Polaroid will be introducing a new ink-less photo printer called the PoGo on July 6th. I know what you're thinking. "Polaroid? They're still around?" Yeah, I figured Polaroid, Kodak, Fuji and Konica would have formed a murder-suicide pact by now given the ubiquitousness of digital cameras. But I guess the originator of instant film isn't ready to cash in their chips just yet.

The PoGo uses an ink-less technology that Polaroid has branded as ZINK (zero ink, get it?) which includes a special paper embedded with yellow, magenta and cyan dye crystals, activated with heat pulses from the PoGo printer. The prints are water-resistant, smudge-proof, tear-proof and have a peel-off sticky back.

The printer is about the size of small digital camera, runs on batteries and connects to your camera or phone via Bluetooth. What's that? Your camera doesn't have Bluetooth? Well, the PoGo has a USB port as well. Of course you can only buy the ZINK paper from Polaroid and, with over 100 pending patents, you're not going to see a Wal-Mart brand of this paper any time soon. The POGO printer costs about $150.

Will the PoGo and ZINK technology single-handedly save Polaroid from sinking? We'll have to wait and see how things...develop. Ok, you can penalize me for that last pun.

A clever flash-based photo browser that allows the viewer to "flip" through a stack of photos. You can download the source files from Andrew's site.

The stock photo companies are desperate for my money. How do I know this? The evidence is all the promotional stuff they send me.

Just today I received a package from Jupiter Images. It was a plastic eyeglass case with 3D glasses inside. The included insert directed me to their website where I could look at images from their collection that had been enhanced by another company to be viewed in 3D. So I went to their site and dutifully viewed the slide show. Hey, they sent me free stuff, right? Why wouldn't I oblige by giving them ten minutes of my time?

Then there are the countless mailings from Veer. Most of them are beautifully designed, lavishly produced booklets that feature Veer's photos and typefaces in some elaborate narrative such as, "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" or "Great Architectural Masterpieces of the World Reconstructed in Type." I worked as a print designer for several years and I know how expensive it can be to produce and mail these pieces.

So why are these stock photo companies wasting my time? Don't they know I have to scrape together the cheapest, most overused stock imagery for my projects because most of my clients don't have a stock photography budget? I would looove to license some of the rights-managed images from sites like Getty and Corbis but I have a hard enough time convincing my clients to spend $49.95 on an image, let alone $495.00.

Here's my idea. Instead of sending me 3D glasses or a 45 page booklet on the history of the internet, the stock companies should take the money they blow on promotional mailings and lower the prices of their images. Or, better yet, send me the money and then I can afford to purchase an image that hasn't been seen in every magazine, newspaper and online ad for the past three years.

Now you'll excuse me, I need to go see what cnn.com looks like in 3D.

If you surveyed 100 designers and asked them to name one thing they would like their clients to understand it would likely be: designers love to help clients solve their problems. This may be hard to believe, especially if a client recently had a bad experience with some prima donna designer who believes whatever they produce should be accepted without question.

Simply telling the designer "make the text blue" doesn't allow them to solve a problem. However, if the client says, "the text is hard to read" or "the site colors seem too dark" the designer can work with the client to come up with a solution. This is far more productive than simply providing the designer with a bulleted list of "solutions" and having them scratch their heads trying to figure out what the client's intentions were.

At Newfangled, we provide the client with a Website Profile at the beginning of the project to help them think through some of the aspects of their website that would not be necessarily be obvious to them. Then, when the first round of home page designs are presented, I'll write a brief "rationale" (why I think these designs are appropriate and the thought process behind it) and some prompting questions to help the client review the designs and provide useful feedback.

Things we ask clients to keep in mind as they review our website designs:

• Overall Look & Feel - which design best reflects your organization?
• Color Pallete - does the use of color accurately represent your organization? (is it too warm, too cool, too neutral?)
• Content - does the design have a good balance of content and white space?
• Navigation - does the navigation seem intuitive and well placed?
• Images - are the images appropriate for your market area? Do they strike the right tone?

If the designer can initiate an informative discussion between themselves and the client it will go a long way in helping the client be better engaged in the design process and help the designer come up with good solutions for the client's problems.

One of the most critical components of a website affected by color blindness is the text link. Andy Rutledge has posted a great article on how to style your site's text links to make them more distinctive without having to resort to the hideous <blink> tag.

Tinyteam.com is just over the line into clever. Instead of traditional navigation, this design studio's site uses a Russian-doll-like effect to take you from one page to the next. Of course, it's 100% Flash (and therefore 100% SEO unfriendly) but it is a fun site to play with. Tinyteam also does a good job at focusing their content and limiting the viewers choices (which can sometimes be a good thing).

Now comes FontStruct, a free, online font construction tool brought to you by FontShop (back in December I wrote about another cool FontShop service, HandFont). FontStruct allows you to build your own fonts using geometric shapes on a grid. When you've finished making your character set, FontStruct will "render" your font so you can download it in TrueType format. And did I mention it's free?

The wine-and-brie crowd might turn their collective noses up at such a pedestrian tool as FontStruct, but it's a lot of fun to play with and, who knows, you may discover your inner Erik Spiekermann.

Ever wonder where that Latin gibberish that designers use for placeholder text came from? You know, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..." I used it for years without questioning its origins any more than turning on the tap or flicking on a light switch.

