Wired: 'Google Bomb' an Enemy

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/%27Google_Bomb%27_an_Enemy
"Google bombing involves manipulating search engines' contextual search methodologies to cause a certain search phrase to point to an unexpected page, usually for comedic or satirical purposes. A recent example of a Google bomb happened in January 2008, when the search phrase "dangerous cult" returned the Chuch of Scientology home page as the top search result.

Google bombing -- also known by the more generic term "link bombing" -- works with any search engine using a relevancy algorithm similar to Google's. For example, run a search for "miserable failure" in Yahoo Search. You'll see prominent links to President George W. Bush's biography at whitehouse.gov at or near the top of the list.

The heart of the system is Google's PageRank algorithm, as well as equivalent competing technologies. The PageRank system assigns a numeric score of 0-10 for each page on the web. Google derives a page's ranking from the PageRank scores of all other pages that link to it.

The key to Google bombing is to generate outgoing links to your target from highly-ranked sites. Get enough highly-ranked sites pointing to your target using the same phrase, and you'll push the target site to the top of the list of search results one sees when entering that mischievous phrase.

Here's how to do it."

Fortune: Ending software patents: Has the time come?

http://legalpad.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/02/28/ending-software-patents-has-the-time-come/
"

Attempting to ride a wave of corporate and judicial disenchantment with aspects of the current patent system, a new project was unveiled Thursday designed to, as its name bluntly indicates, End Software Patents. (Press release is here. The group’s “first yearly report” on the state of software patents is here.)

The group is intended to become a clearinghouse for information and a hub for those strategizing legal challenges, according to its executive director, Ben Klemens. Though End Software Patents will not initiate litigation of its own, it will be on the lookout for appropriate test cases to support as they arise, he says.

Though the project is being sponsored and funded by leaders of the Free and Open Source Software movement, it hopes to attract support from the wider community of businesses, financial institutions and universities that have all been blindsided in recent years by lawsuits over software patents and their close-cousins, business-method patents."

Business Week: Apple, Buy Back This Stock

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2008/tc20080227_160304.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech
"It's sitting on a huge pile of cash—and there are compelling reasons to return some to shareholders"

ReadWriteWeb: 6 Adobe AIR Apps to Check Out

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/some_adobe_air_apps_worth_a_look.php
"Adobe's AIR platform allows developers to create web applications that run on your desktop without the need of a web browser. Now that AIR has dropped the beta tag (see our previous coverage), it's time to look at some of the AIR apps you can use today. And if you want to know why we here at Read Write Web are so excited about AIR, read more of our analysis about the platform to get caught up. Did your favorite app make the list?"

garfield minus garfield

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/
"Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb."

Wired Magazine: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free
"At the age of 40, King Gillette was a frustrated inventor, a bitter anticapitalist, and a salesman of cork-lined bottle caps. It was 1895, and despite ideas, energy, and wealthy parents, he had little to show for his work. He blamed the evils of market competition. Indeed, the previous year he had published a book, The Human Drift, which argued that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public and that millions of Americans should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls. His boss at the bottle cap company, meanwhile, had just one piece of advice: Invent something people use and throw away.

One day, while he was shaving with a straight razor that was so worn it could no longer be sharpened, the idea came to him. What if the blade could be made of a thin metal strip? Rather than spending time maintaining the blades, men could simply discard them when they became dull. A few years of metallurgy experimentation later, the disposable-blade safety razor was born. But it didn't take off immediately. In its first year, 1903, Gillette sold a total of 51 razors and 168 blades. Over the next two decades, he tried every marketing gimmick he could think of. He put his own face on the package, making him both legendary and, some people believed, fictional. He sold millions of razors to the Army at a steep discount, hoping the habits soldiers developed at war would carry over to peacetime. He sold razors in bulk to banks so they could give them away with new deposits ("shave and save" campaigns). Razors were bundled with everything from Wrigley's gum to packets of coffee, tea, spices, and marshmallows. The freebies helped to sell those products, but the tactic helped Gillette even more. By giving away the razors, which were useless by themselves, he was creating demand for disposable blades. A few billion blades later, this business model is now the foundation of entire industries: Give away the cell phone, sell the monthly plan; make the videogame console cheap and sell expensive games; install fancy coffeemakers in offices at no charge so you can sell managers expensive coffee sachets."

