In a nutshell: white monitor space uses more energy than black monitor space, so blackle.com steps in to green the aesthetically spartan but energy-extravagant Google behemoth. A totally brilliant bit of internet MacGyvering that, if not a runaway success, will certainly go miles in raising awareness about what’s possible.

There’s no real reason it shouldn’t be a runaway success of wide and rapid adoption, but then again, there’s no real reason that people who buy an SUV should have a huge tax windfall instead of paying a tax directly (if not exponentially!) proportional to the weight of their vehicle - thankfully a loophole that appears to be on the wane.

Speaking of the Webbys, I’ll be damned if this doesn’t get nominated and hopefully win next year.

It’s always fun to have your own tastes and opinions validated by the premiere authoritative voice in that field, and so I was super excited to see that Getty Images’ own interact10ways microsite was nominated for a Webby Award this year, in the Art category no less, which, come on, is the coolest category to be in.

If you haven’t heard of the Webbys that may not sound like much (and you can breathe a sigh of relief at having safely bypassed the geek radar), but it’s true when the NY Times says it’s “the Oscars of the Internet”, still true but not original when Time Magazine says it’s “the Online Oscars” (ok, not totally fair, I don’t know who said it first), and oh so brash and daring when Vanity Fair says it’s “better than the Oscars”.  Interact10ways didn’t win, but it is nevertheless a big honor to have been nominated.

Dmitri Kessel

Another notable passing in the world of photography on the heels of Bernd Becher’s recent death. John Szarkowski, photographer and curator of photography at MoMA in New York for almost 30 years, credited with being the first to bring attention to the likes of Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, and Lee Friedlander, and later for introducing the work of William Eggleston to a large audience, thus paving the way for their mainstream critical acceptance and widespread influence on American photography since then. I love the fact that art critic Hilton Kramer completely panned Eggleston’s first show, quipping, in response to Szarkowski’s assertion of their perfection: “Perfect? Perfectly banal, perhaps. Perfectly boring, certainly.” Getty Images gave Eggleston a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.

Link to obit in NY Times by Philip Gefter here

Philip J Brittan

Interesting entry in jet-setting troubadour/intellectual Nick Currie’s (aka Momus) blog about the opening last year of a Japanese division of Pantone, New Jersey-based color coders who’ve become the ubiquitous industry standard in design and printing. Following just on the heels of the Japanese division launch, Pantone also unveiled a new global brand identity.
I just saw the line of Japanese Pantone cellphones last week which I thought was a cool new development in the ever-expanding Pantone Universe, but didn’t think too much of it until stumbling upon Nick’s blog entry, which contains amusingly brainy and acerbic ruminations on Japanese culture, proprietary culture/copyright, and marketing.

Momus (Nick Currie)