The general idea behind Life, Below 600px is an honorable one - namely, users are okay with scrolling a website so you don\'t have to cram everything up \"above the fold.\" After some discussion with Daniel it became clear that the big downfall of the article is that it seems to be saying that \'The Prize\' for the end user should be farther down, persuading them to experience the whole site instead of just the top. This note in particular raises an eyebrow:

Imagine a newspaper squashed all of its quality content on the front page. How disappointed would you be to open the paper to only find the leftovers?

The same happens with your site. If everything of exceptional quality is pushed upon the reader at the beginning, once they start exploring and the rest of the site isn’t of the same calibre, they\'re going to be let down.

The newspaper\'s goal is for you to actually read the newspaper, not just the front page. That should be your goal too.

While I agree that the inner pages of a site / newspaper should be just as content filled as the front page you can\'t make the argument that the most pertinent info shouldn\'t be first. It\'s called The Inverted Pyramid; a writing style where you give the reader all the very important info first and then supplement that with the rest of the article. If you were to think of it as a website, the top would have all the goods and the rest would supplement that; not the inverse.

So, long rant aside, clients and non-web-designers should learn to embrace the ability of a browser to scroll; users are used to it and often think nothing of it. However, hiding your greatest content is a terrible idea.

This article has a great bit of insight on the process of Paul Rand designing the NeXT logo back when Steve Jobs was outted from Apple and started something new. Despite never having used any sort of NeXT operating system I distinctly remember seeing the logo at various computer stores - I suppose that\'s a testament to the work of Paul Rand\'s mark. The best part of the video interview with Jobs is when he\'s asked to describe what it\'s like to work with Rand, he responds:

"I asked him if he would come up with a few options, and he said, ‘No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don’t have to use the solution. If you want options go talk to other people.’"

Sounds like a match made in heaven. Watch the whole thing here.

Heads up via Jed.

This Fire Kit Lamp is kitschy yet enjoyable.. there\'s not a whole lot more to say about it.

Designed by 5.5 Designers and brought to you by Skitsch.

I\'ve said it before and I\'ll say it again - if you aren\'t running Dropbox on your machine you are crazy. I recently had a machine crash and instead of starting completely over due to lack of regular backing up all I had to do was install Dropbox and I had back tons of my data - FTP favorites, address book contacts, fonts, personal photos, etc. Had I not been running the app, I would have lost a great deal of it.

I\'m telling you this for two reasons: 1) To share a personal anecdote about software actually largely benefitting the end user and 2) to get you to sign up for an account if you don\'t have one already. It will benefit you and benefit me. So, yea, my motives are transparent and it\'s a \"trick\" for more storage on my own account but at least you get something awesome out of it as well.

I won\'t even attempt to convince you of the reasons why you need to visit the photostream of Hello, Don\'t Hang Up but I will suggest that you make sure to see this, this and this if you can\'t seem to find the time to browse the entirety of goods.

Gorilla vs Bear has teamed up with Weekly Tape Deck to form a new label called Forest Family Records. The debut release is from Cults - two songs you can snag for free digitally or order on limited edition 7\".

Gorilla vs Bear has always been one of those sites that was very particular in his musical taste and covered what he wanted to cover, not just the flavor of the moment. It makes sense that it would expand out to a label focusing on worthwhile releases like this.

Bonus fact: the logo for the label is courtesy of Will Bryant of Public School.

Thank you Honor Student for the heads up on the Jean-Pierre Jeunet trailer for Micmacs. Almost all of his movies have hit the mark in having the perfect balance of humor, heart and a visual style exclusive to Jeunet. Much like Gondry or Gilliam you can always tell a Jeunet movie based on the particular aesthetic only they possess. Micmacs appears to be more in the vein of Delicatessen or City of Lost Children; a bit darker in presentation but still amusingly absurd.

Jon Weir created this Super Dumb Player - a Flash video player with no integrated interface but, rather, with a standard set of HTML / Javascript generated UI. The most obvious benefit of this would be that a designer or developer could easily integrate videos into their site without having to learn Actionscript but still having a finely tuned visual experience. Granted, you\'d have to know a little Javascript but not so much that anyone determined to figure it out couldn\'t clear the hurdle.

As we move more towards HTML5 I think we\'ll see fewer Flash video players but I think it\'s safe to say that something like the Super Dumb Player could easily be upgraded to detect which version of video it should deliver to the end user and still be able to maintain the same user controls; a huge leg up in terms of overall experience.

Take a few moments today to watch Sam Harris at TED speaking on the topic of science answering moral questions; two spheres of thinking that seem to be divergent paths. Basically, he makes a myriad of points regarding morality not being a religious decision but, rather, a clear fact based path to the betterment of mankind. Of course there had to be some controversy regarding his talk because science prefers to be as hands-off in the judgement department as possible (understandably so) and to have someone speak to the opposite is a topic worthy of conversation.

Among other things I was really struck by this particular passage from the talk:

Whenever we are talking about facts certain opinions must be excluded. That is what it is to have a domain of expertise. That is what it is for knowledge to count. How have we convinced ourselves that in the moral sphere there is no such thing as moral expertise, or moral talent, or moral genius even? How have we convinced ourselves that every opinion has to count? How have we convinced ourselves that every culture has a point of view on these subjects worth considering?

It\'s 20 minutes long so you may not have time to watch it right now but, please, partake in it sometime today.

Via Aaron.

