geekery

It’s no secret Apple, one of the most valuable public companies in the world, is making major cash off today’s tech gadgets — but how much?

This week, the company reported a record net profit of more than $13.6 billion for its quarterly report lasting 14 weeks and ending Dec. 31, 2011. Apple’s income is 207 times the average annual salary for a U.S. worker. A rumored summer release of the iPhone 5 will help keep the money flowing in this year for the more than $400 billion company.

“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in a statement. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

Cook alone raked in $378 million last year, naming him the highest-paid CEO. In the past three months, Apple brought in four times more profit than Walmart, the world’s largest retailer.

It seems unimaginable to see how far $400 billion could be used. The infographic below puts into perspective Apple’s monetary power and influence around the world. First off, $400 billion could cover 42% of the United States if dollar bills were laid flat across the South.

Apple could pay off the public debt of eight European Union countries. Apple could also write $6,622,516 checks to each of its employees before exhausting its fortune. More than $97.7 billion of Apple’s money is in cash reserves, and two-thirds of the money is stored offshore.

How could Apple’s money be better spent? Should Apple spend more money on its China suppliers to improve working conditions for workers?

Infographic created by MBA Online; Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, wdstock

More About: apple, infographic, ipad, iphone, ipod, tim cook

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It’s not always clear how Facebook apps interact with the data you share on the social network. Are they allowed to broadcast it? Sell it? Compile it in a way that you never intended?

“When you turn all Platform applications off, your User ID is no longer given to applications, even when your friends use those applications,” says a portion of Facebook’s privacy policy. “But you will no longer be able to use any games, applications or websites through Facebook.

Simply, should you choose not to share with apps at all, they are taken away from you. If you want to use some, but limit their functionality, you have to carefully customize your privacy settings in order to ensure your information is used appropriately. With the Open Graph, which can push any information to your Facebook page without explicit permission each time, it becomes more of an imperative.

Here are seven things you may not realize that Facebook knows, and is using to interact with your friends or advertisers. Concerned about what you share on the social network? Be sure to check the Apps You Use in the Privacy Tab to ensure that you have full control of your privacy in a way that makes you feel comfortable.

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1. Where You’ve Been

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You’ve always kept your location up to date on Facebook, ensuring everyone knows when you change cities — but you’re not interested in geotagging. Watch out, because your exact location can still be picked up by Facebook and broadcasted.

One of the more prominent design features in Facebook’s new Timeline is the “Maps” feature, which gathers the meta data from a user’s location and prominently displays check-ins, life events, photos, and the like on the map. The issue is, for those who aren’t necessarily keen on sharing discrete location details, this feature is virtually unavoidable. According to Facebook’s privacy policy: “We receive data from the computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access Facebook. This may include your IP address, location, the type of browser you use, or the pages you visit.” This data is collected every time, even when a friend of yours has GPS turned on and tags you in a picture she’s uploading from her mobile phone.

Even if you’re stringent about your whereabouts not making it to a highly visible plane, Facebook has already gathered data from you retroactively, ensuring that every time you’ve changed your city location — or listed your home town– it will show up on the map as well.

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2. What You’re Listening To

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You just downloaded Spotify and you’re really excited to get started. You signed up and were asked to link to Facebook before launching the app, so you clicked the boxes and everything seems ready. But don’t click play on that MC Hammer track just yet…

Since September, Spotify has required that new users sign in through Facebook, thanks to a partnership forged after the music giant hit the U.S. Essentially, anytime a regular Spotify user turns on the app and clicks play, whether via desktop or through mobile, the app can beam information right into Facebook and broadcast it to friends without prior notice. In response to major backlash, Spotify now includes a “Private Listening” mode, which blocks sharing immediately to Facebook. However, it will turn off after a restart or an extended period of time.

The only way to circumvent the compulsory posting is to turn it off permanently in both places. Spotify’s desktop app does have a “turn off publishing to Facebook” within its settings, but the only way to ensure posting does not occur is to revoke Spotify’s publishing abilities within Facebook apps.

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3. When You’re Creeping

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That girl you met at the event you went to last week. Your ex from college. Your worst enemy from middle school. Odds are, they’re all on Facebook, and you can’t resist the urge to creep. Just remember that Facebook is watching, too.

