iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

📝 Got nerd-sniped around tagging all my icons with richer metadata for better search. Still not sure how I want to go about it…but I took notes along the way! blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/icon-ga...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

VLM Enhanced Metadata For My Icon Galleries

Confession: I got nerd-sniped by Sam Henri Gold’s request for my icon galleries: I'd like to humbly request artwork-level searching in macosicongallery.com…

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Álvaro Montoro @alvaromontoro.com · 29/09/2026

The W3C released a new HTML element out of nowhere. It was the element of <surprise>.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 28/09/2026

Ok so here's my (totally unofficial) classification for how Apple’s icon changed from Tahoe to Golden Gate: 1. Got a bit more glassy 2. Got a bit more refined 3. Got a total overhaul First up: the ones that “got a bit more glassy” like App Store, Maps, and Stocks.

Left-to-right comparison of the App Store icon, from 2025 to 2026.

Left-to-right comparison of the Maps icon, from 2025 to 2026.

Left-to-right comparison of the Stocks icon, from 2025 to 2026.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 28/09/2026

📝 Jef Raskin: > An interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties. That condemns so many modern interfaces because they are designed to take advantage of human frailties. blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/humane-...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

Humane Interfaces

So there I am reading Unsung when I come across this quote from Jef Raskin : An interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs and considerate of human…

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 25/09/2026

Everyone claiming to be an OS these days: “OS for Logistics” - it’s a dashboard with a map “OS for Restaurants” - it’s a scheduling app “OS for Food” - it’s a smart toaster with an app

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 24/09/2026

Apple did the Directory Utility app icon dirty

Two versions of an app icon: a globe with a compass on the left (rich in detail), and an abstract map with three blue location markers on the right (poor in detail).

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Danny Smith @danny.is · 24/09/2026

I just added a calendar view to my website. I still find it amazing how little code was needed to do this. Modern browsers are awesome. danny.is/notes/calend...

danny.is

A calendar view for my writing

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 23/09/2026

lol wait wut? codex has a clippy now? what is this thing?

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 22/09/2026

📝 Quite enjoyed this story from @bcantrill.bsky.social on “Oxide and Friends” about AI gaslighting him and saying that his turn of phrase was, in fact, first spoken by Sideshow Bob. Feels like a microcosm of being online these days. blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/online-...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

A Great Story Capturing the Essence of Being Online in 2026

I made a note of it , but Bryan Cantrill wrote a post about the ex-Anthropic employee who pegged the probability of AI killing humanity in the next decade at…

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 21/09/2026

ChatGPT referred to my websites as a "weird constellation of personal web projects". Um, thanks...?

Screenshot from ChatGPT that says "Jim-Nielsen.com / Blog / Notes — Your weird constellation of personal web projects."

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 18/09/2026

“Body has already been consumed” Is this: 1) My cat when asked about that mouse I saw him with 2) Node talking about a Response()

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 18/09/2026

If I were in charge, I would make the primary CTA here (“Convert”) open a browser window to the Rick Astley video.

macOS dialog that says "Convert this message to rich text format?" with two CTAs. The primary one says "Convert" and the secondary one says "Keep Plain"

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 18/09/2026

Ok, first pet peeve in Golden Gate: sidebar type is changing weight on selection. Making selected text bold seems harmless at first…but then a longer label will go from untruncated to truncated upon selection.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 17/09/2026

TFW: You're doing some design work and you're really cooking. Then you gotta break for something. But you're so excited to come back, all the while you're away you’re thinking, “This is gonna be so good—can't wait to get back and build!” And then when you come back you’re like, “WTF is this shit?”

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 16/09/2026

TIL: you can put Safari in “Compact” mode with tabs, then customize the toolbar and remove the address bar. With the sidebar open, it gets you pretty close to the UI/X of Arc/Zen. Problem is, AFAIK, there's absolutely no way to access to the address bar lol — so that's a deal breaker.

Screenshot of Safari with the left sidebar open, listing open tabs, and on the right is the open web page with no tabs or address bar

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 16/09/2026

It's still fun to "view source" and see proper use of HTML comments (screenshot from @daringfireball.bsky.social)

Screenshot of some HTML markup for the twitter card <meta> tags, with a comment that says "<!-- Twitter Card bullshit -->"

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 16/09/2026

📝 If you’re maximizing a bottle for throughput, I think you’ve misunderstood the bottle. Probably the same for us humans. blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/bottlen...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

Bottlenecks Get a Bad Rap

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 16/09/2026

🗒️ Silicon Valley’s mantra should be: You Can Just ~~Do~~ Say Things. notes.jim-nielsen.com/n/2026-09-15...

