CNet: How Apple’s Ping dings Twitter, Facebook.

”Ping picks at the nice parts of Facebook and Twitter — friending and following — and offers these benefits to its users without the generalists’ pains.  Unlike Twitter, for example, these are all real people. Unlike Facebook, you can just wander around and see who or what you like without having to become someone’s friend and without having to like anything at all.”

DP Review: Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3 to support Tamron Lens Correction.

My 28-75 will be overjoyed.

Macworld: What HDR means for iPhone photos.

As long as the effect is mild. Tweakability would be nice.

Wow, man, that iTunes 10 icon is *ugly*.

Just sayin’.

Not conspiracy-mongering, but …

GMail just refuses to do some tasks in Safari (’filter messages like this’) after I’ve done them once ... yet works a treat in Chrome. Slower than death in Safari too - acceptable in Chrome.

Expression Engine Blog: Twitter Timeline Plugin and (n)Oauth.

”Today, the team at Twitter is shutting down their basic authentication service. For all you active tweeters, this is a good thing. Third party services will stop asking for your login information.”

Arcade Fire: The Wilderness Downtown.

Clever use of tech. Their music seems vintage late 90’s to me [White Stripes/Modest Mouse/The Shins/Bloc Party], but smart marketing is making their value soar.

Ajaxian: Raphaël 1.5 Released.

Can’t compete with Flash until you have a GUI, dudes. Exciting to see, nonetheless.

CNet: Men treat virtual girlfriends to beach vacations.

“If you visited the Japanese hot springs resort of Atami recently and spotted a disproportionate number of men gazing longingly at their smartphones, it probably wasn’t because they were playing Angry Birds. This summer, the beach town became a vacation hub for guys who like to treat their girlfriends to sun-and-fun holidays. Girlfriends, that is, who only exist on-screen.” Have human relations devolved so far?

marketcircle: Billings Pro.

I bought this a short while ago, and like it very much. Making it multiuser makes it better. Price is a little high for Pro, IMHO - they should offer a limited-user version for a price point between Billings and Billings Pro.

One personal observation: The templating system for invoices is confusing and needs much better documentation. Trial it and see if you can construct invoice templates with your business ID satisfactorily before purchase. 

Macworld: Adobe releases Lightroom 3.2, Camera Raw 6.2.

Crank up your Adobe updater.

paper.li: Read Twitter as a daily newspaper.

Interesting concept.

Google calling just went live in my Gmail.

Call quality seems better than Skype. If that continues, I’ll retire my $3/mo. Skype account.

Dig WP: Pimp your wp-config.php.

Good article for WordPress users.

Mashable: Gmail Add-on Makes E-mail Smarter.

See social profiles in Gmail. Firefox add-on.

vowe dot net: Apple adds ePub support to Pages.

Cool.

CNet: Use Gmail to make VoIP calls: Hands-on review.

Call quality will be my deciding factor.

Wall Street Journal: Flash Back: Demand Up in Engineering Specialty.

”At the same time, the supply of such engineers remains low. It is particularly difficult to find Flash engineers who have both an artistic and computer-science background, say executives. While there are many Flash designers with experience in artistic elements, few are trained in areas such as power and battery management, they note.” Sounds like a great big, fat opportunity to me.

DP Review: Nik Software releases HDR Efex Pro Software.

I have a feeling Nik is going to be a mighty shake-up in the HDR category. Their U-point technology is significantly spectacular.

SpyreStudios: 10 Great Tips for Writing Better And More Comprehensive CSS.

Nice tips. Nothing earthshattering here, but I thought I’d add that 99% of my CSS problems are fixed by simplifying. When I start frantically adding classes to fix niggles, it’s a sure sign I need to clear out the cruft and pay attention to heirarchy (using the cascading properly). Otherwise, things devolve fast. And test against your browser kit from the get-go (esp. if backtracking to IE5’s).

spoongraphics: A Handy Guide to Image Resolutions in Print Design.

I need to knock up something like this blog post for some my clients.  Specifically so they understand that trying to upload a 300dpi image is just plain wrong.

Macworld: HTML5 raises new security issues.

Somewhat ironic, after all the anti-Flash rhetoric.

NY Times: For Digital Artists, Apps Provide New Palette.

”Beginning last January, Mr. Snibbe dusted off some of his old code and got to work. He has since released three mobile applications — Bubble Harp, Antograph and Gravilux — and has become one of the first artists to make it big in the iTunes app store. All told, his three apps have been downloaded over 400,000 times.”

Luminous Landscape: An iPhone Model Release Manager.

This is, specifically, why an iPhone (over Android) will be my next phone purchase.  Model releases have always been a pain in the posterior.

CNet: Vimeo gets Flash-HTML5 hybrid player.

”The change is that which one gets loaded depends on the device that’s accessing it and its bandwidth conditions.”