Naturally, anything you do on Facebook is seen and gathered by Facebook, and creeping on people is no exception. Facebook specifically tracks all clicks done within its platform in order to better tailor an experience for the user. Do you ever wonder why certain people show up in your feed, while others are hardly ever reported on? That’s your creeping doing its work. Visit your frenemy’s page enough times, and he or she will end up gracing your feed more often than you may like.

Don’t worry, Facebook does not specifically share this data with other users, though it will assume that this person is important in your life. Marking someone as a VIP can lead to their appearances more often in your advertisements or apps in addition to the extra face time on the feed.

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4. Where You Run

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Social running is all the rage these days, and you’re ready to load up your iPhone with RunKeeper, connect it to Facebook and get to stepping. But there’s more, and it has to do with that sneaky little GPS…

Runkeeper is one of the poster children for Facebook’s new “frictionless” user experience. A social network for avid (and aspiring) runners, Runkeeper packs sophisticated technology usually reserved for GPS watches and other athletic gear into a handy iPhone application and has the option of linking material to Facebook. Except, with the Open Graph, linking gives companies an opportunity to simply push all of the info that they collect into a user’s Timeline. And in this case, that means valuable GPS data.

Say that you go on a run with Runkeeper around the park. The GPS data routes the run you made and then pushes it to Facebook so your friends can see where you’ve been and for how long. This may not be much of a problem for you, but what if one day you forget to turn off Runkeeper and go to work? Anywhere you go from that point on is at risk of becoming common knowledge among your social circle, which can be unnerving at best and dangerous at worst. Runkeeper does a great service for those motivated for fitness, but in participating in the Open Graph, the information is fair game.

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5. Your Saturday Night Plans

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Your local bar is having a comedy night, and you have to RSVP on Facebook to get on the guest list. But when you click “Attending,” your plans can be broadcast to your social network — whether you realize it or not.

One of the trickier features of Facebook is the “sponsored stories” section, which is a particular form of advertising. Companies can sponsor particular Facebook actions, called “stories,” that double as advertising for a brand. However, this also means that your information could be used as an advertisement for another brand.

“Sponsored Stories” are a possibility every time you like a brand or location or respond positively to a public event. When you do this, companies can tap into your friends and let them know that you like or are attending an event — with the hopes of getting them involved, too. Liking a brand or attending its event automatically makes your information available for brand ambassadorship, and you can become an advocate for the event or the brand without implicitly signing up.

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6. When You’ve Slacked on Your Diet

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You have a Fitbit and you’re ready to get your connected fitness in gear. You allow your account to connect with Facebook so you can broadcast your successes to friends and family, but the Open Graph does change things.

Fitbit is not currently on Facebook’s list of fully-adopted Open Graph apps, but its potential (and partnership with Runkeeper) can create quite an issue for users who are concerned about privacy. The nuances of Facebook’s Open Graph mean that everything is done for the user as soon as permission is granted, rather than approving every singular action within an app. Combine that with an app that already makes those decisions for you, and the possibility of sharing information you actually don’t want to share is high.

The key issue with Fitbit is that it already uploads very personal information automatically whenever the portable device is near its connected docking station. Combined with Open Graph, data could be broadcasted to friends without even logging into Facebook.

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7. What News Articles You Just Read

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A friend read an article that catches your eye through the Washington Post Social Reader. You click on the title and realize that the app requires permission before linking to the article. You may think little of it and click through to the article, but Facebook watches as you keep reading.

The main news app that has adopted Facebook’s Open Graph structure is the Washington Post Social Reader. You may have already seen the app in your News Feed, highlighting some articles read by friends that could be of interest to you. However, if you’re interested in one of the articles, you’re going to have to allow the app to access your personal information.

That can be an inconvenience for some, but the real issue lies after you read that first article. Because of the app’s structure, you aren’t prompted whether you want to share a particular article with your peers. So, once you begin clicking around the Post’s website, all of your articles become fair game for posting onto someone else’s mini-feed. The result is, from that point forward, even without accessing the app directly through Facebook, your connection to your reading habits is already cemented and anyone can access it.

More About: apps, Facebook, facebook open graph, features, mashable, Open Graph, privacy, trending

From an article by Jake Brodkin at Ars Technica:

"Twitter has taken the unusual step of making DMCA takedown notices public, in partnership with Chilling Effects, a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several universities. The site shows 4,410 cease and desist notices dating back to November 2010."

