It's a simple idea: serve (locally-sourced) pie and coffee, give people a place to sit and talk, and good things can happen. Greensboro, Alabama is the site of PieLab, a community space developed by design group Project M and non-profit housing organization HERO. You can read more about its founders and mission here.

What I like most about it is the earnestness and simplicity of the idea. The New York Times discusses how, early on, PieLab's young designers struggled to fit into the local culture. The latest incarnation is sensitive and helpful, without being patronizing.

Image from the PieLab Facebook Group

Image from the PieLab Facebook Group

IKEA has just released a baking book called "Hembakat är Bäst" (Homemade is Best). Check out these photographs of the ingredients for various recipes, shot by Carl Kleiner.

Via.

We see our food cut into sections all of the time, but the grain of the images and the sequencing turn these into something new. You can see structures within the fruit that you didn't know were there.

Have a look for yourself.

1. 20 Worst Drinks in America 2010

I like this spread on unhealthy drinks by Eat this Not That. Illustrating sugar content via equivalent stacks of cookies and donuts is a powerful visual. I'll never look at bottled teas and water the same way again.

2. We, the users - Facebook users' Bill of Rights

If you wanted a set of principles from which to base a code of ethics for social media, I'd say look no further than this users' Bill of Rights from the San Francisco Chronicle.

3. Google Font Previewer

Google is breaking into web fonts with its new Google Font Directory and API, part of a collaboration with typekit. The selection is a little sparse at the moment, but it's great to think that we might have some more cross-browser fonts (as long as Google's servers are up).

The font previewer interface is nice, but it bugs me that the new fonts aren't properly anti-aliased in Windows. Until that gets ironed out (if it can be, as I think it's an OS problem), I'm not sure it's worth designing websites around them.

4. 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps

We're very early into developing a web application, so I found this article and video helpful for wrapping my head around the mindset that accompanies these things. It covers the gamut from technology to branding and marketing with a few insights I hadn't considered before.

1. 100 Abandoned Houses in Detroit

Photo by Kevin Bauman

Kevin Bauman's Flickr group, 100 Abandoned Houses, beautifully captures the faded glory of Detroit houses and in many cases their return to nature.

2. Facebook's Eroding Ethics

Image from Gizmodo

Facebook is turning out to be the design ethics story of the year. Gizmodo has a scary summary of Facebook's past and present sins against it's users.

And to top it off, just today, Facebook has been found adding data-collecting apps to profiles without users' knowledge. The jury's out on whether this is a bug or a feature, but read the above article before you decide...

3. Why Did Hunt's Ketchup Go HFCS Free?

Hunt's has announced that it is reformulating to remove High Fructose Corn Syrup from its ketchup. Not because it's the right thing to do (which is controversial), but because consumers have worn them down:

“Manufacturers are tired of hearing about the e-mails, the 800-number calls and the letters,” says Phil Lempert, editor of the Lempert Report, which focuses on supermarket trends. “People don’t want it, so why fight them?”

If companies won't lead, at least they'll follow the market.

4. Your Office Chair Sitting Is Killing You

BusinessWeek has an article explaining how sitting in chairs is bad for us, and how office chair design doesn't account for this.

"The Aeron is far too low," says Dr. A.C. Mandal, a Danish doctor who was among the first to raise flags about sitting 50 years ago. "I visited Herman Miller a few years ago, and they did understand. It should have much more height adjustment, and you should be able to move more. But as long as they sell enormous numbers, they don't want to change it."

Maybe instead of that fancy office chair, I should get a higher desk and some better shoes...

5. The Humble Indie Bundle

In the early days of BlogLESS, we professed our love for World of Goo, both as a game and for it's anti-DRM stance.

For the next five days, you can get it, along with four other acclaimed indie games, and name your own price. Moreover, you can decide where your money goes. You can pay the developers, or give to charities EFF and Child's Play, or choose how you want to split the money.

We're not involved with this offer in any way. But this is a model we'd like to see more of.

Buy good games. Do good. We can get behind that.

1. Hotel Fakeout Photos

Photos from Oyster.com -- Hotel pics on the left; real pics on the right

FatWallet ran a story last week about some "creative" photography resorts use in their advertising. Hotel review site Oyster.com, which encourages users to send their own photos of hotels, has a gallery full of examples.

Of course, it's the photographer's job to make things look as good as possible, but it's a slippery slope.

2. 'The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell'

MIT newspaper, The Tech, ran an interesting opinion piece this month about a student's ethical dilemma in Dubai. But it's probably not what you think.

The story is not about Dubai or the culture there, but rather the troubling practices of a consulting company the author worked for after leaving MIT:

...[C]lients usually didn’t know why they had hired us. They sent us vague requests for proposal, we returned vague case proposals, and by the time we were hired, no one was the wiser as to why exactly we were there. I got the feeling that our clients were simply trying to mimic successful businesses, and that as consultants, our earnings came from having the luck of being included in an elaborate cargo-cult ritual.

3. The Ethics of Flying Gaming Press to Hawaii

Ars Technica asks: Is it ethical for journalists to accept an free trip to Hawaii, in order to view presentations from a game company?

I would add: what about the CO2 from all those trips? Hawaii is a long ways from just about anywhere.

4. Is it OK for vegans to eat oysters?

Okay, so this one is not related to design or business ethics, but as a story about ethical complexities, it made me stop and think. Apparently, oysters are okay for vegans to eat.

I thought vegans didn't eat any animals or animal products. It seems I didn't understand vegans or oysters.

Corby Kummer has related a rather confusing realization to us this month in the Atlantic Magazine. Namely, that retail supergiant Walmart may be playing an important part in sustaining small organic farms.

Detail from Kang Can, Fast Food III (2007) [via]

If Walmart's move into organics strikes you as cynical — "a way to grab market share while driving small stores and farmers out of business," you're not alone. But, Kummer suggests, it's not entirely clear that the right reaction is disapprobation. For example, he notes that:

[L]ast year, the market for organic milk started to go down along with the economy, and dairy farmers in Vermont and other states, who had made big investments in organic certification, began losing contracts and selling their farms. A guaranteed large buyer of organic milk began to look more attractive.

Kummer, suspicious of greenwashing, called Charles Fishman, the author of The Wal-Mart Effect. Fishman was quick to note that, in Kummer's paraphrase, "whatever Walmart decides to do has large repercussions."

A virtually unknown Walmart program is responsible for their responsible buying — one that Kummer claims "could do more to encourage small and medium-size American farms than any number of well-meaning nonprofits, or the U.S. Department of Agriculture." At the time of their interview, not even Fishman had heard of it. "They do a lot of good things they don’t talk about," he said.

Kummer's conclusion? If it's not decidedly the case that "the world’s largest retailer is set on rebuilding local economies it had a hand in destroying," at least that "if it wants to, a ruthlessly well-run mechanism can bring fruits and vegetables back to land where they once flourished, and deliver them to the people who need them most."

Decide for yourself here.