An urban agriculturalist says farming needs a rebrand

Caleb Haper discusses his work building "Food Computers" and more

Accessibility Matters: Meet Our New Book, “Inclusive Design Patterns” (Pre-Release)

Accessibility has always been a slightly unsettling realm for web developers. Surrounded with myths, misunderstandings and contradicting best practices, it used to be a domain for a small group of experts who would "add" accessibility on top of the finished product.

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Today we're privileged to announce our brand new book on inclusive design patterns, written by Heydon Pickering, with dozens of practical examples of accessible interface components and inclusive design workflow, applicable to your work right away. With this book, you'll know exactly how to keep interfaces accessible from the very start, and how to design and build inclusive websites without hassle and unnecessary code.

The post Accessibility Matters: Meet Our New Book, “Inclusive Design Patterns” (Pre-Release) appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Microsoft kills Xbox Fitness, will yank access to previously purchased content

Microsoft is killing Xbox Fitness -- without refunding any of the money people spent on the application, or providing any compensation for the loss of purchased content.

IBEW/NECA Retrofit in Los Angeles Raises the Bar for Building Energy Efficiency

Rick Laezman

• Green Building

No profession is impacted more by the changes taking place in the energy sector than electrical contractors and electrical workers. Recognizing the opportunities that this presents, representatives of both groups have teamed up in Los Angeles on a retrofit project that will set a new standard for net zero energy consumption in commercial buildings.

Twitter introduces Snapchat-style Stickers to tweets

By: Ruby Lott-Lavigna

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Alternative thinking on Brexit gains, Brexit losses and CNBC's booking schedule

“What a day.”

That's Crispen Odey, London-based hedge fund manager and the founding partner of Odey Asset Management, talking about the Brexit.

As The Wall Street Journal explains, Odey publicly backed Britain's departure from the European Union and that he “set up his $10 billion firm accordingly.”

Gravitational waves can reveal how black holes are 'born'

By: Victoria Woollaston

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Cannes 2016: Just 12 Lions equals tough year for Canada

After a stellar 2015, Canada's medal count dips in 2016. Judy John's suggestion to be better in 2017

Web Development Reading List #142: Contextual Identities, Form Hints, And ApplePay.js

Today will be a day in history regardless of what happens over the next weeks. The majority of people in the UK voted to leave the EU, and this made clear once again that many people in our society think the current situation is no longer acceptable. Unfortunately, we think blaming those people is the solution, but, as we see, it isn't. Instead, we should focus on teaching people about the root causes of problems, and we should retain from posting everything right away.

In other news, I'm back from vacation to bring you new articles to read. And I realized one thing: While mountaineering holds real risks and dangers, working on websites mostly does not. Of course, the security of our websites should be a top priority, but even if we fail, if a website is down for a few minutes, if we screwed up the layout on some devices, you won't be dead. We have the opportunity to improve our work by making mistakes and fixing them.

The post Web Development Reading List #142: Contextual Identities, Form Hints, And ApplePay.js appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Epsilon Theory: Waiting for Humpty Dumpty

Brexit is a Bear Stearns moment, not a Lehman moment. That's not to diminish what's happening (markets felt like death in March, 2008), but this isn't the event to make you run for the hills.

Inside Euro 2016's tech, Brexit fallout: Podcast 273

We find out how Euro 2016 is broadcast to the world and examine the impact of Brexit on the UK's technology, science and gaming industries

By: WIRED

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Alternative Thinking on Hedge Fund Rankings, Bill Ackman's Blues and Facebook Tyranny

The top 100 hedge funds averaged a return north of 10.5% in 2015, and the three-year average is a tad below 17%. Meanwhile, there are a lot of equity-long-short funds, indicating that good stock pickers are still around.

Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston is 'Power Rangers' new Zordon

By: Matt Kamen

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PG&E to Close Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant

Rick Laezman

• Your Business

The nuclear power industry suffered another setback in California on Tuesday when PG&E announced that it will close the Diablo Canyon power plant in San Luis Obispo County. It is the second such closure in California in the last three years.

