The internets are all abuzz this morning about the new Amazon Cloud Player - a new service that seems to echo the old LaLa service a bit. You are given 5 gigs of storage with Amazon and can upload music there to be listened to from anywhere with a connection. Purchases from the Amazon MP3 store don't count towards your storage limit. The web interface looks just as you'd expect it to and there's some software you can nab to upload tracks from your computer to your cloud. There's also plenty of help if you're having issues as well. The software has some odd behavior but it's a first release, so I assume it will only improve.

On the whole, I'm pleased to see this come to light. Amazon is perfectly poised to launch such a thing and I'm glad they did. The service is not available on iOS devices so you better believe this puts the heat on for Apple to get their new MobileMe services churned out (at least, as far as I can predict). Regardless of mobile access, I am more and more open to embracing the cloud for music storage.

What if you documented all your various ponderings, your research into them and even went as far as to illustrate them as well? You'd probably have something similar to I Always Wondered; the "nearly ADD" blog of Jarrett Green and his curious thoughts. I love the design work and the subject matter is random enough to appeal to everyone.

HT Swiss Miss

Major respect should be paid to Lance Cardinal for his custom built Muppet Theatre. Upon learning that the company was going bankrupt and would never produce this stage he took it upon himself to create one - with painstaking detail. The photos of his creations do a great service to the amount of work he put into it. How are you not going to enjoy something Muppet based that just so happens to also be an incredible miniature?

If you thought Garfield Minus Garfield was a depressing little treat then you're sure to love 3eanuts - Peanuts comic strips with the final panel cut out; leaving them as a look at a group of kids, a dog and bird that are all largely depressed. It's hard to even imagine how the fourth panel could provide any levity based on the first three but I suppose that's what makes it so effective.

Assuming you're using a modern browser, please point yourself over to the TEDxPortland site and scroll down. The effect that reveals itself is simple, impacting and unique. It continues at the bottom so have yourself a blast scrolling the site. It's the simple things in life.

Many of you may have already seen the 2011 Beercamp site that was more relevant two weeks ago for SXSWi but it's new to me. It's also the first exhaustive use of the new CSS 3D Transforms that I've ever seen implemented. The scale / zoom trick has been deployed on any number of Flash sites but I've not encountered it in a pure HTML / CSS / JS environment before. For what it is, it's surprisingly smooth (in Chrome).

Oh, and keep an eye out for a tiny Easter egg.

I'm loving this Type Exploration tool that allows you to adjust all kinds of different parameters for the gridded layout. It's educational on a number of fronts if you're not familiar with text layout terminology. There are a number of good typefaces to check out and the expanding / contracting layout that's based on browser width is a trick that won't get old to me for some time.

via Jamie.

Jennie P is, to me, best known for her roles in various Honor Student videos - as well as a few commercials - but she's been doing her own show called Music Time with Jennie P lately and it's pretty funny. Awkward? Absolutely. The best example thus far is her SXSW Episode - more jokes, more ridiculousness. Watch it, enjoy.

If you've been visiting Designers MX lately you've noticed two things: 1) A ton of great mixes being regularly added to the site. 2) The ability to Like and Comment on mixes if you have an account. But it's unclear on how you get said account. Turns out, you need an invite code. Fortunately, I'm here to help with that if you're at all interested. I've got 30 invite codes ready to roll - so just leave a comment if you want one (along with a valid email) and I'll send it right along.

UPDATE: Out of invite codes. Sorry folks...

Seriously guys, sorry, No More Invites.

Thanks to a little prompting from Landry I did a bit of reading up on the emerging tech of NFC - Near Field Communication. This blog entry gives a good overview of the tech, the challenges involved and what it could mean for consumers moving forward. On the surface, like a lot of tech, it seems pretty great.. using your cellphone instead of a credit card to make purchases and/or get information about a particular real world object nearby. The reality is that there are all kinds of security concerns and losing your phone could then have the added risk of the equivalent of losing your credit card - not great. However, it's got a sci-fi future aspect to it that I can't not enjoy.

I know for a fact that Bank of America / RIM are rolling out a Mobile Wallet that uses this technology so expect to start seeing it sooner rather than later. Also, Google and Apple are rumored to be going for it as well. Just sayin'...

Chad clued me in to this rather clever type undertaking called Chartwellwhich, as far as I can comprehend, uses ligatures tucked away in the typeface to create pie, bar and line charts from numerical type. In other words, you type "20 + 5 + 60 + 15" and the typeface creates a visualization from those percentages. The downside? Apparently ligatures in @font-face are only supported in Firefox 4; so using this on the web is a long way off from full adoption but it's a great idea to keep an eye on.

I realize this iPhone Home Screen Concept has been making the rounds for awhile but it was brought to my attention again recently and I'm struck by how good of an idea it is. After seeing more and more Android phones out in the wild I realize that the only thing they offer that I find superior to the iPhone is their homescreen - an easy to view overall status of things you're curious about. Looking at the design it just makes sense - particularly if it is an optional view instead of a forced one. Maybe this will end up being completely claim-chowder but I'm almost willing to bet that Apple sees this, reworks it as their own and includes it in some upcoming version of iOS. It has happened before and this seems like the perfect idea for it to happen again.

Some decent selections this week.. though I did intentionally omit some videos just because I assume you have already seen them.