The text is not really gibberish but an excerpt from Cicero's, "The Extremes of Good and Evil" written in 45 B.C. You might be asking, "Why is this important?" Well it's not, really. But, just like designers today use type with no knowledge of its origins, Lorem Ipsum is taken for granted. I think having a full knowledge of one's craft makes one a better craftsman.

Want to learn how to keep your cat from scratching up your furniture? How to successfully take a cab in NYC? Maybe you've always wanted to build a water-squirting alarm clock. Howcast is the YouTube of how-to guides. It's conveniently organized by categories and the videos range from really useful (how to avoid jetlag) to really weird (how to grow grass in your office mate's keyboard).

Urban Dirty offers a selection of free background textures that range from grungy to gritty to slimy. The textures are asymmetrical so you can't create a seamless tiled background from any of them, but they're rendered at 180 DPI in small, medium and large sizes.

Go Media's Arsenal site offers textures, vector art and fonts that would appeal to just about any skate rat or tattoo artist. The art is offered in reasonably priced royalty-free collections but you can download free samples here.

For example, one of the keys of a successful website is its content. And one of the keys to good design is making sure your site's content is legible. Admittedly, since I've turned 40, I've had to increase the text size on a few of my favorite sites to reduce the strain on my eyes.

But the following example was clearly executed by a print designer who believes function follows form instead of the other way around. I had to hit command-plus on my keyboard three times before I could even make out what the text said.

So if you're a print designer looking to break into the world of web design do yourself a favor – before you buy Photoshop, read some books, take a class or kidnap Jakob Nielsen for a weekend and force him to tell you all he knows about user interface design and usability.

Occasionally, I'll come across something that so inspires me I have to try it myself. Stefan G. Bucher's Daily Monster site actually had me digging out my drawing tools that have been languishing in a tackle box for many years. Stefan creates a monster a day starting with a random ink blot and records the process using time-lapse video. I'm just as impressed with his hand-drawn title cards (scribed upside down, no less!) as I am with his monsters.

I sat down with my 10-year old daughter last Saturday and we tried our hands at creating our own monsters. It didn't take long to realize that it's harder than it looks. Never the less, it was fun to create something that didn't involve a mouse or keyboard.

There's something inherently beautiful about letter forms and the texture they create on the printed page. I first realized this during my sophomore year at RISD while I was hand-drawing letter forms with pen and ink over and over until my typography instructor was satisfied I had mastered proper form and kerning techniques. Desktop publishing, while increasing typesetting production a hundred-fold, slipped a barrier between artist and art form.

So when I want to take a trip down memory lane, I pour myself a wine cooler, put on some Boston and head on over to I Love Typography. More than just a repository of articles and resources for all things typographic, it's also a beautifully designed site.

EM Calculator is just that: a JavaScript tool that converts size in pixels to relative em units. It also calculates inherited CSS specs from parent to child. It's beautifully simple and that's why it's my Resource of the Week.

I've used ColorBlender for a while now to help me create color palettes based on the client's corporate colors and I've even wandered over to COLOURlovers occasionally when the client has no branding standards at all and I have to start from scratch.

But my new favorite site for creating palettes is Adobe Labs' kuler. Put aside the faux-Bauhaus name and flash-based architecture – this is one cool resource. The kuler site combines the social web aspects of COLOURlovers (tagging and sharing saved palettes) and the practical features of ColorBlender (downloading my saved palettes as swatch files to plug into Photoshop and Illustrator). In addition, kuler allows me to create several different palettes from one base color (analogous, monchromatic, complementary and others) and see the results in real time.

Being a graphic designer AND a football fan, I found this site strangely compelling. This just confirms my theory that if you've thought  about it, it's on the internet.

Inspired by Chris Butler's Week in Review postings, I've decided to try my hand at a weekly feature. Here's the first installment of "Resource of the Week."

A Year of Design Lists from design:related

Have you ever wondered what the government does with all the tax money it collects? I came across this fascinating graphic called the Death and Taxes Chart and it's a great representation of our government's spending priorities. It's also a good example of information design. I recommend keeping the chart handy this election year as candidates from both sides of the ticket ask for more of your money to fund "worthwhile programs."

Great suite of web design tools from Allan Jardine, a web UI developer out of Edinburgh, Scotland. These JavaScript bookmarklets allow you to do any of the following on a web page: overlay a grid; measure from one point to another; display rulers and snap guides; and draw a cross hair on a page to assist with layout alignment. And they're free. What more could you want?

FontShop is one of the better font resources I've discovered. They have a great collection of fonts as well as typographic services such as converting PC fonts to Mac and vice versa. One of their coolest services is HandFont. For $179, FontShop will create a full font set based on your handwriting.

Back aching? Eyes sore? Don't reach for that third can of Red Bull, take a break! Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) can take a toll on your creativity and general health.

In addition to an ergonomic keyboard/chair/monitor arrangement, I use AntiRSI, a simple little program to remind me when to take a break. It's only for Mac OSX (that's too bad because most PC users are already stressed enough) and AntiRSI is simple enough not to be a resource hog but sophisticated enough to know when you've taken a natural break.

A presentation about grids and how they apply to websites. Very educational. Download the PDF.

There truly is a website for everything. Although the subject matter will appeal to mostly to design geeks and those with a pencil fetish, Bob Truby's Brand Name Pencils site is cleanly designed and well organized.

Great site for reducing those really long URLs down to a manageable size.

Turn this URL:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6 OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC 9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg% 252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

into this tinyURL:
http://tinyurl.com/6