This is pure awesomeness:

(Via The Technium)

For me, this is the best invention since sliced bread: the Goateesaver.

Now if only they can make it look less like a contraption from the Saw movie series….

Adaptive Path and Mozilla Labs collaborated to create a concept video about how web browsing might look in the future. It looks pretty awesome. I’m sure some of the things shown are already possible in some form or another, but the video shows a level of cross-compatibility and mixability that’s still beyond our grasp.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

(Via Boing Boing)

Imagine you could create your own website in just a couple of hours. It’ll be a very slick, professional looking website with a fantastic design and full of cool animated features.

You can manage this website through an incredibly easy and intuitive interface, dragging and dropping images, text boxes, navigation items and widgets to exactly where you want them on the site. You can customize almost every aspect of the site, including colors, fonts, layout, and design.

The site will be search engine friendly as well, and to top it all off it’s free.

Can you think of a reason not to use this system? Neither can I.

The folks at German design bureau Blutsbrüder have come up with a supercool series of photo/CGI composite images featuring all kinds of future-tech gadgets and contrivances. Definitely worth checking out if you’re into that sort of thing. I sure am.

(Via Gizmodo)

Now that I’ve properly basked in the glory of my new toy, I can’t help but compare it to Apple’s iPhone. And I must conclude that despite my earlier enthusiasm about the iPhone (the only reason I bought the HTC instead of the iPhone is because it’ll take another few months at least before the latter is released in my country), Apple’s device is lacking on several points.

To list a few iPhone deficiencies with the Tytn II’s features compared:

iPhone: No 3G connectivity, so surfing the web on it is extremely slow.
Tytn II: 3G UMTS and HSDPA with speeds up to 3.6 MBit/sec.

iPhone: A measly 2 megapixel camera, which is just not done anymore.
Tytn II: 3 megapixel camera (on a device primarily marketed as a business device) and an additional small VGA videoconferencing camera on the front.

iPhone: Locked to AT&T in the USA, locked on single networks in Europe as well as it comes out.
Tytn II: Offered by several different cellular providers in Europe.

iPhone: Inadequate touchscreen keyboard.
Tytn II: A full qwerty keyboard that is a joy to work with.

iPhone: No removable battery and no way to exchange SIM cards (without voiding the warranty).
Tytn II: Can do both, and switching SIMs doesn’t even require you to remove the battery.

iPhone: No GPS.
Tytn II: Integrated GPS.

iPhone: Closed OS with (currently) very little additional software options.
Tytn II: Windows Mobile 6 with countless (freeware) software apps available.

iPhone: No memory expansion slots.
Tytn II: MicroSD slot to stuff extra gigs of memory in.

iPhone: $400 with a 2-year contract of $60 a month.
Tytn II: €160 with a 2-year contract of €32 a month.

And yet, despite these numerous shortcomings, the iPhone provokes an almost primal sense of “I want” whenever I see one.

Pet peeve: HTML pages that don’t set their background color properly.

I have my browser set so that the default background color, when none is defined in the HTML code itself, is a light gray. So every page that fails to have a proper background color tag shows up with a light gray background to me. It’s a common error, and to me a sign of a lazy web developer.

Take this site for example. With a project like this you’d expect the web developer to make sure his code is in order, the intended audience being of above average geekitude. The background color is obviously supposed to be white, but the color isn’t set, so it’s gray to me.

Yes, most people’s browser settings show the background as white by default. That’s not my point. If as a web developer you want your page to look right, with the colors and fonts that you picked, you need to code that into the page. If you don’t you’re being lazy or ignorant or both.

So set your damn background color, people.