I\'ve long been a fan of Matthew Curry so it is an honor to have his work now showing in the Smallest Art Gallery. His show, \"Boy vs Dragon\", has all the elements that I\'ve come to enjoy so much from him - an onslaught of movement, drips, some graffiti influence and a great color palette (and the occasional Dragon Scale). Long story short - check out the show online or swing by gallery to see them in person.

• Google AJAX API - apparently Google has a slew of AJAX API\'s that let you integrate their services with just a few javascript calls. I don\'t have a firm grasp on the full scope of how many of their services you can pull in but it\'s nice to see how easy they\'re making it.
• Geolocation in Mailchimp - It\'s entirely possible that all of the email marketing firms out there are doing this but Mailchimp\'s geolocation tracking is the first I\'ve seen to speak about it. Basically, if someone signs up for your mailing list they can / will collect geolocation data about the user without having to ask for their specific city, state, zipcode - making it easier to have information delivered to specific customer sets. This has been a big issue for touring bands as long as I can remember and it\'s nice to see someone making it super easy.
• Box Shadow Experiment - super nerdy (and, thus, totally awesome) CSS experiment with element dropshadows and a \"light source.\" Works surprisingly well. Not sure what the practical implementation would be but it\'s definitely neat to see it working.

Over the weekend I gave Boss Construction a bit of sprucing up on the homepage. It\'s not perfect but it\'s a big improvement from what it was. Hopefully now people see more of his insightful postings and enjoy looking at the news posts a little more.

I\'m usually pretty skeptical of new shows on Comedy Central but I\'m going ahead and saying I\'ve been won over by Ugly Americans. With the premise being a literal take on monsters and freaks in NY it really lends itself to an endless amount of weird characters and beasts roaming through every scene. Not to mention the fact that it has Leonard Powers, a drunken wizard wearing a tie. It\'s a bit crass, a bit gruesome but all so awesomely absurd that you can\'t help but enjoy it.

You can watch a bunch of clips at the official site or just head over to YouTube and watch full episodes (that will inevitably be yanked down soon enough I\'m sure).

I\'ve been enjoying the illustrated works of Denis Carrier this morning - aka Studiofolk. The illustration works are simple, effective and often just humorous enough to be enjoyable but not annoyingly clever. If the portfolio\'s don\'t prove to be entertaining / inspiring enough for you - be sure to check the blog and the inspiration stream.

Only six videos in the playlist this week but there\'s some bonus stuff below worth visiting.

• Gurl, That\'s A Bootyhole! - disgusting and hilarious.
• iPad - Parry Grip - Parry Grip does a ton of videos consisting of Internet memes / phenomena set to original hyper-pop songs. It\'s hit or miss but the transition to a Nacho discussion in this video is great.
• The Thorn in the Heart - new movie from Michel Gondry (new to me) featuring his family. It\'s fascinating to get a little personal insight into one of the film worlds most creative people.
• Metallica - Enter Sandman (Smooth Jazz Version) - similar in idea to the myriad of terrible redubs out there this one takes it to a better place by just going with the actual song in Smooth Jazz version; but with original vocals. The guitar solos are hilarious.
• World\'s Shortest Escalator - not a funny video just a funny fact that this even exists.
• Cabee Cookies - I\'ve seen this before but it\'s been some time and it\'s amazing how terrifyingly weird it still is. It should also be noted that WTF Japan, Seriously!? should be in your bookmarks immediately.

BONUS

• Wunder Palms - Welcome to the Best Decision of your F\'ing Life! This is so weird but in the best way... also NSFW.
• \"Caulk\" Butt Enhancements Hospitalize 6 - a tame news video but the story about a motel room surgery some NJ residents have partaken in that involves getting bathroom caulk injected into their rears is absolutely unbelievable in its stupidity. Bathroom Caulk. No way this is legit.
• Veronica - not a video.. just something you can thank Renaud for.

Have a great weekend.

Did I mention that KNI was interviewed for .net magazine? The spread turned out well.. even if it does contain a vaguely terrible / hysterical photo of myself.

Big thanks to Kirk for sending us a physical copy of the issue!

I\'m sure some of these will end up on a future mix but you should probably go ahead and know about them now:

• Random Patterns - Psychi Luau (Single) - much less chaotic than their Creatures of Teeth record but very promising for the forthcoming full-length. Very summery and feel good. Snag it.
• Roy Ira - EP - overall, this is more country than what I typically listen to but I can\'t deny the appeal of Southern Girls and Too Tired To Do It is one of those ridiculous numbers that only a country song could pull off.
• Twin Sister - All Around and Away We Go - first track from the forthcoming Color Your Life album. Is good. Get it.

Stumbled across Titanium yesterday, a developing environment that uses existing web technologies (HTML, JS, CSS, Python, PHP, Ruby) to help you speedily develop mobile and desktop applications. Basically allowing you to make an app for iPhone or Android with one base of code, not multiple projects. It\'s similar to Adobe AIR in many ways but without having to know any Actionscript.

There are a bunch of Appcelerator videos to introduce you to the concept but some of the sample apps seem a little lackluster. It\'s also odd that the Getting Started guides have a bunch of visible HTML tags, i.e. <em&rt; instead of actual emphasized words.

Long story short, it looks / sounds promising and certainly something to keep in mind if mobile / app development is coming down the chute for a future project and you\'d prefer to use your built-in knowledge rather than tackling a whole new language.

I\'ll be honest, I wasn\'t even aware that Google Chrome had extensions available much less having a Web Developer set that would allow for proper dev usage of the browser. I\'m sort of thinking it might be time to experiment with giving Chrome a go as my main browser.. even if it\'s just for a week.

Heads up via Chad.