Prett darn nice: “SimpleViewer is a free, customizable Flash image viewing application.”

“On Monday, the always-bouncy Boing-Boing published a post about text greeking–you know, the ‘lorem ipsum’ placeholder text that designers often use to flesh out a layout while waiting for final copy. That post got me to thinking: how many Web pages have gone live with placeholder text of one kind or another? Sounds like a job for Google–and a great way to procrastinate while looking busy.” (Thanks Zeldman!)

“Use this [tutorial] to convert your digital pictures and scans into comic book style illustrations. Nothing can take the place of talent …except for maybe a relative who works high up in the business…but this tutorial will get the idea across without requiring much artistic talent at all.”

“By the time an object, or an apartment, or a company hits the half-century mark, it’s usually been through a redesign or two. Yet the standard-issue amber-cast pharmacy pill bottle has remained virtually unchanged since it was pressed into service after the second World War. (A child-safety cap was added in the seventies.) An overhaul is finally coming, courtesy of Deborah Adler, a 29-year-old graphic designer whose ClearRx prescription-packaging system debuts at Target pharmacies May 1.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

“Imagine we’re starting work on the user registration functionality of a web site. After conducting a thorough set of user tests, we discover that half of all users who attempt to register can’t successfully complete the process. Those who do register find the process very frustrating. Fixing the registration process to eliminate any frustration would important, right? Not necessarily.”

“If you are a freelance or small Web design firm, I have an uncomfortable question to ask you: are you thinking too small?”

“CodeZoo exists to help you find high-quality, freely available, reusable components, getting you past the repetitive parts of coding, and onto the rest and the best of your projects. It’s a fast-forward button for your compiler.” (See also: “Some notes on the building of CodeZoo“)

Julian Beever has made pavement drawings for over ten years. He has worked in the U.K., Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, the USA and Australia. The pavement drawings have included both renderings of old masters plus a wealth of original inventive pieces of work. Anamorphic illusions drawn in a special distortion in order to create an impression of 3 dimensions when seen from one particular viewpoint.”

“The official weblog of the Lincoln Sign Company… Lincoln Sign Company is a small, custom sign shop specializing in carved, sandblasted & dimensional signs, but we will happily do just about any job (big or small) that is sign related. The company has been in operation since 1972 and was started by Rick & Chris Weissbrod. J.D. & Vicki Iles recently took over the business in May of 2004, and have been having fun ever since!”

“Since I got back from SXSW and our well received Design Eye for The Idea Guy panel I’ve received quite a few e-mails asking about my use of page description diagrams and how they fit into the design process. For those of you who are unfamiliar with page description diagrams you can see an example over at the Design Eye site. They are, in essence, a text-only alternative to wireframes. I first heard of their use in an article by Dan Brown for B&A. If you’re interested in some background, it’d be a good idea to start there.”

“Here’s a neat way to invent a new Purple Cow. Figure what the always is. Then do something else. Toothpaste always comes in a squeezable tube. Business travelers always use a travel agent. Politicians always have their staff screen their calls. Figure out what the always is, then do exactly the opposite. Do the never.”

“I had an interesting conversation today about the nature of jobs today. The debate centered around the notion of what it means to be the boss, particularly in a creative field. When you’re not the boss, the top spot gets idealized and romanticized as the ultimate perch to do what you love. But when you see close up what the boss really does all day, you realize that he or she is almost never doing what got them into the business.”

“Recently, we received the following topic recommendation, from Tom B., regarding estimating: ‘I’ve been having difficulty estimating how much work will be involved in new projects, and how much to tell the client they should expect to pay. I feel a huge pressure to underestimate - almost as though to be realistic about time requirements is somehow shameful. A discussion about how people deal with the pressures of estimating would be very useful.’ We thought we might put it in two different perspectives — small agency vs. large agency — and go from there. The topic probably makes for a good discussion as opinions on estimating and pricing seem to be all over the map.”

“Once again we experience a long awaited new update of Photoshop. This is a brief overview on some of the features that are new in Photoshop CS2 (aka PS9). All observations are based on a current beta version of PS CS2.”

“When I wrote this article, I had just finished graduate school at MIT and was a struggling neophyte in technology journalism. I knew that there was something important about this Web stuff; a lot of MIT students were already building their own pages, some faculty were posting their course notes, and you could even order flowers online. But virtually none of the technologies that make the Web so powerful today had yet been conceived.”