The COP29 Summit in Baku has approved the key rules that would govern trade in carbon credits. A UN-backed global carbon market is likely to begin next year or so. Despite the BASIC grouping’s demand that discussions on ‘climate change-related, trade-restrictive unilateral measures’ like Europe's CBAM should be included in the main agenda, it was decided that CBAM would be discussed informally.

Heimtextil 2025 expands its Carpets & Rugs segment with new halls and over 300 exhibitors, featuring a Belgian Textiles area by Fedustria. Highlights include a Carpet Lounge by Cover Magazine, expert talks on trends, AI in design, and sustainability, plus guided tours. The event, showcasing global innovations and partnerships, runs from 14-17 January, 2025, in Frankfurt.

October US container imports were 2,494,635 TEUs, marking the fourth month in a row of volumes exceeding 2.4 million TEUs, a threshold that has historically strained US maritime logistics, the November Global Shipping Report by Descartes Systems Group noted. For the first ten months of 2024, volumes grew by 13.1 per cent YoY. At seven of the top 10 US ports, transit time delays rose in October.

Global cotton markets saw slight declines and stabilisation in recent weeks, with NY/ICE December futures trading between 67–75 cents/lb since June, now at 71 cents/lb. The global A Index dipped from 85 to 83 cents, while China's index dropped from 101 to 97 cents due to a weaker yuan. Indian and Pakistani spot prices also declined, but both rupees remained stable against the dollar.

Burberry has introduced its first virtual scarf try-on experience in its ‘Wrapped in Burberry’ holiday campaign. Partnering with AR provider WANNA, the immersive experience lets customers view iconic Burberry scarves in real-time, with over 50 styles and two classic options. Available online and in select stores, customers can share images and directly access product pages for purchases.

H&M is partnering with Glenn Martens for an Autumn 2025 collection. Known for merging streetwear and couture, Martens joins a line of iconic designers H&M has collaborated with since 2004, when it launched its first designer collection with Karl Lagerfeld. This initiative has made top-tier fashion accessible, reflecting each designer’s unique vision and values across two decades of partnerships.

Parallels RAS Now extends the integration and delivery of applications from Azure Virtual Desktop to application delivery on Windows 365 Cloud PCs

I am a firm believer in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey. If you've not read this book, it is worth the time. I mention this because my focus at BA Insight is around Covey's second habit, which is, "Begin with the end in mind." Seems simple, right? Well it is, but it's also quite rare. When approaching any enterprise search project, at any phase, I always try to come back to this idea. What is success? When are we done? What does finished look like? These are all different ways of saying, "Make sure you have goals!"

Unstructured data, which comprises almost 80% of any enterprise's data, holds untapped value when it comes to addressing challenges and embracing opportunities.

AI-Powered Search Engines?referred to as "Insight Engines" by Gartner and "Cognitive Search" by Forrester?can deliver significant value to organizations these days, provided certain risks are avoided.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured the imagination of a wide variety of businesses. I have this image of CEOs in boardrooms around the globe declaring, "We must have AI! Our competitors use AI! We can't be left behind!" There might be some table-pounding associated with this scenario. There will certainly be corporate minions scurrying around to fulfill the AI dreams of their CEO.

A New York appellate court ruled that a worker injured in an accident caused by a falling pipe should have been granted summary judgment on his Labor Law claim. Case: Jara-Salazar…

The Workers Compensation Research Institute is holding a webinar on Nov. 21 to discuss findings from a recent study of the impact of attorney representation on claim payments. Bogdan Sayvch The…

An Ohio appellate court upheld an enhanced award of benefits to an injured roofing worker for his employer’s violation of a specific safety requirement. Mauricio Rivera worked for Prime Roof Solutions…

Wildlife photography fans now have a unique opportunity to own a true collector’s piece from renowned wildlife photographer David Lloyd. For the first time, David...

The post Now you can own this rare collector’s edition book set of wildlife fine art photography appeared first on DIY Photography.

We have teamed up with three amazing brands, Accsoon, Saramonic, and SmallRig, to give a lucky winner a break into the filmmaking world. A complete...

The post We are giving away over $1,500 in filmmaking gear appeared first on DIY Photography.

Starting an online art photography business is a huge milestone in your career. As photographers, it’s all too easy to collect hundreds, if not thousands,...

The post How to sell fine art prints like an award-winning photographer  appeared first on DIY Photography.

