I've gone from collecting wind-up alarm clocks to globes. Gosh, these take up more room - I'm going to need some shelves to store them. The one pictured on the left is the moon. We are quite fond of the tiki picture too.

I love finding old books on flying saucers. These come from a time when the media and public took the topic more seriously. From left to right, these are from 1967, 1956, and 1966.

The one on the right starts off with this sensational message:

"WARNING! Near approaches of Unidentified Flying Objects can be harmful to human beings. Do not stand or attempt to touch a UFO that has landed.

In either case, the safe thing to do is get away from there quickly and let the military take over. There is a possibility of radiation danger, and there are known cases in which persons have been burned by rays emanating from UFOs. Details on these cases are included in this book. Don't take chances with UFOs."

The other two books are much more serious about the subject, I just had to share this funny intro by Frank Edwards.

Today I've updated the Movable Type templates to format comments. The updates reformatted the display of comments, the comment form, and the MT comment preview template to match my redesign. The comment display can be previewed here and here.

I've also installed the Movable Type Comment Challenge Plugin to combat comment spam.

It's becoming clear that the PNG image format is preferred for Web design. The JPG format might be a better choice for photographs, but PNG has many advantages over the prehistoric GIF. The PNG alpha-channel transparency seals the deal by giving designers Photoshop-quality transparency.

The only thing holding us back is a lack of support for transparent PNGs in Internet Explorer 6. While many Windows XP users have upgraded to IE7, it may be another year before we can fully drop support for IE6. There have been many different techniques to use the AlphaImageLoader filter to allow transparent PNGs in IE6, but one finally stands out in the developer community. It comes in two different forms, each applied differently, but both using almost identical code.

The IE PNG Fix v1.0 RC4 from Angus Turnbull is currently being using on the Apple Web site. You need the iepngfix.htc and blank.gif files, and apply the fix by adding behavior:url(iepngfix.htc); to your stylesheet. This can be done with one style for inline PNGs, and also added to individual styles if using transparent PNGs as background images.

The other form of this fix is SuperSleight by Drew McLellan. This one is published on the 24ways Web site and is well accepted by developers. It also promises to fix other issues with transparent PNGs in IE6 — issues besides just display. SuperSleight is applied by adding a conditional comment to target IE6 and load a javascript file that does all the work.

Even with these elegant hacks, IE6 still won't let you use background-repeat or background-position with transparent PNGs. For my personal Web site I rely on tiling a transparent PNG down the background, so in the end, I'm going to turn off PNGs for IE6 that are used in the background of this site.

This entry is aimed at anyone doing a project with the Avery 8293 1 1/2" round labels, and searching for an EPS template. Avery used to offer templates in this format, but apparently they now only offer templates in Microsoft Word format. I've packaged an Illustrator (AI) file together with an EPS.

Download Avery 8293 Template

During a previous project I lived through the horror of importing Illustrator CS2 documents into Flash 8. As you can see from the project, it contained a lot of gradients, and at the time, Flash would not accept gradients from Illustrator. Two years ago I was forced to redraw a shape in Flash if it contained a gradient. For a detailed illustration you might have hundreds of shapes, and redrawing them all is a nightmare.

Now that Adobe owns Flash, their compatibility in CS3 is greatly improved. This works as long as you use the AI import function from Flash (File>Import). Some of the older methods of transferring artwork to Flash, like exporting a SWF from Illustrator, still yields Flash 8 type results.

In a current project I am using the AI import function frequently and have found a few things that Flash doesn't like. I've looked around for a document from Adobe, or even a blog post, that outlines what techniques in Illustrator CS3 are not compatible with Flash. Adobe does tell us a few things that will work, but what I need is a list of common Illustrator techniques to avoid. I'd like to be able to give this information to the artist that I'm working with on the project. I've haven't seen any information posted about this, so I'll start a running list here. If anyone knows of any other lists, or have items to contribute, please post a comment.

• All Illustrator "Effects"
• Dashed Strokes (Though they show up as rounded shapes)
• Blends (Will create millions of little shapes, which hog memory)

View a larger map

The Office of Creative Services is a Webby Awards Nominee in the School category for the 10 Ways IU is Red Hot Web site. Our office is the only in-house group within this category, and appears to be the only nominee from Indiana.

The Red Hot Web site was part of an overall marketing campaign that featured some of the many outstanding achievements of the IU community. You can read more about the Web site and view other Red Hot materials over at the Creative Services' portfolio.

