So there I was, working on my computer as usual, when I had a sudden inspiration as I recognized the arrangement of some application icons in the OS X Dock:

My first thought was “Hey, that’s fun! I wonder how many letter icons there are to build words in the dock. There could be an app for that.”

That was the moment Iconscrabble was born.

Unfortunately, I’m not a pioneer with this idea. Somebody put iPhone app icons in alphabetical order as a nice effect. Also, Mario Georgiou had the idea of designing an Adobe Icon Scrabble using the two-lettered app icons from the Creative Suite in 2006.

But no concept combined this idea in an art project that also incorporates informational value.

Warning: Tech Content

An hour after my initial idea, I had cobbled together a small PHP script that generates a composite image from single icon files and a given word. Every icon has its letter equivalent mapped in an associative array and the script uses GDlib to stitch the single icons together.

A central concept also includes the possibility to cover two letters e.g. by an Adobe application icon (like “Ps” from Photoshop). The webapp basically checks from the longest possible word fragment down to a single character and randomly decides which parts are used to render the composite.

The first simple script was extended with a user input field as well as a database backend to save the generated images. A unique permalink is assigned to each image so a composite can be saved or shared on the Internet. The implementation was done with CakePHP – my framework of choice when it comes to database-driven projects of this size.

Discovering new apps

A great side effect of the database support was the fact that every icon and logo could hold a name, description and URL of the service or brand associated with it. The concept was quickly adopted to implement an informational value for the user — Icons that are linked to the specific company, and tooltips that show you the brand behind the logo.

What users are scrabbling

In 10 days of uptime, 5.351 icon composites were generated. The top 3 entries are Love, Hello and I love you, followed by the most common swearwords and raunchy terms on the Internet. However, most people just seem to feed their name to the generator which brings forward the obvious application of using an iconscrabbled name as doorplate.

I hope you like the arty and diffuse approach of Iconscrabble. We’re looking for letter-based icons from computer-related brands and companies all the time. If you’d like to help us, I’d suggest submitting your recommendations or comments via the Leave Feedback tab on the app’s site.

A link to a website concept I recently found on reddit really blew my mind.
It’s a concept for General Electric’s campaign Ecomagination.
To get a grasp, watch this video:

You can try out the actual application on ecomagination.com.

Update: The concept of using Augmented Reality in advertising has also been used in this ad for the Mini Cabrio.
Update 2: The microsite has apparently been created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in cooperation with North Kingdom (Source).

Alekc provides a simple but stunningly fast Last.fm wallpaper generator that fetches your favourite album covers and stitches them to an impressive wallpaper.

After choosing a resolution of your choice it could look something like the following image – a collage of my favorite albums for the last 3 months:

iuneWind is a designer from Samara, Russia that creates some fantastic digital artwork.
I really love the organic style and the attention to detail in every artwork, which is consistently taken through all elements.
Check out those incredible, colorful wallpapers!

This is a thing I discovered on digg today. If you are enjoying an installation of Apple’s new Leopard OS X you can change the visual appearance of the three-dimensional dock by replacing 5 graphic-files of the Dock package.

Download files from InsideMacGames forum

I tried it out and copied the example graphics into the instructed folder. You then only need to ‘reset’ the Dock application by executing killall Dock in the Terminal.

The new dock

The new glossy Leopard Dock provides more contrast and visual appeal

The standard Dock

The standard Leopard Dock is also nice, but lacks contrast

I personally like the jet-black glossy version better and will stick with it. Really slick.

This mod also makes the glowing dot indicators for active apps better recognizable. People who like to have the old fashioned black triangle indicators back should read this article on Silver Mac.

Detailed instructions on how and where to replace the neccessary files are included with the download ZIP.

I’m not a MySpace member myself but I tend to listen to one or another song once in a while. It’s a great way to discover new tunes or watch newcoming superstars grow as they publish their songs on MySpace.

Since MySpace is especially popular among musicians for its audio streaming capability, one could expect that MySpace designers and developers dedicate an extra focus to this functionality.

The user experience I’ve made with their embedded Flash player shows me they don’t.

Read the full entry "5 Design Flaws In The MySpace Audio Player"