Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. They’ve just released version 1.0, go get it. Use it alongside NicePlayer to get full-screen video on your Mac without shelling out for QuickTime Pro. If VLC’s not your bag, that is.
The ever-interesting Brand New blog introduces the new Coke can. It takes guts to reverse the trend of continually adding swooshes, bubbles, drop shadows, et al, and Coke have pulled this one off to perfection. Beautiful.
Ray Larabie makes fonts. He gives a lot of them away for free. He has a new website: FontSugar
Erik Spiekermann has an interesting post about a new typeface used by the German government on car numberplates. It has a specific design goal: make it difficult to alter any character to look like another. (E.g. convert a C into an O with black paint.)
Update: Computer Darkroom provides comprehensive coverage of the new features.
James Duncan Davidson has a good overview of the new features in Lightroom. Mikkel Aaland also summarises what’s new. I’ve just had a play with the new sharpening option and it’s much, much better than version 1, here’s hoping the other tweaks are as good!
You can download the v1.1 updater here.
After an extended hiatus, I’m going to start blogging again. You think hardly anyone looks at your site, then you get one nice comment and it makes it worth it. Thanks swissmiss!
Potential new competitor to Velcro. Apparently it can hold eight times as much weight as Velcro and is practically silent. If it works well that invention’ll be worth billions. (Via Engadget.)
Mars has abandoned plans to use animal products in its chocolate, and has apologised to “upset” vegetarians. I can’t believe they were so stupid to not realise how strong the reaction would be, but I’m glad they’ve seen sense.
Public art at the Cardiff Bay barrage by Swiss artist Felice Varini.
A throughly researched article highlighting Adobe’s rip-off pricing in Europe by Nigel Moore. The Swiss and — surprise, surprise! — the UK are the worst affected, with customers paying up to twice as much as their US counterparts. (And that’s excluding sales tax.)