Please vote for us! Our site is eligible to win a People's Voice Award. Voting is open to the public from April 10th to April 27th at http://pv.webbyawards.com. It does take a minute to vote (you have to register), but we would really appreciate your vote.

Here are some notable Web sites that I've discovered while at SXSW Interactive. I'll continue to update this post as I run get through my notes.

Web Typography & Grids // The two best panels I attended at SXSW this year were Grids Are Good and How to Design with Them and Web Typography Sucks. These will change the way I design and write CSS. I'm still looking for the slides for "Grids Are Good", but they did post the resulting design. The podcasts for these panels are not posted yet, but there are a few specific people that I'm anxious to share these with. The slides for the Web typography panel are posted here, and I encourage you to read this discussion on Jeff Croft's site. Added March 13

Sphere Widget // Sphere is a blog search engine that specializes in making connections between posts on different sites and the ability to display newly published blog posts. The Sphere Widget is an AJAX popup that can display results right on top of a blog post. You can preview this by clicking the "Sphere It" link at the bottom of this O'Reilly post. While I don't see the need for Sphere in my projects, the technique of using AJAX to pull data from one site to another has great potential. Added March 13

Design Patterns // Luke Wroblewski's panel on design patterns really helped to clarify this subject for me. There is a lot of information on this topic here, but definitely grab the SXSW podcast when it is available. Added March 13

SXSW Interactive Podcasts // This year SXSW is getting their podcasts out much faster. So far Kathy Sierra gave the most inspiring presentation on how interactive media lacks natural human communication. Grab the MP3 now, or subscribe to the RSS feed. Added March 12

Upcoming.org // This site has been around for a while, but I've just recently had a chance to use it. All of the events at SXSW are entered into Upcoming.org and you can add these events to your profile/schedule. Then you can sign up to have the site send you an SMS message to your phone an hour or so before the event. The SMS messages contain the basic information on the event such as the time and location. The messages are very helpful when you are attending a lot of meetings and events but don't have the chance to constantly check your laptop. I found that if you are not on Upcoming.org at SXSW, you're not cool. Added March 12

Trend: Mobile URLs // A reemerging trend is to create a custom URL for mobile devices. The SXSW conference offers sxsw.mobi and flickr now has m.flickr.com. These versions are scaled down for quick and simple functionality. Reminds of something I worked on many years ago.Added March 12

Ideally, someone would create an application that could notify you of a warning or advisory in your area. Until something is available, you can check this information by combining the National Weather Service's RSS feeds and a RSS widget.

Step 1: Find your feed URL

Visit the National Weather Service's RSS feed page, drill down to your state and county, and copy the URL of the feed.

Step 2: Install a Widget

If you use OS X you can use the RSS Reader dashboard widget. Windows users can try a Yahoo! widget by the same name. After installing your widget, paste the feed URL into the widget's control panel, and choose how often you'd like the widget to update the feed.

The results look messy, but the information specific to your area is in there. It appears that there are two OS X shareware apps to track weather, but nothing as simple as a dock notification for warnings and advisories.

So I ordered both SkypeIn and SkypeOut which gave me one year of unlimited calling for about $53. Then I purchased the Linksys iPhone CIT200 (not to be confused with the other iPhone). The phone has a base station that plugs in through a USB connection. The phone itself is cordless like the majority of standard phones today. After a simple application install the phone worked fine - I could call out and the reception was clear. Then I discovered two major disadvantages to this service:

1) No Outgoing Caller-ID

The first thing I did was call my own cellphone and discovered that SkypeIn does not support outgoing caller-ID. So all calls I make with the phone will show up on other people's phones as "Unknown Call". A lot of people will skip calls that show up like this, so I'm realizing that people won't know that it's me calling. This is pretty annoying, but I wasn't quite ready to give up on Skype. Until...

2) My Local SkypeIn Number is Not Local

Using a land-line phone, I tried calling my wife at home and the call would not go through. I must have tried six times before finally calling the operator to ask what is going on. She explained the number given to me was not a local call. So even though the number had the same area code, callers would have to dial 1 + Area Code to call me. I looked over Skype's Web site extensively to see if I had just missed some information, but I did not. The help documents on Skype's Web site all suggest that anyone in your city will be able to call your SkypeIn number like it is a local call.

After doing more research on the Skype Forums, it turns out that Skype needs to acquire a prefix (123-xxx-1234) associated with your area code, and they have only done this in the major US cities. I was able to get a refund, and I'll be hocking the iPhone on eBay, but I'm still surprised that Skype is not more upfront about these issues.