This post on 437signals will come as a surprise to some. The MacBook Air, despite all its lacks, is selling well.

The soft stuff, the emotive stuff, is what matters. A huge part of any purchase decision is emotive and irrational.

From a completely rational viewpoint, the MacBook Air should not be selling so well. After all, many have complained loudly about the lack of various “essential” technical …

I went McDonald’s website recently to look up the nutritional information for their Deluxe Brekkie Roll – which I have developed a soft spot for.

The site has certainly come a long way since I last visited years ago. The current incarnation is without a doubt a beaut piece of Flash “experience” work. The transitions and animations are fluid and smooth – fun …

I put some extra RAM into a friend’s laptop over the weekend. A lame dog with 256Mb, it now runs like a dream with 1.2Gb.

I am flabbergasted that Dell would sell a Windows XP laptop with only 256Mb of RAM. Sure, that is Microsoft’s published minimum requirement for XP; which of course, is the barest minimum it will take for the operating system to …

I came across this website which really how not to do a first contact experience on the web.

Here’s the engagement process:

1

When I first arrived, there was a blank area in the middle of the page. So I started reading the text on the right.

2

Suddenly this Flash element appeared, and pushed the text off to the right. How rude!

Now I couldn’t read …

I am still totally amazed by photos like this. This is a totally alien world, one I will never be able to set foot on in this lifetime. Wow.

If we as a species can do this, nothing truly is beyond us; except what we choose to not give a damn about.

(Incidentally this is the original photo which caused the recent “Martian Big Foot” …

The concept of a “computer” for your business has been kicking around since the late 1970s. And yet, most businesses have yet to really grasp the fact that it is a tool and not an end in itself.

Stilgherrian’s excellent post Social Media: It’s about the people, not the tools sparked this post.

I suggest that the continuing focus by businesses on the technological “bits” instead of …

Like the honourable Japanese whaling luncheon meat type of research, this one involved death.
Unlike the honourable Japanese whaling luncheon meat type of research, this one is not edible.

My friend Stilgherrian has an interesting experiment going involving the bits mentioned in the title. As per usual, it comes with great observations, is well written, and is illustrated to boot. See:

Lessons from tacky Heath Ledger jokes, Day …

Software registration keys are a necessary evil these days for everyone who buys legitimate software (while the pirates continue to merrily steal their copies).

This post on Coding Horror provides some solid lessons on how a bit of sensible design can really make users lives easier.

Using letters and numbers that look similar, such as O and 0 or …

I got this nice collapsible crate not to use as a crate, but rather as a laptop tray.

I recently added more RAM to an older laptop, so I can use it for in-bed reading. The problem was, with the added RAM, the bottom of the laptop became scorchingly hot. I needed to put it on something.

Enter the nice collapsible crate. It was the right size. It was …

I spotted this beautiful collapsible crate on the weekend in K-Mart. It is an exquisite piece of design and manufacturing.

There was no fancy packaging or pretentious product branding. It was simply shrink-wrapped with a single stuck-on barcode. The only way you could tell what it was was by the pricing label on the shelf! And yet - it is so self contained, so honest, so “this is a …