You know it’s time to redesign when…

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Smashing magazine: Redesign. The word itself can send shudders down the spines of any Web designer and developer. For many designers and website owners, the imminent onslaught of endless review cycles, coupled with an infinite number of “stakeholders” and their … Continued

Worms Crazy Golf

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Worms Crazy Golf is a hilarious mixture of the explosive action of Worms and the puzzle-based challenges of crazy golf! All of the trademark Worms humour, comic violence, and cartoon visuals are present, combined with addictive yet accessible golf gameplay. … Continued

Apple lists top apps, music, movies of 2011

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Apple on Thursday posted iTunes Rewind 2011 and App Store Rewind 2011, which lists the best and top downloaded music, apps, TV shows, books, movies and podcasts of 2011. Apple’s top iPhone app of the year goes to Instagram, with … Continued

BlackBerry, Android users want an iPad

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Elizabeth Woyke for Forbes: This was particularly true of BlackBerry users. More than half (53%) of survey respondents who identified themselves as BlackBerry users said they would like an iPad if they were to buy a tablet. A much smaller … Continued

BAMM.tv helps musicians monetize videos

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Billboard:

They work with artists to create quality High Definition live videos of band performing in the company’s state of the art San Francisco studio, which includes a sound stage, engineer, set designers, lighting engineers, a full-recording studio and videographers. The final videos I saw of bands like the Stone Foxes, Kill Rock Star’s Thao and Mirah and the rapper Wallpaper looked and sounded great.The best part: BAMM.tv doesn’t charge the artist a single penny for the videos or the production — It’s completely free.

This is an article I did for Billboard after visiting with BAMM.tv in October. I expect these guys are going to change the way musicians think about videos.

Apple loses iPad trademark in China

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FT:

Apple could face disruption to its iPad sales in China after a court rejected its claim to own the iPad trademark in the country and a rival sought to halt sales of the tablet device in two Chinese cities.

The developments are the latest in a long-running dispute between Apple and Proview Technology (Shenzhen), a struggling Taiwanese-owned company that registered trademarks for the name IPAD in many countries long before Apple conceived its smash hit tablet computer.

Uh oh.

Eight Ferraris Crash

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Bloomberg:

Eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini were part of a 14-car crash in Japan yesterday that wrecked more than $1 million of vehicles.“The accident occurred when the driver of a red Ferrari was switching from the right lane to the left and skidded,” said Mitsuyoshi Isejima, executive officer for Yamaguchi Prefecture’s Expressway Traffic Police unit. “It was a gathering of narcissists.” The drivers were aged between 37 and 60 years old, he said.

When Shawn King showed me this, I almost cried. There is also a video of the aftermath.

Apple’s new campus to have largest solar roof in the US

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Seth Weintraub:

Today’s updated Apple Headquarters Spaceship campus plans include a roof made almost entirely out of solar cells, according to plans released today. With a building as large as Apple’s, that puts it in the top corporate solar installations in the world and the biggest in the US. The current title holder is the 4.26 MW system in Edison New Jersey.

This is pretty incredible. Seems like one of those details that is totally Apple.

Sparrow 1.5

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Lightweight email client for the Mac. People swear by this app.

3.2 million ink dots

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The making of “Hero,” a drawing of my dad composed entirely out of 3.2 million ink dots.

Absolutely amazing.

Kids charging up a storm on Kindle Fire

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Reuters: What happens is that when you order a Kindle Fire […] it comes with your Amazon account information preloaded, along with “1-Click” ordering. That means anyone who is holding that device can place an order, whether it’s their account … Continued

Getting a job

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Get out of the box. Stop thinking there is a magical process to getting a job if you follow the rules. Hone in on 3-5 companies that you’re passionate about and get creative. Meet people, find employees of the company a year before you are graduating and send informational emails through LinkedIn. Go to industry events. Heck, send them a 20 foot tall painting in the mail((Credit to Merlin Mann on Back to Work for this idea.))! Do all of this with the intention of learning more, not necessarily getting a job, because if you wait until you need a job, it’s too late.

I agree with the two main points here. There is no magical solution and if you need it, it’s already too late.

I will add this because I’ve seen it so many times in the last 17 years as a technology journalist: Don’t burn your bridges on the way up. It’s a long way down if there’s nobody to help you when you fall.

Editorial cartoon plagiarism

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The Daily Cartoonist:

As a general rule, as long as the cartoonist isn’t light-boxing, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Even the ones cited above can be excused when looked at individually (the ‘nationalized’ cartoons are easy word gags based on the topic of the day). Collectively, however, the matter gets harder to explain away. Only Jeff knows for sure and the only on-the-record response he’s given me was that “it’s a coincidence.”

All of the examples seem a bit too close for my liking.

Understanding Apple’s endgame

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Whenever you bring up Apple or any of its products, the conversation inevitably goes to market share. So much so that it seems clear to me that some people believe that Apple thinks about market share when it releases products. … Continued

Usability expert hates the Kindle Fire

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Part of making a successful product is making it usable for your target audience. That, apparently, is something that Amazon completely missed with its new Kindle Fire. “Amazon.com’s new Kindle Fire offers a disappointingly poor user experience,” said usability expert … Continued

PlayBook is an ‘albatross’

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Businessweek:

Lazaridis said at the time the PlayBook was worth continuing because the tablet market is still “in its infancy and that “based on the positive response to the promotions that are underway in select markets, RIM believes this strategy will accelerate adoption” of its new operating system and help built the application ecosystem for devices planned for 2012.

RIM failed to plan for the future while it controlled the smartphone market years ago. Then it lied to its users and the market and said the PlayBook was planned all along — it didn’t take a genius to see that the PlayBook was thrown together at the last minute to mitigate a threat from the iPad.

Windows 8 will be ‘irrelevant’ and ‘disappointing’

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AppleInsider:

Microsoft’s Windows 8 is still a year away, but IDC is already predicting that the new release will be “largely irrelevant” to conventional PC users and that its ability to sell tablets will be “disappointing.”

You didn’t need a market research firm to tell you that, did you?

A Facebook phone — why?

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Jean-Louis Gassée: Back to Facebook. Both Google and Zuckerberg’s company vie for the same advertising dollars. This makes Google Facebook’s biggest, most direct competitor. The Trojan Horse applications on Android-powered smartphones are a direct threat to Facebook’s advertising business. Just … Continued

Android bug allows hackers to record phone conversations

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The Register: Computer scientists have discovered a weakness in smartphones running Google’s Android operating system that allows attackers to secretly record phone conversations, monitor geographic location data, and access other sensitive resources without permission. Well now, there’s a feature the … Continued

Telephoto lens for iPhone

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Photojojo:

Simply put, our sheepishness turned to sheer addiction (the good kind, not the itchy-skinned paranoid kind) — and we started taking our iPhone Telephoto Lens with us everywhere.

Yeah, it may look funny, but if it takes great pics, it would be worth the investment.

Frustration with magazines on the iPad

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I’m convinced that the people who actually write for magazines, edit them and publish them have never actually tried using their iPad versions for more than a few moments. If they actually did try to use their publication’s app as the actual means to read each issue, things would have to improve. Right? RIGHT?!

Justin Williams tears apart GQ, Esquire and Sports Illustrated for their poor implementation on the iPad. He also offers 10 solutions magazine publishers could use to help themselves.