing role visualizationDon’t waste time taking those long multiple-choice tests [...]

That’s what Sramana Mitra, writing at Forbes magazine (last month), thinks. Mitra believes that publishers must be treating their authors very badly, because most authors make little money on most books.
Well, guess what: hardly anyone makes money from book publishing — except for UPS. (So, yeah, the industry needs to be reworked. But is Amazon [...]

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Merry 2007How can it not be merry? We are so much smarter than we were a year ago. Just consider the BBC’s lis…Happy Bloomsday

Caduceus asks that question at MetaFilter, and IndiaInk has started a thread in reply.
There have, of course, been many effects. some good, others not so good. Caduceus is probably asking for practical advice on using new technologies and media, but the question could also be answered in a broader sense. Following are a few consequences [...]

“If Folly link with Elegance no man knows which is which ….” – William Butler Yeats

Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Fake Sex and the City book propels real book sales
Why FightTheSmears.com is Barack Obama’s Smartest Move Yet
LA Times 2008 summer reading list
Babylon Salon Summer Reading
The Bodleian Library Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts
Twelve Publishers
Can You Become a [...]

By Nate Beeler
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“Are Editors Moribund?”BBC NEWS | The Editors |

That’s the question the BBC is asking (link above). “What is there left …Dept. of Headlines That Speak for ThemselvesNew York Times Will Lower Editorial Standards Online And Reduce Size Of Print Newspaper

In relate…Speaking of SEOSpeaking of SEO, here is a [...]

I like this Deco-ish typeface on a building at Harrison near 8th in San Francisco. Check out the low cross-bars, the tiny spur on the G, the bulbous loop on the R, the very open C, and most of all the straight central section of the S. It all works.
While we’re in the neighborhood, a [...]

According to the NYT Magazine (via Classical Bookworm), the next edition of the OED, planned for completion after 2018, will likely only be published electronically and not in print form. It makes sense in a way, because reference books are ideally suited for electronic publication, largely because of the convenience of hyperlinks. The print OED [...]

Can it?
World’s dumbest website, via Wonkette.
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Brownback Remembers!Apparently the following is a real post from Senator Brownback’s real website. This man wants to be …Recognizing scam publishing offersEllen M. Kozak has written a nice summary at Wisconsin Lawyer about “Spotting the Publishing Scam.” …More Bad MinistrationSo the Bushies appointed a guy [...]

Several answers are offered in comments to a post on this topic at the Book Design Review. Many people suggest the “traditional” route of design school. The Book Designer offers some good advice (if not the tightest sentence grammatically), saying “barge into as many cafes, design conferences and publishing houses with your portfolio till you [...]

Rightreading is on medical leave and will be back soon.
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More on feed readersNewsgator has been either down or slow all this weekend. I like them, but I’ll starve if I don’t get…Corpse rebornThe following is a message sent by Exquisite Corpse to its subscribers.
Dear readers:

Did you m…More marvels of [...]

But fie! What does that frothy mewling crook-pated ratsbane know about cussing?

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Tony Blair calls Iraq a “disaster”But not for any lack of intelligent planning.

No, it was just one little unexpected thing.A photoblogI’ve replaced my html photography page with a simple, casual photoblog.

I’m not sure exactly …Google Calls Google Alerts SpamI [...]

This is off topic from my usual subject areas, but I haven’t seen this technique suggested anywhere else, and I thought I would share it since it’s so easy and produces good results.
Since I sometimes travel overseas, I wanted to get an unlocked quad-band cellphone that I could use abroad by switching simm chips, rather [...]