CSS3 has a lot of great features too, but it doesn't have quite the power that illustrator's Graphical Styles can achieve. Lets say you want system text to mirror the text styles of a dollar bill:

Sadly, there is no easy way to accomplish this, but I have a solution I've been working on that degrades pretty gracefully and doesn't require any scripts to run. I've nicknamed it "Afterburning", and the idea is simple: Copy the text behind the element, offset it slightly, and apply a background image over for masking.

There are a few tricks being used:

1. A new element is created using the CSS :before pseudo-element, this works in most modern browsers, but is ignored by IE, therefore the text looks normal when it isn't supported.
2. We cannot access and copy the text directly out of the element using CSS, but we can access any attributes that element has using content: attr();. In most cases, the "title" attribute isn't widely used for a header element, so we can copy the text content into this area for our :before CSS rule. The only side effect will be a tooltip when you hover over the text. If that is an issue, use the newly implemented "data-" attributes discussed here.
3. The image can be a transparent PNG or GIF (Animated for that matter), as long as the color matches the background of the header. Sadly, this is one of the issues with using this method, you'll need a solid color in the background for the effect to work.
4. I also added a slight outline to the text with a white CSS shadow. This adds a slight border to separate the text from the hatched-shadow.
5. You may need to adjust the line-height or padding of the header element to ensure the background covers the duplicated element.

As with any modern filter, I wouldn't recommend it until CSS3 is more widely used. Nonetheless, small little flairs like these reward your users for browsing with the newest standards, while keeping your website content easy to update.

This begs the question—is the goal of some of these products to get people to scan the codes while in the store? For some products this might be helpful, for example a gadget QR scan to see its rating or how to use it. But cereal? First of all, I can’t stand people clogging the cereal aisle. Lately, the aisle is clogged enough with displays let alone crowds.

So if some of the codes are aimed at reaching folks at home after purchase, I wonder if people will even see them. Do we really have time to sit down and read the cereal box these days? If you have a phone on hand, with apps and internet access to use to scan the QR code on the box, my guess is you will probably get caught up in email, Facebook, Angry Birds, etc. before wanting to actually watch a Honey Bunches of Oats video. But hey, I could be wrong. 

It'll be interesting to see who jumps on this bandwagon and who really experiences success as a result of the codes on product packaging. Videos, games, and apps need to be entertaining for the right audience, and in some cases you just don't know who that will be. 

Banner ads have long been used to monetize a publisher’s website and breakup content through strategic use of above- and below-the-fold placements. Combined with the right ad server, they have powerful tracking capabilities that allow for great insight into measuring a campaign’s success.

With that said, the one thing online ads have been lacking has been size. Rich media ads can be eye catching, but has animation taken the place of solid design and messaging in some cases? One way or the other, larger IAB ad sizes may bring a new sense of life into online display advertising design.

There are still so many questions that remain to be answered:

• Will the click-thru rates see a noticeable jump from the 0.02% to 0.07% industry standard?
• Will the $50 to $100 CPM rates be worth the cost versus the more traditional fixed-cost homepage buys?
• Will the ad networks be able to control the creative so that it does not cause crashed pages and long load times?

I spoke with a contact at a large ad network that is already using these ad units, and they have seen many verticals already benefiting from these larger ad units.

• The entertainment industry is promoting the latest film releases.
• Travel companies are creating interactive experiences that go past awareness and straight into a heavier push for ticket sales.
• Pharmaceutical companies are loving the extra space to include more room for their list of required legalese.

There will be a lot of room for growth here, and I am sure that a lot will change in the next year or so. But if this recent move begins to improve the overall art design of online ads (which has been lacking)—that is a welcome change in my eyes…

Well, they have proposed this sort of legislation before and it never went through, however it looks like this time things may be different.  Consumers had better know what they’re asking for here. If they keep trying to make it difficult for advertising on the Internet, you will start to find some of the larger web publishers charging users for content to make up for lost revenue. The “free” Internet as we know it is in enough jeopardy with Comcast.

Who would you rather have pay to keep content free – you or the advertisers?

So I did some hunting today for a browser plugin that could bring together some of the more helpful tools without giving me a headache when I don't need them. useKit is a cross-platform, Firefox/Chrome/Safari plugin that allows you to:

• Bookmark and add sticky notes to any page or any piece of content, then share your content with your friends who have useKit.
• Translate blocks of text.
• Tag map locations.
• Edit and debug HTML and Javascript.
• Print out sections or the entire page as you see it on the screen.
• Post to Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, etc.

All with a very neat hideable toolbar at the bottom of the browser. You can even add and remove any of these features from a simple control panel.

Here's the link to their site for a full explaination

I'd definitely check it out, especially If you've ever scared yourself off of toolbars with images like these:

"A Planit/Client Love Story"

I'll let James Kelly from the Google team do the honors of explaining what it is…

If you didn't watch the video, here's a quick rundown (again from someone at Google):

"Google is planning to launch an experiment that we hope will…deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, over 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections."

So what would Baltimore be like with faster Internet?

Well, we know the Internet isn't exactly localized, so the content available to us from outside of Baltimore would probably be the same. But, the speed at which we obtain content would be up to 100 times faster. So, why is this a great opportunity for the creative web community? Here are just a few reasons:

1) A Baltimore web developer's R&D playground:

This would be an amazing opportunity for the Baltimore tech community to push web applications to the next level. Faster Internet connections means more robust applications managing more information faster. Again, the web is not localized so everything we create in Baltimore won't be as easily accessible elsewhere. But, this opportunity would allow our developer community to get a head-start on building "bandwidth intensive" online applications. Whether sharing bigger documents faster, mining data, or just streaming video over a network, could Baltimore create the next big application in telecommunications?

