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David Pogue offers some suggestions the selection of non-jargony words when writing/speaking about technology. Most of these I agree with. Here's a few:

* Enable. Who on earth says, "Enable the GPS function"? Only user-manual writers and computer-book authors. Say "Turn on GPS" instead.

* Support. I don't mean "support" as in "tech support," although even that term is a corporate creepy cop-out (it means "help line"). No, I mean the verb, as in, "The laptop supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth."

In no other corner of modern discourse is "support" used that way. I use "has," "offers" or "works with.

More at NY Times...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/technology/personaltech/16pogue-email.html?_r=1&8cir&emc=cira1&oref=slogin

Lars Willem Veldkampf's Typocalypse flickr set exposes the subliminal messages in type.

http://flickr.com/photos/larsveldkamp/sets/72157607710779069/

I've caught Chuck Todd using a desktop touch interface a few times on MSNBC to click through poll charts. While John King has been using a Perceptive Pixel-designed touch wall, Todd has been using a Microsoft Surface interface on a desktop. The device and manipulation of data on the screen looks very natural on this show, especially for the kind of information he's speaking to. I think whenever there's a lot of visual information to add to a story, this kind of an interface has potential to be very helpful and I look forward to seeing what they do at MSNBC and on other shows.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27265754#27265754

Smashing Magazine does a roundup of pricing comparison table examples.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/13/pricing-tables-showcase-examples-and-best-practices/

This is my first case bound book notebook. I took a one day workshop at the Center for Book Arts to continue pursuing my obsession with notebooks. It is half filled with Bienfang 8x8 to the inch graph paper and the other half is Borden and Riley bleed proof paper. The section of papers is stitched into a text block that is drilled on left side to create this landscape orientation.

find:Design is a Google custom search page with "...an emphasis on design related content from news, portals, blogs, directories, media, podcasts, companies, portfolios and other design resources."

http://finddesign.blinkr.net/

Sumopaint, by Snap Group Ltd is looking to be a really slick Flash-based online graphics creation and editing tool. It has a very complete list of functionalities with shapes, brushes, layers, text editing, filters, and many of the features you'd expect from Photoshop or (ack) GIMP. Users can share images for community editing, create and view versions, and add comments.

This looks like it might turn out to be an excellent resource for those looking at doing things like shared whiteboarding and prototyping without the real-time editing. On the surface this appears to be only a Photoshop-like tool, but if you were to leverage the community and versioning features, the possibilities for a flexible tool like this become pretty interesting. Check it out.

http://www.sumopaint.com/

Because some of us don't mind dropping dollars for design t-shirts. :)

Via swissmiss

http://www.vonroxy.com/

Every week web.without.words takes a popular and known website and reconstructs it by removing all words and images, replacing them with blocks (a common "concepting" phase of any design process).

Via The Letter

http://webwithoutwords.com/

Seems like someone has come up with a better solution for marking my note and sketch pages in my Moleskines. Dog eared pages never suited me, and the colored tabs I get at MUJI and the occasional PostIt note are OK. But I love the idea of these magnetic page markers from Folio because it means I won't need to buy anymore sticky tabs from the stationery store. And the little pointed arrows are pretty useful for pointing out lines of interest in books too.

http://www.spoonsisters.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=100&Product_Code=44308