Choosing the Right Font: A Practical Guide to Typography on the Web | Webdesigntuts+. There’s some interesting advice here.
How do you choose what type you use on your sites? What do you think about the proliferation of Javascript-based @font-face services?
The Journal found that some LOLapps applications, as well as the Family Tree application, were transmitting users’ Facebook ID numbers to RapLeaf. RapLeaf then linked those ID numbers to dossiers it had previously assembled on those individuals, according to RapLeaf. RapLeaf then embedded that information in an Internet-tracking file known as a “cookie.”
via Facebook in Online Privacy Breach; Applications Transmitting Identifying Information – WSJ.com.
This should probably not come as a surprise to anyone, given how fast and loose Facebook has played with privacy in the past, but as another cautionary tale about how marketing’s insatiable lust for personal data to sell to spammers (oh, sorry, “merchants”) leads many a company down the dark path to routine breaches of personal privacy.
Rapleaf: Opt out from data sharing.
While the worst offender of reselling personal information allows you to tediously opt-out for each e-mail address you own (guaranteeing they have a nice, juicy database of e-mail addresses), no one really knows how widespread the abuse of personal data is. Judging by the frosty response one application developer (Familybuilder, who make Family Tree) gave to the Journal when asked about the problem, I’d guess it’s pretty broad.
In the bigger picture, the best model for online marketing (for ANY marketing, in my opinion) is opt-in. Let the consumer decide what they want to hear about, not the marketer/spammer. You waste far fewer resources and tick off far fewer people that way, and your rates of return versus expense of spamming are much better, too.
How Secure Is My Password?. Useful! (417 years to crack mine, BTW 
)
“Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say that the chances for life on this planet are 100 percent. I have almost no doubt about it,” Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California Santa Cruz, told Discovery News.
via Earth-Like Planet Can Sustain Life : Discovery News. (With great thanks to Marija Drenkovska)
[W]e’re starting to see that in some cases the carriers may actually be able to exploit this “openness” to create a closed system that may leave you crying for Apple’s closed system — at least theirs looks good and behaves as expected.
via Android Is As Open As The Clenched Fist I’d Like To Punch The Carriers With. Thanks to Carole M for sharing the link with me originally!
Got a modern Web browser? Biolab Disaster is a cute little 8-bit-like shooter game created entirely using HTML5 and JavaScript—no CPU-sucking Flash needed! It has a great soundtrack, too. Check it out!
Total techno-lustable:
From Philly nerd collective Hive76, USB Typewriters’re old-school manual key-bangers outfitted with fancy boards and chips to create a PC/Mac-compatible keyboard with an old-school feel/sound that’ll make everyone in the coffee shop totally envy you threaten to tear it to pieces if you don’t leave said coffee shop.
Personas | Metropath(ologies) | An installation by Aaron Zinman is an interesting little Web 2.x tool that trolls public pages to look for you—or who you might be—and collates the available information into a pretty colored grid. Unless your name is truly unique, chances are there are lots of people out there who share it, and Personas includes them all. The results may be interesting…
In July 2002, Appled filed a patent for a “Breathing Status LED Indicator” (No. US 6,658,577 B2). They described it as a “blinking effect of the sleep-mode indicator in accordance with the present invention mimics the rhythm of breathing which is psychologically appealing.”
The average respiratory rate for adults is 12-20 breathes per minute, which is the rate that the sleep-indicator light fades in and out on most Apple laptops. Older models such as the Macintosh PowerBook, however, use a blinking LED indicator, with discrete pulses in one-second intervals.
The other day, I noticed that my friend’s Dell laptop had a similar feature but with a shorter fade-in-fade-out period. Its rate was around 40 blinks per second, or the average respiratory rate for adults during strenuous exercise—not very indicative of something in sleep-mode.
It’s interesting how a lot of companies try to copy Apple but never seem to get it right. This is yet another example of Apple’s obsessive attention to detail.
