Gmail now uses an actual PDF viewer!  No more of that half-assed HTML, which never did justice to the actual file, the new Google Docs app is now integrated with Gmail.  Peep the Official Gmail Blog for more info.

The boys at Design Less Better spent this week discussing failure: how to fail honestly, proudly, and courteously. Its been a very enjoyable series and got me thinking about failing in my own projects. Failing is OK, we shouldn’t be scared of it, it’s actually a good thing. Check out the series articles tagged ‘failure’ and see what you think.

Twitter's Fail Whale

From the Overdue Posts pile…IT got together for another regular dinner on Nov. 21, the theme this time was Asian foods.  We started with edamame, crab rangoon (filo nightmare), and salad with marash pepper/teryaki/ginger (?) dressing.  The entree was shabu-shabu, literally meaning “swish-swish,” a fondue-like process of cooking thin sliced beef in a hot kettle of broth.  The broth included several kinds of mushrooms, tofu, cabbage, and some other goodness.  We cooked the meat and served with a laddle of broth over rice - delicious!  Photos were taken, hope to post soon.  Ask us for our recipes!

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

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.

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.