Ars Technica: MetaRAM quadruples DDR2 DIMM capacities, launches 8GB DIMMs

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080224-metaram-quadruples-ddr2-dimm-capacities-launches-8gb-dimms.html
"Since its launch in January 2006, the only thing that has been publicly known about former AMD CTO Fred Weber's new venture is its name: MetaRAM. Clearly, the stealth-mode company was working on something to do with RAM, but what? As of today, MetaRAM is finally ready to talk about its technology, and it appears to be a pretty solid evolutionary step for the tried-and-true SDRAM DIMM module. In short, MetaRAM's technology enables DIMM capacity increases of two or four times, so that a single DDR2 MetaSDRAM DIMM can hold 4GB or 8GB of memory while still being a drop-in replacement for a normal DIMM.

Because MetaRAM's high-capacity DIMMs look to an Intel or AMD system like normal DDR2 DIMMs, the company expects to see servers with memory configurations that would normally require expensive custom hardware to become significantly cheaper. One of MetaRAM's channel partners will soon announce a server with 256GB of main memory for under $50,000, with 500GB boxes on tap for a higher price points"

Web Urbanist: 10 (More) Pieces of Clever Transforming Furniture: From Tetris Tables to Rooms in a Box

http://weburbanist.com/2008/02/24/10-more-pieces-of-clever-transforming-furniture-from-tetris-tables-to-rooms-in-a-box/
"Why is transforming furniture so alluring? Does it appeal to our sense that innovation is progress, the fact that fewer materials for more uses is sustainable or simply a return to the childhood love of things that we can actively change and shape as we wish? Whatever the reason, these designs range from humorous and impractical to jaw-droppingly cool. Be sure to scroll all the way down: the best (pictured briefly above) has been saved for last!"

NY Times: The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 - 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/02/23/movies/20080223_REVENUE_GRAPHIC.html
"Summer blockbusters and holiday hits make up the bulk of box office revenue each year, while contenders for the top Oscar awards tend to attract smaller audiences that build over time. Here's a look at how movies have fared at the box office, after adjusting for inflation."

Made By Elephant: We craft user experiences

http://www.madebyelephant.com/
"We are a small creative agency specialized in designing websites and online applications.

No matter if it’s the website of a small company, or a large scale online application, you need an interface that fits like a well-tailored suit. There’s no “one size fits all”."

Interactions Magazine: Designing for Disagreement

http://interactions.acm.org/content/?p=33
"Creativity is a leap of faith into unknown territory, and the thing that separates a creative problem solver is the ability to make the appropriate leaps. It is through a methodology - whether implicit or explicit - that a creative mind can navigate through a problem space, know when to make a leap, and how that leap will aid in delivering a richer solution to the problem. But, as defined, this event is a singular creative process. One person collects information, synthesizes it, and produces a creative result. The difficulty of methodology comes when individuals are asked to join a group and work together to solve a problem.

Increasingly, the problems the design community is being engaged to solve are compounding in complexity. As a result, what used to be something one person could solve alone now requires participation by a group of complementary collaborators. With such problems, the ways in which individuals solve problems has become less useful than understanding the ways a collaborative team solves a problem. While the individual approach should still be respected - the value of Design for today and tomorrow lies with understanding collaborative problem solving, the methods that enable a fluid design process, and the value of disagreement in solving complex problems."

ideasonideas: Design vs. Style

http://www.ideasonideas.com/2008/02/fuck_style/
"Design is such a multi-layered practice that it’s often difficult to define. That being said, I believe that the word “design” is increasingly confused with “style”. For example, to most “I like the way it’s designed” means that they like the way that something looks.

The visual aspect of what we do is highly important, and style has a place in that. For example, if we want to connect with a particular audience, employing a style can sometimes be helpful. That being said, it seems that style often leads efforts. We have to break this habit."

Joystiq: Wii Head Tracking

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/21/gdc08-boom-blox-to-include-head-tracking-seriously/
"At the end of the "Creating Boom Blox" session at GDC, executive producer Lou Castle revealed that you can use two Wii remotes on your TV (and some form of do-it-yourself LED headset) to control the camera in Boom Blox with your head. Seriously.

Speaking briefly to Joystiq after the session, Castle explained that it was more of an easter egg inclusion and they weren't planning to actively promote the feature. We'll have more from the Boom Blox session later this week. After the break, a video of do-it-yourself head tracking."

Mozilla Blog: 500 million Firefox downloads: complete; 500 million grains: in progress

http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2008/02/21/500-million-firefox-downloads-complete-500-million-grains-in-progress/
"Firefox just reached 500,000,000 downloads. This is an absolutely phenomenal milestone for Firefox. It is sort of hard to imagine what that number means. For some perspective, that’s roughly the audience size of 10,000 Rome Colosseums combined. It would be the weight, in kilograms, of 8,500 Boeing 747 airplanes. In dollars, for $500 million you and 15 of your friends can fly to the International Space Station."

