Stamp prices are expected to rise again on May 11. It’s been hard to keep up with the litany of stamp price increases lately, which is why the post office offers the Forever Stamps that will always cover the postage for first class letters. Forever Stamps cost the same as first class stamps online at $8.40 for a book, making them my new default stamp selection.
You know, for my frequent post office stamp purchases.
Being an astute reader, I’m sure you are wondering what exactly a 1967 Dodge Viper is. The Viper was not produced until the 1990′s, but a very clever designer named Rafael Reston has imagined what might have been. This is his vision of an alternate past:
I absolutely love this project from a design standpoint. He has taken the spirit of the Dodge Viper, as it has existed in modern times, and put it in the design language of the 60′s. It is still unmistakably a Viper, but from another time.
What Rafael has done is take a purely modern instance of an object that has existed for the last century, and put it in the design asthetic of a few decades ago. As another example, I wonder what Starbuck’s branding would have been if they had been around during the 50′s?
Taking a slightly different direction than Rafael, let’s think about the internet. It has not been around for a very long time so there is no set design precedent from the 50′s or 60′s for web technology. Still, I wonder if we were to try and design websites from the 60′s, what they would look like?
Click through if you’d like to see more images from Rafael’s gallery. They’re pretty cool.
Steve Martin has hosted SNL what, twenty times now or something. As they say, with experience comes comedy. Don’t question it.
SNL with Steve Martin via Hulu.com (again).
A while back I installed the “Ding!” application from Southwest Airlines. Today, I am uninstalling that application.
While the application does have some upsides, they are not the upsides you want. The app is unobtrusive. This is good for most applications from a simplicity standpoint, but it’s not great to have your users think “at least I don’t have to look at this all the time.” After opening the application from the system tray, where it resides full time, you are greeted to a window with a questionable color palette and one link.
The buttons on the right are not buttons at all, but rather links to Southwest’s airlines. While this program is not malware of any kind, its dishonest design generates worlds of mistrust.
Lastly, the app is not useful for me at all. Every “Ding!” price that I’ve seen so far in the past few weeks has been for a one-way trip. I have no use for one-way tickets. I’m sure there are people out there who do buy one-way tickets on a whim, but they don’t have any immediate family, job, or other commitment to speak of.
If you install this app, it won’t cause any harm beyond taking up space on your machine, but that’s all it did for me.