Subtraction

There’s plenty to like about the iPhone 2.0 Software Update, not the least of which is the fact that it now officially supports a brand new world of third-party applications. However, I’m only being a little facetious when I say that for me Apple really dropped the ball with its Contacts module.

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Apple’s new MobileMe service is due out before too long, and I’m pretty excited about it. In particular, I’m looking forward to what I hope will be a wholesale remedying of the many irritating shortcomings of its predecessor, the useful but error-prone .Mac service.

I know that I’ve said it before, but I’m really inclined to repeat it until a solution for its many problems is actually in place (and not just marketed) — .Mac is a very poor service. In my estimation, it falls far short of the high bar for excellence that Apple has consistently set for itself and met over the past decade.

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Whether or not Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” turns out to be any good when it’s released later this month, I want to just enjoy for a little while longer the situation that we’re in right now. That is, we live in a world in which the most recent Batman movie, Nolan’s three-year old “Batman Begins,” was actually a very good film. For my money, it’s about as rich a super-hero movie as any Hollywood has produced, but I’ll even settle for just a pretty good movie based on what came before it.

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In some respects, I think Muxtape, the popular site for creating so-called “MP3 mixtapes” is a triumph. Ostensibly a tool for creating personal playlists from nominally legal music tracks, it is in actuality very much a piece of social software. Except that the traditional trappings of social software — buddy lists, presence management, intra-membership messaging, etc. — are almost entirely missing. In a sense, it’s a kind of anti-Facebook, and in that functional asceticism, it’s really kind of a marvel.

On the other hand, minimalism has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. To be sure there’s real beauty to Muxtape’s enormous and simple music playback interface — its single-tasking posture may yet turn out to be as iconic as the original Google home page — but it’s also frustrating.

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Some NYTimes.com-related business today…

First, there’s a pretty plum job opening with T Style Magazine, the Sunday insert that has become a closely watched showcase for luxury design. The magazine launched an online version last year that, I think all of us involved would agree, is an imperfect first step in marrying the singular immersive qualities of the print edition with an authentically digital experience.

That’s why this position could be so influential. As Janet Froelich, the magazine’s creative director, describes it, “The focus of this position is to oversee the translation of the design approach of the print publication to the Web.” It’s a pretty unique job that requires publication design skills, a refined typographic sense and a good eye for photography — and a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of the Web. We’re essentially looking for someone to really help shape how a luxury magazine expresses itself online. By my guess, there are less than a dozen people in the world qualified for this job; if you’re one of them, send your résumé and cover letter to A. J. Rourk.

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To my surprise, Rumplo is an entertaining good time. Read this post…

Presenting design ideas is fraught with distractions. Read this post…

A little spacing could do Gmail a lot of good. Read this post…

A beautiful — and I mean gorgeous — book about galleries in Tokyo. Read this post…

Spending US$599 on an iPhone a year ago turns out to be not a great way to invest my money. Read this post…

Radiohead Video for “House of Cards” on Google

“ No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR.” Beautiful if gimmicky, like the best music videos. By the way, I wasn’t much of a Radiohead fan before “In Rainbows” came out, but I’m still listening to this album several days a week.

Iconic Logo Designers

A new project from independent designer David Airey profiling famous logo designers.

AisleOne:€” BBC Design Guidelines

BBC.co.uk applies some of the thinking I’ve done around grids to its new, wider page template.

Drawger.com: Felix Sockwell on the New York Times App for iPhone

Felix details the work he did for us designing a bucketload of icons for our iPhone application.

Kyle T. Webster Illustration

Lively line work and color.

Steven Heller: The Day I Worked for Clay Felker

A brief remembrance of the recently deceased New York editor.

Cereal Killers

Forthcoming coffee table book featuring satirical cereal box illustrations.

Mac Rumors: Apple to Offer iTunes Remote Control Application for iPhone and iPod Touch

Coming with the 11 Jul release of iPhone 2.0 software, the App Store and iTunes 7.7: “Use the new Remote application for iPhone or iPod touch to control iTunes playback from anywhere in your home — a free download from the App Store”

Thinkdust

Nice design portfolio from Alex Haigh, particularly his typeface BAQ Rounded.

Media Matters: Fox News Gives New York Times Reporters a Makeover

“Fox News featured photos of Jacques Steinberg and Steven Reddicliffe that appeared to have been digitally altered — the journalists’ teeth had been yellowed, their facial features exaggerated, and portions of Reddicliffe’s hair moved further back on his head.” Amazing.

Nike “Air McFlys” Finally Hit Store Shelves

Thanks in part to McFly 2015.

Carsonfied Matt

“The Carsonified team have set ourselves a challenge this week: to build a Web app in four days (32 hours) and we’re launching tomorrow at 5:30 PM GMT.”

Pulp Branding

“Monthly musings on the mysteries of branding.” Thanks to Jeremy.

NYT: Rhapsody Runs Hard Just to Stay in Place

Saul Hansell’s sobering update on the music subscription service: “All this seems the best that is possible for Rhapsody: A lot of time spent negotiating with labels to create products that are still expensive and don’t have the features that can get people excited.”

Business Week: The 10 Commandments of Web Design

Nominations for best and worst designs on the Web, with contributions from yours truly.

GrApple Theme for Firefox

Best theme I’ve come across yet for reskinning Firefox 3, the interface for which I file under, “nice effort, bad result.”

Owen Fitzgerald and His Descendants

Nice write-up by John Kricfalusi about this old school comics artist.

Rick Poynor Reviews Stefan Sagmeister’s “Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far”

“It’s a typically brilliant and engaging piece of design, but it sure ain’t modest.” Via Lined and Unlined. Also see my February write-up of “The Sagmeister Phenomenon.”

Eve Duhamel: Paintings, Illustrations & Videos

Jon Hicks on Expression Engine vs. Textpattern

“The upshot is, that for a lot of client sites, Expression Engine is wonderful (if you can put up with the admin side) — especially sites that need members, forums and all that jazz. The thing is, if a site doesn’t need those things, it’s less pain and more pleasure to use TextPattern.“

Internet Jogging: Whip iTunes Back into Shape

Handy utilities for managing your iTunes library.

Speak Up: Inside the Herb Lubalin Study Center

The Premier Firebird Trans Am Gallery

A visual resource for all things related to the Pontiac’s immortal sportscar.

“The Dark Knight” Tracking Extremely Well

A MovieTickets.com poll shows that anticipation for this sequel to “Batman Begins” is running very high. I can’t wait.

Fifty Designers’ Current Favorite Typefaces

Proceeds go to UNICEF.