Here's the database on Chillingeffects.org. (Twitter's effort to expand partnership with Chilling Effects on this issue and the "countr-specific censorship" policy is, IMO, most laudable.)

Former President of Facebook, Sean Parker, did an interview with CNBC today in which he discussed Facebook’s “inevitable” IPO and applauded Mark Zuckerberg for keeping the company private for as long as he has. While Parker didn’t provide any insight as to when the public offering would be made or at what valuation, he did admit that the public push for Facebook shares can’t be ignored:

To the extent that there is any bubble in technology at all, it is really a bubble around Facebook in the sense that there is a huge amount of pent-up demand among retail investors for access to Facebook equity.

Our sources say that the IPO could happen as early as next Monday, but it’s anyone’s guess at this point.

In the interview below, Parker discusses how ironic it is that Zynga, which has found success with its games by piggybacking Facebook’s social graph, went public before Facebook did.

Notice that the interview started to go south when questions about Justin Timberlake’s portrayal of him in “The Social Network” started being asked. Let’s keep it to tech folks, shall we?

Twitter‘s new approach to censoring tweets has users rallying around the hashtag #TwitterBlackout — a call to boycott the microblogging service Saturday.

The change lets Twitter withhold content on a country-by-country basis, when a government deems the tweets inappropriate. Rather than wholly removing the content from the site, it will now only be blocked locally.

“When we receive a request from an authorized entity, we will act in accordance with appropriate laws and our terms of service,” a Twitter spokesperson told Mashable Thursday.

Many users have expressed dissatisfaction with the change. Tweets have been streaming in, in various languages, Friday with the #TwitterBlackout hashtag.

Anonymous has also supported the blackout. One of its tweets read: “SPREAD THE WORD #TwitterBlackout I will not tweet for the whole of January 28th due to the new twitter censor rule #Twitter #J28″

On the other hand, as Mashable‘s Josh Catone argues in this column, this change could be good — not bad — for activists. Instead of blocking tweets globally, they’ll only be blocked within specific countries.

Check out the video above to learn more about the boycott. And tell us in the comments: will you be participating in the blackout? Do you think Twitter’s new method of blocking tweets makes sense?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, SimmiSimons

More About: censorship, mashable video, Twitter

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Sound it Out # 15: Nada Surf "Waiting for Something"

Nada Surf has been playing intelligent and catchy guitar-based rock music for two decades. Their records are lush and beautifully written, and the constant sense of wonder and optimism throughout is a joy for this cynic to discover each time. Nada Surf always makes me believe that everything is going to be all right.

The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy is Nada Surf's new record and it came out Tuesday. The songwriting covers lots of introspective themes about the passing of time without even a hint of sullenness or pomposity. 'Waiting for Something" is a fine example of Nada Surf at their best and may well stick in your head for the foreseeable future. It's been in mine for days.

Click the play button below to listen or the little arrow on the right side of the widget to download.

Nada Surf - Waiting For Something by Sound it Out

CBS has shown the door to the blogger who tweeted an erroneous report of legendary Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno’s death last weekend.

Blogger Adam Jacobi wrote on Friday, “I had an awesome 17 months with CBSSports.com. I’m sorry to everyone, most importantly the Paterno family, for how it ended.”

He followed it with this message:

In the end, CBS had to let me go for the Paterno story going out the way it did, and I understand completely. Thanks, everyone, for reading.

— Adam Jacobi (@Adam_Jacobi) January 27, 2012

The fiasco began last Saturday when Onward State, an online publication run by Penn State students, tweeted that Paterno had passed away. The 85-year-old coach was previously reported — and confirmed — by many news outlets to be gravely ill with lung cancer and in the hospital.

The @OnwardState Twitter account posted this: “Our sources can now confirm: Joseph Vincent Paterno has passed away tonight at the age of 85.”

The story quickly spread online as an attributed rumor, while many news outlets held off on reporting it as fact. But CBSSports.com tweeted that “Joe Paterno has died at the age of 85.” The message was ostensibly sent by Jacobi, and did not name a source.

The false reports were soon debunked by the Paterno family. Joe Paterno died the next day.

Onward State‘s managing editor resigned from his position shortly after Paterno’s family denied the premature reports.

Jacobi’s dismissal announced Friday is not the first time CBS has cut ties with a blogger over erroneously tweeted reports. In September, blogger Shira Lazar was let go after tweeting that Steve Jobs had died. Jobs died the following month.

