Weekly Link Round-Up #24

So many late nights this week watching basketball and working on a freelance project. Lots of good things to read this week:

• 5 Most Common Web Standards Misconceptions I love the first item: Web Standards = Validation. Just because your site is valid, that doesn’t mean it’s not crap.
• Core Principles for Rapidly Attaining Creative Flow Some simple techniques for achieving “a state of focused concentration”. I find it hard to stay focused some times; I need to try some of these.
• A List Apart: Issue 255 As usual, A List Apart delivers two solid articles: Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry and Sign Up Forms Must Die. While I don’t really agree with the thought that all Sign Up Forms Must Die, I think Luke Wroblewski brings up a lot of interesting points.
• The Secret To Google’s Success: Free Beer And Sushi So you’re telling me that I just have to tell my job that I will work better with beer and sushi? Yeah, I’m sure that would fly.
• Decision or Bug? Can you imagine actually being able to use pixels for font size? I guess we can dream.
• Grid-Based Design: Six Creative Column Techniques Six creative techniques for making your grid design extra special.
• 10 Tips For Your First Email Campaign Ugh, just thinking about HTML emails makes me want to cry. At least this article discusses the non-design factors when preparing a campaign.
• Farnsworth. Wow, they call all of their clients every week? That’s pretty awesome.
• The thrill of launch This is a great article for two reasons:
  1. It was really interesting to read about the hectic day that Clickpass had leading up to their launch. (I know the feeling)
  2. I think that OpenID is going to be really important this year. With services like Clickpass making it easier for developers to add OpenID to their sites, I am hoping that OpenID will really take off this year.