Finding power on location can be tough, especially when those locations are out in the middle of nowhere. It’s been getting a lot easier in...

The post Bluetti’s new Elite200 V2 wants to power your camera gear on location appeared first on DIY Photography.

My friend and colleague, Chris, has shared a spiffing idea, the Ideas of March. He suggests: ‘If we all blog a little more than we normally would this month, maybe we can be reminded of all of the reasons blogs are great.’

But wait, this post is called the Ides of March? Right. As soon as I read what Chris had posted, a twist on the phrase echoed in my memory. The Ides of March is a Roman festival dedicated to the god of war, Mars. Some say it’s on the 15th of March (today). I can’t find a reference that this is accurate relative to the Julian or current Gregorian calendars, so I will use the first full moon instead. This year it will be on Saturday, 19th of March, in four days time. Wikipedia has more:

The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars and a military parade was usually held. In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date that Julius Caesar was killed in 44 B.C.

Dramatic stuff. Appropriate in these times, too. Mars may have been the god of war, based on the anarchistic Greek god, Ares, but he represented the pursuit of peace through military strength. A thoroghly debunked method if you ask me, but a pretty neat rationalisation still used today. The military pursues Gaddafi’s version of peace in Libya. Mubarak tried it, and failed, in Egypt. The Ben Ali regime collapsed under protests in Tunisia. Saleh is on his way in Yemen. Right now, Saudi soldiers are deployed in Bahrain to quell protestors fighting for democratic freedom.

Whatever you think about the current strife, one thing is true: Tyrants never last. I’ve been an advocate of Twitter, and its ambient intimacy for almost four years. In that time I’ve seen it buoyed by the innovations of its users. Smart folks using @replies, and retweets that became a part of the fabric, coded into links and threads (sort-of). Other smart people building clients with new ways of looking at the graph. I’ve seen Twitter take the good ideas and do good things with them. Yet now, Twitter isn’t just the platform any longer, it wants to be the clients too. From URL shortening and tracking, to changes in who can make clients, and how they work. People don’t like it. The same kind of smart people who helped it be successful. The same kind of people who permit benevolent dictators to exist until they become tyrants.

I’m still a fan of the idea of short messages. They are neat, by their nature, but lest Twitter forgets, they also exist elsewhere, too. They’re a snack between meals. Signposts to feasts. The real banquets are blog posts, though. I’ve learnt more from them in the last ten years than I ever will from 140 characters. That’s why blogs are something to be treasured. Blogs and RSS may be dead according to some, but I like that I disagree. After all, even with this rambling post, you’ve probably learnt something, just like I have writing it. Thanks for the prompt, Chris.

Don’t procrastinate, fire up your editor and share your own ideas of March. Drew, Lorna, and Sean already have. Go on, you know it’s been far too long!

Stories are everywhere. When they don’t exist we make up the narrative — we join the dots. We make cognitive leaps and fill in the bits of a story that are implied or missing. The same goes for websites. We make quick judgements based on a glimpse. Then we delve deeper. The narrative unfolds, or we create one as we browse.

Mark Bernstein penned Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web for A List Apart in 2001. He wrote, ‘the reader’s journey through our site is a narrative experience’. I agreed wholeheartedly: Websites are narrative spaces where stories can be enacted, or emerge.

Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies, and Professor of Literature at MIT, wrote Game Design as Narrative Architecture. He suggested we think of game designers, ‘less as storytellers than as narrative architects’. I agree, and I think web designers are narrative architects, too. (Along with all the multitude of other roles we assume.) Much of what Henry Jenkins wrote applies to modern web design. In particular, he describes two kinds of narratives in game design that are relevant to us:

Enacted narratives are those where:

[…] the story itself may be structured around the character’s movement through space and the features of the environment may retard or accelerate that plot trajectory.

Sites like Amazon, New Adventures, or your portfolio are enacted narrative spaces: Shops or service brochures that want the audience to move through the site towards a specific set of actions like buying something or initiating contact.

Emergent narratives are those where:

[…] spaces are designed to be rich with narrative potential, enabling the story-constructing activity of players.

Sites like Flickr, Twitter, or Dribbble are emergent narrative spaces: Web applications that encourage their audience use the tools at their disposal to tell their own story. The audience defines how they want to use the narrative space, often with surprising results.

