"From the windows of Urban Coffee you’ll see several of the hundreds of jewelers that fill Birmingham’s remarkable Jewellery Quarter. Jewelry factories are a centuries-old tradition here, and there are plenty of retail shops where you can find locally made pieces. Or follow the Heritage Trail to see where the Scottish inventor and engineer James Watt lived, and where Washington Irving wrote “Rip Van Winkle."

36 Hours - Birmingham, England - NYTimes.com Did someone from the New York Times actually spend 36 hours here? I have my doubts, but I don’t mind. Nice writeup.

"Those who don’t have much free time often desire to conserve it, so rather than seeking out or welcoming additional opportunities, they view them as mentally taxing impositions on a limited resource. For them, planning is a higher-risk endeavor, and usually they’d rather not plan anything at all, since if they’re busy, they likely have a preference to keep their free time just that – free. It’s hard to generalize by saying most people are in one camp or the other, but suffice to say, there are many people in the latter. And for them, it’s hard to get them excited about a service that will give them more options on how to use their time."

The Uphill Battle Of Social Event Sharing: A Post-Mortem for Plancast | TechCrunch

Via @artsfeed

"So what Google asks is not a brain teaser, not a math test, but a programming problem. It’s a simplified coding problem, designed (by trial and effort, mostly) to make sure a candidate has the most basic coding skills. Can you write a for loop and traverse an array? Do you know what sort of data structures are appropriate for what sort of situations? Do you recognize the inefficiency problem you might have when you traverse an array inside a loop that is itself traversing the array? Things like that. So, yeah, these problems might seem simplistic or offensive to you, but we ask them because a large proportion of our applicants simply can’t solve them."

Why we don’t hire programmers based on puzzles, API quizzes, math riddles, or other parlor tricks - (37signals)

I’m picking out a comment here, that is at odds with the article, but inline with my personal experience. A majority of web developers out there can’t actually program. They don’t think that this is relevant, because they can cut and paste some code, or Google for an answer. But because they can’t program, they are horrendously slow, and they can only ever achieve 80% of spec, not the awkward 20% that wasn’t in the cut and paste code. Programming tests weed these people out. You have to weed them out. A 1st class CompSci degree is usually a guarantee too, but not always.

Independent Skin Cancer Screening | The Mole Clinic →

"As the years went by she honoured this agreement although in time it wasn’t necessary as my stubborn refusal to help with Windows issues has rendered my knowledge of them pretty useless, which suits me fine."

Parental tech support resumes | I Am Pete Ashton

No collateral damage on @MadeHQ’s Christmas party this year. Very tame. Christmas starts here.

Merry Christmas →

And so 2011 draws to close. We’re closing our doors today and will be back in full force with more devastating puns from Tuesday 3 January (with a skeleton crew in London from 28-30…

RT @AndrewLowther: Worlds shortest day? Really? Could’ve fooled us.

"In 2010, Birmingham was due to become a leading digital city. I’ve no reason to assume that didn’t happen on schedule, although I’ve been flicking through The Drum’s list of Top 100 Digital Agencies (by fee income) and they don’t seem to have got the memo."

Created in Birmingham - arts, culture and creativity

"The married couple told how they once trashed the tour bus of rock band Status Quo and that on one occasion Ian flattened magician Paul Daniels with a single punch in a bar."

The Krankies: ‘We used to be swingers’ - Telegraph

RT @GuardianJoanna: Desperately sad to see @paulmdale’s last Iron Angle for @birminghampost: http://t.co/bmgdTrZ1

"Ten years later, sadly, Birmingham continues to punch below its weight. The inner city wards are among the poorest parts of Britain with systemic unemployment and a poorly skilled workforce, children’s social services are failing and remain under Government special measures."

Iron Angle: A farewell to arms - the final Iron Angle column - Iron Angle - Birmingham Columnists - Blogs & Comment - Birmingham Post

"It’s a lot harder watching Wigan than it is dealing with melanoma. With melanoma you just get pain and the pain goes away. With Wigan, you lose hope. That’s the difference. At least I’ve got hope with my cancer. I’ve got no hope with my football team."

Dave Hodgson: You plan for your future but you don’t know what your future is - Post Features - Life & Leisure - Birmingham Post

Coffee machine installed in Islington office. Feels like home.

Warwick Arts Centre: a case study →

We’ve worked with Warwick Arts Centre since 2009 when we were asked to relaunch their main website. In the time since, we’ve worked with their marketing team to provide the digital means to make…