Four days ago, I published an article entitled Tail wagging, about the backlash against skeuomorphic design. It was well received, gaining about 30,000 reads here and links from The Loop, Marco Arment and Khoi Vinh, amongst others.

I get a great deal of pleasure from reading responses to my articles, most of which are via my Twitter account. I was reading the stream of tweets referencing the article via Topsy recently, as I do for all my pieces, and I was once again fascinated by the extracts and quotes people choose to use.

Last year, Jony Ive was interviewed in the London Evening Standard. It makes for interesting reading (despite the awful title).

Our industry is in the throes of an aesthetic shift. At one end of the spectrum, there’s the stitched leather and wood of iOS; at the other, the stark, ascetic information-spaces of Windows Phone. It’s more than a change of fashion: I think it highlights our continuing struggle to understand how to design and build products.

In that context, one seemingly offhand remark of Ive’s really struck me:

One of the things that really irritates me in products is when I’m aware of designers wagging their tails in my face.

As will be immediately obvious if you’re reading this in a web browser, I’ve redesigned mattgemmell.com – yes, you’re still in the right place!

You may have heard of the new-ish social network (it’s actually more than that, but for most people the distinction isn’t particularly relevant) called App.Net, or ADN (for “app dot net”). I’ve been a member since August 2012, and I’ve been meaning to write about it for a while now.

I think that ADN is important, and I’d like you to consider joining me there.

Following on from my workflow to generate clean filename or URL ‘slugs’ using Alfred 2, I’ve created another one to tell you which day of the week a given date is (or was, or will be).