We often build both kinds of narrative spaces. Right now, my friends and I at Analog are working on Mapalong, a new maps-based app that’s just launched into private beta. At its heart Mapalong is about telling our stories. It’s one big map with a set of tools to view the world, add places, share them, and see the places others share. The aim is to help people tell their stories. We want to use three ideas to help you do that: Space (recording places, and annotating them), data (importing stuff we create elsewhere), and time (plotting our journeys, and recording all the places, people, and memories along the way). We know that people will find novel uses for the tools in Mapalong. In fact, we want them to because it will help us refine and build better tools. We work in an agile way because that’s the only way to design an emerging narrative space. Without realising it we’ve become architects of a narrative space, and you probably are, too.

Many projects like shops or brochure sites have fixed costs and objectives. They want to guide the audience to a specific set of actions. The site needs to be an enacted narrative space. Ideally, designers would observe behaviour and iterate. Failing that, a healthy dose of empathy can serve. Every site seeks to teach, educate, or inform. So, a bit of knowledge about people’s learning styles can be useful. I once did a course in one to one and small group training with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. It introduced me to Peter Honey and Alan Mumford’s model which describes four different learning styles that are useful for us to know. I paraphrase:

1. Activists like learning as they go; getting stuck in and working it out. They enjoy the here and now, and are happy to be dominated by immediate experiences. They are open-minded, not sceptical, and this tends to make them enthusiastic about anything new.
2. Reflectors like being guided with time to take it all in and perhaps return later. They like to stand back to ponder experiences and observe them from many different perspectives. They collect data, both first hand and from others, and prefer to think about it thoroughly before coming to a conclusion.
3. Theorists to understand and make logical sense of things before they leap in. They think problems through in a vertical, step-by-step logical way. They assimilate disparate facts into coherent theories.
4. Pragmatists like practical applications of ideas, experiments, and results. They like trying out ideas, theories and techniques to see if they work in practice. They positively search out new ideas and take the first opportunity to experiment with applications.

Usually people share two or more of these qualities. The weight of each can vary depending on the context. So how might learning styles manifest themselves in web browsing behaviour?

• Activists like to explore, learn as they go, and wander the site working it out. They need good in-context navigation to keep exploring. For example, signposts to related information are optimal for activists. They can just keep going, and going, and exploring until sated.
• Reflectors are patient and thoughtful. They like to ponder, read, reflect, then decide. Guided tours to orientate them in emergent sites can be a great help. Saving shopping baskets for later, and remembering sessions in enacted sites can also help them.
• Theorists want logic. Documentation. An understanding of what the site is, and what they might get from it. Clear, detailed information helps a theorist, whatever the space they’re in.
• Pragmatists get stuck in like activists, but evaluate quickly, and test their assumptions. They are quick, and can be helped by uncluttered concise information, and contextual, logical tools.

An understanding of interactive narrative types and a bit of knowledge about learning styles can be useful concepts for us to bear in mind. I also think they warrant inclusion as part of an articulate designer’s language of web design. If Henry Jenkins is right about games designers, I think he could also be right about web designers: we are narrative architects, designing spaces where stories are told.

—∞—

In 2003, my wife Lowri and I went to a christening party. We were friends of the hosts but we knew almost no-one else there. Sitting next to me was a thirty-something woman and her husband, both dressed in the corporate ‘smart casual’ uniform: Jersey, knitwear, and ready-faded jeans for her, formal shoes and tucked-in formal shirt for him (plus the jeans of course; that’s the casual bit). Both appeared polite, neutral, and neat in every respect.

I smiled and said hello, and asked how they knew our hosts. The conversation stalled pretty quickly the way all conversations will when only one participant is engaged. I persevered, asked about their children who they mentioned, trying to be a good friend to our hosts by being friendly to other guests. It must have prompted her to reciprocate. With reluctant interest she asked the default question: ‘What do you do?’ I paused, uncertain for a second. ‘I’m a web designer’ I managed after a bit of nervous confusion at what exactly it was that I did. Her face managed to drop even as she smiled condescendingly. ‘Oh. White backgrounds!’ she replied with a mixture of scorn and delight. I paused. ‘Much of the time’, I nodded with an attempt at a self-deprecating smile, trying to maintain the camaraderie of the occasion. ‘What do you do?’ I asked, curious to see where her dismissal was coming from. ‘I’m the creative director for … agency’ she said smugly, overbearingly confident in the knowledge that she had a trump card, and had played it. The conversation was over.