Bud Light psychs out EDM fans with social experiments

Millennial test subjects were given a chance to win tickets to Tomorrowland

Flat science budgets could kill the Arecibo Observatory, the world's largest telescope

The Arecibo telescope has been a landmark observatory for 50 years, but limited funding could see the facility shut down in the near future.

Mobile advertiser tracked users' locations, without their consent, FTC alleges

The privacy settings on your phone don't mean much if tech companies choose to ignore them. One major mobile advertiser allegedly did just that.

The company InMobi was secretly tracking user locations, regardless of consent, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission alleged on Wednesday. The motive: to serve location-based ads over mobile apps.

InMobi is headquartered in India and partners with thousands of apps to offer advertising. This gives the company access to 1.5 billion devices.

Collecting user information to serve tailored ads is all too common, but InMobi did so through deception, the FTC alleged. The company stated it would only collect the location-based data if given permission, however, InMobi secretly collected it anyway, the agency said.

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New Galaxy Note 7 Leak Reveals Samsung's Risky Gamble

While there has been no official comment on details around the upcoming Galaxy Note 7, Samsung's website was reconfigured yesterday to provision the SM-N930F. That model number matches Samsung's historical pattern for the South Korean manufacturer's phablet. What it didn't help with is answering one of the biggest questions around the Galaxy Note.

Short-term signals in E-minis, crude and gold

The Cycle Projection Oscillator (CPO) is indicating some potential near-term opportunities in several markets.

Looking at a 240-minute chart of the E-mini S&P 500 shows potential weakness over the next couple of days (see chart).

The CPO is also projecting WTI Crude oil to slip over the next few days. WTI has recently dropped from overbought territory according to the CPO and is sitting near its 10- and 20-day moving average lines (see chart).

Birds can grasp the basics of human grammar

Researchers have found that budgerigars and zebra finches can understand the abstract relation between sounds

By: Matthew Reynolds

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Cannes 2016: FCB/Six offers an unofficial festival app

Cannes Meow focuses on catty comments, gossip and 'humanizing' data

Is it time to dump gold and buy platinum?

For a relatively safe investment, the market says investors should be selling gold and buying platinum. That can be done either by buying a platinum exchange-traded fund and selling a similar amount of a gold ETF or simply by trading gold coins for a greater number of platinum coins.

In search of Finding Dory's brand storytelling secrets

Pixar offers some object lessons that creatives everywhere should appreciate

Scientists invent machine that can (sort of) read your mind

Machines can now read your brain, they're just not very good at it yet.

Prefabricated Construction Growing in Popularity

William Atkinson

• Your Business

According to a recent report published by Technavio (www.technavio.com), a global technology research and advisory firm, the global prefabricated construction market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of between 6 and 7 percent until 2020. Technavio values the prefabricated construction market at about $79 million in 2015 and expects it to reach over $110 million by 2020.
Why is the technology gaining popularity? There are several reasons, most related to energy savings, both in the manufacturing of the units, as well as with the final products in place.

Cannes 2016: LG2 lone Canadian shop on Print & Publishing list

Agency's Quebec office shortlisted five times for two clients

The Fed giveth and the bullion banks taketh away

Janet Yellen just blew all remaining semblances of credibility believed to be still present at the U.S. Federal Reserve Board.

Shortcuts And Tips For Improving Your Productivity With Sublime Text

Sublime Text is, no doubt, one of the most powerful text editors out there. The number of satisfied users attests to that. If you explore it, you will eventually see how beautifully its powerful features are hidden behind a simple and elegant interface.

If you have been using Sublime Text for some time, now is the time to upgrade your arsenal with new ammunition. I'll be taking you through some of my favorite tips and tricks. Knowing them might just unleash your hidden powers as a programmer to the world.

The post Shortcuts And Tips For Improving Your Productivity With Sublime Text appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

CBC to broadcast The Tragically Hip's final show

Band set to kick off last tour after lead singer's terminal cancer diagnosis

Cannes 2016: Marla Natoli on competing for creativity

AOL Canada's director of video and mobile recalls her first experience at the festival

The Art Of Layout Testing With Galen Framework

When designing a graphical user interface, there is always an open question: How do we automate testing for it? And how do we make sure the website layout stays responsive and displays correctly on all kinds of devices with various resolutions? Add to this the complications arising from dynamic content, requirements for internationalization and localization, and it becomes a real challenge.

