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. Is Spec Work Ever Okay?

Threadless is a popular t-shirt company who crowdsources its designs from user submissions. Chosen designs are awarded $2,500 with bonuses for reprints and a shot at a larger prize in a yearly "best-of" competition. But of course, the company might make a hundred times that in sales, which has led some to accuse it of basing its business on spec work.

Jake Nickell, CEO of Threadless, doesn't argue that he uses spec work, but he disagrees that what his company does is a bad thing. His argument is that Threadless submissions 1. Allow designers to keep their copyrights 2. Are an open process with no specifications (no brief) 3. Pay quite a bit. Most importantly, he says, people who submit to Threadless do it for enjoyment and not for the money.

I'm torn. On one hand, it doesn't answer the critics of spec work which argue for professional engagement-- that design is serious business which is not something to be farmed out on the cheap to amateurs. On the other, people who aren't designers like to make things and Threadless actually seems to give them a fair shake. I'm not sure what the breakdown is ethically. But if you're going to solicit spec work, I suppose there's a sea of people out there doing worse.

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