I’d like to say her reaction didn’t matter to me, but it did. It stung to be regarded so disdainfully by someone who I would naturally have considered a colleague. I thought to try and explain. To mention how I started in print, too. To find out why she had such little respect for web design, but that was me wanting to be understood. I already knew why. Anything I said would sound defensive. She may have been rude, but at least she was honest.

I am a web designer. I neither concentrate on the party venue, food, music, guest list, or entertainment, but on it all. On the feeling people enter with and walk away remembering. That’s my job. It’s probably yours too.

I’m self-actualised, without the stamp of approval from any guild, curriculum authority, or academic institution. I’m web taught. Colleague taught. Empirically taught. Tempered by over fifteen years of failed experiments on late nights with misbehaving browsers. I learnt how to create venues because none existed. I learnt what music to play for the people I wanted at the event, and how to keep them entertained when they arrived. I empathised, failed, re-empathised, and did it again. I make sites that work. That’s my certificate. That’s my validation.

I try, just like you, to imbue my practice with an abiding sense of responsibility for the universality of the Web as Tim Berners-Lee described it. After all, it’s that very universality that’s allowed our profession and the Web to thrive. From the founding of the W3C in 1994, to Mosaic shipping with <img> tag support in 1993, to the Web Standards Project in 1998, and the CSS Zen Garden in 2003, those who care have been instrumental in shaping the Web. Web designers included. In more recent times I look to the web type revolution, driven and curated by both web designers, developers, and the typography community. Again, we’re teaching ourselves. The venues are open to all, and getting more amazing by the day.

Apart from the sites we’ve built, all the best peripheral resources that support our work are made by us. We’ve contributed vast amounts of code to our collective toolkit. We’ve created inspirational conferences like Brooklyn Beta, New Adventures, Web Directions, Build, An Event Apart, dConstruct, and Webstock. As a group, we’ve produced, written-for, and supported forward-thinking magazines like A List Apart, 8 Faces, Smashing Mag, and The Manual. We’ve written the books that distill our knowledge either independently or with publishers from our own community like Five Simple Steps and A Book Apart. We’ve created services and tools like jQuery, Fontdeck, Typekit, Hashgrid, Teuxdeux, and Firebug. That’s just a sample. There’s so many I haven’t mentioned. We did these things. What an extraordinary industry.

I know I flushed with anger and embarrassment that day at the christening party. Afterwards, I started to look a little deeper into what I do. I started to ask what exactly it means to be a web designer. I started to realise how extraordinary our community is. How extraordinary this profession is that we’ve created. How good the work is that we do. How delightful it is when it does work; for audiences, clients, and us. How fantastic it is that I help build the Web. Long may that feeling last. May it never go away. There’s so much still to learn, create, and make. This is my our party. Hi, I’m Jon; my friends and I are making Mapalong, and I’m a web designer.

BIG NEWS: My custom Lightroom presets are now available and 50% off for a limited time with discount code HOLIDAY50. Link in profile!

This collection includes two styles (Everyday and Clean) that I use to edit every shot on this feed. I can’t wait to see what you all do with them! Stay tuned to my upcoming tutorials on how to put the presets to good use. ???? (at Toronto, Ontario)

Bricks are better black. ◾️ (at Toronto, Ontario)

I took this shot about a year ago when I had a very different editing style. A ton of faded blacks and, believe it or not, a subtle green tint (unknowingly inherited from the preset I was using at the time). Re-editing it now, I’m happy with the way my style has evolved, though I can already sense that I’m on the brink of evolving it again. And I’m okay with that. ???? (at London, United Kingdom)

This trip solidified my conviction to learning photography. A lot has happened since this shot was taken.
Can you pinpoint the moment you decided to pursue photography? (at Toronto, Ontario)

A lot to look forward to in 2017. How did 2016 treat you: ???? or ????? (at San Francisco, California)

Four days from now I’ll be boarding a one way flight to San Francisco to take on the next evolution of my role at @shopify. Leaving the city that I’ve called home my entire life and the people who have defined everything I am was one of the most uncomfortable decisions I’ve ever had to make. But this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve chased discomfort in my career.
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I wrote about my ongoing pursuit for discomfort this morning in hopes of inspiring others to do the things that scare and challenge them this year. You can find the link in my profile.
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Happy 2017! ????
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????: @jonasll (at San Francisco, California)

UX competitor analysis is a valuable user research method that focuses on understanding your products’ competitors, helping you better understand your market and goals. Idea Theorem™ has worked with many clients that required a UX competitor analysis to get actionable insights about their competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and mistakes to avoid and know what they are doing right.

