Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories (via MAKE Mag) brings you a how-to guide for baking your own Apple Mac Mini Pie.  (You won’t need to use carbon laser, like they did, to cut the Apple logo.)

"Cored" Processor </rimshot>

I really enjoy nerd-chic design, like the previously posted ASCII curtains.  These write-your-own cards and gift wrap are available from Yellow Owl Workshop.

Many thanks to Billie for making our blog a mobile-friendly site.  Peep us from your smartphone,  ZingIT everywhere!

Millions of photographs from Life Magazine’s collection are now online at Google.  From the Google blog:

We’re excited to announce the availability of never-before-seen images from the LIFE photo archive. This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s.

Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos.

Here’s a round up of the Geek Finds we had for last week’s huddle:

• DD-WRT
  A free Linux based firmware for many popular routers.  Elph laid down the latest version on some of our Linksys boxes.  DD-WRT.com
• Sharepod
  A Windows-only app that lets you backup your entire iPod, easily copy music from your (or a friend’s) iPod to your computer, and even write new music to your Pod.  The first real iTunes competitor for Windows, via LifeHacker.
• Snapily
  Create animated/wiggle/stereoscpic pictures from your own photo collection.  C’mon and wiggle it, just a little bit…Snapily.com
• Clonezilla
  An open source, Linux-based alternative to commercial disk cloning tools like Symantec Ghost and Acronis True Image, via LifeHacker

An interesting update from the Google blog about their Google Book Search program. They’ve settled a law suit with the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers (AAP) and are moving forward on their plan to scan a vast number of books. Access to the books comes in a couple of different, confusing flavors but the key point is that Google will have full text of millions of books. This is worth keeping an eye on.

Just some apolitical eye candy for today.  This is an aerial shot taken in May of the tulip fields in northern Netherlands. Thanks to the boys at Design Less Better for the much needed dose of zen.

At an Open Forum panel for ZingTrain’s Art of Giving Great Service seminar, one of the questions that came up was, “The whole Zingerman’s culture. When you go home after work, how do you turn it off?”

Turn it… off? The panelists all blinked at each other. Is that even possible?

Great service, honest communication, servant leadership — these are things we wholeheartedly believe in as employees and as individuals. There isn’t anything we do or teach that is bad. By having work values that coincide with our personal values, we are able to live in integrity.

Expectations are high in this organization. By taking a job here, you make a commitment to provide great service to customers and coworkers, to forecast key numbers for the department, to learn finance, to develop a professional palate, to participate in decision-making for the business, to train other staff members, to devote time for personal growth, and a whole slew of other responsibilities in addition to, say, making a cup of coffee. This isn’t the right fit for everyone - and that’s alright. But for some people, this is exactly the kind of place they want to be.

It’s not perfect, no sirree. Sometimes we fall short of expectations or we don’t get along with everyone(!). We’re human. But at the end of the day, we respect each other, we have fun, and coming to work never feels like a chore.

Business leaders often say the most valuable resource a company has is its people. So hire people for the company you want. Build the culture and they will come.

Not a single XBox owner in the crowd.

Silverlight, Micrsoft’s media delivery platform now used by Netflix, is a win for both Macs and PCs.

Macs, you can now Watch Instantly.  Welcome to the club.  High-fives from the PCs.

Windows users, things just got better.  The annoying media acquisition & digital rights prompts are gone.  Better still, Silverlight lets you Watch Instantly with Firefox; no more IE-only watching.  Playback is much faster, with less badwidth adjustments, and improved controls.

Netflix announced on Friday the beta release of Microsoft’s Silverlight for Mac and Windows computers.  PC users have been able to watch instantly using Internet Explorer for a few months, leaving Mac users jealous and desperately waiting.  Now, thanks to Silverlight, Intel-based Macs (sorry PPC folks) can stream movies and TV with Safari and Firefox.  Netflix members, go to the opt-in page to become a beta tester and download Spotlight. Netflix remind us in Friday’s post that the beta player may contain bugs and that not all titles are available.