techdirt: Saying You Can't Compete With Free Is Saying You Can't Compete Period

http://techdirt.com/articles/20070215/002923.shtml

reply from informationarchitects.jp:
http://www.informationarchitects.jp/how-to-compete-with-free

Engadget galleries: Windows mobile 7?

Galleries > Is this Windows Mobile 7?

http://www.engadget.com/photos/is-this-windows-mobile-7/

NY Times: Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/business/30know.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
"IT’S a pickle of a paradox: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience.

Andrew S. Grove, the co-founder of Intel, put it well in 2005 when he told an interviewer from Fortune, “When everybody knows that something is so, it means that nobody knows nothin’.” In other words, it becomes nearly impossible to look beyond what you know and think outside the box you’ve built around yourself."

Slate: Don't Fear Starbucks

http://www.slate.com/id/2180301/pagenum/all/

"The first time Herb Hyman spoke with the rep from Starbucks, in 1991, the life of his small business flashed before his eyes. For three decades, Hyman's handful of Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf stores had been filling the caffeine needs of Los Angeles locals and the Hollywood elite: Johnny Carson had his own blend there; Jacques Cousteau arranged to have Hyman's coffee care packages meet his ship at ports around the world; and Dirty Dozen leading man Lee Marvin often worked behind the counter with Hyman for fun. But when the word came down that the rising Seattle coffee juggernaut was plotting its raid on Los Angeles, Hyman feared his life's work would be trampled underfoot. Starbucks even promised as much. "They just flat-out said, 'If you don't sell out to us, we're going to surround your stores,' " Hyman recalled. "And lo and behold, that's what happened—and it was the best thing that ever happened to us."

Smashing Magazine: 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/01/19/53-css-techniques-you-couldnt-live-without/
"CSS is important. And it is being used more and more often. Cascading Style Sheets offer many advantages you don’t have in table-layouts - and first of all a strict separation between layout, or design of the page, and the information, presented on the page. Thus the design of pages can be easily changed, just replacing a css-file with another one. Isn’t it great? Well, actualy, it is.

Over the last few years web-developers have written many articles about CSS and developed many useful techniques, which can save you a lot of time - of course, if you are able to find them in time. Below you’ll find a list of techniques we , as web-architects, really couldn’t live without. They are essential and they indeed make our life easier. Let’s take a look at 53 CSS-based techniques you should always have ready to hand if you develop web-sites.

Thanks to all developers who contributed to accessible and usable css-based design over the last few years. We really appreciate it. Thanks!"

Mayang's Free Texture Gallery

http://mayang.com/textures/
"Our texture library has over 3400 free to download, free to use, high-resolution textures.
Online at www.mayang.com/textures"

Bittbox: Random Free Vectors - Part 9

http://www.bittbox.com/freebies/random-free-vectors-part-9/
"I had fun making these. I’m constantly trying to push my Illustrator skills to the limit, so I was experimenting, and I came up with this set of freebies in the process. I don’t even know what to call these free vectors. Swirls, ornaments, swooshes, I don’t know. Call them what you want, but I hope you like them. Download AI, EPS, or SVG."

Brusheezy: 20 Photoshop Brushes

http://www.brusheezy.com/brush/530-Paint-Brush-Strokes
"Here I have 20 paint-brush stroke brushes for Photoshop CS 2! Made with an actual paint brush on paper, then scanned in at a large resolution. The zip-file includes a jpg image so that older Photoshop-users can define them as brushes separately."

Smashing Magazine: Best of October 2007

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/11/14/best-of-october-2007/
"Every month we take a look around and select some of the most interesting web-development-related web-sites. We read articles, check out tools, analyze the advantages of new resources. Below you’ll find useful references, tutorials, services, tools, techniques and articles we’ve found over the last 30 days - an overview of web-sites you shouldn’t have missed in October 2007.

All images can be clicked and lead to the sites from which the screenshots have been taken."

Pop Upon Magazine: Geek Trends: 15 Footers with great usability

http://yample.com/popupon/?p=54
"Footers are becoming an essential strategy to engage visitors. Leaders in the industry are moving toward implementing effective footer features and creating a place for presenting, displaying and branding to their audiences in a very personal way by providing intuitive nature.

