June 2006 Archives

• 29 Jun 2006

  MSFT and Reverse Word of Mouth

  The Register exposes Microsoft's rather unseamly tactic for muzzling partners who are faced with disgruntled customers. Exposed: techniques to silence Microsoft 'haters'.

• 28 Jun 2006

  FontShop's Freebie

  Download FontShop's featured free font: URW Grotesk Extra Light Extra Wide -- clean, thin, geometric and elegant.

• 28 Jun 2006

  Name That (Threadless) Font

  Next time you're caught staring at someone's chest, it better be because you're trying to identify their T-shirt font: Threadless Tee Shirt Fonts.

• 28 Jun 2006

  MSFT Demographics Predictor

  Interesting technology demo from Microsoft's adCenter Labs. Type in a query and it predicts a customer's age, gender, etc. Demographics Prediction. According to this, simplifierlab.com tends to attract males between 18-24. Where have I heard this before?

• 28 Jun 2006

  Get Your Daily Dose of Widgets

  I just found widget heaven: Widgetoko: Your daily dose of widget-y goodness.

• 27 Jun 2006

  Read the Font End User Agreement

  A UK publishing firm was found to have used 11,000 unlicensed typefaces. How do I work as software snitch? Publisher in £80,000 font raid.

• 26 Jun 2006

  Banner Blindness

  People ignore things that are irrelevant (and, in my case, fugly) -- so why do many businesses still insist on peppering websites with banners? Research: Internet Users Plagued by 'Banner Blindness'.

• 26 Jun 2006

  Digg Demographics

  I dig Digg. So I was pretty interested in finding out more about Digg's audience. Once again, my preferences tend to skew male. Federated Media on Digg's audience.

• 25 Jun 2006

  AOL Rumored to Sack 75% of Its Workforce

  Yet unconfirmed Valleywag tip: Guest scoop: AOL allegedly axes most of its dying Access department. One thing's for sure, however, investors and analysts are unhappy with AOL's continued lackluster performance and dubious leadership.

• 25 Jun 2006

  Give it away, give it away, give it away now

  Warren Buffett will start giving away his fortune worth an estimated $44 billion -- most of which will go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Respect.

• 25 Jun 2006

  Majority are at 1024 x 768 resolutions...now what?

  Nearly 80% of all Web users worldwide are at 1024 x 768 resolutions or higher and more than half are at 1024 x 768 according to OneStat. While it's tempting to start designing pages that occupy the full 1024 width, don't. Keep in mind that most folks typically don't expand their browsers...

• 24 Jun 2006

  Get Home Safely

  Another reason why I heart NY. RightRides offers free rides home for women, transpeople and gender queer individuals to see that they get home safely. RightRides is available every Saturday night from Midnight -3 AM late night Saturdays (aka early Sunday morning). Visit RightRides Programs for more information.

• 23 Jun 2006

  AmEx Butterfly Card

  AmEx's new Butterfly card design has been receiving a lot of press lately though I fail to see how this is a better design? It's thicker, unnecessarily uses more materials and doesn't fit into a wallet or pants pockets. I'd file this under gratuitous design. Via Cool Hunting.

• 23 Jun 2006

  Investing and Simplification

  Interesting study by Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer shows there's a correlation between simple company names and their market performance: BPS Research: Why you should invest in shares with simple names.

• 22 Jun 2006

  Who Matters Most?

  Business 2.0 today published its list of 10 people who don't matter and the 50 people who do.

• 22 Jun 2006

  Quicksilver Cheat Sheet

  Be even quicker with Quicksilver! TUAW found a a great cheat sheet for Quicksilver -- the must-have productivity tool for OS X users! Quicksilver cheatsheet and user manual.

• 22 Jun 2006

  Panda Poop and Poopers

  Scientists are using panda fecal analysis to get better calaculations of the panda population and are estimating that the population may be 50% higher than the current estimated 1600 worldwide. Too bad that a handful of the Ars Technica commenters poo-pooed the research and would rather see the panda population dwindle to extinction. Nobel Intent: Panda Profiling.

• 20 Jun 2006

  Google Has Other Products Besides Search?

  Despite Google's aggressive, frequent product rollouts, it seems that they're having trouble competing in non-search markets: Google Verticals vs. Google.com: What is Google's end-game?

• 19 Jun 2006

  Game, Interrupted

  The online game, Second Life, will feature an American Apparel store: Online Shopping via Forbes.com. I don't know about you but I find this invasiveness a little creepy.

• 19 Jun 2006

  50 Tips on The Art and Business of Design

  Very helpful tips (if not reminders) on ideation, execution, best practices and minefields for designers: Computer Arts: 50 ways to become a better designer.

• 17 Jun 2006

  Father's Day Factoids

  The Origin of Father's Day and other Father's Day factoids, via Live Science. Interesting statistic from the report: "All in all, 84 percent of child-support...

• 16 Jun 2006

  Spiekermann Uncensored

  Erik Spiekermann, esteemed designer, typographer and founder of MetaDesign, openly criticizes the World Cup design as "Just Embarrassing".

• 16 Jun 2006

  Link Love

  Jared Spool extols the merits of link-rich sites: Lifestyles of the Link-Rich Home Pages.

