• 50 Years of Space Exploration. Great looking infographic from National Geographic.
• AB Tests – Handy online resource that lets users create and test websites and applications.
• Service Design Tools – Design tool and pattern resource.
• The Billion Dollar Gram – Trying to make sense of the billions spent by governments using scale.

iA (Information Architects) release the final beta version of their fourth Web Trend Map.

• Vintage footage made by the Eames Office for Herman Miller on the manufacturing process behind the Eames Shell Chair via Core77
• Designing Social Patterns – Great companion resource to the forthcoming book Designing Social Interfaces:
  Principles, Patterns, and Practices for Improving the User Experience by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone.
• Stokemonkey – Electric hybrid drive for longtails and cargo bikes from Cleverchimp

• The First 100 Days – Nice infographic detailing achievements by US President’s in their first 100 days of office
• Typeface – Documentary about Wisconsin’s Hamilton Wood Type Museum which explores the convergence of digital design and traditional printmaking.
• London (Harder, Better…) – David Hubert shows what you can do with 3000 photographs, Daft Punk and a bit of patience.

• 20 Cool interaction design concepts including a ‘buttonless remote‘ concept designed by Joris van Gelder
• iPlayer downloader – Handy OSX 10.5 application for downloading programs from the BBC iPlayer website
• Huffduffer – Tag based ‘roll-your-own’ podcast app’ for found sounds

• Type is Art – Interactive type tool that lets the user create new forms using letterform parts
• Facebuster – Nice looking fat face from TypeTrust
• Balsamiq Mockups – Handy cross platform application wireframing tool

• Skyrails – Impressive open source interactive social networking visualisation tool. Check out the demonstration video and screenshots.
• Atmosphir – Interesting looking game creation tool from Minor Studios.
• “Man, that was fast!” You’re telling me it was! Extreme downhill skateboarding.

The Pencil Project An open source prototyping extension for Firefox 3 that allows a user to create GUI prototypes using built in stencils which can be saved and exported as .pngs.

It looks like it could be pretty handy for the odd job but I found it slightly quirky and slow compared to using an offline application, also there’s a current lack of stencils (shape collections) which I guess will change. Where it might come in handy is rapid prototyping with clients at brainstorming sessions. One to watch as more developers come on board and I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of these online tools.

• Space Project 1 and 2. Intriguing photographs from Vincent Fournier.
• Furniture manufacturer and museum Vitra have re-designed their website and to celebrate are running a competition to win one of 33 products including several by Charles and Ray Eames. Enter here.
• Welie – Nice collection of interaction design patterns

• Fantastic retro style posters for Pixar’s latest film Wall-E by Eric Tan via io9.
• The paper version of the web – Sketches of user interfaces as found on Flickr, including Twitter, Flickr Places and Vimeo.
• 280 Slides – Very impressive online presentation application