Posts by Allen Cheung
Salary Requirements for a House in Silicon Valley
Kim-Mai Cutler is quickly developing a reputation as a journalist in technology who provides well-researched commentary on the industry as a whole, particularly around the issues of housing perpetrated by the current tech boom. Her piece on the effect of…
Appreciating the Game Design of Magic: the Gathering
We moved our home office this past weekend[1], and in the cleanup I came across a binder two decades old with a treasure trove of Magic: the Gathering cards. I got into the classic collectable card game (CCG) back…
The Cost of Best Practices on the Web
Those of us who were building websites a decade ago remember the Internet Explorer tax. Project managers budgeted anywhere from 25% to 50% of additional engineering effort for building a site compatible in IE6 & 7. As the majority of…
The Acceleration of Educational Competition
As the parent of a happy and fun two-year old, I became disheartened when reading this report on how the pressure is increasing for toddlers – not even children! – to compete to get into the “best schools.” The gist is that…
How Minimalism Becomes Homogeneous and Unfriendly
Flat design has been the hot current design trend. It may have been ushered into prominence by Apple’s iOS 7 and Google’s Material Design[1], but its philosophies resonate under the broader umbrella of minimalism. Minimalist design has…
The Many Buttons of GTA5
I’ve been working through the PS4 version of Grand Theft Auto 5 recently. It’s something like the 7th game in the series (after GTA3 added a number of sequels labeled GTA3 but were fully-fledged titles), and at this…