Smashing Magazine: Powerful CSS-Techniques For Effective Coding

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/21/powerful-css-techniques-for-effective-coding/

"Sometimes being a web-developer is just damn hard. Particularly coding is often responsible for slowing down our workflow, reducing the quality of our work and sleepless nights with pizza and coffee laying around the laptop. Reason: with a number of incompatibility issues and quite creative rendering engines it sometimes takes too much time to find a workaround for some problem without addressing browsers with quirky hacks. And that’s where ready-to-use solutions developed by other designers come in handy.

One year ago we’ve published the post with 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without where we provided references to the most useful CSS-techniques which are often used in almost every project. Over the last year we’ve been observing what’s happening with the CSS-based web-development, and we collected most useful CSS-techniques we’ve stumbled upon — for us and for our readers.

In this post we present 50 new CSS-techniques, ideas and ready-to-use solutions for effective coding. You definitely know some of them, but definitely not all of them. Some technique is missing? Let us know in the comments to this post.

Thanks to all developers who contributed to the CSS-based design over the last year. The community appreciates it."

Business Week: Social Media Will Change Your Business

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db20080219_908252.htm
"Editor's note: When we published "Blogs Will Change Your Business" in May, 2005, Twittering was an activity dominated by small birds. Truth is, we didn't see MySpace coming. Facebook was still an Ivy League sensation. Despite the onrush of technology, however, thousands of visitors are still downloading the original cover story.

So we decided to update it. Over the past month, we've been calling many of the original sources and asking the Blogspotting community to help revise the 2005 report. We've placed fixes and updates into more than 20 notes; to view them, click on the blue icons. If you see more details to fix, please leave comments. The role of blogs in business is clearly an ongoing story.

First, the headline. Blogs were the heart of the story in 2005. But they're just one of the tools millions can use today to lift their voices in electronic communities and create their own media. Social networks like Facebook and MySpace, video sites like YouTube, mini blog engines like Twitter—they've all emerged in the last three years, and all are nourished by users. Social Media: It's clunkier language than blogs, but we're not putting it on the cover anyway. We're just fixing it."

Gizmodo: Stairs Bookcase Actually Makes Me Want to Move to London

http://gizmodo.com/358636/stairs-bookcase-actually-makes-me-want-to-move-to-london
"Here's a great idea for anyone who loves books and doesn't have enough apartment space or a Kindle: a "secret staircase" made of English oak, lined with books left, right and center, leading to a loft bedroom in a Victorian 1898 apartments block."

Lifehacker: Use your wii as a media center

http://lifehacker.com/357869/use-your-wii-as-a-media-center

5 Ways to Speed Up Windows XP

http://www.5min.com/Video/5-Ways-to-speed-up-your-computer-7060

Bittbox: Dingbats Roundup: 16 Incredibly Detailed, Useful (and free) Dingbat Fonts

http://www.bittbox.com/fonts/dingbats-roundup-16-incredibly-detailed-useful-and-free-dingbat-fonts/
"Now, before I start, not everyone is going to think these are all useful, so if you don’t ever use tree silhouettes, fine. But some of us do. Personally, I love dingbats because (most of the time) I convert them to vectors in Illustrator and use them as very large elements in some cases. All you have to do is use the font in Illustrator and then go to Type > Create Outlines, and Bam. You got yourself a vector to work with. Here are some dingbat fonts that I thought you might enjoy."

Visualizing Fitt's Law

http://particletree.com/features/visualizing-fittss-law/
"In preparation for the redesigns and overhauls we implemented in Wufoo, I took some time to revisit a few HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) fundamentals with the hopes of gleaning something new out of the decades of research dedicated to making interfaces easier to use. One thing that surprised me was how most of the material was pretty dense, heavily geared towards mathematicians it seemed and written in the impenetrable language of the academic elite. You’d think that if they’d really wanted to make an impact (especially on designers), they’d create documents that were a bit easier to digest."

Poolga: iPhone and iPod Touch wallpapers

http://www.poolga.com/
"iPhone and iPod Touch wallpapers from a selection of designers and illustrators from around the world.

We love our iPhones and we love customizing them. But we hate the standard wallpapers and cheesy nature themes available everywhere. That's why we create our own, and thought it would be nice to share them. So here they are. Enjoy!*

We upload new wallpapers every couple of days. Come back often and stay informed!"