• TLC Promo - sadly, I can totally imagine half of these shows being legit. via Zach.
• The Kelly Family - it's hard to believe this is from 1990. It's also hard to believe that a song about not wetting the bed had such a huge production behind it and was broadcast on TV. That kids voice is the perfect combo of hysterical and vaguely terrifying.
• DEVO Honda Ad - despite being from 1984, the weirdness sustains. via Danny.
• 60 Things in 60 Seconds - a combination of good writing and Matt Berry narration makes for a must see commercial. I love the "Draw a Bath" portion.
• Guilty - which dog got into the cat treats? Can you tell?
• Kristen Schaal Xperia PLAY - this is weird. Real weird.
• Dungeonmaster Trailer - you may not be convinced of it after watching the trailer but I assure you - you need to watch Dungeonmaster. It has seven different directors, features Bull from Night Court as the devil, has a running time of just over 100 minutes and contains more perfectly cheesy 1980's special effects than you could imagine in one film. I'm not saying it's a good movie but I am saying it's an entertaining one. If you're still not convinced, just read the one sentence synopsis on IMDb, if that doesn't get you in.. you're beyond my help.

BONUS

• DFA1979 - apparently now that Death From Above 1979 have somewhat reunited they're posting videos of their practice. The lo-fi style matches their sound quite well.
• Scary Boots - if you can explain what is going on in this video I commend you wholeheartedly.

Have a great weekend!

Kid Grandios has posted a typographic / photography experiment entitled ONEHUNDRED. The results are a mixed bag but that's what experiments are for.. learning what works and what doesn't (plus, it's all subjective). We should all be so bold as to take on, and complete, such a task!

via Paige.

You know a design is great when you're compelled to look at every single available section even when you don't care one iota about the subject matter. Such is the case with Quality Laundry Professionals - a laundering service in Missouri. I'm not exactly personally invested in the pricing scheme of a launderer in MO but because the folks at Cinch Creative did such a bang up job with the design, I exhaustively checked it all out. I think you will too.

via Zach.

There's a great series of logo design going on over at Aqua Velvet. In the ongoing four part series they present a number of solid, simple designs from around the world. I believe most of the examples are taken from this book but if you don't happen to have that, it's nice to see all the inspiring designs. Simple really is best.

via Revgoomba.

Upon the suggestion of Daniel I picked up the Color app yesterday. Basically, the app allows you take and immediately share photos from within a small physical area. Imagine being at a party or show and everyone was taking photos, this app compiles them into one viewing gallery and shares them amongst anyone looking. From that angle, it sounds like a fun way to share photos amongst friends. The problem I had with it is that the interface was rather bizarre (lots of swiping in non-standard ways) and while it saves your photos to your Photo Library there doesn't seem to be a way to save anyone elses. The app claims the range is roughly 150 feet but with our one experiment using it we had people joining the group from at least half a mile away.. not exactly a common party.

Long story short, it's free so it's worth checking out but I'm not entirely sold on it being a Must Have piece of software in your life.

If you've been paying attention at all you know that I am a huge fan of the Danny Jelinek / Jason Whetzell video series Everything. It is an eclectic mix of short vignettes tied together by consistent narration. It has a vaguely ADD riddled style that is almost always up my alley.. and, if it isn't, it's only a few minutes until something new starts that likely will be. It's all over the map in terms of styles, tone, method of execution and subject matter. I really love it - watch them all if you've not done so yet.

With that in mind, when my friend Mac asked me to help him collaborate on a mix paying tribute to the series, I immediately agreed. He did a great deal of the heavy lifting in terms of compilation - gotta give credit where credit is due - but it was still a collab. On the whole, this mix tries to capture the spirit of the shows eclecticism - I think you'll enjoy.

[ Single MP3 | Single M4A | Individual MP3 ZIP ]

1. The Electric Flag - Intro To Everything
2. Nik Freitas - Sophie
3. Ford & Lopatin - Scumsoft
4. Ford & Lopatin - Channel Pressure
5. Man Man - Piranhas Club
6. BATTLES - Sweetie & Shag (Featuring Kazu Makino)
7. Rachel Goodrich - G-Dino
8. Cloroform - Public Pervert
9. The Beach Boys - I Went to Sleep
10. Galt MacDermont - Moving Clothes
11. Kitty Wells - Searching (For Someone Like You)
12. The Equals - Michael and the Slipper Tree
13. The Electric Flag - Flash' Bam' Pow'
14. The Idle Race - The Skeleton and the Roundabout
15. Jean Jacques Perry - Porcupine Rock [52751]

I recall seeing this video for the Superbrothers game Sword & Sorcery over a year ago. After several more videos and a bit of breath holding, the game is officially released. What is it? First and foremost it's a genre of videogame involving discovery, exploration and the like. Approved. Secondly, it's a collaboration between art collective Superbrothers, musician Jim Guthrie and game studio Capy. The Guthrie soundtrack will be released in April on iTunes / Bandcamp and I guarantee you're going to see a lot of #sorcery on the ole tweets.

It's been awhile since I've been this intrigued by the release of a game and I'm stoked to fully dive into it. If you need more convincing, go through every link on this page and you'll know everything there is to know.

I saw this series of images making the rounds yesterday but didn't have the context of what they were depicting.. I assumed they were just digital creations of varied lightforms. Turns out, the official explanation is that each image is a photograph of the light system shutting down inside of old tube televisions. It's an image most of us have seen hundreds of times before but only for a minuscule moment. Stephan Tillmans has been able to capture not only the effect but the movement as well. The result is fascinating to say the least.