May 2006 Archives

• 31 May 2006

  Web-Stalking, Simplified

  Ooh, I'm really enjoying Stalkerati.com. It lets me snoop on people efficiently! (What does this say about me?) :)

• 31 May 2006

  State of the Union, Deconstructed

  Think of the President's State of the Union Address as the nation's zeitgeist for the pulsepoints of the American people. (Okay, so in some cases, you may have to read between the lines a bit.) And so it makes for rich material for new media artists...

• 30 May 2006

  Worldwide, Internet Users Are Still the Minority

  According to Miniwatts Marketing Group's Internet Usage and World Population Statistics, 68.6% of North Americans use the internet. But North America only represents 5.1% of the worldwide population. Worldwide internet penetration is just 15.7%.

• 29 May 2006

  Online Compression Tool

  Compress/decompress files through Krunch, a simple, online web utility that supports .zip, .rar and .gzip file formats. Krunch.

• 29 May 2006

  An Inconvenient Truth Finds an Audience

  The film on global warming with Al Gore (QuickTime movie trailer) managed to climb to #11 at the box office despite its limited release in only four theaters. An Inconvenient Truth - Off to a Good Start, via Treehugger.

• 29 May 2006

  TV Guide Needs Guidance

  With print publications continuing to experience eroding readership, TV Guide seems to think it may have the panacea to recapture newsstand buyers: a free DVD of television clips. Isn't it cheaper to make these clips available for download online instead...

• 29 May 2006

  UNIQLO SoHo

  UNIQLO -- the Japanese clothing company that's a cross between Banana Republic's affordable, casual yet refined aesthetic and the Body Shop's socially responsible raison d'etre -- will be opening a retail store in NY City's SoHo. They have launched a...

• 29 May 2006

  Skeet Shoot: The General Theory of Design

  I empathize/commiserate with Brian Sooy's poignant General Theory of Design: "Design consists of creating things for clients who may not know what they want...

• 28 May 2006

  Pixel to Em Converter

  Nice little tool helps you convert your CSS markup from pixels to ems: Em Calculator.

• 27 May 2006

  Times New Roman

  As previously posted, Microsoft plans to include newly-crafted fonts in their next OS and Office releases. What wasn't known at the time was that apparently they will be sunsetting Times New Roman and will replace it with Calibri -- a sans serif...

• 26 May 2006

  Visualizing Websites by Tags: The Applet

  Sala at aharef.info just posted the applet for visualizing websites by tags (see earlier post). It uses Processing, the java-based, open source...

• 25 May 2006

  Visualizing Websites by Tags

  A graphical way of viewing site complexity and structure as color-coded nodes and branches: Aharef: Websites as graphs.

• 25 May 2006

  New Products Getting Nekked

  Oh, the bliss of opening a shiny, new digital toy. Unboxing.com is a new blog that indulges those of us who get goose-pimply as we slowly peel off packaging layers from our prized gadgets. Of course, this comes just shortly after Wired released Tales From Packaging Hell: the unseamly side of unboxing.

• 25 May 2006

  Book Cover Design

  A site dedicated to book cover artwork: Book Covers. Among my favorites...

• 23 May 2006

  Banish "www."

  Typing it is annoying. Saying it is even more cumbersome. Let's face it, there's no need for it: www. is deprecated.

• 23 May 2006

  Marketing through Chatty Housewives

  BusinessWeek reports that Procter & Gamble has hired moms to endorse and spread the word about their products in stealthy word-of-mouth marketing campaigns. This just really crosses the ethical line, in my opinion. Sorry, but my friends won't sell me out so they can get loads of free product samples by shilling unwanted groceries. But this is why I don't have too many friends, I guess.

• 23 May 2006

  The Funny Thing About Germans...

  With a language riddled with compound words (say Abkürzungsverzeichnis three times, fast!), I imagine it's a challenge for Germans to get comic timing right. And this hasn't gone unnoticed by the Brits. A funny piece on -- would you believe...

• 23 May 2006

  Editorial Style Guide

  The Telegraph released their blogging style guide, a brief primer to blogging best practices. My favorite tip: "Try to avoid writing things like "you can read the full report here", with 'here' being the link. A construction such as "the...

• 22 May 2006

  Sign of the Times

  Does anyone actually use newspapers for stock data? Finally: The New York Times to Cease Printing Daily Stock Tables. Rebuilding Media: The fate of media.

