• Food Miles: Green Good Sense, Ill-Considered Hype, or Naked Protectionism?
  Ethan Zuckerman at Worldchanging suggests that the concept of ‘food miles’ as a measure of sustainability in produce is inherently misleading because delivery emissions are more than offset by farming methodology.
  (tags: sustainability)

• Local Context and Direction Map Design
  AQ, a bilingual Japanese/English graphic design and IA company, have some great tips here on designing usable and effective local-level wayfinding maps. Relevant tips for everywhere, not just Japan.
  (tags: design graphic mapping usability)
• Why a physicist dropped everything for paper folding
  Lengthy but fascinating New Yorker article on Robert J. Lang, a physicist who became one of the world’s most respected origami artists—and on how he combines the two careers.
  (tags: design product origami)

• I have a theory that dinosaurs were silent
  Matt Webb is losing it here, but in such a lyrical and abstract fashion that it’s a pleasure to read.
  (tags: science dinosaurs biology philosophy)

• New National Office for Arts Council England
  Caruso St John Architects have set up this website as an integral part of their research and development process in designing the Arts Council of England’s new headquarters. An interesting experiment in open and transparent working.
  (tags: architecture design workplace web)

Bandwagon is a forthcoming online backup service for your iTunes library.

For an annual fee, they’ll store a constantly-updated copy of all your music, videos, etc for a rainy day. Or for a day where you spill a pint of lager over your music Mac. Which may well happen.

Bandwagon are offering a year’s free membership to anyone blogging about their service and posting the logotype (although they plan to rebrand soon), so here’s my selling-out moment.

• More on the ‘folding chair’
  Remember the cardboard, slinky-like chair in a recently-blogged YouTube video? Turns out it’s not a student project or a one-off proof of concept. It’s from a company called Molo, it’s on sale, and it’s part of a huge range of concertina kraft board furniture.
  (tags: product design chair)

• Neighbourhood Fix-It
  Report, view, or discuss local problems like graffiti, fly tipping, broken paving slabs, or street lighting. This simple little website takes your problem and reports it to the relevant local council. Saves negotiating their often labyrinthine websites or phone networks.
  (tags: local council politics services)

• The case of the Panton Chair
  Domus magazine reporting on Vitra’s recent legal victory in Italy. The first case of a design product being ruled capable of being subject to copyright.
  (tags: product design law)

• Collaboration and Innovation in Workspace that Works
  Tom Hume’s notes and thoughts on a talk by Clark Elliot at the LIFT07 conference. Basic insights on workspace planning.
  (tags: interior design)
• Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll
  Emily Nussbaum writes in New York magazine about the online social life of the average American teenager. As Clive Thompson says; “A superb corrective to the endless crap you get anytime anyone over the age of 40 tries to write about MySpace.”
  (tags: connectivity web sociology)

• Steve Jobs of Apple on DRM in music
  Steve Jobs using a little-read part of the Apple website to blog about the current state of digital music stores and the Digital Rights Management they inflict on customers: Making a public dig at the major labels in the hopes of changing things.
  (tags: music technology apple)