By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

Reading glasses are for old folks and big type is for kids that don't know how to read. Well, that used to be true.

For those that believe that the web is now looking like itself and no longer doing a mimetic dance with it's first cousin, print, you should be down with this: Bigger font sizes, better kerning, wider line height and plenty of negative space make for a better user experience. Especially when reading thousands of words online everyday.

What got me going down this path was a link that someone shared today through their Google Reader shared feed to an article in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi. The link, as you can see, is a link to a printable version of the piece. I was rate this as great for print and poor for readability.

The post content font size is super for saving printer paper and thus trees, but it is a killer on the eyes. Reading the post at that size even in the the early paragraphs was causing me strain and fatigue. I was tired of reading the dense blocks of text without even forming half and opinion about writing. I was more concerned with the design and the inability to read it quickly because the type was packed so tight letters like sardines.

To read this article and make it not about the squished fonts and tiny words I had to throw the Readability plugin at it. Once activated it gave me plenty of white space, larger font and the ability to scan the words with ease. It performed the duty of making the web look like itself.

This got me thinking about what the best size for type readability on screens is. Turns out that after reading a couple of studies that say that is someplace between a 12pt or 14pt sans-serif typeface with a setting of 120% height in CSS. Readers also typically prefer serifed fonts for legibility but sans-serifed for actually reading blocks of text.

The major irony of course is that this blog and both of the posts that I linked to don't follow any of these guidelines for creating and optimal reading experience! Tech Startups will be heading there in the not so distant future but I fear that the those two poasts are going to be stuck in the internet dark ages.

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No Shame In Readability is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

In one day less than two months I have managed to write 200 blog posts.

This one, being the 200th.

I know this because after writing about 50 posts I thought to myself, What else am I going to write about?

Turns out, at this many, right now, you write about writing and how to build blog traffic.

So how did I get to this magic number in roughly two months of blogging?

It's my job. My number one duty is to write 5 posts a day.

If being senior editor of this blog were not my job I wouldn't have written 99% of these posts. The remaining 1% I would have posted on my personal blog.

If I were starting a blog today on my own I would follow this pattern of writing posts. I might find it harder to find topics to write about now but writing itself is much easier to do.

Why post so much?

Traffic, traffic, traffic. With my posts and the posts of John and Boonsri we've increased unique visitors, indexed pages, page views and keywords over 1500%. We've got a long way to go with this blog but by producing regular content that has interesting angles on technology we're growing steadily.

Where do we go from here?

We keep on cranking out the posts on the topics that keep you coming here or subscribed. You can expect to see a fresh new design in the New Year, more video, more local startup news and other fun stuff we're keeping under wraps.

Thank you guys for sticking around and helping us to grow Tech Startups! And thanks to the Network Media Holdings honchos for having us!

How to Build Blog Traffic In 60 Days is a post from: TechStartups.com

Like most netbooks with Intel processors, most Eee PC models rely on integrated graphics which are good enough for watching videos or rendering some basic games, but kind of stink if you want to play a Crysis or Call of Duty. Asus does package an NVIDIA 9300M graphics card with the Asus N10 laptop, but the company refused to call that laptop a netbook (even though it has the same screen and keyboard size as a netbook, as well as the same 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU used in most of the company's netbooks).

Now it looks like Asus could be preparing an Eee PC netbook with a dedicated graphics card. If the rumored netbook is anything like the N10, Asus will offer users the ability to switch between dedicated and integrated graphics. You can use the lower power integrated graphics processor when battery life matters more than GPU performance. And when you want to blow up some aliens, you flip a switch and reboot your system.

No word on pricing, availability, or if this is actually going to happen or if it was just some guy at Asus mouthing off. But if it does come to pass, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that Asus will charge more than $399 for an Eee PC with a fancy graphics card.

via Eee PC News

Post from: Liliputing

The Tribune Editorial Board released its list of endorsements in the upcoming Illinois primaries on February 5. Among the list are 3rd District Congressman Dan Lipinski (striking a blow to challenger and progressive blog champion Mark Pera) and tenacious ice cream magnate Jim Oberweis -- running for Congress in the 14th District -- who is determined to get himself elected to some office, somewhere, some time (we hear Sugar Grove is looking for a new mayor, perhaps he should start there). They also endorse Senator Dick Durbin's challenger, Steve Sauerberg, who has about as much chance of unseating Durbin as Spanky the Clown.

But the big news is obviously their endorsements for Democratic and GOP presidential nominees. Not surprisingly, our own Barack Obama gets the nod on the Dem side, as the Trib champions how the country has moved beyond the issue of race (er, while they lead the endorsement with it) and that while they agree that their endorsement is a "paradox", they feel Obama is best suited amongst the Democratic candidates to "help this nation move forward" and that Hillary Clinton "unifies only her foes."

