Website of the Week: Design Milk

Today's website features thousands of products, and admittedly, I don't own any of them. In fact, many of them aren't even for sale. As a Mac user though, I'd like to think I'm at least a little bit intrigued by modern design. While I don't love all of it, a stop by Design Milk now and then will keep you up to date on modern design, and might even inspire you on your own design project. If a trip to the neighborhood IKEA just isn't doing it for you anymore, check them out at design-milk.com.

Wednesday Website of the Week: Dispatches From The Island

We often put celebrities on pedestals. They don't like the same things we do, or deal with the same problems we do. Well guess what? That's not always the case. Take Jorge Garcia, one of the stars of ABC's hit "Lost." For those unfamiliar, Jorge plays Hurley, one of the more easygoing castaways on the island. (believe me, we're brushing over a lot of mythology of his character over the last five years.)

Jorge has his own blog, Dispatches From the Island. If you're looking for Lost spoilers, this isn't the place for you. Instead, this is Jorge's personal blog of his own experiences, and sure there's some crossover. For example, he recently blogged about his trip to Comic-Con, but he wasn't talking about the Lost panel, instead he was talking about the swag at the event, things that personally excited him, and a look at his hotel room. You realize that like a lot of us, it's the kind of event Jorge would attend even if that whole major TV show gig wasn't going on.

He's one of us. One of the guys who enjoys a trip to a theme park, or a snapshot with Star Trek gadgets. In short, we'll call him one of the good guys. Check out dispatchesfromtheisland.blogspot.com

Introducing the Wednesday Website of The Week

If you're like us, you might be in a bit of an internet rut lately. It just doesn't seem like we bookmark as many sites as we used to. Back in the "good old days" just the idea of a website we hadn't seen before was enough to go check it out.

Well we're doing our part to bring back the joy of websurfing, with the new Wednesday Website of the Week (the WWW, see what we did there!) And for our first selection, we're going with a site aiming to simplify all those dang saver cards for hundreds of different stores.

JustOneClubCard.com allows you to input all of your club card numbers, and generate a single card with all of the different codes on it. While there are iPhone programs to store this info, scanning an iPhone screen is problematic for certain stores, and do you really want to hand your phone over to scanned? One slip, and, well, let's just stick with the safer solution from JustOneClubCard.com .

Sorry Computerworld, You're Just Plain Wrong

You have to take it with a grain of salt when a predominantly PC magazine decides to talk about Apple. After all, are they hedging their bets, placating their masses, or just trying to fire up the Apple faithful to generate more hits? Those are the questions raised in the latest article by Dan Turner for the magazine.

The gist is this: Apple's best days are behind it, and it's not what it used to be. Turner goes on to lay out a highly accurate history of Apple's various stages over the years, but then undercuts his argument with this:

Look at the Apple rumor sites -- the one or two left, I mean. The snooping and Kremlinology involved in building up best guesses and sneak peeks at Apple's next "One More Thing" was a veritable cottage industry, especially for those of us on the guessing end of things. Some pundits lazily made a career out of taking easy pot shots at the Mac faithful's clockwork frenzy around Jobs' keynote speeches.

Really, Dan? The only Apple rumor sites that have disappeared of merit are MacMinute, with the death of founder Stan Flack, and As The Apple Turns (we still miss you, Jack, please come back!) which disappeared long before Apple's newfound stature. As the founder of the first online video channel of Apple news and lifestyle, I take offense to this concept that somehow people are less interested in Apple today. I know our own videos, especially those related to the iPhone are tremendously popular. 

True, the days of juicy rumors squeaking out of Cupertino may be past, or at least diminished (didn't we get a leaked mac mini shot just this week?) but that doesn't translate to loss of interest in the company. I would encourage Dan to look at the reduction in PC publications/Expos/websites as well. I would guess the percentage is at least as high as for Apple sites. We're in a recession. Some businesses don't make it.

Oh, and the irony of the end of your quote above isn't lost on us: "Some pundits lazily made a career out of taking easy pot shots at the Mac faithful..."

Really?