Learning to Love Leopard’s Spaces

So you’ve upgraded to Leopard and you’ve heard Spaces is soooo handy—it’s guaranteed to change the way you use your Mac! You check it out, but you don’t believe the hype. Until recently, that was me. As a web designer, I spend a lot of time with my browser (obviously); using one browser in multiple spaces — one space to scan feeds in Google Reader, another to check e-mail in Gmail and another to develop websites — doesn’t work. Until now.
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Random Internet Awesomeness

Check these hilarious reviews of the Bic Crystal ballpoint pen on Amazon. I suspect this kind of thing abounds on Amazon if you’re willing to look for it. All the reviews are great, but this one is my favorite.

Moneygami — if you’ve seen bills folded to look like shirts; these blow those out of the water.

The creative cats at Barkley have opened the Bad Gift Emporium — a place to show off the thoughtful-yet-awful gifts that should have never been given. Best of all, you can post your own examples of Christmas crap and work out trades so you can get your hands on someone else’s crap (if that’s your thing).

Email Standards Project

Email Standards Project launched today. It’s all about bringing web standards support to e-mail clients by educating web designers and developers and a starting a dialogue with email client developers.

The current state of web standards support in email can best be described as dismal. It’s a throwback to the early days of the web with each client (both desktop and online) offering wildly varied levels of support for basic HTML and CSS. You can see the results of ESP’s client tests here.

It’s a grassroots movement spearheaded by the fine folks at Freshview, makers of Campaign Monitor, some of the easiest to use email newsletter software around.

Find out what you can do to help and follow the latest developments on the ESP blog.

TripAdvisor redesigns (beta)

TripAdvisor, the travel site that has never let me down, has cracked the lid on their new site — see it here. Overall, it’s a huge improvement — the effort and planning involved are evident in the information design and user experience. It’s much easier on the eyes thanks to the wider layout, increased whitespace, rounded corners and more. Congrats to the design team, whoever you are.

Puma’s Wit & Wisdom

I finally made it to the new Puma store at my local mall to grab a fresh pair of kicks and when I got them home I was pleasantly surprised to find this clever message on the bottom of my shopping bag:

Puma’s shopping bag - click to enlarge

It reads:
“CAUTION: THIS IS NOT A TOY. Obviously, it’s just a bag. OK, we didn’t really think you would mistake it for a games consol. [sic] All we mean is don’t fool around and put it on your head, you’ll just look silly.”

It’s always fun to find little bits of unexpected humor in seemingly mundane places… kudos to the copywriter! Shame on the proofreader though… unless there’s an alternate spelling for “console” that I’m not aware of.