Graphis '57 and '58

http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/graphis_annual_57_58
"As promised, here I will continue with my series on Graphis Annuals of years past (previously: ‘59/60 parts 1, 2, 3 and ‘71/72). This time I’ll be presenting some material from the 1957-58 edition. It’s not my favorite year but it’s an interesting year because you can see the past and future jostling for position. Though much of it feels distinctly 50’s some of the 60’s advertising style that would soon overtake everything was already making inroads. Below I have culled 22 images for your perusal, so happy perusing.

The issue begins with an introduction by Charles Rosner which I’ll spare you the bulk of. It does strike me as disrespectful and lazy somehow to not at least offer a few words, however, for context’s sake. So here is a single paragraph to get light your way forward.

Quote: “As for the impact [of advertsising] on society: the economic implications are closely linked up with deep-rooted inferences. The ‘social function’ of advertising is to stimulate wants, to make people dissatisfied with the little they have, and to work harder and earn more. Yet this function—to stimulate dissatisfaction—is relatively recent, for the goods people want, the auto, the washing machine, the radio, the television, electric iron, dishwasher, are all products of the lasty forty years or less. All this is part of the transformation, of the Western world at least, to a high-consumption society. There is more advertising in the United States not because salesmanship is a peculiar American virtue, or vice, but because of the comparative opulence of the country. As Professor Galbraith has written, A hungry man could never be persuaded that bread that is softened, sliced, wrapped and enriched is worth more than a cheaper and larger loaf that will fill his stomach.” —Charles Rosner, Graphis annual ‘57/58."

Six Revisions: 10 Web-building Resources You Should've Already Bookmarked

http://sixrevisions.com/resources/10-web-building-resources-you-shouldve-already-bookmarked/
"I spend a large portion of my day connected to the internet, and as a result I’ve amassed a large collection of websites and links pertaining to web development. Here’s 10 of my favorites:"

Six Revisions: Eight Tips on How to Manage Feature Creep

http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/eight-tips-on-how-to-manage-feature-creep/
"Feature creep, also known as scope or requirement creep, refers to unforeseen requests for additions and changes that are outside the project scope. It typically happens due to inadequate requirements gathering, poor initial planning, and an unclear protocol for change implementation, among other things.

In this article, I’d like to discuss eight tips and suggestions, based mostly on my experience, to help minimize and manage the effects of feature creep in your own projects."

Neatorama: Evolution of Car Logos

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/02/18/evolution-of-car-logos/
"This article should come in handy for the next time you’re stuck in traffic: have you ever wondered why the Audi in front of you has a logo of four interlocked rings? Did you know that the Cadillac emblem was inspired by a family crest of a nobleman who later turned out to be a fraud? Or that Volkswagen was Hitler’s idea?

We took a look at the evolution of tech logos before. Today, let’s take a look at the fascinating stories behind the logos of some of the most popular cars in the world:"

Iwata Asks: Wii Fit

http://us.wii.com/wii-fit/iwata_asks/vol2_page1.jsp
"Now, for the second part of this series, I would like to interview the two men behind the development of the Wii Balance Board, the world’s first game accessory capable of measuring your weight and body balance. It’s interesting to note here that the two are from completely different divisions: one is from the Entertainment Analysis & Development Division, which develops software, and the other is from the Integrated Research & Development Division, which develops hardware. I’d like to first ask Mr. Sawano to introduce himself and describe his responsibilities in developing Wii Fit. "

Netdiver Best of the Year 2007

http://netdiver.net/newsarchive/boty/boty07.php
"Netdiver Best of the Year are more than a yearly retrospective - or a trendy compendium. We share the same space as TIME Best of the Year (via Google) and for an online sub-culture design magazine, we think that's pretty awesome.

Review our 100 best of the best! These folks whatever their disciplines create memorable and dazzling projects, taking us to uncharted territories where imagination, skill, talent abide - inciting us to keep pushing forward."

NPR Free Live Concert Podcasts

Via Airbag Industries: Nekko Case live at the Disney Concert Hall. Thanks to Ryan for pointing us all to NPR's free live concert podcast. Amazing!

Fantasy League Typography

http://www.typography.com/ask/showBlog.php?blogID=75
"One of the things I most love about the design of the late nineteenth century is its unpredictability. Across all of the decorative arts there was a strong emphasis on novelty, and a succession of new technologies made it easier than ever to execute these strange and untested ideas. (You can see this in the terra cotta work of architect Louis Sullivan, or the elaborate inlays of furniture designer Gustav Herter.) The period was a riot of ornament, and to be sure, much of the work was awful: most of what we remember today is hopelessly cliché, or cloyingly overwrought. But then there are moments like these.