The right photo effect can transform an ordinary image into a work of art. Adjustments to lighting, color balance, and texture help you create the perfect mood for your project.

The market Study is segmented by key regions which is accelerating the marketization.

Jesse Chehak
Near Big Water, Utah, 2010
Website - JesseChehak.com

Born in Tarzana, California, Jesse Chehak studied photography and Art History at Sarah Lawrence College and is currently pursuing a MFA at the University of Arizona. Chehak has exhibited his large format prints in galleries and project spaces including Bruce Silverstein (New York), Danese (New York) and the Durham Art Guild (Durham, North Carolina.) He is currently seeking funding to publish his first monograph, Fool's Gold, and a gallery to exhibit and distribute the completed print edition. In 2005, Chehak joined M.A.P. and began executing commercial campaigns and editorial features for clients, including The New York Times, Wallpaper*, Newsweek, GQ, Ogilvy & Mather, Saatchi & Saatchi, Digitas, and others. Chehak has received notable attention for his work, including PDN30 in 2005, The Magenta Foundation's Flash Forward in 2007, a Baum Nomination in 2008, and AP25. He lives in Tucson and Los Angeles.

Abelardo Morell
Camera Obscura: Early Morning View of the East Side of Midtown Manhattan, , 2014
Website - AbelardoMorell.net

Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1962. Morell received his undergraduate degree in 1977 from Bowdoin College and an MFA from The Yale University School of Art in 1981. In 1997 he received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College.

His publications include a photographic illustration of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1998) by Dutton Children’s Books, A Camera in a Room (1995) by Smithsonian Press, A Book of Books (2002) and Camera Obscura (2004) by Bulfinch Press and Abelardo Morell (2005), published by Phaidon Press. Recent publications include a limited edition book by The Museum of Modern Art in New York of his Cliché Verre images with a text by Oliver Sacks.

His work has been collected and shown in many galleries, institutions and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York, The Chicago Art Institute, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Houston Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, The Victoria & Albert Museum and over seventy other museums in the United States and abroad. A retrospective of his work organized jointly by the Art Institute of Chicago, The Getty in Los Angeles and The High Museum in Atlanta closed in May 2014 after a year of travel. Abelardo will be having his first show at the Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York opening October 23, 2014 and will run until December 20, 2014 featuring a selection of new pictures.

““I always hated that word—marketing—and I hate it now. Because for me, and this may sound simplistic, the key to marketing is to make something people want. When they want it, they buy it. When they buy it, you have sales. So the product has to speak. The product is what markets things.””

- Interview with Tom Ford.

“

What is deceptive, especially in the West, is our assumption that repetitive and mindless jobs are dehumanizing. On the other hand, the jobs that require us to use the abilities that are uniquely human, we assume to be humanizing. This is not necessarily true. The determining factor is not so much the nature of our jobs, but for whom they serve.

‘Burnout’ is a result of consuming yourself for something other than yourself. You could be burnt out for an abstract concept, ideal, or even nothing (predicament). You end up burning yourself as fuel for something or someone else. This is what feels dehumanizing. In repetitive physical jobs, you could burn out your body for something other than yourself. In creative jobs, you could burn out your soul. Either way, it would be dehumanizing. Completely mindless jobs and incessantly mindful jobs could both be harmful to us.

“In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman.”

- Artist Sol Lewitt on conceptual art.

Hundreds of "Wanted" posters targeting members of the University of Rochester community were found glued to campus buildings and classrooms, according to the Department of Public Safety.

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a Massachusetts Air National Guard member to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to leaking highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine.

We wanted to let readers know that we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X (formerly Twitter). We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.

Allies of Donald Trump who were charged in Arizona for illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election can still expect to face justice despite his return to the White House, the state's attorney general has said.

President-elect Trump on Tuesday announced he was choosing Pete Hegseth, an Army veteran and a Fox News host, to serve as Defense secretary.

President-elect Donald Trump has only begun to fill out the ranks of his incoming administration. His first choices confirm that his son Donald Jr. and the former Fox TV personality Tucker Carlson have emerged as major influences over his picks.

House Freedom Caucus members block bipartisan bill to expand some Social Security benefits

A new report describes the dire state of Earth's snow and ice, suggesting several major tipping points are likelier than scientists once thought.