Useful Links: CSS Calendar, Unreadable, Accessify

A Semantic List=Based CSS Calendar at CSS Newbie is an interesting tutorial.

Unreadable by Joe Clark at Scroll Magazine argues that the difficulty of reading at length on a computer screen is an insurmountable problem that is actually rewiring our brains.

The future of the web is one of an initially unwitting species-wide rewiring of the brain. The western world has carried out a Tuskegee-style experiment in which citizens’ neurology is permanently – and involuntarily – altered. At the dawn of the web, we could rationally have claimed not to know what we were doing. We don’t have that excuse anymore, but the experiment is still under way. In fact, it’s full steam ahead.

If you’re looking for a T-shirt slogan (a nice concise pithy bit of text from which you can glance away immediately), try ‘This is your brain on RSS. Any questions?’

Clark’s position about rewiring the human brain reminds me of some points made in the SXSWi Keynote by Jane McGonigal last year. Her topic was virtual reality, but she discussed how online gaming is changing the way our brains work. Knowledge about how online activity affects brain interaction can be important to designers, educators, and perhaps even to therapists.

A redesign at Accessify looks very spiffy and boasts new functionality, such as a JQuery Function Builder Wizard and updates to my eternal fav on Accessify, the List-O-Matic wizard. Nice update!

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