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Where is Web design headed? For a preview, check out the Boston Globe. It looks like a perfectly normal newspaper Web site, until you start resizing the browser window. The page layout is dynamically altered so that it properly size whatever window is being used to view it. There’s no more “click here for our mobile site” button or a link beseeching you to download the site’s app in somebody’s app store. This technique is called responsive design, and its creator, Ethan Marcotte, consulted on the Boston Globe’s implementation. He’s written about his role in the project on his blog. ...

Last month Tim Bray reminded me that I should be reading The Economist. The thing I like best about The Economist as a publication is that its editorial stance is to be uniformly in favor of global economic growth. While I am certainly much more left wing than their usual reader or their editors, I am essentially in agreement with them that the number one priority of economic policy must be continued, long-term economic growth, even if I disagree with them on other priorities or occasionally on the best approach to creating sustainable growth. ...

Michael S. Hart, the inventor of the electronic book and the founder of Project Gutenberg, died this week. Project Gutenberg has his (public domain) obituary. Hart was born in 1947. The last published work to pass into the public domain was published in 1923 and it seems probable that copyright terms will be extended indefinitely such that no published works will enter the public domain again. Update: Nat Torkington has posted a nice remembrance. ...

As part of his semi-retirement, Jim Romenesko is shutting down The Obscure Store & Reading Room, one of the few remaining first generation blogs. I always felt honored to be in his blogroll back in the day.

Sure, you may know me as a very amateur political commentator or guy who builds Web stuff, but I spend most of my day writing Java code. My first impression of Java 7 was that it is a disaster due to some compiler bugs that result in unstable code. While it’s certainly prudent to wait for Oracle to work out those bugs, I am actually pretty excited about the language features in new version. One of the biggest complaints about Java is all of the extra typing you have to do compared to scripting languages like Ruby and Python, so it’s always good to see things get a little simpler. The new features certainly won’t convince anyone who isn’t already a Java developer to switch to it, but they will make life a little easier for those of us who use Java already. ...

A blog post I read earlier by Jesse Brown that’s sophomoric in both premise and conclusion has stuck in my brain, so I may as well write something about it, if for no other reason than so that I can move on to other things. His colleague makes the following assertion: No company—probably not even Google—and certainly no individual has made as much of a difference or changed the way things work over the past 10 years as Apple has under Jobs. ...

Chris Dixon on working on projects that matter: The best entrepreneurs seem to follow a path of increasing gravitas. I like the idea of that kind of ethic. For another take on the same idea, check out Steve Yegge’s keynote from OSCON Data this year.

Writing about audio books the other day led me to think about a documentary that aired on HBO a few weeks ago – Koran By Heart. In it, we are introduced to a few children who have been selected to participate in a contest in Egypt for people who have memorized the entire Koran. Koran By Heart is really, really interesting, portraying a view of Islam not normally seen. Competitors are tested by showing them the first and last lines of a passage from a Koran – they are expected to figure out where in the Koran those lines appear and recite all of the lines between them. What’s particularly impressive is that many of the reciters do not actually speak Arabic – one of them, a young boy, does not read or write in any language. ...

Today Steve Jobs announced what I have expected and dreaded for awhile – that he’s stepping down as CEO at Apple. I think Apple will be fine but it’s certainly too soon to say goodbye to Steve Jobs. The news brings me back to the commencement speech that Jobs gave to Stanford graduates in 2005, which I have read many times. In it, he talks about facing mortality: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. ...

I confess that I’ve not listened to an audio book since I listened to an album-length version of The Hobbit that we had when I was a little kid. Roger Ebert makes me think I’ve been missing out. This is quite an endorsement: I’ve been a lifelong reader. My love for physical books is old and deep. I also love audiobooks, and have listened to probably 300 of them. Sometimes they stay with me better than the printed ones. I avoid abridgments in most cases, and listened to Simon Callow read all 12 novels in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time twice. Every word. It became part of my experience. Now I’m re-reading it in print, and I can hear the voices. ...