Above is a piece of nineteenth century engraving, which looks as if it might have been the product of a CalArts group project by Wim Crouwel and Louise Fili. (The rest of my fantasy league is no less oddball; images after the jump evoke Jonathan Barnbrook vs. John Downer, and Max Kisman vs. Marian Bantjes.) These excerpts come from an incredible collection of American sheet music from the period 1850-1920, currently being exhibited online by Duke University. The documents from the 1870s are my favorites, many of which are from the hand of an engraver named Reed (note his signature hiding in the fourth image below.) His stylistic pairings are among the more remarkable — above, the constructed sans serif and swelled rules are unexpected bedfellows. But some of my favorite moments are those in which unrelated visual agendas collide in the letterforms themselves. Is there anything more fabulous than the monoline blackletter of "Mazurka Elegante" below, or the squared-off shapes of the final line, "Tiny Birdlings of the Air?" Will you check out that lowercase g? —JH"

Ditch Your Cable Company With Free, Legal Alternatives

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ditch-your-cable-company-with-free-legal-alternatives/
"Ditching your cable company has never been more viable than it is today. The rise of online, streaming TV shows allows you to save on one of the most expensive household bills if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of the convenience of having either a cable box or DVR. The main question you will need to ask yourself is what shows you actually enjoy watching. Several name brand shows are now available online in free, ad supported formats; if your particular shows are not available then you may be stuck with your cable company, at least for now. More and more shows are always coming online, so keep checking back to see if your favorite show is available."

Psychology Today: Field Guide: Sarcastic Masters

http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070625-000002.html
"If there's such a thing as a congenital smart aleck, Rachel Mosteller is it. The 27-year-old Houston journalist has been ready with a well-timed barb since her elementary-school years. "I made my first quip when I was about 10. My parents were getting divorced right around my birthday, and I said, 'Well, isn't that a great present,'" she recalls. "That made my mom pretty mad."

Mosteller has continued to hone her sensibility ever since. "I tend to use it when I think people are taking themselves too seriously," she says.

Certified wisecrackers may see their snarky remarks as clever diversions, but because the distinction between a joke and an insult can be nebulous, they can easily damage relationships and careers with their one-liners. Frustrated by her company's practice of feting model employees with Hallmark-style gifts, Mosteller posted a send-up of the policy on her blog, The Sarcastic Journalist, in 2005. "You go and do something spectacular (most likely, you're doing your JOB) and someone says, 'Why golly, that was spectacular.' Then they bring you chocolate and some balloons," she wrote. Though she never disclosed her real name or the company's, higher-ups got wind of the post and she was promptly fired.

So why do wisecrackers keep their bons mots coming at the risk of alienating others? Though they may not be aware of it, sarcasm is their means of indirectly expressing aggression toward others and insecurity about themselves. Wrapping their thoughts in a joke shields them from the vulnerability that comes with directly putting one's opinions out there. "Sarcastic people protect themselves by only letting the world see a superficial part of who they are," says Steven Stosny, a Washington, D.C.-based therapist and anger specialist. "They're very into impression management."

Because humor and hostility often come mixed together, it can be difficult to pinpoint a wisecracker's primary intent. "Sometimes sarcasm is humor—purely a Don Rickles kind of joking—and sometimes it's just innocently insensitive," Stosny says. "But other times, it's devaluing." Everyone benefits from a wisecracker's comic relief, but if you are the target of regular swipes, it's best to assertively call the joker out. His hilariousness doesn't give him the right to belittle you."

White Hot: Silver loses its long-held top spot as the most popular car color.

http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/412/white-hot;_ylc=X3oDMTE2MDVocjJhBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEc2VjA2ZwLXRvZGF5BHNsawNob3QtY29sb3Jz
"After seven years wearing the color crown, silver has been dethroned.

For the first time this century, more white cars were manufactured in 2007 than those in any other color, according to DuPont’s most recent color study.

In North America, 19 percent of vehicles manufactured in 2007 were either white or "pearl white," which is white with an iridescent or metallic sheen. Eighteen percent of 2007 vehicles were silver, and 16 percent were black, including black with metallic effects.

White has also taken a decisive lead in other countries, including Japan and Mexico. In Europe, however, black was far and away the top color. See the charts below for the full breakdown."

Adweek: The Rise of BRIC: How Brazil, Russia, India and China are reshaping the marketing world

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/special-reports/other-reports/e3ibd2a4d5f94f9578bb5e64247c12ae3b1
" What used to be considered the developing countries of the Third World are quickly becoming the emerging economies of the next world. BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and China are four markets with unique characteristics, but are nonetheless tied together by the potential created after changes in their political systems unleashed the consumer demand of 43 percent of the world's population. Already, five of the planet's top 10 cities -- centers of wealth generation for consumers climbing the economic ladder -- are located in the burgeoning BRIC.

