Coke's New Design Direction

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/aug2008/id20080825_105720.htm
"When David Butler joined Coca-Cola (KO) almost five years ago, he was given, as he tells it, "the Post-it Note mandate: We need to do more with design. Go figure it out." Butler, who had come from a gig as director of brand strategy at the interactive marketing and consulting firm Sapient, had soon written up a 30-page manifesto laying out a design strategy for the company. But if Butler, who's now vice-president for design, has made an impact at the beverage giant, it's not because of some heady proclamation. Instead it's because he has learned the most effective way to implement design strategy at a company as large and complex as Coca-Cola: avoid the word "design" as much as possible."

Postmortem Bioshock

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3774/postmortem_2k_boston2k_.php
"

[Gamasutra is proud to be publishing notable Game Developer magazine postmortems online for the first time - starting with project lead Finley revealing the creation of 2K Boston/Australia's seminal BioShock.]

The story of developing BioShock is an epic one and isn't easily expressed in 10 postmortem points. The team and the game changed remarkably over the course of development. A company was acquired. The team size doubled. The product focus changed from RPG hybrid to shooter.

It's easy to talk about the processes we used to develop the game, but it's harder to describe the creative spark that somehow managed to turn the most unlikely of premises (a failed underwater art deco utopia set in the 1960s) into a marketable shooter. It took a visionary to make the creative choices to guide the game, and an incredibly talented and hardworking team to bring that vision to life."

Smashing Magazine: Top 10 CSS Table Designs

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/13/top-10-css-table-designs/
"Tables have got to be one of the most difficult objects to style in the Web, thanks to the cryptic markup, the amount of detail we have to take care of, and lack of browser compatibility. A lot of time could be wasted on a single table although it’s just a simple one. This is where this article comes in handy. It will show you ten most easily implemented CSS table designs so you can style your tables in a zap!"

Chicago Tribune: Underwater, a disturbing new world

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-great-lakes-invasives_30jul30,0,5835308.story
A Tribune team follows researchers to the bottom of Lake Michigan as they try to explain the rapidly shifting ecosystem
"OFF ATWATER BEACH, Wis.—This place should be an underwater desert.

But as the three researchers wearing scuba tanks and lead weights drop through the water, the landscape of rounded stones 30 feet below is disturbingly full of strange, new life.

In just a few years, the gravel and white boulders that for centuries covered the bottom of Lake Michigan between Chicago and the Door County, Wis., peninsula have disappeared under a carpet of mussels and primitive plant life.

The change is not merely cosmetic. In the last three years or so, scientists say, invasive species have upended the ecology of the lakes, shifting distribution of species and starving familiar fish of their usual food supply."

MArk Cuban Blog: A Couple of My Rules for Startups

http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/03/09/my-rules-for-startups/
"My buddy Jason had a GREAT post about rules for startups. Read it, love it learn it.

Of course, anyone who has started a company has their own rules and guidelines, so I thought i would add to the meme with my own. My "rules" below aren't just for those founding the companies, but for those who are considering going to work for them as well."

27th May 2007, the second trip to the Zone of the Chernobyl atomic power stations

http://www.nuclearflower.com/pripyat/pripyat.html
"

This trip to the alienated Zone of the Chernobyl atomic power station was much more interesting than last year. We left early so that we would have more time.

As to the risk (as many ask) I will say the following: the background level in the Zone is not a big danger (except for several places where one would not think of going). The intenisty of the exposure dose of radiation at 10 km from site is not high. The dose received by us for a day is comparable to what would be received on one transatlantic flight. Greatest danger is risk of inhaling a hot particle, a slice of nuclear fuel from a reactor. The probability of this is low, as compliance with the safety precautions and rules of behaviour in the Zone aims for zero, but the possibility exists, therefore everyone solves it for themselves, and I have, for a long time, solved it for all.

Having left Kiev at 7:30am by minibus with air conditioning (hurrah!) we stopped at the village Zalese which is now a completely impassable jungle though it once had a population of more than two thousand people, then called into Chernobyl for a short briefing. We were surprised by the huge, monumental constructions intended for cooling water. The closer we approached, the higher our radiometres read, these places did not previously pass activation test and visitors did not go in the general area, we appeared to be the first visitors allowed there. Still not too close as readings rapidly increased on approach.

We then went to a viewing place called "Shelter". The wind blew from station to us, the background level on the platform was one third of what it was in June last year, the work on strengthening and repair of a sarcophagus goes on effectively enough.

Pripyat—a phantom city—is not present on maps anymore, a city about which many people will know nothing, a city which will reduce to ruins over the years but which for the people who were involved it is important and will always be remembered. In the street it is hot, more than 30°C, every couple of hours we are in the bus to be cooled down and have a bite.

We found a strongly radiation infected ladle-capture. It was amusing to observe how some people with radiometres were hysterically peeping with excitement to find the hottest point on it, and other people, on the sly, departed far away from it."

How to enable kerning in Firefox 3?

http://ubuntu-snippets.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-enable-kerning-in-firefox-3.html
"If you don't know about kerning please visit wikipedia article on kerning. Kerning deals with space adjustments between letters to make words more readable. Now a days most of the fonts are shipped with kern hinting but very few applications make use of this extra information. Firefox 3 now officially supports kerning for text elements.

