My first reason is: i like to give proper attribution whenever possible. Someone somewhere created this image, whether a photo or graphic or some kind of composition. They deserve credit. As a content creator, i don’t like the feeling that my stuff might be circulating out there as random anonymous images. And while some creators may not care or they create things to be used freely, i bet a lot of people would like to know how their works are traveling across the web.
Second, after many cycles of downloads and uploads to various web sites, images loose quality and size. Finding the original often reveals a large, sharp image, devoid of blogger’s tags and cropping.
Third, i want to know the story that goes with this set of pixels i’m looking at. Finding the source can be even more rewarding than stumbling upon that single image itself. The original page or blog post is often more interesting than a single pinned or copied photo. You get a sense of context and perspective seeing the complete work. When pieces are copied and circulated individually, that story and sense of belonging can be lost.

Here are a couple tools i use to track down an image’s source. TinEye is a web service that matches an image’s content, instead of its file name or description as with typical web searches. They offer plugins for Firefox and other browsers, which make searching for matches as simple as right-clicking on an image while browsing. It works impressively, and will even find matches when images have been cropped or had watermarks or borders added or removed. Results can be few or none at all, but their database is constantly growing. And i just found that Google Images offers a similar feature — just click the camera icon and paste the URL. However, Google’s results are much broader, returning images that are merely similar, which makes for many many more results to sift through.

Sometimes an image’s source can’t be found. It may have originated in print and was scanned by a fan, or may just be too many degrees removed, or time may have erased any connecting links. But i think if i find something worthy of being pinned or blogged or posted, it’s always worth a shot to find out where it came from and who made it.

When i turned on my Xbox tonight, the Home screen greeted me with a banner for Super Bowl Ads with a picture of VW’s Beetle spot (which i had seen earlier on YouTube). I think, “cool, i’ll check it out and catch up on the ads that i missed.” So i click the banner.

Super Bowl Ads banner on Home screen.

The screen goes blank. And a popup says it is downloading some “app”. It’s the MSN app (or msnbc.com app, not really sure) which i had never downloaded or used before. Great, i was just hoodwinked into downloading a new app without consent, and i’m probably never going to use it again for anything else. So the app finishes downloading, and installs on my Xbox. Then i am told that:
“An update is available for this game from Xbox LIVE.”
And if i decline this update, that i will be signed out of Xbox LIVE.

Update for the app I just downloaded.

Huh?!

I just downloaded this for the first time ever 30 seconds ago. How can there be an update for it already? Oh, wait. I see. You sent me an older version of this “app”, and then waited until it was installed on my Xbox before forcing me to to download and install this updated version that you were too lazy and stupid to send me from the start. I get it. So where was i?

Oh yeah, i wanted to watch some Super Bowl ads. So after all that, the MSN app starts and i see another Home screen that looks just like the Xbox Live Home screen but with a different background. Tiles and banners in Microsoft’s new Metro-style interface. But no where does it say anything about Super Bowl Ads. I scroll to every screen, but no Super Bowl Ads. What gives?

Super Bowl Ads?

How insane is it that after clicking on a banner for Super Bowl ads that i am left at an unexpected update screen coercing me to install yet another bit of unwanted software at the threat of being signed out of the service if i decline? And then left on my own to find these ads i was promised back on the Home screen. This stuff is not hard to get right, Microsoft. But your Xbox Live team consistently screws up the user experience. I expect far more from a service that i have to pay for.

By the way, the only way i found to get to those ads was to exit the MSN app (once it was finally installed and updated), then click on the banner again from the Live Home screen. The Super Bowl Ads feature, as far as i can tell, is not accessible from inside the app itself.

This is what it looks like, if you can find it.

Folded Shirt Cuff Shows Off Watch

Noticed that Stephen Colbert had a simply clever trick to flash his watch from under his shirt cuff on The Colbert Report last night. He (or his stylist) just folded in the “corner” of the cuff down to where it hits the button, which makes a nice little window allowing the watch to be seen.

I’m sure this isn’t new, but it’s the first i’ve noticed it. I’ll probably try it out next time i’m wearing something with cuffs. See it in action in this clip starting at about 1:30.

http://youtu.be/aMfSGt6rHos

Chipotle has shared a behind the scenes look into the production of this stop-motion animated ad, and while watching it i spotted a Canon DSLR, which appears to be the 5D Mark II, obviously shooting stills and not video (stop motion).

Canon 5D Mark II in a stop motion control rig.

http://youtu.be/AFlbGwAW7rw

The New Header Design Above the Old

Amazon.com (or is it just Amazon now?) just redesigned the header across their site, along with a few other elements on the home page. Product pages seem untouched, aside from the new header. They’ve stripped almost all the color from the previously teal-blue header bar with orange buttons. It is now in shades of gray, with just a few select touches of color, some orange notification type and a few blue links. It looks bigger and less cluttered, yet is actually just a few pixels shorter.