notes.jim-nielsen.com

The contagion of fear | Jim Nielsen’s Notes

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 15/09/2026

Came across the personal "About" page of @maya.computer today and it's fun / lovely. Check it out: www.mayven.computer/about

Screenshot of the About page for mayven.computer

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 14/09/2026

📝 I'm officially a hoarder now. Netlify throws away my analytics data every 30 days, but I finally setup a little automation with @val.town to persist it. blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/preserv...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

Preserving Netlify Analytics Data Beyond 30 Days

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

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Dave Rupert @davatron5000.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Appreciate this "ode to links" by @jim-nielsen.com They are a tiny but powerful artifact for sharing culture and ideas. blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/ode-to-...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

An Ode to Links

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

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R. Alex Anderson @ralexanderson.com · 10/09/2026

“A URL is technical, a link is cultural.“ What a Pitch Perfect sentiment

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Tynan is afk til 10/19 ⁂ @tynanpurdy.com · 01/09/2026

Love is sharing a link

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 10/09/2026

📝 Got to thinking about all the ways we use links: - We save ‘em, we lose ‘em. - We open ‘em, we close ‘em. - We share ‘em, we hide ‘em. I love links! blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/ode-to-...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

An Ode to Links

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 09/09/2026

📝 Have you ever liked a post so much you printed it out and stuck it on something in your home? This is that. blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/hands-o...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

Don’t Let Anyone Take Away Your Big Box of Cables

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 08/09/2026

How was school? Horrible Name one thing good that happened today? School ended. And so begins our weekday dinner time talk.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 04/09/2026

- Sign up for a service in 2014. - Leave sometime later. - Be eternally subscribed to their "Privacy update" emails.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 04/09/2026

Well this is interesting? If you type in a query in Google, then go to the "AI Mode", the URL switches from: []google[dot]com To chrome://google[dot]com But (obv.) only if you're in Chrome. So Google is somehow like "we want to handle this experience with browser internals if we can"

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 04/09/2026

Because shoptalkshow has yet to cash in and sell the podcast, they can continue to bring us quality programming like this. Never change STS. Never change.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 04/09/2026

Really enjoy seeing folks write openly and honestly like this—on a company blog at that!

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 03/09/2026

📝 tl;dr - Downtime is mainstream now. - Status pages are the public interface for understanding it. - Uptime percentages are a lousy interface for general understanding. - Can we stop? blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/stop-wi...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

Can We Stop With the Uptime Percentages?

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 03/09/2026

That feeling when you make and ship a personal website

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 02/09/2026

You when you post on a website you own and control.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 02/09/2026

📝 You know, those things we all do even though individual experience suggests otherwise. blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/nobody-...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

Nobody Believes It, Everybody Does It

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 01/09/2026

Early bird gets the ~~worm~~ downtime.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 31/08/2026

📝 We know these feedback and rating mechanisms don’t accurately capture our experience, yet the results are too tantalizing to see as anything other than clean, objective data. blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/nuance-...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

My Experience Has Nuance, Yours Is a Data Point

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

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Reposted by Jim Nielsen

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

They still haven't solved the hallucination problem, then

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 25/08/2026

📝 I had a PR up for microlighter the day it was announced, but I let it sit there for a couple days just to let my subconscious decide, “Is this what I really want?” Turns out, it is. So now it’s live. blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/shippin...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

Have You Heard the Good News About Microlighter?

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 24/08/2026

Make a band bigger: Forget Sum 41, I wanna see Exponential 41!

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 24/08/2026

📝 I’ve been wanting to clean up some of the metadata in my icon collection, so I got the LLM to build me a little custom tool that surfaced likely options, helped me make decisions, and then updated the data — a little “here’s how I did it” post. blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/use-llm...

blog.jim-nielsen.com

Getting an LLM to Make Me a Tool for Enriching the Color Metadata in My Icon Collection

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

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Effin' Birds @effinbirds.com · 23/08/2026

Effin’ Birds greeting cards for every occasion. eatf.art/gc

A greeting card featuring a painting of a bird above the text "Can I please unsubscribe from your bullshit?"

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 21/08/2026

ah yes, the late-stage tech worker

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 21/08/2026

This is spot on. Watching “Jaws” as a kid, I thought sharks+water would be the biggest thing I had to fear in my life. But no, turns out it’s house+water.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 21/08/2026

For better or worse, this is how I’ve made career choices.

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Jim Nielsen @jim-nielsen.com · 20/08/2026

More and more apps in my app switcher on macOS are going the way of Google's (infamous) product icons: colorful shapes on a white background.

A horizontal row of six colorful app-style icons on white squircles inside a the cmd tab switcher on macOS. The icons depict a variety of abstract multicolored shapes.

Google’s product icons, all of which are different colors/shapes on white background app tiles

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