On the heels of a discussion of branding and motivation in Martin Kace's thesis research class. Where at one point we were dissecting why you buy the shoes you buy. I decided to take a look at a few websites...

Actually, really very nice found type badges from Typophile. Buy yours here.

To coincide with the Financial Times newspaper redesign. DDB London have created a pretty nice branding campaign The campaign features three distinct images that represent globalization, mergers and acquisitions and entrepreneurship. The shark-mergers one makes me feel quite uneasy especially viewing it on a huge billboard at 8:00 in the morning waiting for a train.

The posters for entrepreneurship shows the face of Richard Branson made to resemble the iconic picture of Che Guevara and globalization is an island containing recognizable business buildings from all over the world. Check the posters out here.

Halo 3 is the third game in the Xbox science fiction franchise. The UK adverts for it features beautiful hand crafted figures by Weta Workshop, the same guys who created the costumes and equipment for all three Lord of the Rings movies.

Rather than focusing on the typical graphics or gameplay elements to the game, it’s instead using a huge model set to look at the themes and multiple storylines. I bet G-I Joe is quaking in his boots.

Amazon is selling MP3s. Right now it’s US only (and I’ve got a sneaky US account on the side) but hopefully this will reach foreign shores before too long. Straight out of the starting gate, they’ve got about 2 million songs on offer. Every single one of those songs is encoded at 256kbps with no DRM. It’s that last detail that makes this such a big deal.

I’ve never been able to get my head around the justifications for DRM. In the past, I have been literally sitting in front of my computer with my credit card in hand, eager to spend money on music I love. But rather than greet me with open arms, services like iTunes instead treat me with suspicion, demanding that they get to call the shots about how I can use music that I’ve bought.

For a really egregious example of where this can lead, take note that Virgin Digital is shutting down:

All tracks used Windows Media DRM, and therefore were only playable under Windows and on WMA-compatible devices. The site now advises its customers who have purchased tracks to back them up, as they will not be able to download them again once Virgin Digital has closed. It’s unclear whether the purchasers of individual tracks will be able to access their songs without burning them to CD and reimporting them as MP3s, but it’s better to be safe than sorry if you’re one of those customers. And naturally, subscribing members will lose access altogether once their subscriptions lapse.

DRM-crippled suppliers treat me like a criminal. That turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. It’s precisely because of the DRM that I resort to using peer-to-peer networks or other illicit means of music acquisition.

Make no mistake, the design of the iTunes music store trumps Amazon on just about every level. For most of the purchasing process, the user experience is far superior on iTunes. But the user experience doesn’t end with a financial transaction. The user experience of interacting with the purchased song continues long after leaving the store.

I haven’t bought anything from the iTunes music store because of the DRM. I have used it though: I’ve been given gift certificates for iTunes downloads. This is what I have to do after completing a download:

1. Pull out the read/write CD I keep just for this,
2. Burn my new music to the CD,
3. Rip the music back as MP3,
4. Erase the CD in preparation for step 1.

And that’s perfectly legal allowed by the terms of service*. But I can’t just convert from DRMed AAC straight to MP3—that would be illegal.

Now, it’s pretty clear that this kind of “copy protection” isn’t going to get in the way of anyone who seriously wants to make copies of the music. All it does is place frustrating stumbling blocks in the path of legitimate customers who want to listen to their purchased music wherever they choose.

I hope that the launch of the Amazon MP3 store is a sign that record companies are finally beginning to realise that people who want their music to be open and portable aren’t criminals—they’re music lovers.

John Gruber puts it best when he says:

Given the Amazon MP3 Store’s audio quality, prices, and user experience, I can’t see why anyone would buy DRM-restricted music from iTunes that’s available from Amazon.

In a wonderful twist, the current number one bestselling song on Amazon is 1234 by Feist— the very song that Apple uses to promote the iPod Nano. And why not? iPods and MP3s have always been a great combination (it always frustrates me when I read reports by lazy journalists that contain statements such as “only songs purchased from Apple’s iTunes music store can be played on the iPod”). I suspect that the vast majority of iPods are filled with un-DRMed music, mostly ripped from CD. Now, thanks to Amazon, there’s also an easy way to fill them with un-DRMed music downloaded from the tubes of the internets.

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* Matthew points out that back-ups, archiving, shifting format, all currently illegal in the UK. Here’s the petition to change that. Even the government agrees that the current situation is pretty stupid but the law hasn’t changed.

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Tagged with amazon apple itunes drm music mp3

The Photoshop family has a logo - John Nack posted about it on his blog first - the detailed image.

This is where the same news is shared on the Adobe website.

Most people [ from the various comments that I’ve read and reviews ] don’t like the logo.
I like it.

For all of you who have been drooling over the much-talked-about graphics editor for the Mac, Pixelmator. . . wait no longer! The first version of Pixelmator (1.0) is out of Beta and has been released to the public. Head on over to Pixelmator.com and download a free trial, and remember, the price tag on this software is a mere $59. It may not be (and probably isn’t) as powerful as Photoshop, but it definitely packs more features than what $59 brings to mind.

(more…)

In my article Learn JavaScript before tasting the library kool-aid from January this year, I ranted a bit about JavaScript libraries and mentioned Robert Nyman's DOM Assistant as an alternative that looked interesting to me because of its focus on doing only the essential things and keeping size to a minimum.

Since the original release, Robert has listened to feedback from people using DOM Assistant and added some features to the library. It's still smaller than most other libraries since it focuses on essential helper functions for DOM scripting. The result is DOM Assistant 2.0, announced in Releasing DOMAssistant 2.0 - Chainability, AJAX Module, DOMReady, XPath And More.

The new features are in the title of the announcement: chainability, an Ajax module, an easier-to-use DOMReady function, and XPath support. I could live without chainability since I think that is partly to blame for jQuery code being so hard for me to decipher. But it's there now, so... just remember that you don't have to use it.

I haven't had the opportunity to use DOM Assistant extensively, but I like its focus on doing only the necessary stuff so I think it's worth considering. And it's modular, so you don't have to include all of it if you know that you're only going to use a few functions.

If you haven't taken it for a test drive, check it out and let Robert know if you run into any problems or have suggestions for improvement. Any feedback of that kind should be sent to Robert, not to me ;-).

Demos, documentation, and the source are all available from the DOM Assistant site.

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This is one of the new things coming from the WeWorkForThem camp, and I’m totally amazed by it. There has been a very interesting progression of work from Mike&Mike, and it’s great to see a new twist on it. I can only atribute some of this to the new location and possible stomach pains of Mr.Young. Much different than the previous, keep it up guys.