The term entered into business parlance in 2003 after Goldman Sachs global economist Jim O'Neill outlined his future worldview. He believed BRIC possessed the economic potential to become the world's four most dominant economies by 2050, which could be larger than that of the U.S. and Western Europe combined.

Recent headlines about the bailouts of major U.S. financial institutions and speculation about the dollar's fall from global dominance underscored the shift in power towards Asia that has been well under way. China and India, along with Russia, are expected to be among the fastest-growing economies in the world this year (although a U.S.-triggered global downturn could impact the BRIC economies, which are still heavily driven by exports)."

10 Insights From 11 Months Of Working At Google

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/02/10-insights-from-11-months-of-working-at-google.html#commentshttp://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/02/10-insights-from-11-months-of-working-at-google.html
"It will soon be a year of working at Google and milestones are always a good time for introspection.

I have a lot on my mind but there was one thing in particular that I wanted to share with you all:

What it is has been like working at Google.

Interesting, fun, surprising, insightful, inspiring, impactful, and more such words. This post shares that experience.

I went into Google with my own filters and expectations on what the experience would be like and what I would end up doing.

Looking back the reality has been different in so many ways, even for a jaded Silicon Valley veteran of layoffs and cool companies like myself."

Things I Learned at the Apple Store | Burbia

http://www.burbia.com/node/1614
"I stopped by the mall the other day, mainly to pick up a pair of sneakers my wife had ordered. (That's another story, shopping -- even picking up things -- for the wife. It rarely ends well.) Anyway in the mall, I passed an Apple Store. It had recently been renovated, and I had never been there. (In fact, I'd never been in an Apple Store anywhere.)
I went in. First, I'm not a techie or a remotely skilled computer user. I have no strong feelings about Apple. I went in without preconceptions. I went in really to avoid leaving the mall -- it was freezing out & snowing & I was hoping (dreaming) that a few minutes later it would be a lot warmer and not snowing.
Here's what I think I learned or observed or concluded on my first trip to the Apple Store..."

Smashing Magazine: 10 Principles of Effective Web Design

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/index.php/2008/01/31/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/
"Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site. Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has established as a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. After all, if users can’t use a feature, it might as well not exist.
We aren’t going to discuss the implementation details (e.g. where the search box should be placed) as it has already been done in a number of articles; instead we focus on the main principles, heuristics and approaches for effective web design — approaches which, used properly, can lead to more sophisticated design decisions and simplify the process of perceiving presented information.

Please notice that you might be interested in the usability-related articles about 10 Usability Nightmares and 30 Usability Issues we’ve published before,we’ll cover more principles of effective design in our following posts. Therefore you might want to subscribe to our RSS-feed.

In order to use the principles properly we first need to understand how users interact with web-sites, how they think and what are the basic patterns of users’ behavior."

Apple's Safari 3.1 to support downloadable web fonts, more

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/02/07/apples_safari_3_1_to_support_downloadable_web_fonts_more.html
"The ability to download and immediately render non-standard web fonts is just one of several advancements Apple Inc. has planned for Safari 3.1, a small but significant update to its share-gaining web browser for both the Mac and Windows PCs.

The release, which underwent private testing this week, will tie in a number of other enhancements, most of which have been under constant development as part of the company's WebKit open source application framework since last fall. They aim to provide Web developers a means of writing more dynamic and customizable web pages and iPhone apps, which will in turn provide surfers with a more feature-rich and enjoyable experience.

For example, CSS Transforms and CSS Animations will join web downloadable fonts in allowing Safari 3.1 and iPhone users to render web pages and web apps with enhanced design messages and real-time visual effects. By applying Transforms, developers can author trigger actions that scale, rotate, skew and translate HTML boxes in real time. Similarly, Animations offer a quicker route to AJAX-like effects, such as fading out an HTML element, or increasing the border of a box when hovered over.

Another significant addition to Safari 3.1 will be support of HTML5's SQL storage application programming interface (API), which is a client-side database storage programming interface that will allow a future array of web applications to store structured data locally on a user's machine using SQL. The API is asynchronous, according to Apple, and uses callback functions to track the results of a database query."

Mac Tips and Tricks: Top 100 Essential Mac Applications

http://www.mactricksandtips.com/2008/01/top-100-essential-mac-applications.html
"I love my Mac and I have hundreds of applications installed on it. As a result I wanted to do a post on what I believe are the top 100 Mac applications that are essential to any user. I've picked a variety of applications that I could think of. I have tried to go for the cheaper free option, but quite a few you have to pay for. If you think I am missing an application leave a comment with a link to the app and why you should think it should be included, it doesn't have to be long, I just want your opinions. If you disagree with any leave a comment with your reasons."

