Ignore the story...it's not really that interesting. I mean Microsoft to tell people that hardware and software will be certified compatible is not really a new or totally unexpected idea. But please do click the link. Cnet is doing sometihng interesting with the way they allow you to find news and info.

In the right column under the "myspace" style in your face ad, there is a widget provided by liveplasma that allows you to see related links and what's hot in a graphical way. Basically it allows you to communicate more than one dimension of information in a smallish amount of space. Give it a whirl:

Microsoft doesn't want Santa to ignore Vista | CNET News.com

I've always been fascinated with all things digital even before I knew them to be digital. I credit this with my childhood obsession with IKEA-instructions-prepatory (aka Lego) and the Transformers (the original robots in disguise). But seriously, digital melding with the physical is the name of the game over at Interactive Architecture dot Org.

Truly a grand resource (check out their tutorial section which has a growing catalogue of tools to let you create the next Internet-big-deal-2.0-of the moment).

In the never ending struggle with my tendency to make dark websites, I've found the help of many awesome web designers and photoshop gurus who volunteer their knowledge. But none have been so awesome as Jennifer of Photoshop Support. Her blog absolutely rocks the photoshop science. It practically drips with great advice and simple examples.

I thought the neat little 4096 Color Wheel was sweet, but Jennifer has found far superior tools (not to knock the 4096 folks of course...their work is awesome in it's own right). Check out WellStyled's color scheme generator. It's downright disgustingly sweet. It not only produces color schemes using the various color schemes, but it even has options to see how your chosen scheme will look to someone with different color disabilities. If you're into accesible websites and design, this is the place to go!

See for yourself.

Thanks Jennifer.

This is a cool look at the progresion of a family through time. It's sort of information visualization in that the viewer could figure out the age of the children by looking at the chart, however, I don't think it functions on that level very well.

Instead, this is more of an interesting retrospective in the growth of a family. It's both haunting and real all at the same time.

Paul Nixon created a very cool (and Apple-ish) visualization of the Tipping Point theory as it pertains to Apple's current product mix (well, as of 7 months ago).

So what does this mean? It means that the age of Apple may finally be upon us. The fact that sales of Macs have skyrocketed speaks to the trend Paul lays out in his slide.

I have a feeling the intriguing Intel switch will cause unprecendented adoption levels of Mac hardware (and eventually software). I don't think BillG is loosing much sleep over this development, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there are more than a few eyeballs on Apple's Intel move here at Microsoft.

Anyone who has a blog (and c'mon, who doesn't nowadays?) knows what a drag it is to sift through their web statistics in order to find the very gems of statistical data that will make the site a smashing success. Well, VisitorVille aims to change that. VisitorVille takes your web traffic data and creates a SimCity-like isometric representation of the data. There are people and buses with "Google" on them to represent
various parts of your data. It's really quite neat! It doesn't cost very much and it's quite entertaining, I may have to try it for a couple of months to see if I can get any benefit out of it (and have fun while I'm doing it). Even if you don't have a website, the demo video is entertaining.