onfocus

great tiny icons. [via mathowie]

can interactivity make consumers more susceptible to suggestion? "These findings suggest that marketing managers should test their campaigns for both true and false memories."

This site is a little tough to navigate because it's in German, but seeing examples of East German design from everyday tools (like drills) to architecture are worth the effort. They're like artifacts from another world. [via designboom via sterling]

Google is considering adding data portability--the ability to easily move your information out of Google to competing services. [via Slashdot]

rafe comments on his recent experience with a PDF book.

great story about a Neuroscientist using ideas from his field to help win a gameshow. [via Mind Hacks]

this articles dissects the art of comedy and distills it down to a few "joke templates". [via Mind Hacks]

"a musical realization of the motion graphics of john whitney as described in his book 'digital harmony'." By Jim Bumgardner. Play with the hand crank!

Flickr Hacks co-author Jim Bumgardner recently spoke at Yahoo about the visual and audio hacks he plays around with. I hope Yahoo releases audio of his talk.

[via Bruce Schneier]

some of the presentations from the IDEA conference are available now

I already ordered the book. (It arrived today, yay!) But I'd be ordering on Nov. 1st with others if I hadn't. [via Brian Sawyer]

Easy-to-install version of GPG for Mac folk.

I just tried Enigmail again after a couple years, and it actually works well. This plugin handles encrypting/decrypting email on the fly. (If you have GnuPG installed.)

"Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old." [via sterling]

rael and michael's startup has a blog now.

Hex the Mac color picker

handy tip for quick access to color picker, especially when combined with the HexColorPicker add-on

buy these geek shirts. !!! sudo buy these geek shirts.

There's a new version of SQL Server client tools that has better query integration (no more moving over to query analyzer). I'm still getting to know it, but so far I'm impressed.