On the search for effective integrated footers we collected a few that are amazing for creating engagement to produce internal traffic and brand awareness. We present you an alphabetical order list of 15 Footers with viable integration."

thecontaminated.com: Adobe Design Achievement Award Winners 2007

http://thecontaminated.com/adobe-design-achievement-award-winners-2007/

http://www.adobe.com/education/adaa/

Lifehacker: The 20 Best iPod Utilities

http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/the-20-best-ipod-utilities-329507.php
"With a new generation of iPods on the market this holiday season, your reliable old iPod may not seem as shiny as it once did. But with the help of third party applications and utilities, you can unlock tons of useful functionality you never knew was there and revive that aging iPod so it doesn't look quite so bad next to its successors. Whether new or old, the following 20 iPod utilities can help you get the most from your iPod."

a.viary.com: Hacking in the real world

http://a.viary.com/bizblog/posts/hacking-in-the-real-world/
"There is a prevailing attitude amongst creators that it is better to release a prototype and rebuild it the right way if it becomes popular then building it the right way from scratch.

That's foolish, but it's also largely unavoidable, since you can never really know what problems exist with your prototype until their has been mass adoption of it. The Catch 22 is that if your prototype does get properly adopted, it's already too late to rebuild it from scratch.

There's a line at your door and they want immediate attention."

Web Designer Wall: Best of CSS Design 2007

http://www.webdesignerwall.com/trends/best-of-css-design-2007/
"For those who don’t know, I’m also the guy behind Best Web Gallery and N.Design Studio. In 2006, I started Best Web Gallery as a gallery site where I feature the best CSS and Flash sites. I’m glad that I started the project because it gives me the opportunity to keep my design sense up-t0-the-trend. In the past year, I’ve seen a lot of sites from the submissions (some are great, some are horrible). As 2007 is wrapping up, I would like to share the best design sites with you. Here is a list of 50 websites hand-picked from Best Web Gallery — Best of CSS Design 2007."

abduzeedo.com: 2007 GRAPHIC DESIGN INSPIRATION

http://abduzeedo.com/2007-graphic-design-inspiration
"This last december was a bit odd, I was robbed, they took my laptop and 2 iPods, I had all my backups and all my clients jobs in those, for sure one of the most delicate situations in my life, I didn’t know what to do. So I decided to start a blog and save some of the jobs I done and share them with everyone. This would allow me to promote myself too.

In these last 12 months I’ve seen lots of really good designs, they have inspired me and helped me to get over this unfortunate incident. The outcome of that made me think and focus so to celebrate this past year and to welcome the next I decided to post ( in my opinion) 2007 ´s best designs. Enjoy!"

JotSpot to Spawn Google Sites - Can it Make Intranet CMS Dinosaurs Extinct?

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/jotspot_to_spawn_google_sites.php
"A well linked to post over the weekend was Andrew Miller's notes on a Google Apps presentation. The main presenter was Scott Johnston, former VP of Product Development at JotSpot - one of my favorite Web Office apps that was acquired just over a year ago by Google, but has yet to be turned into a Google Apps product. Well apparently JotSpot is being integrated, according to Miller's notes.

JotSpot is/was a very flexible wiki-based product, which had spreadsheeting and other office functionality. Miller reported that it will spawn "Google Sites" in 2008, which "will expand upon the Google Page Creator already offered within Apps." It will be based on JotSpot collaboration tools and will allow businesses to set up intranets, project management tracking, customer extranets, and "any number of custom sites based on multi-user collaboration.""

The Troubles With OpenID 2.0

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_troubles_with_openid_20.php
"Portland, Oregon's JanRain, leaders in the OpenID movement, put on a PR push this week to promote what they say is the imminent approval of OpenID 2.0's final draft. Specifically, they say that they expect the final signatures to be penned on Monday at the upcoming Internet Identity Workshop.

General consensus is that it's the finalization of 2.0 that many big players have been waiting on. Remember when Digg said they would support OpenID, for example? In theory, this is what they and many others are waiting on.

Here's how I explain OpenID. Once you register an OpenID with any of a number of vendors (like JanRain's MyOpenID.com) then you can login with it anywhere that supports OpenID login. You can also use your existing accounts from a growing number of services as an OpenID login, like AIM, Bloglines, WordPress, etc.

What's the value for the user?"

There's No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blogosphere_long_tail.php
" In 2004 Chris Anderson wrote an influential book called The Long Tail. In it, he argued that the future of business is to sell less of more. The main premise is that collectively, things that are in rather low demand can amount to quite large volumes. This is because there is a large number of people who belong to the long tail and they encompass a wide rage of tastes.

A classic example of successful long tail sales is Amazon. A substantial subset of the book sales for the largest online retailer comes from obscure books. Amazon itself could afford to stock up on rare books as well as offer these via numerous online partners. The net effect is that a lot of book sales occured in the long tail. This phenomenon is captured nicely in a quote from an Amazon employee: "We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.""

Emmanuel Polanco: Portfolio 2001-2007

http://www.emmanuelpolanco.net/portfolio/illustrations.htm#heg
"

Flickr Set: Business Cards

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dailypoetics/sets/72057594104389710/
Great set of business card designs from all over...