U2 is (aside from Lepa Brena) - the most anticipated concert of the year in Croatia. Marketing campaign was pretty strong (so I guess organizers invested some money) and commercials strongly advertised online ticket sale which started just couple of minutes ago (at 00:01AM).

Unfortunately for U2 fans, online ticket sales maybe did start, but they sure did end pretty fast. But not because web shop run out of tickets, but because web shop and organizers of the concert ran out of professionalism.

Look guys, if you decided to run so strong advertising campaign across couple of countries which loudly and clearly says: "Ticket sales start online on Friday at 00:01", I suppose one who does all that, would also build a website which can sustain such number of customers?

Well, I guess not.

Exactly the same thing happened some time ago when Croatian Football Association launched online reservation of world cup tickets (if I can recall correctly). I am not big sports fan but many of my friends are and they were very pissed.

Servers are so dirty cheap, and downtime costs a lot of money (nerves, reputation...), Especially if downtime happens a minute you launch your service. My personal preference/advice regarding server configuration in time of special events or service launch is - tend to over engineer your network! EC2, EBS, S3 (Amazon Web services) and other cloud computing solutions do their job pretty good in situations like this.

Otherwise you get this beauty...

How many times you accidentally sent email to somebody, just to realize that you shouldn't have done that? "Uuuuups!", just a millisecond too late? Well, Gmail introduced new lifesaver feature into their already great web app - Undo send! The feature is available via Labs, and I would really like that this feature becomes standard for all email clients. :)

WTF!? :)

Couple of days ago, Croatian Armed forces got brand new shiny uniforms. Timing is doubtful (hello recession!), but uniforms really are nice. Usual camouflage texture is replaced with pixelated texture along with pixelated map of Croatia (which I think is very cool). Purpose of pixelated texture is not to achieve maximum bling effect at battlefront nor to rise design awareness, this type of texture is actually called MARPAT (short for MARine PATtern) and in theory, it is a far more effective camouflage than standard uniform patterns because it mimics the dappled textures and rough boundaries found in natural settings.

Scientific research is suggesting that the old saying - "Rumors do not dignify responses" is bad advice. So if you can't ignore the rumors, what are you supposed to do? Rumor control specialists suggest to take a stand and stop it.

The way rumors were handled in the most recent American elections (Obama's own anti-rumor/facts website - Fight The Smears) seems to back up this new perspective. Latest (I've seen) addition to anti-rumor websites is gmfactsandfiction.com launched by General Motors aimed at stopping the rumors regarding extremely bad situation in the automotive industry. I am not sure how that will work out for GM, but it sure did work for Obama.

This concept of communication on the web is quite new to me and very appealing. However, there is thin line between stating the facts and propaganda. For example - "stealing thunder" is one interesting and perfectly valid method of rumor control used mostly by US celebrities and politicians. Basically, you explain why the rumor exists, and who is benefiting from it. Then you create a new truth by providing worthy piece of information, one that people will gossip over, but which you can control. If done early enough, can completely put shadow on original rumor.

Few days ago Facebook unveiled their new looks. I am aware of the fact that every time Facebook changes something, people yell "AAARGG HELL NO", just to be silent 5 days later and accept those changes as good. And indeed, when version prior to this one came out, i considered it to be excellent because it solved a lot of architectural design problems, and made Facebook more, how should i say, interesting.

This version is just bad, and it is bad from two different standpoints.

First - too much faces.
I know this is FACEbook, but there are just too much faces now on the homepage. Every post has a face associated to it. In reality there is no need to put face of a person next to every action. Someone shares a link - i see a face. Someone adds friend - i see a face. This makes homepage look too chunky and too heavy.

Second - identification of MY facebook
Of all those faces i see on homepage, my face at the top is the same size as everyone else. This makes it hard for me to quickly comprehend that this is indeed MY account. My picture should be bigger, or in any way more visible.

Third - switch to Twitter-like "what's on your mind"
The switch from Status to What's on Your Mind makes Facebook too much Twitter-like. People are now compelled to spam their ideas all the freaking time. "Status", may he rest in peace, was more personal and more related to an individual. This switch will, inevitably, spawn tons of useless messages, diluting Facebook into Twitter madness.

Fourth - the ROUND CORNERS
This point touches me more than any other. Facebook was one of the last bastions of safety and refuge for web designers - any time a client asked "can my website have rounded corners", web designers could answer "well, it could, but we suggest not to, because Facebook is massively successful and it does not rely on rounded corners". I hope you folks reading this realize that from today all websites will have rounded corners. How can you battle against client's argument "well, Facebook had square corners, and now they redesigned into round"?

New web awaits us, and it is fat, rounded and chunky.

Mistabishi - Printer Jam from Hospital Records on Vimeo.

Some of our readers running AVAST antivirus got nasty security window when visiting our blog. AFAIK, this happens because AVAST gets triggered by example javascript code from All Your iFRAMEs Point to Us post. In that post I tried to demonstrate very common way of web site hack. Code doesn't get executed, and is perfectly safe. Carry on! :)

The main drawback of iPhone and all other phones that have big screen and no physical keyboard is clumsy input of text.

I present to you: Swype.

Just check that and be amazed.