Media commentator Alan Mutter, who writes the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur and is a former newspaper editor and Silicon Valley CEO, said that the recent propensity of false reports like the one that cost Adam Jacobi his job are symptomatic of today’s perpetually in-motion news cycle.

“It’s been a great tradition in the news business to always want to be the first with the most, but the problem is that the traditional latency between news gathering and news production — the different editing layers and time it took to actually go to the press and things like that — is gone today, ” he told Mashable.

“The good news with tools like Twitter is that we have many more people contributing to the conversation,” Mutter said. “But if they’re wrong, or especially trying to mislead or missing the facts, then that’s the price we pay for instantaneous communication.”

What’s more important to you — the speed or accuracy of news delivery? Do you think people such as Adam Jacobi deserve to be fired, or do large publications like CBS deserve equal blame? Let us know in the comments.

More About: Media, sports, Twitter

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CBS finally let go its sports blogger Adam Jacobi following the Paterno debacle, Jacobi himself announced today on his Twitter account:

As you may remember, CBS Sports wrongly announced the death of the ex-Penn State American football coach Joe Paterno – who had recently been accused of child sex abuse.

As Paterno’s sons soon pointed out, the information was incorrect – although terminally ill, their father only passed away hours later.

Following the misstep, it emerged that Jacobi’s report was based on a sole source he initially didn’t bother to name: the Onward State. A local online news outlet run by students targeted at Penn State College community, it had erroneously reported JoPa’s death on Twitter.

This is how CBS ended up sharing the blame with Onward State’s managing editor Devon Edwards. According to Poynter, the student’s wrong information was itself based on a false email and other incorrect allegations.

Had Jacobi mentioned his source, he may had kept his job following public apologies. Instead, CBS seems to have hesitated for a few days before deciding to let him go. Jacobi had been working for CBS Sports for the past 17 months; according to his LinkedIn profile, his job title was College Football Blogger.

Jacobi himself insists he’s not bitter about CBS’ decision – not only with the above-mentioned apologetic messages, but also with this clarification an hour later:

Jacobi and Edwards know it too: source attribution and fact-checking are mandatory for quality reporting. These are two tasks anyone involved in print and news has to perform, no matter if they call themselves ‘journalist’ or ‘blogger’, ‘student’ or ‘senior’.

Still, some consider CBS’ decision to be harsh on Jacobi. Says US blogger Erik Wemple:

CBSSports.com could easily have kept Jacobi right where he was. Just issue a statement expressing commitment to further training and be done with the issue. But a firing sends a message that CBSSports.com cares more about its credibility than it does about one employee’s job security.

Not only does CBSSports.com put on notice its employees that multiple sourcing matters, it puts on notice the entire industry.

For journalists and bloggers alike, Jacobi’s sacking is certainly frightful: one article goes wrong, and we could lose our jobs. Yet, this whole debacle also serves as a reminder that we should always maintain our standards. Despite deadlines and newsroom pressure for scoops, let’s keep in mind the damage bad reporting can do.

Do you think CBS’ decision was fair?

Last spring we talked about a giant LEGO recreation of the Garrison of Moria from The Lord of the Rings. The only thing missing from the setting was official LOTR minifigs. Now it looks like these missing characters are coming soon according to a pic that has surfaced.

Apparently, a guy from the LEGO site Brickset was at the 2012 UK Toy Fair and while he couldn’t get pics inside the booth to share, he was able to shoot a pic of a photo on the side of the booth showing off the new LOTR minifigs. The photo clearly shows that the entire fellowship of the rings is coming in Minifig form.

We also have a few hi-res LOTR movie-inspired posters here which LEGO was kind enough to share with us recently, featuring Frodo, Legolas and Aragorn in minifig form:

Brickset also reports there are a number of LOTR LEGO playsets coming too, and not just the minifigs. The early pics look really cool, and I bet LEGO fans that also love the films and the books will be salivating when they arrive. I’d keep an eye peeled during the New York Toy Fair in early February for more details to emerge, or bookmark LEGO’s LOTR web page, which indicates that something is coming in Summer 2012.

[via BrothersBrick]

Two things that are completely relevant to us geekazoids: mathematics and beauty. This guy uses incredible mathematics to create pattern-free structures to create the world’s ugliest music, composed using a structure called the Golomb ruler.

