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Occasionally the argument about the affect of aesthetics or beauty on usability seems to come up in UX discussion, and this CHI short paper from 1995 is referred to. This is an article by members of the Design Center, Hitachi discusses the team's research on determinants to apparent usability, based on tests of design and psychology students.

These results show that the apparent usability is less correlated with the inherent usability compared to to the apparent beauty. ... This suggests that the user may be strongly affected by the aesthetic aspect of the interface even when they try to evaluate the interface in its functional aspects and it is suggested that the interface design should strive not only to improve the inherent usability but
also brush up the apparent usability or the aesthetic aspect of the interface.

ACM members can download the short report at the ACM Portal.

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=223680

ClickTale makes observations about scrolling based on their research of users' browsing behaviors around "the fold." Their report on scrolling makes the following conclusions:

[I[t appears that visitors scroll in a relative way - about the same percentage of page views will reach the middle of a web page regardless of the actual page height in pixels.

Visitors appear to be using the location of the scroll bar but not the size of the tracker when scrolling, since the scroll bar location is a relative indicator and the scroll tracker size is an indicator of page height.

View their 2 part report.

http://blog.clicktale.com/2007/10/05/clicktale-scrolling-research-report-v20-part-1-visibility-and-scroll-reach/

Kickstarter is a brilliant idea for creatives needing funding for projects. It's a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, bloggers, etc. It works much like fundraising sites you may have used if you've ever had to raise money for events for non profit organizations. A few years ago I used a similar one for Team In Training.

You set up a page stating your mission and the need for funding. On this page you state the monetary goal, and a form allows users to pledge donations at different levels of support. The charges are made via Amazon payments. The project gets 100% of all proceeds minus Amazon's fee for credit card processing.

A filmmaker I recently became acquainted with is shooting a documentary film and set up a fund raising page for the project with levels of support that include special bonuses as an incentive, from tickets to the premiere to inclusion in film credits. I remember Jill Sobule also did something similar to this a few years ago to fund an album, giving people bonus gifts and liner note credit for support.

Seems like a great way for artists to empower themselves by raising funds through peers and fans without the hassle of going to banks or finding angel investors and VCs. I would bet some investors will be watching this space if web app designer/developers start using it.

http://www.kickstarter.com/