John McCain picks up the Republican endorsement, in which the Trib makes a not so subtle dig at Rudy Giuliani:

Many Americans yearn for the holiday-from-history that was the 1990s. The Cold War had ended; the cataclysmic updraft of concrete dust and human DNA hadn't risen from Lower Manhattan.

But there will be no going back. The planet's lone superpower won't again have the privilege of ignoring -- of appeasing with strong words but soft pursuit -- the sworn enemies of this nation and its friends.

One Republican candidate for president dedicated himself to American honor, American duty, long before Sept. 11, 2001. The world of 2008 is the dangerous world John McCain unknowingly spent a military and political career preparing to confront.

McCain, who as of a few months ago was practically written off, has surged forward as Giuliani's strategy of ignoring all of the primaries until Florida has erased his previous dominance in the national polls. [Trib]

Photos from the Tribune website

The web worker has a very different kind of working day. Clients are lined up and liaised with through email, payments come in via PayPal and Facebook trumps the television when procrastination time comes around.

To be efficient and effective as a web worker you'll need to come to grips with a few important tools and change some rusted-on behaviours. In part 3 of the Becoming a Freelance Web Worker series I'll describe exactly what you need to make it through your first working day (and every day after that) as a wired freelancer.

Equipment

Computer if you want to go mobile a laptop is essential, but if you're content working from home any half-decent computer will do. Some web workers swear by Macs, others swear by Linux, others are PC devotees. My advice is to go for the operating system you find easiest to use or the one you can afford. The Web 2.0 hipsters might have their preference, but they're not doing your work for you, are they?

Fast internet connection while it's possible to be a dial-up web worker (I'm doing it at the moment, but only out of financial necessity!), it's not very cool or very productive. If a fast connection allows you to do a day's extra work each year, it pays for itself.

USB thumb drive I'd suggest getting a USB thumb drive big enough to store your current project on it. If you're a freelance writer you'll be storing mainly documents and text files, so you can get something really cheap. If you're a web developer or designer you'll need a more heavy-duty option but you're also probably a technophile, so I don't need to tell you that.

Optional: Scanner sometimes nothing beats a pen and paper for getting an idea across, sketching and brainstorming. A scanner will allow you to share your pen and paper sketches with clients instantly. You can also make digital copies of paperwork (if you need it). If you're an illustrator or animator, a scanner is a must-have.

Client liaison

Email the only option for me, I've had no troubles working with clients over email. It encourages a kind of professionalism that's hard to capture through other mediums. The relatively slow response time means you'll soon learn to ask the right questions from the outset.

That being said, I'm a freelance web writer and that gives me a lot of autonomy. If you're working closely with a client on a design, for example, you'll probably need to make heavier use of more immediate options.

(For many web workers, there's email, and then there's Gmail. You can use a different email client, but prepare to be mildly teased/socially ostracized).

Skype if you're missing the sound of your clients' voices over the phone (or just feeling lonely), Skype is the liaising option for you. It can take 5 minutes to work out something that would take three days via email. That being said, a call through Skype is a bigger interruption than a new email in your inbox particularly if you've started working online to finally escape the sound of forever ringing phones

Instant Messenger if you're searching for the immediacy of Skype without the awkward silences, IM could be the client liaison option for you.

Just remember not to LOL in the wrong places.

Getting paid

PayPal corporate clients will often want to pay you old-school style, but individuals will favor PayPal. You lose a few dollars in the transfer process, but the immediacy and control is worth it. You can invoice and get paid within minutes if your client is online. PayPal will also handle the conversion of foreign dollars into your home currency for you.

If you're one of those people who've been somehow wronged by PayPal and don't want to use it, there are alternatives (but clients happily using PayPal might be a bit grumpy about the inconvenience).

Time management

Resisting temptation I've always thought freelance ink illustrators would be masters of productivity, because none of the tools of their trade actively encourage procrastination unless doodling counts?

If you thought the temptations of traditional freelancing were bad, for a web worker, they're just one click away. We're also good at convincing ourselves that procrastination is work. Reading feeds is research. Facebook is networking. StumbleUpon is for inspiration.

I can't really think of a solution for this. I'm too busy writing an update on Twitter.

Anti-procrastination charms and pendants usually called Web Apps' and Firefox extensions', a common piece of advice given to web workers can be summed up like this: more web apps and extensions = more productivity though the sources of this advice wouldn't like it being so brutally paraphrased.

I'm going to be a luddite here and say this equation is wrong. Technology won't magically make you more productive. In fact, I think a lot of web workers fall into the trap of spending more time reading about productivity and learning to use new productivity tools than they do actually being productive!

My rule: if it's faster than doing the same thing with pen and paper, keep it. If not, scrap it, be old-school and proud of it (and more productive).

Having said that, keeping your paperwork to a minimum is essential if you want to work anywhere in the world something I'll be covering in the last part of the series, Part 4 coming soon.

Part 4 of the series will be online tomorrow, you can also read more from Skellie at her brand new blog Anywired