Esquire: The Five Most Pwned Newscasters

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/video/newscaster-bloopers-videos
"The Germans have a word for it: Schadenfreude, which literally translates to “Fuck you,” the etymology stemming from a nasty feud between the German bourgeoisie and the peasantry over whether or not Goethe’s Faustus was a comedy or a dramatic memoir. Anyway, what it means is that people love to see bad things happen to other people. It’s a relatively simple platitude of human nature: Watching others suffer means you’re not suffering. It’s the reason Tom Brady always has that smile on his face that says, “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure your life is pretty cool, too.”

Throw in the element of surprise, and it’s a surefire recipe for success. Newscasts are a medium tailor-made for real-time hilarity. Men and women so composed, so intent on pursuing the noble goal of reporting the events of the world, convincing themselves every night that it is important for the public to know about the upcoming apple-picking season, and it does matter that delicious fiber-rich desserts can have half the calories and fat of traditional cookies and cakes, so in the zone that the smallest derivation from the script is magnified tenfold. These videos? Try one thousand fold."

Present Imperfect: Neither aroused nor inspired.

http://www.presentimperfect.com/archives/2008/01/neither_aroused.html
"Alrighty. Let’s just get this out of the way, shall we?:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
-Steve Jobs on the Amazon Kindle

I could spend the rest of this post saying things like “hey, Steve, doesn’t that mean that sixty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or more last year?” Or pointing in the direction of the nearest behemoth bookstore superchain whilst making “duh” face. Or mentioning that I don’t think Amazon became the number-one online retailer in the universe by selling flyfishing accessories.

The comments on every site that published this quote are positively aglow with this kind of gleeful reactionary outrage. All over a statistic I can’t find anywhere — except in that quote.

This is because crazy genius billionaires make stuff up.

In fact, most crazy geniuses become billionaires by making stuff up. iPod? That’s a word from a language I invented when I was eight in order to secretly communicate with my imaginary dog-faced friend, Jorb from Orb. Okay, no. But it could have been, for all its made-upedness. And the iPod itself is a shiny fruit fallen to earth from an enchanted tree in a mystical fairy land populated entirely by crazy geniuses.

Really great ideas tend to be unique. Or, at least, they transform just-okay ideas into really great ideas by adding something unique.

If the Kindle fails, it won’t be because it’s ugly or because it uses only one font or because people don’t read anymore. It will fail because of a lack of imagination. The book was a fucking great idea. Seriously ace. Thank you, Aldus Manutius, you 15th-century Venetian crazy genius. The Kindle is not a unique idea, nor does it improve on Manutius’s really great idea.

Arthur C. Clarke, who has written way more about failure of imagination, once said, “Nothing will ever replace books. They can’t be matched for convenience, random access, nonvolatile memory (unless dropped in the bath), low power consumption, portability, etc.”

Of course, that hasn’t stopped Clarke from giving Amazon whatever permission it needs to turn some of his works into Kindle editions. But, hey: Crazy geniuses can also become billionaires by hedging their bets."

Tom Peters: You, Me, and Charlie

http://www.tompeters.com/entries.php?note=010180.php
"Over Christmas I read George Crile's Charlie Wilson's War, the tale of the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan and the subsequent implosion of the Evil Empire, our undisputed nemesis for the first half century of my life. I can state with some certainty that it was the most incredible non-fiction story I have ever (!!) read. Last night I saw the movie—it was, for me, wonderful, though a pale reproduction of the full 550-page treatment by Crile. Turning to the practicalities of your and my day-to-day professional affairs, the story was peppered with de facto analyses of how Charlie did his amazing thing. He is indeed "larger than life," and yet his practical "can do" tactics have a lot to teach all of us. As I imagine it, 100% of the readers of this Blog are Professional Change Agents, fighting wars against the bureaucratic evil empires that impede success. So what follows is rather (!) lengthy for a Blogpost, but ridiculously short considering the importance of the subject matter:"

Designer Today: Hundreds of Illustrator Tutorials

http://www.designertoday.com/Tutorials/Illustrator.aspx
"Designer Today: Hundreds of Illustrator Tutorials"

Lifehacker: Hack your metabolism

http://lifehacker.com/351394/hack-your-metabolism
"Need to get your metabolism going? Personal trainer and blogger Lauren proposes that you can bolster your metabolism by eating enough (not too little, like most people who diet), eating more frequently (5-6 small meals a day), and adding more protein and fiber to your diet. Exercise should also be added to your daily regimen. Weight-training, building muscles, and doing more high-intensity cardiovascular exercise are critical."
http://laurensfitness.com/2008/01/10/increase-your-metabolism-11-helpful-tips/

Energi Design: Motion Graphics

http://www.clickenergi.com/

Eden Soto, Motion Designer

http://edensoto.com/
Reel: http://vimeo.com/386633

Flickr: More regrettable incidents in a life filled with bitter remorse

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fullarton/sets/1381539/
"Don't know really. Started out as something, ended up many other things. I've been eating a lot of figs recently. They're good and ripe right now."

