Flickr’s Commons is an astonishing repository of cool public domain imagery from such collections as the Smithsonian Institute and the Library of Congress. It’s stated goals (according to the FAQ):

• To increase access to publicly-held photography collections, and
• To provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge. (Then watch what happens when they do!)

Recently I needed an image of Charles Darwin and came across this photo:

Now, I know jack squat about Charles Darwin, so this particular member of the general public can’t do much in the way of adding information and knowledge to this photo. What I am capable of doing, however is removing all those weird black spots and boosting the contrast a bit on the image:

I then reposted this image in my own flickr stream and left a comment on the original with a link back. Nothing has changed at the Smithsonian’s original file.

This seems to me to be a really good way to leave the Flickr Commons better than you found it. If you see an image in need of some retouching, why not clean it up and repost it? Especially if you find another use for it.

At the very least, It’s good retouching practice.

Appendix: I’m not a legal scholar so if I’m breaking several thousand ordinances against Good Samaritan Photoshopping, I’m sure I’ll hear about it soon enough at which point I’ll pull this post and sheepishly explain myself elsewhere on this blog, although I fail to see why anyone who object to crowd-sourced photo retouching. If I’m missing something, I pre-apologize.

-oAk-

A quiz

One of these is the Twitter Bird. The other is not. Do you know which one?

The bird on the left actually belongs to Twitter. It shows up on twitter.com from time to time, most notably when you try to hit a profile page that doesn’t exist:

The bird on the right has nothing, officially to do with Twitter. It’s the copyrighted logo/icon for The Icon Factory’s application Twitterific. In fact, the Icon Factory, officially does not allow the use of their bird icon if it’s being used to represent Twitter, (a fact I learned from Charles Strickland’s blog post “Stop Using the Twitterific Icon!)” Officially condemned or not, using the Icon Factory’s mark to promote Twitter is becoming a trend one runs into frequently. Here’s an example:

Now…am I picking on Noupe? Nope. Just to prove that I am an amiable sort, I’ll admit that I made the exact same mistake last summer in my (as yet undeveloped) Tweetionary design:

Why did I do this? Simple: I didn’t know any better.

Unfortunately, for The Icon Factory, they have created a truly…well…iconic icon. The Twitterific bird is arguably more recognizable then any of the marks officially in use by Twitter. (As far as I know, the bubbly, light blue “Twitter” letter mark at the top of the “page doesn’t exist” image is the official Twitter logo, although i would argue that the Fail Whale is more recognizable). The Twitterific bird looks like the strong brand icon of an internet phenomenon like Twitter… especially if you don’t think to do the research.

Weak branding by Twitter encourages bloggers and site owners to come up with their own branding to promote their Twitter streams. The result is hundreds of different interpretations of a blue cartoon bird. Each one of those instances of a user created Twitter brand is a waste opportunity for Twitter to manufacture a consistent brand identity.

The Design Superhero (an extremely hot site that I just found through the magic of google), actually has compiled some of the myriad ways people represent twitter on their sites. (seriously…click on that link. I’ll wait…  …  …you back? How hot was that site design?!)

You can’t really blame the Icon Factory, can you? Making strong marks and icons is what they do. The real question is, why hasn’t Twitter established a more cohesive branding strategy with better, more recognizable marks? They have a network of downright evangelical users who want to promote their brand for them for free. All they need to do is come up with a strong brand identity, and make it really easy to syndicate that identity across tens of thousands of user websites.

At the very least, as web designers we can be aware that Twitterific and the Icon Factory probably shouldn’t be asked to do Twitter’s branding work for them, and stop using their bird to represent anything but Twitterific.

-oAk-

Every so often, songs pop up in my Party Shuffle list that I have absolutely no recollection of acquiring. “And I Was A Boy From School” by Hot Chip is such a track. Kind of makes me wonder what other gems are buried in my Music library waiting to be unearthed.

Until I figure out how to embed a track, you can listen to the full track on last.fm here.

A soon-to-be-regular series of posts documenting the various things that attract a designer’s attention. 

“You’re designers. Things will bother you that no one else will ever notice.”-Michael Beirut from a talk given at Notre Dame, October 21, 2005

Do you know where I can find a 1040? Oh…Here they are…in the astonishingly large type section…

I went with the snarky section title because it amused me, but in reality, I was impressed with the design of these forms. I like designs where the form follows function sometimes to such an extreme that form is kicked to the curb entirely.

Really, what more does a 1040 have to be? Does anyone enjoy filling them out? Will anyone ever stop and consider the elegant layout? No. They have to be easily accessible, cheap to produce (notice the cheap newsprint and one color printing), and presumably, as easy as humanly possible to complete and mail back. 

Anyone going to have any trouble finding the 1040 forms? Doubtful. Was that only purpose of the cover design? Hell yes. That makes this a valid design in my book. (There really should be a W3C inspired validator for graphic design, but that’s a subject for another post).

Feral Line Breaks in the Wild

I could not walk past this.

Life should come equipped with a Shift+Return option like InDesign does. (My wife pointed out that they were actually missing volumes 12 and 13…but still!)

The Symptoms:

A couple of days ago my first generation iPhone stopped producing audio out of the built-in ear piece, or picking up audio out of the built-in microphone. I could make and receive calls, but there was no sound either on my end or the other end of the call. SMS worked normally. So did all other functions including Safari.

The Problem:

The iPhone has a sensor in the headphone jack that is aware of wether or not headphones are plugged in. It’s what tells the phone to turn off the built in earpiece and microphone so that the earbuds can be used. This sensor, I’ve found, is sensitive to dust and dirt and needs to be cleaned every so often. If it’s not clean it can get confused (for lack of a better word) and think that headphones are plugged in when they are not.

Testing to see if this is your problem:

This article helped me diagnose the problem. The easiest way to tell if your phone “thinks” an empty headphone jack has something plugged into it is use the controls on the side of the phone to turn the volume up and down. If the word “headphones” appears under the volume icon, and you have nothing plugged in you have the same issue I did.

(Incidentally: this is the second time I have had this issue. The first time it was because something had gone seriously wrong with my iPhone and it was accompanied by a warning message that said something like (I’m paraphrasing) “This device is not approved for use with iPhone.” This warning appeared every fifteen minutes or so, and the phone was otherwise functional. Still, there was nothing I could do to make the error message stop appearing and I ultimately had to take the phone to the “Genius Bar”:http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/ and have it replaced.)

How to fix it:

You need a cotton swab, scissors and rubbing alcohol. If you’re not comfortable sticking a wet cotten swab into your headphone jack, you should probably skip the rubbing alcohol. I used it and it worked fine for me. A cotton swab is too thick on the tip to fit into the headphone jack, and you don’t want to run the risk of leaving errant cotton threads inside your phone. Use the scissors to cut the cotton swab in half. Dampen the cut edge of one of the halves and use this end to clean out the headphone jack of your iPhone. You’ll probably be surprised at how much grime (relatively) you’ll clean out. 

You should be able to tell immediately if it worked because the volume control will no longer have the word “headphones” on the volume display, but make a call anyway and see if you can hear anything through the built in ear piece.

This is not my trick. I found it many moons ago during the first (abortive) attempt to fix this problem. Many relevant articles exist on the ‘net that discuss the technique I used of which, this message thread is an example.