I do suck!

You suck at photoshop!

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/06/27/you-suck-at-photoshop-11/

Style Switchers

These are nifty, definitely to be included in a future project!

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/06/25/style-switchers-contest-results/

The new form of usability?

I was looking at the style switcher contest over at Smashing Magazine when I had a revelation... What if you used this idea as a way to usability test your product? Here is the concept:

• create a highly customizable version of your site
• break your site into discrete elements and make each element editable
• let users of your product make changes to each element
• record the changes that each user makes
• aggregate your observations to find which layouts people preffer
• make those layouts the "default" choices with the option to change to the OTHER most popular

I'm thinking in terms of websites such as amazon.com. Allow the visitors to customize what they are seeing on the page and where that is placed. Especially with a large site you will see in a matter of hours (maybe days) what configurations are the most popular and can start to make changes to your default to better suit the needs of your users. Is it just me or does this seem obvious? Anyone know people who are doing this?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Astronaut? Musician? Politician? Rich? Famous? In love? Another nifty webapp that lets you see the aspirations of other visitors to the site in real time! Not particularly innovative, but a fun idea.
 
 I want to be me!

Why rail makes sense over BRT

Seattle Transit Blog has up an article laying out why rail makes the most sense for our major transit corridors over BRT technology. Check out the article here: Why BRT Doesn't Make Sense It is a good article and it lays out well the issues surrounding the debate between Light Rail and BRT buses in Seattle.

Social Music

Weezer cover Radiohead's Creep, live in Portland from Dave Allen on Vimeo. A cool video. from Vimeo via Kables

How will the browser of the future look and behave?

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo. And of course Part 2 after the jump:
Aurora (Part 2) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.
Aurora (Part 3) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.
Aurora (Part 4) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Last.fm adds music videos

Last.fm (a social music site) has teamed with Universal to offer music videos from the universal collection for free. You can check the latest video, or go back and see some old classics. This is pretty cool. see the news here: http://blog.last.fm/2008/06/17/lastfm-freed-the-video-star

Cool Tag clouds via Wordle!

A cool online tool to generate a tag cloud from a text source. For example, copied and pasted Pride and Prejudice from the Gutenberg Library, and it produced this:
 
 Take a look at the tool here: http://wordle.net/

Firefox 3 is coming

Tomorrow (June 17, 2008) is the launch date of the newest version of Firefox Firefox 3.

For a guide on what is new and exciting in the browser, check out David Tensers <a href="http://www.dria.org/wordpress/archives/2008/06/12/655/">Field Guide to Firefox 3</a>

Don't forget to <a href="http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/">download</a> the newest browser on the 17th and help the Mozilla organization set a download record.

Cool Canvas features

Firefox 3 is releasing tomorrow! Help them set a world record for the most downloads in one day by nabbing your version here. Firefox 3 includes better support for Canvas, which is a open source rendering framework. See what it can do without pluggins and the like here: http://azarask.in/projects/algorithm-ink/#0656fbe7

Best news Headline this week:

From Yahoo News:

Astronauts spot object floating from shuttle, NASA not worried

Well I don't know about NASA, but if I were an Astronaut, I'd sure as hell be worried LOL

Free Web Design Books from Smashing Magazine

Because the folks over at smashing magazine are cool! Comment on thier blog posting with which book you want and you will be entered into a drawing for it.

RAD!
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/06/09/books-giveaway-comment-and-win/#comment-226556

Woman Marries Eiffel Tower

http://www.kjrh.com/entertainment/weirdnews/story.aspx?content_id=3d9e3625-442f-4827-9bb4-49ae03c570cc LOL this is great, my favorite part: She also says her first infatuation was with Lance, a bow, and she also says she has an intimate relationship with a piece of fence she keeps in her bedroom.

Lessig hits another one out of the park

Lawrence Lessig's NCMR Keynote address: A great presentation. http://lessig.org/blog/2008/06/ncmr_keynote.html

HA... SO TRUE!

Awesome! Taken from http://a.bunchof.us/2008/06/05/mccain-bumper-sticker/
 

  McCain is old! Reminds me of http://www.thingsyoungerthanmccain.com/

Entertainment industry accuses campus laser-printers of downloading Indiana Jones

Title says it all.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/05/entertainment-indust-1.html

How can you think there is NOT a problem/potential for abuse in this type of system? It is like accusing people of a crime by throwing darts at a dartboard!

The power of twitter!

After being arrested this man sent a tweet to twitter simply commenting "Arrested" alerting all of his friends.

His university hired him a lawyer and the man has been released, otherwise who knows... do you know what they do to people in jail in Egypt? Yea me either!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/05/twitter.maree/index.html

Why not naked baristas?

What is wrong with it I ask?

Seriously, no one is forcing people to patronize the establishments, and if they are worried about the innocent children (what a crock) then they should put in regulations that if you wear less then (some standard, say a bikini) then your baristas should be screened from public view.

Apparently Bonney Lake has issues with the baristas going a bit too far (pasties, or electrical tape, or just an apron). See an article here:
<a href="http://seattlest.com/2008/06/05/sitting_here_lo.php">Sexy Baristas Have Gone Too Far, Says Bonney Lake</a> from <a href="http://seattlest.com/">Seattlest</a>

I did try to go to one of these places once... but my car was too short to see anything interesting (yea who likes faces on their baristas anyway?!?). See the account here: <a href="http://schwerzler.com/node/5">32oz? Really?</a>

Amazon pimps ancestry.com books

Spurred by a rogue search from a new/interesting search engine I stumbled across this book on Amazon.com about Schwerzlers.

The interesting thing is this seems to be a "book on demand" type of thing where Ancestry.com will print a book with all/a lot of the records they have relating to <insert name here>

For Schwerzler that book would probably be pretty short (84 pages) in comparison to a book on the name Johnson for example.

It is an interesting feature though, and I wonder why they did not come up with some clever way to electronically distribute the book as well as printing it?

While the idea may be novel, the reaction is not positive. If you look at the tags that people have tagged the book "Waste of good dollars" "Disappointed" "Waste of money"

I think I will hold off on plopping down the $30.

http://www.amazon.com/Schwerzler-Name-History-Ancestry-com/dp/B000WDAMI0

Barack has done it

He has the count now to clinch the nomination... the fight of the Dems is essentially over.

YAY now bring on McCain.