6 Crucial Social Media Tips for Traditional Media – Mashable
If you’re used to traditional media like newspapers or television, here are some tips for how to use social media. Read how to share value-filled content, curate conversations about your brand, engage audiences, promote your presence in social media, customise users’ experiences and track everything!

10 Tips for Corporate Blogging – OPEN Forum
These are some pretty sound tips to get the most out of your forrays into corporate blogging.

The art of slow reading – The Guardian.co.uk
Can you read this whole article without getting bored? If not, maybe you should consider the art of slow reading: forsaking modern trends of skimming, summaries, reading the first two paragraphs. This article discusses the merits of reading in full to maintain our abilities to process and understand lengthy textual information.

HOW TO: Use Game Mechanics to Power Your Business – Mashable
A great article about using engaging, rewarding game mechanics to get people using and continuing to use your product or marketing campaign. Work backwards from your business vision, to user behaviours/actions, to the mechanics like points or levels that can be layered over those behaviours to create the game.

This article I read in Fast Company left me astonished by how much attention Apple pays to every microscopic detail of their marketing campaigns.

Have you ever wondered why all Apple product mockups show the time at just after 9.40? Neither had I (nor had I even picked up on this peculiarity). But indeed, the iPhone’s clock displayed 9.42am. The iPad displayed 9.41.

I’ll let Fast Company explain:

Turns out Apple’s keynote organizers think about this stuff right down to the tiniest detail–and this is certainly one of the tinier details. They rehearse the presentation with Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller, and whoever else will be speaking, and time it so the big announcement comes 40 minutes in. They add a couple minutes to be on the safe side.

That means that when Apple puts that most important slide up, the one introducing the new hardware, the time on the static image of the device will be damned close to the time the packed room of journalists sees it for the first time. It’s just one more example of how carefully Apple prepares everything–that’s a detail we didn’t know about until a couple days ago, and they’ve been doing it for years, with no fanfare. Very cool, right?

Their level of perfectionism is at once impressive and intimidating, isn’t it!

See for yourself at Apple.com »

• April Fools shenanigans — TechCrunch
• Infrequently asked questions of FAQs — A List Apart
• Contrast is King — A List Apart
• Consistency: key to a better user experience — The UX Booth
• Be completely mesmerised by — AN ANIMATED GIF PARANOIA
• User-centred innovation is not sustainable — Harvard Business Review
• Interaction10: how to design an experience for experience designers? — Fast Company
• 40 funny error messages you’ve never seen before — Kongkiat
• REMEMBER TO HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY EASTER!

 
Notes on improvisation and design

Liz Danzico-Frames: Notes on Improvisation and Design from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

via Swiss-Miss

• Writing for the web: tips and common mistakes we make — Hongkiat
• Starting out organised: website content planning the right way — Smashing Magazine
• 17 guidelines for better information architecture from 1991 — Volkside
• 22 useful chart, graph and diagram generators — Hongkiat
• Let social media help your SEO — Smart Blogs
• How to keep readers coming back to your blog — Social Media Examiner
• Tutorial: Using Garageband to create custom iPhone ringtones — CNET Reviews
• Social media stats and anecdotes — Pamorama
• 10 best Twitter practices for brands — Mashable
• How to find and remove broken links from your site — Six Revisions
• When to respond to negative reviews (and not) — Small Biz Trends

Sneak Peak at a new Photoshop feature?

Thanks to @susannahgeorge for most of the social media links above! The YouTube clip came via the ISO50: The Blog of Scott Hansen

• 11 common web design blunders — Hongkiat
• The art & science of the email signature — Smashing Magazine
• Free vector social media icon set — Web Designer Wall
• Colour theory for designers part 3 — Smashing Magazine
• Why HTML5 isn’t going to save the internet — Gizmodo
• Google to trial ultra high-speed broadband networks — Sydney Morning Herald
• Imogen Heap’s ‘Twitdress’ takes her fans to the Grammys — Times Online
• Overcoming creative block — ISO50 – The blog of Scott Hansen
• Developing sites with AJAX: design challenges and common issues — Smashing Magazine

 
Delivered in Beta

Delivered in Beta from KS12 on Vimeo.

Delivered in Beta
an immediated autodocumentary

How are social media changing design? What is the value of a prototype? How are work and play merging? Where is design headed in the 21st century? “Delivered in Beta” begins a conversation on these topics and invites your participation (twitter hashtag #od10beta)

Via Swiss-Miss.

• The best UI you have ever used — UX Exchange
• The worst UI you have ever used — UX Exchange
• 50 geeky gifts for Valentines’ Day — Hongkiat
• Apple unveils iPad Tablet — Sydney Morning Herald
• 53 New York City Storefronts vs Their Websites — Blue Fountain Media
• UX case study: Designing a user-focused web app — Brian Cray
• Colour theory for designers — Smashing Magazine

 
Tips for Better Ideas

Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010 Call for Entries from Rory O'Sullivan on Vimeo.

Via Kitsune Noir.

• Weirdest internet moments of 2009 — Sydney Morning Herald
• Creative and unusual layouts and navigation designs — Noupe
• 10 web browsers you probably haven’t heard of — Six Revisions
• An introduction to website split testing — Six Revisions
• The complete guide to getting the most out of Twitter — Noupe
• 24 UX articles to start 2010 — The UX Booth
• Funny passive aggressive wi-fi networks — PassiveAggressiveNotes.com [Note: strong language warning!]

 
Have a go at First Person Tetris. Frustrating, fun, totally retro!