The Visual Dictionary

http://thevisualdictionary.net/
"The Visual Dictionary is a collection of words in the real world. Photographs of signage, graffiti, advertising, tattoos, you name it, we're trying to catalogue it.

We started the project in February 2006, and have since racked up over 5000 images of over 3000 words - thanks to everyone who has contributed to date. We're of course, still accepting entries, as the Dictionary should just continue growing forever, but we're starting to think about ways of navigating and browsing images now.

If you want to join in, why not sign up and contribute images, or drop us a line with your ideas of how we could use the images. We're open to suggestions! We'll be releasing a proper API soon so you can develop your own solutions too!"
http://thevisualdictionary.net/twitter/

PHP + CSS Dynamic Text Replacement (P+C DTR)

http://artypapers.com/csshelppile/pcdtr/
"PHP + CSS Dynamic Text Replacement is a JavaScript-free version of the Dynamic Text Replacement method originally created by Stewart Rosenberger.
P+C DTR allows you to take a vanilla standards-based (X)HTML web page and dynamically create images to replace and enhance page headings using only PHP + CSS. Sick of using the same three fonts? Tired of editing heading images in PhotoShop? If so, P+C DTR might be for you."

What I Learned at the SEED Conference

http://www.passion2publish.com/2008/01/what-i-learned.html
"Last Friday I had the opportunity to attend the SEED conference here in Chicago. What is this SEED conference you ask?

"A One-Day Conference on Design, Entrepreneurship & Inspiration, by 37signals, Segura Inc. & Coudal Partners."

First off, the conference was inside the Rem Koolhass designed Tribune Student Center -- which is an amazing building itself, nestled in the middle of an entire campus designed by Mies van der Rohe. So, the fact that my attention was diverted from drooling over that much beauty is testament to the value of the conference. But I definitely used the breaks to walk the halls with my jaw on the floor. If you live in or around Chicago, or are just visiting, it's definitely worth the trip in the cold."

http://www.seedconference.com/

What font says 'Change'?

http://s-nonblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-font-says-change.html
"TYPOGRAPHY CAN subtly or boldly define a company, product, or person. Whether it is Best Buy's big, bold, screaming signs or the sweet, elegant script on a wine label, the type talks to us, the reader. The logos of the presidential candidates are no exception."

Squealing and Blinking: An Analog Artificial Neural Network as ArtPhil Stearns has constructed a 45 "neuron" network of electronic parts which respond

http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2008/01/are_analog_artificial_neural_n.php
"Phil Stearns has constructed a 45 "neuron" network of electronic parts which responds to lights and tones with a (rather cute) squealing sound. A picture of the strange device:"

Simply birolliant - the incredible 10ft 'photographs' drawn with a ballpoint pen

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=511688&in_page_id=1770&ito=newsnow
"They may look like pin-sharp photographs - but these amazing pictures are actually drawings created with the humble ballpoint pen.
The stunning pictures, measuring up to 10ft high, were drawn by a rising star of the art world, Juan Francisco Casas.

Casas, 31, can use up to four 14p ballpoint pens for a canvas and his works are already a sell-out at exhibitions.

Formerly a traditional painter, Juan began the drawings three years ago based on photographs of nights out with his friends."

Think Simple Now: 8 Keys to Instant Charisma

http://thinksimplenow.com/relationships/8-keys-to-instant-charisma/
"There is a simple fact of human nature that states we all want to be liked. Don’t be afraid to admit it. If we think about it, underlying many of our actions, we are really seeking ways to validate ourselves and to fulfill this desire of being liked.

Have you ever met someone and instantly took a liking towards them? You can’t explain why, but you feel a fondness and you want to do things to help them. I’m not talking about sexual attraction, but a genuine and innocent feeling of fondness towards another person."

Apple Launches How-To Site For New Mac Users

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206101197
"For Windows users thinking of taking the plunge, the site offers video on how to move data from a Windows PC to a Mac."
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/macosx/