• 22 May 2006

  Del.icio.us Color Swatches

  Use del.icio.us to save or browse through color palettes: del.icio.us/tag/ColorScheme

• 21 May 2006

  Microsoft's 4,000-Page Open XML Draft Standard

  "At 4,000 plus pages, a 6.7MB Microsoft Word document, the Open XML draft standard is less of a standard and more of a painfully detailed description of how Open XML could be used to display almost any possible Microsoft Office...

• 21 May 2006

  Pearl Jam Does Good Web 2.0 Business

  Pearl Jam released their most recent video under a Creative Commons license. The video can be donwloaded for free from May 19-24 at Google Video...

• 19 May 2006

  Feed Factoids

  Did you know that heaviest volume of feeds are read on Tuesday? Find out more feed factoids from Pheedo's current findings (PDF) on feeds and user behaviors, via Online News Squared.

• 18 May 2006

  Fubar? What fubar?

  Pogue's piece on The Human Side of a Microsoft Disaster offers an interesting perspective from a former MSFT employee behind what had gone wrong with their Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC): "It's like when a new Robin Williams movie comes out...

• 18 May 2006

  PDFs Make Good Business, Part 2

  Following on the heels of O'Reilly's earlier report on their customers' overwhelming PDF preference, 37 Signals reports that their PDF book has made close to $175k in sales: 75-day Getting Real book stats update - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals).

• 17 May 2006

  PDFs Make Good Business

  O'Reilly's Rough Cuts stats confirm that folks DO like PDFs after all with 95% of their customers opting for the PDF version of pre-release books: O'Reilly Radar > Gentlemen Prefer PDFs.

• 17 May 2006

  Imagery, Ten Ways

  Interactive pieces commissioned by Getty Images that explore visual language. My favorites: Less Rain's Color , and Sumona's Information. 10 ways.

• 17 May 2006

  One of the Top Three Vices

  Amiglia is a smart, best-of-breed Web 2.0 genealogy application created by fellow ITP alums, Paul and Milena Berry. And, it's free during their beta period. "[Genealogy] is the third most popular pursuit...behind the twin vices of gambling and porn," ...

• 17 May 2006

  Tech Speak

  I advocate simplicity in everything. But articles like this, Why the Tech Industry Needs to Change Its Language, only tell half the story...

• 16 May 2006

  Highlights from the 2006 ITP Spring Show

  If you weren't able to catch the ITP Show last week, you can be there vicariously through these pre-show videos: Day 1; Day 2. Wired also recently featured the show within the context of the Infinite Games project. Cool Hunting also has a few highlights from last week's ITP Spring Show.

• 15 May 2006

  Beta Testing Books

  O'Reilly applies the principles of community stress-testing to book publishing with Rough Cuts, pre-release PDF versions of books that readers can collectively help shape and finalize. O'Reilly releases book betas online.

• 15 May 2006

  Affordable Homes with Style

  Thanks to some well known-brands that include Dwell and Ikea, streamlined, modernist style have now made their way into prefab homes. Just bring your own land and labor, and you're all set. Prefab Homes Get Fabulous.

• 14 May 2006

  Recent Thank Yous

  A few thanks are in order. First, thank you, mom, for your saintly selflessness in caring for me (I know I can be a handful!) Happy mother's day! Thanks also to Steven Colbert, for having the bravado to say...

• 12 May 2006

  PDF Versions of Current Magazines for Free!

  Free PDF eMagazines of popular newsstand titles including Make vol. 5, the May 2006 edition, Step Inside Design, April 2006 issue -- even the current issue of Harvard Business Review -- and much more. (Yes, you read it right -- FREE!)

• 12 May 2006

  Kill Them with Laughter

  US troops complained that their new government-issued protective armor suits make them look "too goofy". Bwhahahahaha...indeed, they look like a putty-colored Michelin man! Telegraph | News | Armoured suits are 'too goofy' say US troops.

• 11 May 2006

  As Seen On...The Big Screen

  Curious about the name of the typeface used on a movie title? Linotype has identified a few of them for you: Movie Fonts - Linotype Font Lounge...

• 11 May 2006

  Tai Shan Moonwalk

  Just had to post this video (Quicktime) of Tai Shan, or Butterstick. I caught the baby panda prodding mom while she was asleep. Then, when he was satisfied that she was asleep, he went on to his cute antics...

• 10 May 2006

  Visual Aids, Sort Of

  File these under "Painfully Obvious". Remember the Pythagorean Theorem? Well, apparently this guy never heard of it: Rethinking geometry...