Another one for the age-old battle of arts vs. science: perhaps we can’t create the most beautiful music, but damn it, only mathematicians can make the world’s worst music!

Related posts:

1. Teacher anxiety influences girls view of mathematics
2. Geek festival brings music without the mud
3. The Beamz – A laser music system that makes you look like an idiot

An explainer from Eva Galperin at the Electronic Frontier Foundation on Twitter's "country-based tweet takedown" news:

Until now, when Twitter has taken down content, it has had to do so globally. So for example, if Twitter had received a court order to take down a tweet that is defamatory to Ataturk--which is illegal under Turkish law--the only way it could comply would be to take it down for everybody. Now Twitter has the capability to take down the tweet for people with IP addresses that indicate that they are in Turkey and leave it up everywhere else. Right now, we can expect Twitter to comply with court orders from countries where they have offices and employees, a list that includes the United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan, and soon Germany.

Twitter's increasing need to remove content comes as a byproduct of its growth into new countries, with different laws that they must follow or risk that their local employees will be arrested or held in contempt, or similar sanctions. By opening offices and moving employees into other countries, Twitter increases the risks to its commitment to freedom of expression. Like all companies (and all people) Twitter is bound by the laws of the countries in which it operates, which results both in more laws to comply with and also laws that inevitably contradict one another. Twitter could have reduced its need to be the instrument of government censorship by keeping its assets and personnel within the borders of the United States, where legal protections exist like CDA 230 and the DMCA safe harbors (which do require takedowns but also give a path, albeit a lousy one, for republication).

Read more at EFF.org.

Two years ago this Friday — Jan. 27, 2010 — Apple unveiled the iPad to the world. At the time, critics and analysts were quick to mock the name, criticize the devices shortcomings and predict that while the Apple name would sell the product, it wouldn’t create a new market.

Boy, were they wrong. The device was an immediate success, quickly becoming the fastest-selling gadget of all time.

Even those of us who were bullish on the iPad have had our expectations blown out of the water.

As a company, Apple just had its most successful financial quarter ever and sold 15.4 million iPads. Apple CEO Tim Cook says he can envision a time when the tablet market will be larger than the PC market, at least in numbers of units sold.

Looking at the trends in computing — especially with the rise of Ultrabooks — the merging of the tablet and the computer into one device certainly seems possible. Some Windows laptop makers are already attempting such a hybrid, with mixed success.

Two years after its introduction, the iPad has not only created the modern tablet market, it has had a transformative effect on publishing, education and entertainment. The rate at which the iPad has become a widely-adopted piece of technology — from the car service in my neighborhood to hospitals to airlines — is staggering.

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Why the iPad Matters

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I was discussing with a friend the changing nature of entertainment, and the role that the iPad has had in convincing networks and content producers to embrace the future.

I remarked that the iPad is the first device that has shown what can happen when you meld the TV and the computer. The size, touchscreen and supported applications has turned the iPad from a simple consumption device to something much more robust.

Two years ago, I watched Steve Jobs unveil the iPad. My reaction: This is the future. Two years later, I’m even more convinced. This is why the iPad matters. No other device in memory has had the ability to integrate into so many different worlds so quickly and will so little resistance.

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All Hail the King

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Over the last two years, plenty of so-called “iPad Killers” have entered the market. Very few found success. The Kindle Fire, the first product to significantly undercut the iPad on price while matching its content ecosystem, has garnered a decent amount of interest — especially at Best Buy. But as Apple’s first-quarter figures showed this week, it’s not eroding iPad sales.

Android is the leading platform on mobile. But on the tablet, the number of optimized apps are still extremely low. I’d be surprised if there were as many tablet-specific apps for Android now as there were for the iPad at its launch.

This isn’t to say that competition is impossible. With Windows 8 and the Metro UI, Microsoft has shown that it has some chops. Still, as Marco Arment is fond of pointing out, “we still don’t know if there is a tablet market. We know there is an iPad market.”

The iPad represents the cornerstone of the next era of computing, both for Apple and for the industry. Here’s to many more years of disruptions.

More About: apple, ipad, Opinion, steve jobs, tablets

A month ago, we saw a marvelous demonstration of troll physics from YouTube user [Fredzislaw100]. In his video, we saw a circuit of three switches and three LEDs wired in series and but not acting like the should. A lot of the comments for this post elicited reasonable explanations like modifying the battery or pure camera wizardry via After Effects. Thankfully, [Alan] stepped in and showed us how it was done. The solution uses two AC power sources with diodes in two of the switches and LEDs and inductors in the third pair. [Alan]‘s build was rather large compared to the original video, so we were wondering how this circuit could be made invisible.

