In my previous lives, working at nonprofits and corporations for a few years, it was common that colleagues – but not me – wanted to visit websites, especially those like Metafilter. Someone behind a site called workFRIENDLY figured out a pretty good way to emulate Microsoft Word (old school flavors only) so that you can visit sites like Metafilter and not be accused of philandering, time-wasting, or even learning. The beauty of is that the WorkFRIENDLY filter itself strips out the styling of the site and converts it into Arial. There’s even a “Boss Key” that makes it look like you’re, well, thinking.
The whole thing reminds me of something I could have done myself in 1999. But I like the fact that it exists and I love the way sites look through WorkFRIENDLY, all stripped down and out. Of course, if you want to see what a website looks like without all the pretty stuff, you can always download and install Lynx, a free, text-only browser that can looks great on a Mac.

For those of you who care about companies wasting people’s time because they can’t agree about standards, a bright new website has launched promoting email standards. It’s called, simply, the Email Standards Project. Why does it matter? Because a hundred years ago, industries agreed that planes generally need a wing on each side, that cars need four wheels, and that roads should be paved with a line down the middle. This allowed everyone to focus on the activity of transportation rather than the act of transporting. With many thanks to Jeffrey Zeldman, Web standards has us on a path toward Internet browsers supporting basic website functionality and display. Now, a few people want the same for Email browsers and applications so we can focus on the activtiy of communication rather than the act of communication. Let’s go, email yo!

I recently unsubscribed from stupid newsletter sent by a company that I sometime don’t like hearing from. After having me go through two steps to unsubscribe (and I honestly don’t recall ever signing up in the first place), I got the following screen.

When I tried to “Click Here” nothing happened. What kind of crazy thing is this? A large company that loses an customer creates a screen like this? This is the best they could do? Here are some suggestions for what they could have done:

• Say “We’re sorry to see you go. Sign up again any time!” and then have a link to subscribe again.
• Show me something really cool that might make me interested in their future projects
• Simply take me to a page that says “You are now unsubscribed. If you would like to reach us about anything, give us a shout-out.” And have a contact link around that shout-out.
• How about a picture of a pretty man or woman waving goodbye to me?

I guess I’m thinking almost anything would be better than this. Then again, that’s not true. A picture of the inside of the Elephant Man’s intestines would not be so good.

Boy, they got this one right in the year I was born. It puts Marshall McLuhan and Guy Debord to shame. Note: I’m not entirely sure if this video was filmed, edited, and crafted by some 2007 video art students.

I’m planning on writing up a longer review of a number of online backup services, including Amazon’s powerful S3 service and the concomitant backup tools. But I’m glad that Panic’s new release of their FTP client Transmit supports file transfers to S3. Very cool stuff, though later than its competitors. In particular, I am going to try to get Transmit’s sync functionality to work with S3. This would provide the holy grail for Mac file storage: inexpensive, fast, and encrypted online backups.

On my Macintosh, I use Parallels to run a Windows machine for testing websites. It works well, except when I tried to test a site in AOL VR 9.0 (whatever that means) and AOL more-or-less permanently installed itself on my machine.
It’s incredible that a company would make it so completely difficult to remove a piece of software, in 2007! Sure, I know that, back in 1999, it was kind of cool to force software on users because they didn’t know any better and, anyway, AOL was kind of cool, and the Internet was cool, and we were all cool with being cool with each other. Today? It’s unacceptable. And totally not cool.
I know enough about Windows to have found a very ugly alias icon for uninstalling AOL deep within the Program Files folder. Having double-clicked on that little horror-show, I was taken to Windows’ own Add or Remove Programs screen and I had to temporarily rewire my brain. The screen showed an Uninstall AOL program that said “You can uninstall this program or remove it from your computer.” Did I really want to uninstall the uninstaller? Why wouldn’t I want to eat a shoe? I went ahead with it, in the off-hope it would work and part of AOL was removed. I restarted, tried it again, clicked on more components that I wanted deleted, and now AOL is gone.
But, lo and behold, it’s still freaking there! In my Program Files folder, there is another folder called “AOL” and guess what’s inside? A folder called “Installers.”

