Big Apple

Bee’s Knees General web CriticalCSS [github/filamentgroup] finds the critical (above the fold) CSS for your page, and outputs it into a file you can use elsewhere. Mezzano [github/froggey] is an OS written in Common Lisp. NSQ [nsq] is a realtime distributed messaging platform built by bitly. Newscast.js [github/nprapps] is a library to make developing for Chromecasts a lot easier. Bees with Machine Guns [github/newsapps] is a tool for load testing web apps. You might remember it from that article about Paper scaling its back-end to deal with the traffic from posting the Kardashian pics [medium/message]. Mozaik [github/plouc] is a Node/React/D3/Stylus-based tool for creating beautiful dashboards. In Motion Design Here’s an interesting post on how motion is becoming more and more important to interaction design [smashingmagazine]. Here are some of the things design school doesn’t teach, but should [medium/kieranpblack]. And here’s a look at what companies (should) look for when hiring designers [medium/design-playbooks]. Wary-ables SitePoint First up on SitePoint today, here’s how to write Angular apps using ES6. Then we had an argument against developers worrying about the new world of wearables. Then we have five of the best productivity plugins for Adobe Illustrator. And here’s how to build a simple image editor with CSS and jQuery. Big Apple News/business Apple reported its quarterly earnings yesterday, and the company is doing pretty well. How well? It just reported the biggest quarterly earnings of any company ever [techcrunch]. Also, the Apple Watch is coming in April [arstechnica], if this financially mismanaged company will even still be around by then. Meanwhile, Google has expanded its fibre program to Atlanta, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte [theverge]. If you live in any of those cities, look forward to receiving these emails even speedier! YouTube now defaults to HTML5 video [youtube-eng.blogspot]. A few developments on social media: Snapchat launched a new Discover feature [blog.snapchat], which means media companies now have another platform they have no control over where they can share #content for dubious returns. Meanwhile, Twitter launched group direct messages and video sharing from the mobile app [blog.twitter], both moves aimed at matching features Facebook has had for ages. Vivaldi [vivaldi] is a new browser by the folks who made Opera. Get it? How Slack launched [firstround]. A look at how Pinterest experimented with SEO tactics by just… running experiments [engineering.pinterest]. Slow Burn Off-topic Here’s an idea that would’ve worked pretty well before teens got their own data connections: A router that slows their connection speeds down to 56k so they do their chores [motherboard.vice]. Predominant.ly [predominant] is a pretty clever site. Pick a colour and the site will tell you which album covers were predominantly the same colour. Here’s how Netflix knows where you are in that episode of The IT Crowd [techblog.netflix]. If you want to understand youth, the future of media, and the future of attention, you could do worse than this look at Vine [buzzfeed]. Finally, the Tesla Model S has a button labelled “insane mode”, which accelerates the car from 0 to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds: Here’s a video of people reacting to that insanity [businessinsider]. That's us for today. Please note that if you skipped down to read this section of the email before anything else, you're actually using our little-known "insanity mode". Good job. See you tomorrow! Get in touch with us, either by replying to this email or catching up with us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. If you want more to read, check out the archive.