[Fredzislaw100] just posted a video on how he did it. Like [Alan]‘s build, it uses two AC power sources, diodes, and inductors. In contrast to every single guess about where the circuit is hidden, the majority of the build is inside the battery connector. [Fredzislaw] did some amazing work hiding a 74LV132 quad NAND Schmitt trigger inside the battery connector. The diodes were easily hidden on LEDs 1 and 3 with some red nail polish, but we’re amazed by the inductor built into the LED seen in the title pic.

So there you go. With a ton of electronics know-how and an extremely steady hand (and a microscope), you too can build your own troll circuit. Check out the video after the break.

Filed under: led hacks

It isn’t just the sun’s radiation storm getting all up in Earth’s face this week. An asteroid the size of a school bus, discovered mere days ago, came about five times closer to us than the moon Friday.

The good news is an asteroid that size would have burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere. The bad news is there are still plenty of larger near-Earth rocks we haven’t discovered yet — and we may not discover them until they come flying at us.

Asteroid 2012 BX34, after all, had plenty of company. It was the 873rd space rock detected by NASA in the last two weeks. Only in the last couple of days did we discover that its orbit would bring it within one-fifth of the distance between here and the moon — which is just what happened at 10 a.m. EST Friday. In cosmic terms, that’s a hair’s breadth. (Check it out in the video below.)

Had 2012 BX 34 been larger — the size of a mountain, say — gravity may well have put it on a collision course with our planet. At that scale, given mere days to prepare, we may have been looking at a Deep Impact-style scenario. We can only hope that the next civilization-ending rock we detect isn’t quite so keen to meet us.

Suddenly, President Obama’s priority for NASA in the next 10 years — to land astronauts on an asteroid — makes a lot more sense. Not only are there trillions of dollars in mineral wealth in those rocks, but the more we get to know them, the better we can detect and deflect their orbits.

[via Space.com]

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Bonus: 23 Must-Follow Twitter Accounts for Astronomy Lovers

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1. @NASA

A convenient feed for all things NASA, including launch news, astronaut updates, space discoveries and interactive media.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Asteroids, space

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At first it may sound strange for a designer to keep their icons in a font file, let alone use them Online. CSS3 and @font-face are just now emerging as a viable option for display and text fonts, so why depend on it more for icons as well?

The thing is, pictograph and icons packed into a font file are already a very reasonable way to keep track of an entire series of graphics. All you need to do is install the font for safe keeping, start typing and you’ll automatically have access to scalable icons straight from your system’s font library. Now, with CSS3, we can style them in tons of impressive ways Online with little effort.

Pictos, a user interface icon font that has been out for a while now, has just recently created what I can only call “Typekit for your user interface.” Pictos Server is out to get designers off of image sprites and onto icon fonts (sans JavaScript), and will host them on-the-cheap too.

According to the creator:

The entire purpose of using icon fonts is to replace the need to render icons on a web page using images. Icons fonts can be styled dynamically using CSS. They are smaller in file size than an image sprite. Being vector in nature, they are infinitely scaleable.

If your interest is peaked, you’ll want to check out the guide to using the font, as well as the explanations for accessibility and compatibility problems.

There are definitely issues involved in the process. If you rely on the font for all of your navigation and your site is viewed in an incompatible browser, your entire site is doomed. The service also costs $19+ per year, and you could instead use other fonts like Modern Pictograms or IcoMoon for free with the @font-face tag, but you’d have to host that yourself.

All in all, this is definitely worth the experiment. If you feel like living on the edge then go for it. Icon fonts may be the way of the future, along with actual CSS drawings. If you’re stuck supporting old versions of IE, then you’ll unfortunately have to stick with images for now, but otherwise, why not give it a try?

> Pictos Server ($19+ / year)

Check out our full Design and Dev channel for more inspiration! Also, you can exclusively view typography articles here.

Pat Aufderheide sez,

When is it OK for me to put copyrighted material on e-reserves for students?

I've got an ancient VHS and the company that made it is defunct. Can I copy it to DVD for a prof's class?