I’ve been using 37 signals’ Backpack [disclosure: affiliate link] application for a good year and a half or so, stumbling upon it after many, many hours looking at personal information managers that would (help me) keep on top of my many projects, occasional ideas, and special friends. After a lot of searching, I settled on a few different solutions to keep track of things, but the one I’m starting to like again is Backpack. A few weeks ago, 37 updated both the functionality and interface of the application, fulfilling many user requests such as drag-and-drop between pages and more Ajax-y goodness. More importantly, they added these little things called “dividers,” which are exactly what they sound like: lines that separate out different lists, notes, or writeboards, which are highly usable writing platforms that can be shared with other writers. Dividers, for me, are the killer application. They allow tremendous amounts of simplification, dividing and parsing different components of a page, and doing it without additional fanfare.
Moreover, I’ve learned to finally ditch the idea of contexts, which is the raison d’etre of many in the Getting Things Done community. I refuse to look at project lists more than once per day and if I have to do more work than that by contextualizing where a given job has to get done, I might as well be a secretary instead of a designer. (Does anyone really need to indicate that “Buy bread” is “@store” and not “@computer”?)
The most important breakthrough: individual tasks are useless to me. Whereas I used to list out all relevant and related tasks associated with a specific project, now I just list out the project. In other words, I went from a page of 15 projects and 6 to 12 tasks each to, well, 15 projects. My theory is that if I don’t know what task to do next, I shouldn’t be managing my own projects.
For instance, Client X (a nonprofit in New York) is redesigning a large and important website from the ground up. In traditional Getting Things Done tools, the project would look like this:
Nonprofit Site

• User interface document 1
• Feedback
• User interface document 2
• Feedback
• User interface document 3
• Asset capture
• Feedback
• Approval
• Design stage 1
• Feedback
• Design stage 2
• Feedback
• Design stage 3
• Feedback
• Design stage 4
• Finalize images
• Coding and development
• CSS tweaks
• Content integration
• QA 1
• Content modifications
• QA 2
• Launch

Now, the project looks like this:
Nonprofit Site
Needless to say (though I’ll say it anyway), this system is new to me but seems to work. It’s not unlike many other systems I’ve read about and liked but, to me, it’s clear and simple and easy to update. In fact, it’s the same system I use on paper on my desk but now it’s available to me anywhere. As always, your mileage may vary.
P.S. When Backpack was initially launched, I tried it out for a few days. It sucked. I hated it. It’s interface was confusing, limited, and lame. I can assure you that, if you have not seen it since its incipience, it’s worth a shot.

Okay, this makes this phone something I want. The funny thing is that I don’t even own a cell phone currently.

Microsoft’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas shows off Photosynth at the most recent TED conference. Wait for the demo of the incorporation of thousands of Flickr images of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. It’s phenomenal and I have little doubt that this is how either the Web or operating systems will work in a few years. (Thanks, R.L.)

I’ve been really busy with a few smaller projects at work. It’s been great, actually. But I’ve also been thinking about a bunch of technology tools that have been really fun playing with. I don’t know why I’m fascinated with these things and I’m trying to find a good, productive use for them, but, for what it’s worth, here are they are:
Mindjet came out last week with its latest version of MindManager for Mac. It’s a sweet little application that allows one to draw out sophisticated maps of text and images with little stress and strain.
VoodooPad by Flying Meat is a fantastic little Mac desktop Wiki that gets more TLC from its developer than almost any other application out there. The latest version, out today, gives the user the ability to see preview a page just by hovering over a link and holding down two keys.
Then there’s NetNewsWire, the RSS reader created and generously managed by the folks at NewsGator. I’ve tried other RSS readers and this is the best. One very sweet little feature in the new 3.0 version is a mini-screenshot of selected feeds; this is something I’ve long thought should be part of every browsing experience and which can be found in the most recent versions of Opera. [Note: of all of the applications listed, this one is the most readily applicable and I’m including it here because I can.]
Oh, and the really nifty new kid on the block is the unlikely titled Mental Case. I haven’t the foggiest idea what it does. It’s nice and dark gray, though, and the buttons and transitions are nice.