“The Entire Communications Industry, in Less than 200 Pages… The 2007 Digital Economy Fact Book is a tightwad researcher’s dream: In-depth, statistic-heavy, well-cited, and freely-available online. One could hardly ask for more.

This report covers so much ground that any sentences I try to write about it are positively littered with commas and semicolons, and quickly become confusingly long. So instead, I’ll just list out some of the topics covered to give a feel for the extent of the info available here. Bet you can’t get to page 188 without learning something new…”

Another good thing from former XPLANEr Jeff Lash: “Ask A Good Product Manager provides answers to your product management questions. It is an offshoot of How To Be A Good Product Manager, a blog which provides regular tips on good product management practices.

Many readers of How To Be A Good Product Manager send emails asking for advice on product management questions and challenges. Ask A Good Product Manager was created as a way to answer more of these questions and share the answers with other product managers who have the same questions.”

“I’m rather sad to be reporting this one, but Vector Magic, the awesome free online vectorizing service is no longer free. It looks like the creators behind the service have left Stanford to make a desktop version of the popular software, which will be selling for a price that has yet-to-be-decided. Personally, I prefer Vector Magic over Live Trace in Illustrator, but that may change if the price isn’t right. Vector Magic is a single-function software. It’s nice, but It only does one thing. I can’t see myself paying more than $50 for a software that only does one thing, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

XPLANE continues to grow and we’re looking for project managers for the Portland and Atlanta offices. You can find job descriptions at http://www.xplane.com/#/careers/.

“Pacifists and war protesters all over the world wear peace signs on shoulder bags and jeans jackets. But only few know what the symbol really means, and where it came from.

Exactly fifty years ago British designer Gerald Holtom created what would become the international peace symbol. On February 21, 1958 the Royal College of Art trained artist designed a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the start of the British peace movement.”

Paula Scher: “I don’t see very many speakers from the advertising community invited to speak at design conferences (except for the very few who lead branding groups at agencies and in some circles they are still considered the enemy). I don’t read about it on design blogs, and I’m not seeing books published about it. I’m not seeing advertising, in any form, turn up in any design museum exhibitions, not at the Modern, not at the Cooper-Hewitt.” (Thanks kottke.org!)

“Swift-3D is a system for visually surfing datasets of hundreds of millions of items, with the full data available for answering queries down to individual records. Swift has a high-interaction visual interface constructed from 3D maps, 2D charts, tables, and network diagrams.”

“As promised, here I will continue with my series on Graphis Annuals of years past (previously: ‘59/60 parts 1, 2, 3 and ‘71/72). This time I’ll be presenting some material from the 1957-58 edition. It’s not my favorite year but it’s an interesting year because you can see the past and future jostling for position. Though much of it feels distinctly 50’s some of the 60’s advertising style that would soon overtake everything was already making inroads. Below I have culled 22 images for your perusal, so happy perusing.”

“Happy (belated) birthday Helvetica! The typeface turned 50 last year and feted with the release of an eponymous independent documentary film. While Helvetica has claimed its own place in history, still, it remains only one of myriad options on your Microsoft Word toolbar. Think you can tell one typeface from another?”

“Designers must draw. We pretty much all agree on that one. Regardless of whether we’re designing buildings, products, clothes or even web pages, a good number of us are judged–and judge each other–on our ability to snag a sheet of paper from the printer and quickly draft something beautiful and compelling.

This makes sense if you examine the history of these professions. Until the advent of desktop CAD, being a designer or architect meant being a draftsman too, for some or all of your career. The daily impression of pen on paper lent itself to the building of visual eloquence, and more importantly a lasting professional culture of valuing that eloquence.

In light of this culture, it’s surprising to look back on the work of great designers of the early and mid 20th century and realize that what’s usually depicted is the product itself…”

“Here’s video of ‘Casulo,’ the much-hubbubbed-about ‘apartment in a box’ from Marcel Krings & Sebastian Muhlhauser, who won the Abraham & David Roentgen Award with it in November of last year.”

“As promised a couple of weeks ago, I’ve uploaded a copy of the VHS tape that shipped in the box with Illustrator 1.0, hosted by company co-founder/CEO/Illustrator developer John Warnock…”

“How do we ensure that our Web sites actually give users what they need? What are the best ways to understand our users’ goals, behaviors, and attitudes, and then turn that understanding into business results? Personas bring user research to life and make it actionable, ensuring we’re making the right decisions based on the right information. This practical guide explains how to create and use personas to make your site more successful.”

“Visualizing Information: An Introduction to Information Design is a booklet I wrote and designed to introduce advocacy organizations to basic principles and techniques of information design. It’s full of examples of interesting design from groups around the world in a variety of media and forms. It has tips, exercises, and even recommended Free Software packages to help polish up your graphics.”

This is a list of software to create any kind of information graphics:

• either includes the ability to create one or more infographics from a provided data set
• either it is provided specifically for information visualization