A student's thesis analyzes advertisements and includes some of them. Can I put the thesis in our digital institutional repository?

Academic and research librarians can employ their fair use rights to make such decisions, and now they have a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use to help them decide what's appropriate. Librarians developed this code under the aegis of the Association of Research Libraries and with funding from the Mellon Foundation in sessions over the course of two years, in locations around the country. Legal scholar Peter Jaszi (Washington College of Law, American University) and communication scholar Patricia Aufderheide, who have facilitated several codes of best practices in fair use, also participated.

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries (Thanks, Pat!)

By now you’ve probably heard the news: Facebook could be filing its papers for IPO as early as next week.

A Wall Street Journal report, siting some anonymous sources, spilled the news that many of us may have been suspecting following a week of big Facebook events.

On Tuesday, Facebook announced that all users would have the “new profile,” a.k.a. Timeline, within the next few weeks. While some may see this as a “product push,” stronger predictors to an IPO unraveled later in the week.

SEE ALSO: How Facebook’s Expected $100 Billion IPO Breaks Down [INFOGRAPHIC]

The next day, Facebook halted secondary market trading with no explanation, leading many to suspect an IPO was on the way. The WSJ report suggests investment bank Morgan Stanley will manage the IPO, rather than Goldman Sachs, the bank many assumed would fill that role.

Facebook is currently valued between $75 billion and $100 billion — making it the largest in tech IPO in history. Check out the video above to see how that compares to other Internet companies.

SEE ALSO: Everything You Need to Know About Facebook’s $100 Billion IPO

If you’re an averaged investor looking to buy a piece of Facebook, you have two options: investing in a mutual fund that invests in IPOs or buying on the aftermarket.

What else do you want to know about the Facebook IPO? Let us know in the comments.

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BONUS: How Does Facebook Compare to the World’s Biggest IPOs?

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1. General Motors

Headquartered in Detroit, MI, GM owns Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC.

Proceeds: $23.1 billion

Year: 2010

Image courtesy of Flickr, Crouchy69

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I’m a big fan of simplicity, because it shouldn’t take rocket science to explain a service or product. One of the masters of simplicity is Philip Kaplan aka Pud, who has made some fun products that even your mom can understand.

One of his most recent creations, TinyLetter, allows people to start an email newsletter in just a few clicks. It was purchased by MailChimp in August.

Kaplan’s latest app, Bellbot, might not get acquired, but it’s yet another interesting creation from a guy who has seen it all in Silicon Valley.

The service allows you to drop a single line of code on any page of your site, and a bell will ring when someone hits it. In a TinyLetter email today, Kaplan explains the service:

I came up with the idea a long time ago when I read a story about how Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder) in the early days rigged a bell to play every time Amazon had a new customer. Also I think it’s fairly common for sales people to ring a bell (or smash a gong) every time they have a sale. So this is a virtual version of that.

All you have to do is sign up for Bellbot, and you’ll get a unique code to drop on any page of your site. To go along with the usage Kaplan suggests, you should put the code on a “Thank You” page that happens after someone signs up for your site or buys something.

After you’ve placed the code on your page, just keep your Bellbot page open, sit back and relax. As soon as people start hitting your chosen page, the app will ring. It sounds goofy, but if you’re just getting started, this type of incentive will definitely keep you and your team in the know and pushing forward to keep going.

This could be great for a charity who is having an event and wants to let everyone in attendance know when a new donation is made. As donations come through and Bellbot starts sounding off, more people will be excited to donate too. This one falls under the “Why didn’t I think of that?” category, and Kaplan is a master at churning these types of apps out.

➤ Bellbot

Director Dougal Wilson created this visually delightful spot for Danish Butter brand Lurpak. The spot was specifically made for their product Lurpak Lightest Spreadable and celebrates the joy of healthy cooking. It was produced by Wieden+Kennedy.

via Colossal

image via Blink

Save the Date cards are not geeky, and a classy black and white picture is likely worth the dozen or so words on this card, but Ben still managed to make this card while expressing his geeky side.

Of course he managed to wait until they were printed, mailed out, and received by friends and family before he spilled the beans of what he managed to hide in plain sight on the card.

This might very well be the geekiest and yet classiest Save the Date card EVER.

Don’t see it? Let me help…

Still don’t see it? Then look a little closer on the left of Ben’s shoulder, there’s a Raptor hiding there!

Clever indeed.

Via

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