Most people consider Github just a repository for code and a place where developers can collaborate on projects and visitors can download cool new open-source applications. It's definitely that, but there's much more available to you as a Github user if you know how to take advantage of it. Here's how you can use Github to host your webapp and make it accessible to visitors, as a good-looking website that lists your projects, or even a personal nameplate site you can direct people to. More »

(This article was first published on me nugget, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)

Having recently received a comment on a post regarding geographic xyz data interpolation, I decided to return to my original "xyz.map" function and open it up for easier interpretation. This should make the method easier to adapt and follow.The above graph shows the distance to Mecca as interpolated from 1000 randomly generated lat/lon data using the "interp" function of the akima package. Several functions, found within this blog, are needed to reproduce the plot (pos2coord, earth.dist, new.lon.lat, color.palette, val2col, image.scale). One thing you will notice is the strip of uninterpolated area within the stereographic projection. This is a problem that I have yet to resolve and has to do with the fact that the interpolation is not considering the connection along the 180° longitude line. This will probably require some other type of interpolation based on geographic distances rather than Cartesian coordinates. R code to produce the above graph...Read more »

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When Mandy Brown, Jason Santa Maria and I formed A Book Apart, one topic burned uppermost in our minds, and there was only one author for the job.

Nothing else, not even “real fonts” or CSS3, has stirred the standards-based design community like the imminent arrival of HTML5. Born out of dissatisfaction with the pacing and politics of the W3C, and conceived for a web of applications (not just documents), this new edition of the web’s lingua franca has in equal measure excited, angered, and confused the web design community.

Win free copies of HTML5 For Web Designers on Gowalla!

Just as he did with the DOM and JavaScript, Jeremy Keith has a unique ability to illuminate HTML5 and cut straight to what matters to accessible, standards-based designer-developers. And he does it in this book, using only as many words and pictures as are needed.

Watch Jeremy Keith discuss HTML5 with Dan Benjamin and me live on The Big Web Show this Thursday at 1:00 PM Eastern.

There are other books about HTML5, and there will be many more. There will be 500 page technical books for application developers, whose needs drove much of HTML5’s development. There will be even longer secret books for browser makers, addressing technical challenges that you and I are blessed never to need to think about.

But this is a book for you—you who create web content, who mark up web pages for sense and semantics, and who design accessible interfaces and experiences. Call it your user guide to HTML5. Its goal—one it will share with every title in the forthcoming A Book Apart catalog—is to shed clear light on a tricky subject, and do it fast, so you can get back to work.

4 May 2010
Jeffrey Zeldman, Publisher
A Book Apart “for people who make websites”
In Association with A List Apart
An imprint of Happy Cog™

The present-day content producer refuses to die.

And don’t miss…

Read Chapter One free in today’s issue of A List Apart!
The author, Mr Jeremy Keith himself, shares his thoughts!
Creative director Jason Santa Maria discusses the design of A Book Apart!
Editor Mandy Brown discusses the business side of A Book Apart!