Blue Flavor

Bonsai Trees VII by Garrett Murray

Flavlets, Year End, 2007

December 21st, 2007 at 10:10 a.m.

Well, it’s that time of year again—the tree is up, the holiday party is over, the office is about to close so we can all visit our families and complain about the gifts we’re given while drinking egg nog and yelling at each other. It’s Christmas (or a non-Christmas holiday if you’re so inclined—it doesn’t really matter what you celebrate, I’m pretty sure the gist is the same (except the tree, I guess (well, I don’t guess, I know (and how many parentheticals can I include in one sentence? (it’s a Christmas miracle!)))))!

Before we close up shop on a wonderful year 2007, we figured we’d do one last run of Flavlets to give you something to look at durning the week we’re not around. After all, if we’re not here, where are you possibly going to find interesting links? Nowhere. That’s right, NOWHERE.

But first, here’s what we’ve been talking about the past few days in the Blue Flavor office (and my virtual BF office, which I call my ‘voffice’ (I don’t actually call it that, but I might if that catches on—and if it does, consider this a patent pending notice))…

Are you an 80 percenter? Dan Cederholm talks about Yvon Chouinard (the founder of Patagonia) and his business philosophies in an interesting post.

Derek Powazek give us the first rule of collaborative media: Ask First.

Evan Williams of Obvious Corp has some good ideas on evaluating ideas.

Brian writes about the past, present and future of mobile for the 21st installment of 24ways.

Jeff’s post on innovation in the browser space was the lead quote on a Wired article about the same topic yesterday.

Rock Band is great, but a little deceiving. You know how you sound kind of good when singing? Yeah, well, mute the volume and it sounds a little more realistic…

Opera reopens antitrust concerns over Internet Explorer in the EU.

Naming names is an absolutely fantastic infographic from the New York Times illustrating who’s mentioning who in the debates for the 2008 presidential race. It’s particularly interesting to see how many people are talking about Clinton from both sides of the aisle.

And finally, we’ll close out 2007 by sharing some of our favorite flavlets of the year…

Keith’s link of the year: A Brief Message
“I love the concept and this is a great example of how content can drive beautiful design.”

Keith’s runner-up: Songza
“An awesome and very useful experiment by Humanized. It’s an internet jukebox with a clean, simple look and some interesting interaction wrapped around technology that works really well.”

Nick’s link of the year: CSSblueprint
“Despite how we feel about frameworks, the realities of business require us to apply our creativity and through beyond what we already know and simplify the tasks of creating and designing for what we already know. CSSblueprint is not for everyone, but certainly a step forward for those who need to do rapid site design or prototyping.”

Nick’s runner-up: Msnbc.com Acquires Newsvine
“As web professionals, we love to play in our own sandboxes, experimenting, playing with new ideas. Sometimes we expose those ideas to our colleagues and it takes off. This is what has happened to several social networking or web application created over the past year. MSNBC‘s acquisition of Newsvine is the first in a series of things where we begin to see the masses adopt the idea that the web is a social place and no longer controlled by one person, one company, or one idea.”

Kevin’s link of the year: IE 8 passes the Acid 2 test
“It seemed like the year was going to end in a maelstrom of browser angst and the long march to another browser war. Out of the blue the IE team shows us they’ve been hard at work getting the next release up to snuf. While there is still a long way to go before IE8 makes it to the desktop, it’s good to know there’s a bright spot at the end.”

Kevin’s runner up: FF Meta Serif
“FF Meta has been one of my favorite type faces for years. Ten years later, it finally has a serif counterpart. The Font Shop article talks about why it took so long and is a great look into what it takes to make a beautiful typeface.”

Brian’s link of the year: Apple Reinvents the Phone with iPhone
“There were many links about the iPhone in 2007, but it is hard to imagine it was announced almost a year ago. I have never seen any consumer product talked about for so long, and people still talk about the iPhone with as much excitement and passion now as they did back in January. It’s easy to dismiss all this buzz as hype, but at some point you have to stand back in awe as a truly incredible story unfolds in front of your eyes.”

Brian’s runner up: iPhone to Support Third-Party Web 2.0 Applications
“This one is special to me as I was there when it was announced. Only minutes after Steve Jobs declared the Web would be the platform for the iPhone did the idea for Leaflets start to percolate. By lunch time, Garrett and I were deep in the details. It was really fun to get excited and inspired about the Mobile Web again, it had been some time.”

Garrett’s link of the year: Blue Flavor Band
“This has nothing to do with the outside world, but pretty successfully encapsulates the last year and how much fun I’ve had working with Blue Flavor. Sure, it’s nerdy as hell for us all to be sitting in a small room as the holiday party began, seriously playing what I’m sure was a crappy mid-90s alternative rock song, but you’ve gotta hand it to us: We look good.”

Garrett’s runner up: Tumblr
“I love writing content management systems. In fact, I tend to write them and release them (um, SimpleLog?), but Tumblr came along and ruined it all for me. It’s just so well done and fun and unique.”

Tom and Jeff’s link of the year: KillerSpin
“We love ping pong. And to top the year off, the Blue Flavor office got a new ping pong table—the Killerspin—and despite all the great things happening out there on the internet this was definitely our favorite link of this year.”

That’s it for 2007, folks!

Thanks to everyone who played a part in this year for us both professionally and personally. We appreciate it, and we’re looking forward to some time off and then getting back to work! And, of course, next year will be full of new challenges we’re excited to take on. See you in 2008!

Garrett Murray

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