We hope you’ll support us by donating $5-10 (or more) via our FirstGiving page (a secure way to send directly to Farm Sanctuary, and they’ll mail you a tax-deductible receipt).

We visited Farm Sanctuary’s California farm in Orland last weekend (they have one on NY, too). We stayed in the farm’s guest cabin and were able to spend a lot of time with all the animals (Aimee discovered I’m something of a turkey whisperer). It was fun to see them in action and we had a chance to volunteer a little by preparing food and feeding many of the animals and brushing the goats.

Aimee posted a set of photos (ad 2 vids) from our time at Farm Sanctuary on Flickr.

Also, if you vote in California, please join us in supporting Prop 2 (sponsored by Farm Sanctuary) with a “Yes” vote in November.

Prop 2 is a modest measure that would allow farm and food animals the ability to stand up, stretch and turn around. Through the reduction of these inhumane caging/crating practices (most commonly used by factory farms) will improve the health and safety of our food, support family farmers, and reduce the environmental degradation caused by these unnecessary practices. The NY Times has endorsed Prop 2 in a thoughtful and straightforward article.

We hope you enjoy our pictures and hope you’ll consider helping us raise money for this important organization.

Thanks and love,
nate & aimee

As the name implies, they publish big photos. Not thumbnails or small one-column photos like most news sites (and sites in general), but true large format photos. Generally 990×660. It’s remarkable the greater impact that larger photos can have.

Today’s feature is on California’s Continuing Fires.

There are a LOT of fires burning. Coming home from Golden Gate Park yesterday after Tasty, we crested Twin Peaks and had an eastern view of the entire bay as we drove on Portola Drive. In near unison we all noted the “fire smog.” The air is thick with smoke, even in SF which is currently fairly removed from the fires.

About a month ago, my buddy Matt’s house in the Santa Cruz mountains came within a kilometer or two of being engulfed. If the winds had been normal his house would have been gone. But luckily the winds were anomalously blowing the opposite directly. They evacuated, but were spared.

About 10 days ago, my friend Jud’s mom was evacuated from her home in the Brisbane hills just a few 2 or 3 miles south of SF. She avoided disaster, too.

Last week I flew out of SFO. All flights were delayed because of lack of visibility due to fire smoke in the air across the whole region.

So, take a look at the fires through the Big Picture lens to get a better sense of what’s really going on, and the amazingly tough and dedicated firefighters. There are more than 20,000 hard-core people out there fighting to get it all under control.

Here’s to them.

And here’s the feed for the Big Picture so you can add it to your reader.

From Left: Satyen Desai, Georgiann Puckett, Nate Koechley, Lucas Pettinati, Adam Moore, Douglas Crockford, Thomas Sha (behind the sign), Luke Smith, Matt Sweeney, Jenny Donnelly, and Dav Glass. Not Pictured: Todd Kloots and Eric Miraglia.

(Photo credit: Eric Miraglia. The YUI Team, December 20, 2007
Originally uploaded by superfluity.)

Thank you Flickr!

If you’re in the holiday spirit, there’s no better place than Kiva.org, where you can make an individual’s dream come true for as little as 25 bucks. Kiva’s definitely my favorite site right now – an excellent realization of the world-changing power of the Internet.

Jumpcut is a video site, but the coolness is their web-based online video editor. With an easy to understand Flash interface you can rearrange and trim clips and add snazzy transitions. Also cool: you can email video from the video camera on your mobile phone to the site. Every video has a “remix” button, that when clicked makes the video you’re watching editable and mixable with your own content or other content on the site.

You can slice and splice the clips. You can import Flickr photos to use in your videos. You can pull in mp3s and audio clips. Title screens are cake.

As with most video players, this one is in Flash and seems to Just Work.

All and all, a pretty cool piece of web-based software.

Update: Jumpcut announced the acquisition with a “Great Combos” video. I remixed it in 30 seconds:

Last month I had the privilege of addressing the audience at the prestigious @media 2006 conference in London. It was quite an honor to contribute to such an outstanding event, accurately dubbed “Europe’s foremost professional web design conference”. Many thanks are due to the organizers, to my fellow presenters and all the attendees, to everybody who attended my session, and especially to those who wrote about it in the blogosphere both before and after. It is a ongoing joy to be part of such a vibrant and open community.

My talk, Yahoo! vs. Yahoo!, used case studies to examine how and when development decisions change in response to a project’s location on what I’m calling The Page-to-Application Spectrum. I used three case studies: the new Yahoo! home page beta, the new Yahoo! Photos beta, and the Yahoo! Mail beta.

While slides don’t capture all the material of the talk, I’m pleased to share them today:

• atmedia2006.ppt (.ppt, 4.2mb)
• atmedia2006.pdf (.pdf, 2.1mb)

Detailed notes taken during my presentation are available thanks to Stuart at Muffin Research. Also, if you have questions or comments, please send me a note or leave a comment.

On a final note, public speaking these days is especially rewarding because of the immediate feedback blogging makes possible. If you will please indulge me, I would like to point to some of the coverage of my session:

PPK of Quirksmode.org, in Did we just win the web standards battle? (@media impressions – part 3)

“Nate Koechley’s presentation was a case study in knowledge sharing, with him giving away quite a few juicy technical bits for free. In short, Yahoo is firmly committed to openness and to discussing stuff with the international technical community.”

PPK of Quirksmode.org in @media impressions – part 2

“…my favourite one, because it’s the only one that taught me some new geeky stuff.”

IT Bytes in @Media 2006

“Rating, 8/10″

Marko Samastur in @media 2006 is over

“[@media] was great and I specially enjoyed presentations given by Nate Koechley and Andy Clarke. Those two alone made going worthwhile and if you have a chance to see any of them, don’t miss the opportunity.”

“Nate Koechley’s talk was a revelation. An incredible amount of good information and it’s been eye opening for me to learn about Yahoo’s experience.”

David Storey of Slightly ajar in @Media 2006 London

“Nate Koechley of Yahoo! is one such Open the Web hero that has done more than many to promote open standards and get web sites working in as many browsers as possible.”

Martin Kliehm of Learning the World in My @media 2006 Day Two

“I went to this presentation because Nate Koechley recently published his smart concept paper about graded browser support, which we immediately adopted. What I didn’t expect was a most impressive roller coaster trip through browser performance!”

Thanks again, and I hope to see you all again very soon.

It’s been many months now since I returned from my backpacking trip across Asia, and I’ve still got zillions of photos to post.

Here are 39 photos from the Tokyo Fish Market.

We took about 9000 during the three month trip, but tried to just post the best of the best in small, digestable sets. (15 of my 34 Flickr Sets are from the trip.)

The Fish Market in Tokyo is fantastic. I highly recommend a visit next time you’re there. Against the conventional wisdom, you don’t need to arrive at 4am. My brother and I overslept a bit, and didn’t down there til about 8am (right Pete?).

Massive. Bustling. Colorful. Beautiful. Unique.

At brunch this morning, I received an email invitation to play with the early “soalphaithurts” alpha of Riya. Riya is consumer facial recongition software. After you name a face, it will scan and auto-tag the rest of your photos.

The concept is great; I took 9000 photos on my backpacking trip earlier this year, some help tagging them is very welcome.

Anyways, I just signed up and installed the uploaded. It takes quite a while to upload and process the photos, but in the meantime check my screenshots of “Nine Step Registration Process” and the “Six Page Tour”.

More Riya details, screenshots and first impressions coming soon.