In this article, I will guide you through an interesting new layout testing technique. Using Galen Framework, I will provide a detailed tutorial for writing meaningful generalized layout tests, which can be executed in any browser and on any device and at the same time used as a single source of truth in your design documentation.

The post The Art Of Layout Testing With Galen Framework appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Rumors suggest AMD's Zen servers will pack 32 cores, serious heat

New rumors suggest that AMD's top-end Zen server chips will pack an enormous amount of potential performance, as AMD aims to regain lost market share in the server space.

Cossette opens healthcare practice

Cossette Health strives to help healthcare organizations thrive in disruptive climate

Designing Modular UI Systems Via Style Guide-Driven Development

Using a style guide to drive development is a practice that is gaining a lot of traction in front-end development - and for good reason. Developers will start in the style guide by adding new code or updating existing code, thereby contributing to a modular UI system that is later integrated in the application. But in order to implement a modular UI system, we must approach design in a modular way.

Modular design encourages us to think and design a UI and UX in patterns. For example, instead of designing a series of pages or views to enable a user to accomplish a task, we would start the design process by understanding how the UI system is structured and how its components can be used to create the user flow.

The post Designing Modular UI Systems Via Style Guide-Driven Development appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Competitive Advantages Are Key

William Atkinson

• Systems

Since its humble beginnings in 1981, Metropolitan Electrical Construction in San Francisco has grown to a staff of almost 300 (250 field staff and 40 office employees) by ensuring that it can offer a number of competitive advantages to the marketplace.

Throughout the 1980s, the company focused almost exclusively on electrical projects. That changed in the next decade.

“In the early 1990s, management saw the way that the market was going and brought some people on board to start handling low-voltage projects,” said Steve Borghello, division manager, voice/data/wireless communications.


Google evangelist: 'Say no to data pukes'

Avinash Kaushik tells Art of Marketing Toronto that information needs to be better managed

The Situation Is Under Control

Julie Mazur

Timothy Johnson

• Your Business

While the magazine's headquarters are in Bethesda, md., ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR can't cover a national industry without getting out to various locales for trade shows and conventions. They are some of our best resources for learning what's going on, so we can pass that knowledge on to you.

E3 2016: Microsoft's Project Scorpio promises 4K gaming and VR support

Project Scorpio aims at delivering enough horsepower to support 4K gaming and virtual reality while maintaining compatibility for the entire catalog of Xbox One releases.

How To Roll Out New Features Without Hurting Loyal Users

“Be agile; release early; release often.” We know the drill. But is it strategically wise to keep rolling out features often? Especially once a product you're building reaches a certain size, you probably don't want to risk the integrity of your application with every new minor release.

The worst thing that can happen to your product is that loyal users, customers who have been using that one little feature consistently over the years, suddenly aren't able to use it in the same convenient way. The change might empower users more, but the experience becomes less straightforward.

The post How To Roll Out New Features Without Hurting Loyal Users appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Moosehead preaches perseverance in new campaign

'Outlast' campaign is Taxi 2's first work for the independent beer brand

ET deals: Dell Inspiron 15 7000 series quad-core gaming laptop for $750

If you're looking for a reasonably priced gaming laptop that can handle new releases, take a look at the 15.6-inch Inspiron 15 7000 series from Dell. With a new quad-core Skylake processor, a graphics card with some decent horsepower, and a solid state hybrid drive, this laptop can hold its own at any LAN party. And thanks to today's coupon code, you can save a total of 16% off the sticker price.

Gold is the watchman warning of stormy economic seas ahead

A massive "financial blip" is on the radar screen, headed directly for your position. It's not the government coming to help you. But it is mostly the result of their formulated policies which have stood proverbial common sense on its head.

Hands on with Lenovo's Phab2 Pro Tango augmented reality phone

Lenovo brings Google's Tango to consumers with Phab2 Pro smartphone, enabling a whole new class of augmented reality applications.