I'm officially obsessed with Wordle. The concept is simple - paste in a bunch of text (the example above is the Gettysburg Address) and Wordle spits out a pretty word cloud with emphasis determined by the frequency of words in the text. Play around with the font, color, and layout, and turn your words into works of art.

The first time I used Google Chrome, I was suprised on how simple the design of the browser.   The only visible functionality are the most common use buttons such as: back, forward, refresh, favorite, address and setting buttons.  The address field looks like any regular browser, but it smarts enough to distinguish between site url and search text. It also gives text prediction as you type.  

But after using with this new browser for about a week, I'm starting to notice the limitation of this new browser.  Unlike FIrefox, Chrome does not has the functionality to add adds-on to the browser.  This limitation make me miss the convinient of accessing my favorite site through my virtual bookmark.   

I'm hoping  that google will bring back the virtual bookmark toolbar to Chrome.

In honor of its 75th anniversary this year, Esquire magazine will be publishing a cover incorporating flashing text designed by MA-based company E Ink (whose technology is also applied in Amazon.com's reading device, Kindle). The text, which reads "the 21st Century Begins Now," will lose juice and stop blinking after 90 days.

“I hope it will be in the Smithsonian,” said David Granger, Esquire’s editor in chief,..."The possibilities of print have just begun. In two years, I hope this looks like cellphones did in 1982, or car phones.”

Read more about it in the New York Times here.

Rumor has it there are people out there in Internetland that subscribe to several social networks/microblogging platforms. As a confirmed and (varyingly) active member of (ready for it?) Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plurk, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Pownce, hi5, and Plaxo (phew!) myself, I've often been hit with the annoying inevitability of having to update my status up to 9 times over and simultaneously lead a life outside of the Internet! Sound familiar? Enter hellotxt. Super simple in concept, the site allows you to easily update your status (and check the status of your friends) on 24 different Social Networks and microblogging platforms. Being active and alive online just got that much easier. Check it out here.

I'll just come out and say it. I love Tumblr. The whole concept behind "Tumble-logging" (or quickly blogging and posting links and media as you're surfing) takes away the tediousness of having to sit down and put a lot of thought into a full entry. Of course, this is both good and bad, but for the purposes of sharing cool stuff you come across, the simplicity can't be beat.

I was a bit nervous today, however, when I saw that Tumblr is testing its new beta site. I was so concerned that the simplicity and straightforwardness of the interface would be sacrificed for "new" stuff. But I was pleasantly surprised - those Tumblr guys know what it is that makes their product great. Check it out here!

A friend just turned me on to this delightfully simple work log, ididwork.com. The name pretty much says it all; log the work that you did, tag it if you like, and ididwork.com will create charts mapping your work, email your logs to your manager (if desired), and schedule work reviews. This is a handy little tool for jobs where you have to log hours on certain projects, or you may be working on site and have to report in your work to your manager. Just a great example on how simplicity wins over and a site without too many bells and whistles can be most useful.

The LUPE may look like another touchscreen camera but this concept is designed for ease of use and simplicity even tho technically it’s quite complex.

1. Designers question

2. Designers connect

3. Designers commit

4. Designers care

An 86 year old Japanese Buddhist nun is focused on the forefront of mobile technology by writing a cellphone novel. Cellphone novels are a growing trend in Japan, where subscribers (usually young women) sign up to receive short fiction via text messages. The story, called "Tomorrow's Rainbow" focuses on a young girl who meets the love of her life after the trauma of her parents' divorce.

Read More about it here.

Jacqui Cheng over at Ars Technica writes...

"How many times have you stumbled home after a long night out with
friends, only to plop down in front of the computer and start sending
e-mails that you would wake up regretting the next day? ..."

"Called "Mail Goggles," the Gmail add-on makes sending e-mail from Gmail
more difficult during certain times that you can set manually (while
sober, that is). How does it do this? If you have Mail Goggles
installed—which you can do by going to the "Labs" tab under your Gmail
settings and turning them on—it will force you to answer a series of
math questions before sending out any new messages..."

Read the full article here.

Yesterday, Twitter launched a redesigned homepage, which shows a shift in focus towards search (rather than specific users, as the old homepage highlighted). It seems that this new homepage could be a recognition, on Twitter’s part, of how users have shaped the microblogging platform - it’s now the place where you can find up-to-the-minute information on what’s happening NOW (rather than depending on search engines that are increasingly appearing to post more dated content, dependant on the slower nature of crawling the web and indexing content). Just look at the trends to see what people are talking about right this second (um…M&Ms and William Shatner? Really?). So does this poise Twitter to take on the search behemoths of Google and bing? Only time will tell…