2) More experiential display ads:

If any aspect of the web could benefit from a better connected Baltimore, localized display advertising has the most potential. Think about it. Most display ad publishers/networks limit the size and level of interactivity of online advertising in fear of slowing down the performance of their sites. Not with Google Fiber. With higher-quality video, images, Flash, and dynamic content streaming seamlessly into web content, ads could reach great new heights of creativity, and as a result garner more attention for Baltimore businesses. I know Google is already making major overhauls in the way we consume and create targeted display advertising, so could Baltimore be the testing ground for more advanced behavior-based advertising? As a direct result of this, publishers could charge more for ad space due to the potential creative opportunities within prime real estate.

3) Business ventures and a boom in technology:

If Google builds it, they will come. Once an infrastructure is set in place, businesses and investors would be keeping a close eye on Baltimore. The local economy could grow from recognition of being a test city. Greater speeds mean more efficiencies for businesses who rely on faster connectivity. Creative web/tech shops could presumably generate greater awareness for our capabilities in this region. Could Baltimore become the next Silicon Valley?

These are just a few quick thoughts on how Baltimore-based web teams could leverage the use of Google Fiber. Outside of the creative web community there are far more pressing and quantitative reasons that Google should consider Baltimore as a test city. I'm grateful that our state and local governments are joining forces with the tech community to generate more of a legitimate buzz to answer Google's RFI. Fingers crossed.

Japan's Stats

First, he says that statistics in Japan show that most research done in that country is performed on smartphones instead of desktops. Whether or not that is also a spiking trend in the states, I cannot say. I'd imagine that at the rate at which smartphones are becoming ubiquitous among people of all ages, I'd assume that we're close on Japan's tail.

Storage in the Cloud

Second, information stored in the cloud could potentially replace the need for massive hard drives. This of course, as Mashable suggests, is Google's domain. With a growing number of services that allow users to store and access their documents and media from the web (instead of their computers), this point can't be ignored.

The question, though, is will we be ready to eliminate our need for a workstation? Maybe? Sorta. I believe there will come a time when we'll be able to come into work, plug a hand-held device into a monitor, and use this device as our operating system. As these devices continue to sync our accounts, media, and contacts together, it only makes sense that they will sync to our files in the cloud, too.

Some of the major problems with this theory include native applications and large files that require powerful processors. Can a smartphone's tiny processor ever be as fast as a desktop? Will Adobe make a suite of fully functioning applications in the cloud? Or will they continue to make lightweight versions native to the hand-held device itself? We've seen the limitations of Android's and iPhone's Photoshop app, so will Adobe improve upon this? Will Internet speeds increase to levels that make storing large files online a problem of the past? Truthfully, I'm not sure.

Tell me your thoughts:

Do you think John Herlihy is right? Will smartphones make desktops irrelevant?

What are some other limitations of my plug-and-play device-to-monitor scenario?

Flash on the Nexus One looks great, not sure what all the hoopla is about with not being able to use flash on the iphone and ipad. 
I guess this is a little off-base after watching the video, but brings up an interesting point about the hover state not being supported on the iphone and ipad.

Record Tripping ,Ingenious flash game using record scratching and storytelling ("Alice in Wonderland").

Crazy lego model

http://www.fokistudios.com/superfun/

"To better explain the poor name for this plugin, I'm not exactly sure what to call this. Consider it an HTML5, CSS3 tech-demo / experiment with scale, rotation and transformation."

Beautiful Safer Roads PSA

Do you use Tumblr? Great looking theme here.

I'm a noob to design patterns, and being a self taught programmer I've slept on learning things like this. But, after picking up this book at the library, I realized how helpful it is to know these by heart. Instead of me trying to figure out how to solve a problem from scratch, I realized that the same problems have cropped up for every developer in every language, and this book covers how to avoid most of the same mistakes and architect your programming in a way that prevents a lot of the same problems from occurring.  If you haven't formally used design patterns, but do a lot of programming, you'll immediately recognize a lot of these patterns that you might have loosely used in the past.   If you don't want to buy the book, you can see all of the patterns at this website.  

Code Organ - See what the Planit Website sounds like.

Keep up with Adobe at the mobile world conference. I've been seeing a lot of flash on mobile platforms.

Welcome Tableau Public to the multitude of Social Data Vis tools out there now, such as  Swivel, Daytum and StatPlot. Although, this seems to live in a more robust desktop application.  It would be nice if you could use private data without making it public to use on your own presentations, but still seems to be useful when you need to embed some nice infographics on a website and don't have the time to create them yourself.

In other infographic news, Google released their own chart tools.

Beautiful website for Manchester City Soccer.

Great resource for seeing AS3 code samples.  And Stack Overflow has become my favorite forum for posting developer questions, incredibly responsive replies.

Opera Unite, turn your opera web browser into a server, share files, host websites (well, host them until you close your browser).  I find myself flipping between two browsers already, Chrome and Firefox, now I might need to add a third one to the bunch, BROWSER OVERLOAD!

Need to give a client the ability to edit a site, but don't want to build a giant cms. Use Edit-ease.  Simply put some javascript on your page, click admin, and edit away.  Just saves the content back to the HTML page, and has a nice WYSIWIG.

Really amazing TED talk on Bing Maps. It's been a while since I have checked out the mapping functionality on BING, the photosynth feature is impressive.

If you weren't sure what HTML 5 was capable of, this will show you (so will this)

Nice Style on the Wrangler jeans site.http://eu.wrangler.com/bluebell/

Really great image search site http://www.moofe.com/