Please make sure you only apply kerning to the elements which use larger font sizes because you won't observe much difference with smaller ones. And use kerning carefully as it could slowdown page rendering because of extra math calculations.

With Firefox 3 you can use the css property text-rendering to enable or disable kerning. text-rendering takes following 4 possible values.

• auto - default value of text-rendering. Gecko will try to guess which one of the following option to use probably based on some kind of global setting.
• optimizeSpeed - will disable font kerning.
• optimizeLegibility - this option enables kerning & ligatures.
• geometricPrecision - this option also enables kerning."

Think Simple Now: Connect with Your Creative Writer

http://thinksimplenow.com/creativity/connect-with-your-creative-writer/
"Do you have to complete a piece of writing but are putting it off? A report, a blog article, or a letter? Are you finding that the moment you sit down to write, your mind seems to go blank? Crap! Writers block! What can you do about it?

Although, the term writers block is popular, this feeling of blockage and mind blanking is not specific to writing, but of any creative feats. Other examples include, brainstorming for a new business, dancing, musical performances, music composition, painting or photography. I’ve personally experienced this during my photography work, blanking out as I stand in front of a client waiting for me for direction. I call these Creative Blocks, where your mind just comes up empty and you feel lost. It’s purely mental."

Popular Mechanics: Why Pixar Is the Apple of Hollywood

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4270580.html?series=6
"LOS ANGELES — To see the influence of Apple on Pixar, you don't have to look much further than WALL*E—not the cute trash-compacting robot from the studio's eponymous new film (though he does boot up to the Mac chime and own an iPod), but his polished white paramour, EVE. Part iPhone 3G, part Asimo, she's the animated equivalent of the next product that might be unveiled by Steve Jobs, who effectively runs both companies. Except for the laser blaster, perhaps."

Mashable: 30+ Must-Have Updated Firefox 3 Extensions

http://mashable.com/2008/06/26/firefox-3-extensions/
"We’ve put together a list of 30+ must-have Firefox 3 extensions that we know you’ll enjoy, whether you’ve upgraded to Firefox 3 and are looking for something new to add to your browser, or have yet to make the upgrade and are looking for a reason.

We cover everything from useful tools to social bookmarking and more. Let us know which extensions are your favorites."

Chicago Tribune: Jesus in China: Christianity's rapid rise

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-jesus-1-1-webjun22,0,833717.story
"The rise of Christianity is reshaping the officially atheist nation, its politics and the way many Chinese view the world. The Tribune's Evan Osnos reports from Beijing and the countryside."

Preview: CNET's new, improved look

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-9974373-80.html
"The new CNET home page includes a carousel highlighting several stories across News, Reviews, and Downloads, as well as an integrated video player for CNET TV content. Click on the image for a full view.

After more than a dozen years of bringing you our content surrounded by yellow and green, CNET is getting a new look. As you can see above, the carnival of colors is being replaced by a cleaner look that pivots off our content and our updated red CNET logo."

Vimeo: Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)

http://www.vimeo.com/1211060
"14 months in the making, 42 countries, and a cast of thousands. Thanks to everyone who danced with me."

Freelance Folder: 20 Must-Read Blogs For Freelance Writers

http://freelancefolder.com/20-must-read-blogs-for-freelance-writers/
"The idea of this post comes from Steven’s recent post on freelance blogging. Freelance writing certainly has many advantages and can be rewarding too.

It goes without saying that in order to become a freelance writer, you gotta love writing. But you should also consistently work on sharpening your skills. And how do you do that? Reading well-written articles and blogs is a very good start! This can help you write innovative and appealing content."

Blik Wall Graphics

http://www.whatisblik.com/
" blik. Wall graphics for the commitment phobic.

blik surface graphics are oversized, self-adhesive, removable decals that allow anyone to quickly & easily create decorative patterns or custom wall murals for home or office."

Girl Effect

http://www.girleffect.org/

http://www.girleffect.org/#/about/

Mezzoblue chalkwork icons

http://www.mezzoblue.com/icons/chalkwork/
"Chalkwork is a visually unified set of carefully designed royalty-free icons. Built to cover some of the most common icon needs of web and software designers, the entire Chalkwork family offers hundreds of computer and internet-related metaphors in a visually consistent style at 3 different sizes in up to 6 file formats."

LA Times: Your boss shouldn't read your text or e-mail messages without an OK, court says

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-text19-2008jun19,0,4172340.story
"The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules in favor of an Ontario police officer whose messages were obtained by the Police Department and reviewed without his permission."

Fail Blog

http://failblog.org/
"A collection of FAIL images"

How can I prevent my own content from being indexed or remove content from Google's index?

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35301&topic=8459
" How can I prevent my own content from being indexed or remove content from Google's index?

You can instruct us not to include content from your site in our index or to remove content from your site that is currently in our index in the following ways:

• Remove your entire website or part of your website using a robots.txt file.
• Remove individual pages of your website using a robots meta tag.
• Remove cached copies of your pages using a robots meta tag.
• Remove snippets that appear below your page's title in our search results and describe the content of your page.
• Remove outdated pages by returning the proper server response.
• Remove images from Google Image Search using a robots.txt file.
• Remove blog entries from Google Blog Search.
• Remove transcoded versions of your pages (pages we've reformatted for mobile browsers).

If the content is currently in our index, we will remove it after the next time we crawl it. To expedite removal, use the URL removal request tool in Google Webmaster Tools.