• 14 Jun 2006

  Re-Branding Mistakes

  Great list of tips that brand stakeholders (not just marketers) often make when re-thinking their brand: ReBrand's Top 20 Mistakes Marketers Make.

• 13 Jun 2006

  Taming the Spaghetti Monster

  I so love this Lifehacker tip on how to conceal your workspace's unruly cable mess: Hack Attack The Cordless Workspace (sort of).

• 13 Jun 2006

  Universal Packing List

  The Universal Packing List is an online form that generates a list of stuff you need to pack for your trip based on climate, activity, accommodations, etc. Wish it had a category for techie travellers -- I always forget chargers for gadgets.

• 12 Jun 2006

  Jakob Tackles the Inbox

  Jakob Nielsen just published a number of findings on email newsletter usability (updated from a February 2004 report). This time, the study also includes usability findings for RSS, err, news feeds: Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion.

• 12 Jun 2006

  The Peter Pan Principle

  Middle-agers are the new kids as more grown-ups indulge themselve in cartoons and other kid fare: Adults Do The Darndest Things.

• 12 Jun 2006

  Spam: Taiwanese Style

  A while back, I blogged about Mailinator's Spam mashup -- a map that plots the IP locations of spam they've filtered. A recent survey by email security firm CipherTrust, however, claims that most spam comes from Taiwan, a whopping 64%! Taiwan fingered as the hub of spam distribution via The Register.

• 12 Jun 2006

  Car Design: Luxury and Complexity

  According to a study by JD Powers, the high price tag for premium features on many luxury cars apparently don't include usability. How Do You Turn On The #@!&% Air?

• 11 Jun 2006

  People Are People

  Apparently, users have something in common with Soylent Green. While I agree philosophically that a more human/e appelation would be preferable, I disagree...

• 10 Jun 2006

  (Re-)Design Observer

  Their old Trendy MT template allowed them to "focus on the content first." Now, form follows function. Redesign of Design Observer

• 9 Jun 2006

  SEO Myths

  Three common search engine optimization myths debunked: (1) You can be guaranteed consistently high rankings...

• 8 Jun 2006

  ThinkQuest NYC 2006 Winners

  Congratulations to the 2006 TQNYC internet challenge award winners. As I mentioned in a previous post, ThinkQuest is an afterschool collaborative...

• 8 Jun 2006

  AOL's Email Ads

  AOL has done it again: piss off more subscribers. For $23.95 a month, AOL subscribers get Web 0.5 features and now...unsolicited ads in emails!

• 8 Jun 2006

  iTunes: Emerging Channel for PDF eBooks

  The latest issue of The Fader is available for free on iTunes. Of course, MAKE magazine, had released PDFs through iTunes on occasion in the...

• 7 Jun 2006

  Utah Freakonomics

  While George W. Bush's popularity continues to plunge, folks in Utah have steadfastly supported the president (NY Times). Interestingly enough, Utah has the greatest prevalence of poor mental health in the United States. Coincidence? Well, it's certainly one for the Freakonomists.

• 7 Jun 2006

  Accessibility for the Elderly, Visually-Impaired

  Two interesting products that address accessibility for the visually impaired and the growing elderly population. SpeakOn, developed by blind entrepreneur Chris Mairs, is a new device that challenges the paradigm of current screen readers such as JAWS to make the web accessible to the blind. According to Mairs...

• 6 Jun 2006

  More Goofy Military Wear

  Another one to add to the list of goofy military attire...this time, they get German-designed strap-ons: Special Forces Get 'Strap-On Wings' via The Raw Feed.

• 6 Jun 2006

  Paper Prototyping Resources

  Download a handful of resources for conducting paper prototypes for usability testing: paperprototyping.com downloads.

• 4 Jun 2006

  Blogs and the Cost of Advertising

  Hugh MacLeod's blog-based ad campaign for Stormhoek wines recently won Best Consumer campaign beating out bigger ad budget competitors (Chivas' Brothers campaign cost 40 million Euros!) for the cost of a $400 commercial blog software license. And the Winner Is...

• 4 Jun 2006

  Hospital Features All Rooms with Sunny Exposure

  Smart solution to sunless windows! Patients in Revolving Hospital Have Sunny Rooms All Day via Modern Mechanix.

• 4 Jun 2006

  Ignore whitespace = "false"

  Programming language made up entirely of whitespace characters such as spaces, tabs and new lines as part of the syntax! Whitespace. A bit too minimalist I think.

• 3 Jun 2006

  Get Well Sawyer!

  Sawyer is a 12-year old boy who was recently striken with a yet unknown illness that has left him immobile from the waist down. His Uncle Howard, a fellow ITP alum, has created a viral invitation for people to send in their photos to give their well-wishes to Sawyer: Get well, Sawyer!

• 2 Jun 2006

  How to be a Great Illustrator in Two Years

  Gez Fry has an outstanding portfolio of Japanese-style illustrations. Not bad for someone who started out with absolutely no illustration experience...

• 1 Jun 2006

  The Homepage Challenge: 20 Words, 27 Seconds

  According to Jakob Nielsen, people read only about 20 words on the homepage. Most don't scroll to look at additional content below the fold (we already know this one, right?). And that users spend about 27 seconds on a homepage, mostly scanning for links (of course, they've already formed a first impression in the blink of an eye).