No More .com, Uncolored Departments Menu

The .com has been dropped from logo at top left, and the type weight slightly adjusted so the name appears larger and clearer. The Shop by Department menu is now hidden until you pop it open, and submenus expand more uniformly with more rich content. The search bar now appears nearly twice as tall, with all elements (department selector and go buttton) integrated into a single visual element, much like Firefox’s recent Address Bar revisions. The cart button is a larger and much cleaner line graphic now without a text label.

Cart and Lists are separated from the integrated Search Bar

Front page “headline” banner type is now in gray, with highlights in only one color per piece, instead of gray with orange and blue, and the typeface is slightly lighter-weight and less narrow.

Lighter, less-compressed typeface, fewer colors.

This feels very much like what Google has been doing to their products. I’m a fan of these clean, tailored designs. Stripping the old-web glitter, decluttering, combining elements, and making things larger and clearer and grayer, with more breathing room all around. Color is becoming a much more conscious choice, used for emphasis, instead of ambiance. Amazon must be doing a phased roll-out or A/B testing, because in Firefox i get the new version, and in Chrome i still get the old.

Red with big elements and plenty of white space.

Coincidentally, i just saw the other day that Target did a major redesign of their entire site. It’s very on-brand for them. Very designy and clean, yet fun (no capital letters) and easy. It looks more like one of their print ads or TV commercials now, instead of just a web store. I don’t shop Target.com often, so i’m less familiar with the changes, though i definitely did notice that it was new when i visited last week. They even made a little video to show it off.

Update: Apparently, Target’s redesign is a complete relaunch of their entire web store presence in order to be independent of Amazon.com who previously ran their e-commerce services. That explains the “reset your password” links on their new homepage. I had no idea that Target’s redesign was related to Amazon when i started writing this. It was just an ironic coincidence that i noticed both their redesigns this week.

*That’s a reference to the trend in films to color grade everything severely orange and teal.

Deus Ex: The Eyeborg Documentary

[via Joystiq]

A feature idea for Plex or Xbox or any media center. Physical media are becoming more and more obsolete. Yet many of us still have them sitting on shelves next to the TV, and may keep them forever for whatever reason. While they take up space, there’s something about being able to pick up and hold and look at something tangible when trying to pick a movie to watch (or browsing music). However, many of us have or would like to have all our media stored digitally on the local system or a NAS or the “cloud”. There’s no doubt that it’s more convenient to be able to play movies and music from a purely abstract/digital interface, without having to find and load a disc and switch all the gear to the proper playback settings.

So, as a shortcut, using a camera device like the Kinect, or perhaps a smartphone camera or a remote with a camera/scanner, you could simply snap a shot of the DVD case (or barcode), and the media center app (Plex, or Logitech Harmony-ish system) would identify the movie, put the system into the proper playback mode, and start playing it from the storage device. Imagine holding a DVD box up to your TV screen (with a Kinect-type device) as if to say “I want to watch this”, and it just happened.

I guess it sounds a bit like a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s kind of a round-about way to do it, especially if you already have your DVD collection ripped and stored on your computer. But flipping through pages of thumbnails on a screen à la iTunes or Netflix can be overwhelming. Sometimes it’s easier to just grab something off a shelf.

For that matter, this idea could easily be extended to playback things you *don’t* have in your collection. Tying in to streaming/rental services, on your smartphone you could click a “watch now” button on Amazon.com or IMDB or Get Glue, and start watching right away on your TV. You could “scan” a TV commercial for a movie or TV show and start watching it right away. Or scan a poster and have it ready to watch when you get home.

In fact, thinking about it now, i’m sure someone must already have done something like this.

So effortless, you don't even have to look at what you're doing.

PS: i don’t understand why most “premium” mice are still not designed to the shape of a human hand. If it’s made to be “stylish” or ambidextrous, then it’s 100% compromise. If you’re gonna spend that much on a mouse, go for a Performance MX and call it a day. If you want touch input, Apple are the masters, and the Magic Trackpad is the real deal.

This was in Woodbridge, 58 miles northwest of the epicenter in Mineral, VA. It shook for a solid 20–30 seconds, followed by softer rumblings for another 30 seconds. The video starts 10–15 seconds after the quake first hit.

I’ve felt one or two minor quakes in the years that i’ve lived in Northern Virginia, as well as the big ’89 in San Francisco and others in Kodiak, Alaska when i was younger, but something this strong on the East Coast was just unreal.

As i’m posting this at midnight, i have not seen any other videos shot live during the earthquake. #Exclusive!

20110824-01:29 Update: USGS has clocked 4 aftershocks so far, ranging in magnitude from 2.2 to 4.2. I’ve felt at least the two stronger ones in Woodbridge.

Marketing copywriter Jeremy Reeves explains on Visual Website Optimizer what the long sales letter is. I have seen these before, but didn’t know it had its own category.

I always thought they looked so tacky and poorly designed, but it seems there is some strategy to them. It turns out i’m mostly right. Long sales letters almost always have miserable design (the kind of design that instantly turns me off — no matter what the product). But, as 37signals has shown, they don’t always have to.

Via Ramit Sethi on Twitter.