• 9 May 2006

  'Savvy' users cause AOL job cuts

  That's right: AOL blames savvy users for their recent layoffs. I particularly love the BBC News' double entendre headline too. (Those Brits. They do have a good command of the language, don't they?) BBC NEWS | Business | 'Savvy' users cause AOL job cuts.

• 8 May 2006

  Five Days, Five Eyetracking Studies

  Etre is publishing an eyetracking study over a five-day period beginning today: Five days: Dixons.co.uk.

• 8 May 2006

  Complexity and the Noodle

  Technology is supposed to help make things simple. And it often does, though at times, it comes at an expense. Take the Biang Biang noodles, for instance. The Chinese character "Biang", made up of 57 strokes, is one of the most complex Chinese characters in contemporary use...

• 5 May 2006

  Pictures of Missing Children, 2.0

  Brilliant use of Flickr to view photos and profiles of missing children. Flickr: Photos from Help Find These People (tabhastal's 2nd account) via MIT Advertising Lab.

• 5 May 2006

  McDonald's Makeover

  McDonald's unveils a revamped look for their franchises. But, the clean, simple lines and iPod aesthetic are the antithesis of their food which is superfluous and unrefined. Do they really think you can change customer perception that easily through store camouflage?

• 5 May 2006

  Funny Pictures: GW Bush at the Correspondents Dinner

  A few video stills of George W. Bush reacting to Stephen Colbert's speech at the Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner: Make Tea Not War - Bush in distress: reaction shots at the WH Correspondents Dinner.

• 5 May 2006

  Forms Design

  I am irked by eCommerce sites that require you to create a member account first before you are allowed to make a purchase. Why not simply integrate the new member registration process seamlessly into the checkout process? EGM Strategy offers...

• 5 May 2006

  "The economic model of the film business is broken"

  Just days after Steven Soderbergh railed against Hollywood's ineffective business model where, among other things, he disapproved of the outrageous compensation of A-list talent, Entertainment Weekly reports that a number of A-listers are having trouble getting their $25 million-per-picture asking...

• 4 May 2006

  Microsoft Goes Back to the Storyboard: The Snarky Version

  I'm stumped by Microsoft's latest move. Apparently they're in the early production stages of developing a spate of TV-style shows, according to a recent report from Ars Technica. This is somewhat of a revival of a past failed attempt in...

• 4 May 2006

  Webcast: The Art and Science of Interaction

  The Art and Science of Interaction with George Mallen will be webcast live today at noon ET (-5GMT). The talk will focus on "HCI in the broader context of linguistic and social evolution and ... the relationship between belief systems and knowledge systems". It will also be available in the Events Archive for those who won't be able to watch it live. London Knowledge Lab.

• 4 May 2006

  Pay As You Exit

  Few of you may know of a Little Rascals episode where the kids staged a Flory Dory show to raise money. Rather than conform with conventional wisdom, however, the kids admitted the audience into the show without demanding payment up...

• 4 May 2006

  More on Infographics

  Sometimes pictures do say it better than words...

• 3 May 2006

  AOL Subscribers Continue to Defect

  According to Time Warner's recent Q1 earnings call, "AOL’s overall U.S. brand subscriber base declined 835,000 in the first quarter to 18.6 million." In 1997, my first year at AOL, we had boasted 11 million members. It had swelled to 33 million by my final year with the company in 2002. What a sad reversal of fortune. The Internet Stock Blog � Time Warner Inc. Q1 2006 Earnings Conference Call Transcript (TWX).

• 2 May 2006

  Poor Usability for Mobile TV

  Research conducted by Amberlight reveals that while consumers want mobile TV, they are "put off by poor design and user experience." picturephoning.com: Poor user experience puts consumers off mobile TV in droves.

• 2 May 2006

  ITP Thesis Webcasts

  View the ITP thesis presentations online this week beginning today, from May 2-5, 12-9pm ET (-5GMT). Projects on tap today iclude: Interactive Shoes, shoes that interact with a mobile phone; Ramps -- a prototype of which I had seen at the 2005 Spring Show; [new-context-likeOne]. Consult the thesis page for the webcast info and thesis schedule: ITP Thesis Presentations 2006. Participate in the live chat as well for additional peer commentary.

• 1 May 2006

  AOL Management Doesn't Get It

  The Inquirer and the New York Times separately share their lack of optimism for AOL's executive oversight and direction. Seriously, what's to love?

• 1 May 2006

  Design for Invisibility

  Good design disguises the complex mess that runs behind things. "To be truly successful, a complex technology needs to 'disappear'". Now you see it, now you don't | Economist.com.