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I’m particularly fond of the dog-restrainer:

Via.

If you haven’t followed the interesting case of the website Rip-Off Report, it’s worth checking into. I’ll give you the gist here. The discussion started with Chris Bennet, who had some interesting things to say to Google. He sums up his post like so: “Rip Off Report is spamming Google’s index, and Google is currently letting them get away with it.”

Rand at SEMoz has a nice summary of the problem. According to Rand (and we’re paraphrasing here):

1. Rip Off Report makes its money essentially through the extortion of businesses based on the search results (almost like a reverse reputation management campaign). Companies whose profiles appear on the site must pay the owner to have the information removed or have administrative comments added that an issue was resolved or the complaint was found to be false.
2. Rip Off Report’s ability to do this is facilitated by the fact that the site ranks well at Google, in a way that violates Google’s Terms of Service.

Excerpt from Paul Pope’s The One Trick Rip-Off

In other words, content creators can add negative reviews of companies to the site. When one does so, it creates a page on the site. According to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, these user-created pages should not be indexed, but they are. The critical mass of indexed pages gives Rip Off Report a high PageRank, which in turn means that its results will come up near the top in relevant Google queries. The salience of its pages to innocuous search terms fuels Rip Off Report’s ability to allegedly extort money from companies.

This is an interesting case, not because Rip Off Report’s business model appears to be unethical (that shouldn’t strike any readers of BlogLESS as particularly aberrant), but because it seems to be facilitated by Google’s (weird) unwillingness to address the problem.

What I take from all of this is that if you want to do no evil it’s not enough to merely state this in your corporate position (or to specify it in relevant documentation). Google of all companies decidedly can’t be an innocent bystander, and this shows it. They’ve got to take an active role in addressing unethical behavior at it arises. What’s required of them is not to merely “do no evil”, but rather to “do good”.

I found this absolutely mind-blowing.

1. iStockphoto to Sell Logos

Big news this week from iStockphoto: the site plans to offer logos for sale in the near future. Commenters on their forum seem to favor the deal, while designers are (not surprisingly) much less enthused.

To their credit, iStockphoto is trying something different with the logos they plan to sell. Logos will be unique items, only sold once apiece. In addition, they will cost much more than stock photos. Whereas a decent sized image might run $7-$10, a logo could run $100-$750.

But tell me, who is going to buy these things and who is going to supply them? Is there really such a thing as a stock logo? I think we know the answer…

2. Sub-pixel typefaces

I found this reference to a subpixel typeface through Tom Carden’s Delicious links. Through the comments I found out about another, similar typeface from computer graphics guru Kevin Perlin. Both are fascinating.

Neither is exactly subpixel, but three pixels high is mighty small. Both claim to be the smallest legible text you can render on a monitor, an effect achieved by painstakingly manipulating the colors of each individual pixel to fool the eye.

For my money, Perlin’s font (left) is technically proficient and likely more readable, but I admire the craft of miha’s letterforms (right) a bit more. To get that much finesse from so little is impressive.

3. Online Dating Advice: Exactly What To Say In A First Message

Dating site OK Cupid analyzed over 500,000 first contact messages in an attempt to understand what words or phrases most often resulted in reciprocated interest. Perhaps (if we stretch a bit!) there’s something to be learned here about what makes for a more successful first impression or marketing message.

One graph, which I found counter-intuitive, seems to suggest that when it comes to companionship, expressing confidence may not be as successful as a bit of awkwardness.

It could be that appearing unsure makes the writer seem more vulnerable and less threatening. It could be that women like guys who write mumbly. But either way: men should be careful not to let the appearance of vulnerability become the appearance of sweaty desperation: please is on the negative list (22% reply rate), and in fact it is the only word that is actually worse for you than its netspeak equivalent (pls, 23%)!

4. Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted on Twitter

Want to know which words, phrases, and punctuation are more likely to spread your tweets? Viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella thinks he can tell you. Fast Company is running a piece on his research, comprised of over 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets.

Beggars Can Be Choosers

Although conventional wisdom suggests that SPAMmy pleas, such as “PLEASE RETWEET,” would be generally ignored, Zarrella found the opposite. “Please” and “retweet” were his third and fourth “most retweetable” words, preceeded only by “Twitter” (duh) and “you.” Also worth noting: “Check out” and “new blog post” were Nos. 19 and 20, respectively.

The shoes are structured with carbon-fiber and covered in fine leather. I was surprised to learn that the styling isn’t just for looks, but might actually work:

One late summer night in the studio I was thinking about the design of shoes in general. I wondered why there was the need for a foot plate in shoes such as high heels When I look at a foot print on sand it is very clear to see that the main force goes to the heel and ball. With a high heel providing the heel is supported, even by standing on a wooden block the foot naturally ’spans’ the gap naturally, with bones and tendons. The foot has its own inbuilt strength and support so why duplicate this. You would not have a jumper with rigid arms between elbow and wrist.

Umair Haque’s Awesomeness Manifesto has been making the rounds lately, proclaiming that “awesome is the new innovation”. Haque’s hypothesis is that innovation is too costly. Innovation brought us feature-laden products that quickly fail or are obsolete the next year. Innovation brought us the poor banking instruments that helped cause the financial crisis. Innovation needs to make way for awesomeness.

What is awesomeness? (emphasis mine)

Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. That’s a better kind of innovation, built for 21st century economics.

And wouldn’t you know it? The first pillar of awesomeness is ethical production:

Innovation turns a blind eye to ethics — or, worse, actively denies ethics. That’s a natural result of putting entrepreneurship above all. Buy low, sell high, create value. That’s so 20th century. Awesome stuff is produced ethically — in fact, without an ethical component, awesomeness isn’t possible. Starbucks is shifting to Fair Trade coffee beans, for example. Why? Starbucks isn’t just trying to innovate yet another flavour of sugar-water: it’s trying to gain awesomeness.

Here’s one for the books (and for the DLB taxonomy of unethical designs). According to a recent AP article, parents who install Sentry and FamilySafe brand software to monitor their children’s online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children’s instant messages, and sell gathered marketing data from them.

via.

The rest of this post writes itself.