Hey, my biggest daily annoyance inspired a PopGadget post! I've had a 3M privacy screen on my laptop for ages because of all the people who would blatantly lean over on the train to see what was on my laptop's screen. Since I have EVDO, it was often work related, which was not so much something that I really want random people on NJT to see. Chrissie saw my screen a few weeks ago when I had to take it off to show her photos of declan, and now she has a post up on PopGadget about it. Neat. I really think they should come standard on laptops.

headphones & apple

Andrej's post on Apple design details reminded me of two Apple details that I recently discovered. They are great little detail-obsessive easter eggs. I noticed the first one at work a day ago- my macbook was muted, then I plugged in my headphones and went to change the sound level and noticed that it had updated to the level that I'd had it at last time I'd had headphones in it. Amazing! When I showed that to a coworker, he showed me how the ipod will pause your music if your headphones come unplugged. Those are such small details, but they're exactly the sort of tweaks that make a great product, ones which show that designers really use and play with their products when creating them.

A new icon for the city

The Eagle
Originally uploaded by wck

I walked across the new Olympic sculpture park in Seattle again this evening, watching everyone taking photos of the Eagle sculpture. It's been so fascinating to see how this one particular piece is really almost emerging as a new iconic image of Seattle. Flickr (which has tons of images of it) and the proliferation of digital cameras have certainly led to the ability of a new view of a city to crystalize. It's a gorgeously captivating piece, on its own, and mesmerizing in its location. Experiencing it person makes a strong impression, especially at sunset.