I opened my e-mail this morning to find this gem. I know making fun of people’s names isn’t all that funny, but come on.

Trust me: the guy on the left knows how to “enter into negotiations.” And check out how the guy on the right is just…staring right at it, as if there isn’t a big, orange, clipart wang staring him in the face. (Hint: Rollover to see the funny.)

This comes from a real-live computer software company’s website. And I know that I’m not making the funny up here, because it was covered up with a de-cocked version several hours later.

Even worse, this clipart was supposed to indicate a friendly merger of two companies. Not counting the aired out sausage, is there anything friendly (or at least not hostile) about the posture of these two guys?

So I downloaded the IE8 beta 1 last night. It’s not bad. Seems pretty promising, in fact, although a couple of the new features are less than intuitive at first glance. As a disclaimer, Microsoft is pretty clear that this beta is aimed at “designers and developers,” so I’m sure there will be a bunch of usability improvements before the next release. With that said, some first impressions:

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There’s probably not much demand for this kind of stock, but it’s cool to look at, and you never know when you can use it for some unorthodox purposes (website navigation, anyone?) Bassboy.com has put together a five-disc library of photos, brochure scans, and schematics for hundreds of old tape recorders, stereos, amplifiers, and other old-timey stuff. Each disc costs around $30, and they each have variations of open-reel-tape-inspired disc art. (Side note:Why isn’t anyone making blank discs like this? I’d buy them by the pantload.)

As an extra bonus, think of all the dirty ’70s things your parents total strangers did while listing to Paul Anka records on these things. Explain.

W

e stuck with our new spaceman (person?) theme and redesigned our cards for the third time in as many hours, it seems like. For those of you who are interested in such things, we had them printed at 48HourPrint.com with rounded corners and the nice-to-the-touch matte dull finish on both sides. Whatcha think? (Special thanks to Griffin Crowdson for loaning us the space helmet.)

I‘m kind of a font-whore, and as such, it takes me about a year to go through all of them one by one. There seem to be a lot of crappy font managing programs out there, but here’s one that seems a little better: Opcion Font Viewer, written by Paul Chiu. Opcion’s best quality is its ability to display a bunch of fonts at once. It uses a page forward/page back system, so you can see a whole new group of fonts (with your chosen text) with the click of a button. Opcion lets you choose how many fonts to put into a page, so if you have a big enough monitor, you can probably fit 15 or 20 at a time.

Opcion also lets you preview fonts that are not yet installed and lets you save a list of favorite fonts for quick recall. The only thing missing is a way to to see extended character sets, but that’s not really the point of this program anyway.

One final thing that gets a little annoying: Opcion was written in 2004, so it can’t be blamed, but every time I open it up in Vista, I get a warning message telling me that an “unauthorized program is trying to access my computer.” Honestly, this is more of a kavetch about Vista, but you’ve been warned.

I have a secret. I don’t hate Vista. I wanted to, though. A big, glassy turd salad, I thought. When I buy my next computer, I’m gonna get that XP downgrade so I don’t have to put up with Vista’s crap, I thought, like a smug jerk.

Sadly, I was pretty much totally wrong.

I didn’t get the downgrade, but it wasn’t my choice: I got a refurbished HP Pavilion laptop ($600 from buy.com - I recommend it if you’re in the market) that came with Vista Home Premium. Fortunately, my cheapness got in the way of my desire to jump on a Vista-hating bandwagon. Here’s a summary of what I like:

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Here’s a good way to make an easy client login system: AjaxExplorer. AjaxExplorer is designed to be an FTP/file management system; upload it to your server, run the install script, and you can browse files (screenshot) just like they’re on your computer, as if you were in some sort of windows-based file-exploring-software-program.

The thing that make this program great is that you can create individual users with their own user names and passwords, with their own limited access to certain folders. So, for example, you have a set of files you want to designate to a particular client (logos, photoshop mockups, etc). Create a directory for that client on your server, and create a user for the client in AjaxExplorer.

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“Fadind”? It’s not a word, so you can’t get off on that homonym you-spelled-it-right-so-the-computer-missed-it excuse. Maybe it’s pronounced ‘FAD-ind,’ as in “I am fadind by eating lots of Crisco.” Stupid.

I can’t stand to read a big, long article on a computer screen. This, combined with my printer that devours SIX (6) Fifteen Dollar ($15) Ink Cartridges every couple months or so, is the reason that I have to eat belly lint and Ramen noodles for dinner every night.

On a related note, it’s a big help to have articles automatically re-format themselves when you go to print them. I also like it when there’s an easy “email to a friend” link on each post. Occasionally, I’ll copy-and-paste a link into an email, but usually, I won’t do it.

With that in mind, here are 2 Wordpress plugins: One automatically creates an e-mail link, and the other formats your posts for the printed page.

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Here’s how our visitors divided, browserly speaking, for the month of November (according to Google Analytics):

1. Internet Explorer users were split 52/48 in favor of IE6 vs. IE7.
2. Almost all Firefox users were using some version of 2.0, except for a few people using the 3.0 beta.
3. 71% of visitors were on Windows vs. 23% on Macs.
4. Screen Resolutions were split pretty evenly, but 1280×1024 was the winner at 27%.
5. Only two people were using Safari for Windows, because it blows.

A little while ago, I found a good article highlighting 25 Minimalist Blog Designs. Here’s one that didn’t make the list, but should’ve. Book By Its Cover, run by Julia Rothman, is a beautifully designed blog that reviews books on art and design with occasional author interviews.

Gee, two columns, justified to the left, on a white background…why can’t Planet Earth stop ripping us off?*

*This statement is totally untrue.

Man, I wish I had paid more attention in high school Spanish. Actually, it’s cool to see a work like this in a language I don’t understand, because it really separates design from content. Notice how you can tell smart and funny things are happening, even if you can’t tell what they’re saying?

For the record, this song is “Ya No Sé Que Hacer Conmigo” by Cuarteto de Nos. If you can understand Spanish, read the lyrics here.