• Spotted: Facebook’s check-in functionality and new “Places” tab — TechCrunch
• Fred Wilson’s 10 golden principles of successful web apps — Think Vitamin
• Guidelines for writing a good ‘About’ page — Six Revisions
• 9 essential social news and bookmarking sites for designers — Mashable
• Why is business writing so awful? — Inc.
• 5 ways to boost your Twitter following — s medio
• Internet Explorer’s market share slips: the beginning of the end? — Fast Company
• Foursquare at right time, right place to be next big thing — Times Online
• Team of 200 to handle President Chavez’ tweets — Sydney Morning Herald

 
Google Chrome speed tests: Google shows us, in this funny and inventive video, just how fast Chrome is!

via Cool Hunting.

Price: $8.99    Get it from iTunes →

There’s an obsessive statistician in us all – just watch a game of cricket on television for proof – and Google Analytics is the bearer of charts, reports, metrics and percentages that will please even the most hardened of website owners.

The Google Analytics App gives you access to the information gathered by your website’s analytics robot (if you have it installed). View data on traffic sources, visitor trending and goals alongside all the usual great Analytics reports… each displayed neatly on your mobile phone. You have the ability to track multiple websites, search specific date ranges and password protect access.

The price tag is a little on the hefty side, and admittedly Analytics App is just a phone-friendly version of the desktop Google app. But if you’d like to track your site while out on the road or in meetings, this is for you. And if you have a website or blog, and you wear a t-shirt to bed that reads ‘I ♥ STATS’, the Analytics App might just become your favourite iPhone application!

“Using Analytics App for the first time left me truly impressed.” – MacWorld.
“Analytics App offers more reports than any other app available.” – App Advice.

3.5 stars

• The current state of web design: Trends 2010 — Smashing Magazine
• Google Latitude has 3 millions active users, check-ins likely on the way — TechCrunch
• Erik Spiekermann’s typo tips — Font Feed
• Facebook adding location features this month — Mashable
• Strategies for engaging your visitors — Six Revisions
• Facilitating design critique — UX Booth
• Social media games: Badges or badgering? — CNet
• The importance of cross-browser compatibility: tips and resources — Noupe
• What’s the single biggest challenge holding design back as a key business strategy? — Brand Packaging

 
Ellen made to apologise to Apple for her iPhone spoof. Apple, please don’t make me hate you!

• Dropbox startup lessons learned — SwissMiss
• Mobile web design: is it worth it? — Six Revisions
• Root domains, subdomains vs. subfolders and the microsite debate — SEOmoz
• Classification schemes (and when to use them) — UX Booth
• 10 new UX books to look out for in 2010 — UX Booth
• Wireframes as a thinking device — Konigi
• Thoughts on Flash — Apple.com

 
Why you should get your mum an iPad this Mother’s Day

engadget shows us how to combine an iPad with two iPhones for a high-tech game of Scrabble! Mums and grandmas everywhere are sure to approve!

Scott Thomas was lead designer in Obama’s 2008 successful presidential campaign. It was the first time that branding, design and social media played a pivotal role in the campaign, and here he discusses how his team managed the epic task of rolling out designs for logos, print graphics, email templates, the website interface… the list goes on. As he describes it, it was “like building an aeroplane in flight.”

Lessons learned: keep things simple, surround yourself with a diverse team of collaborators with whom you can develop unique ideas and solutions to problems, use real-time analytics to make incremental design improvements, and treat the entire project as an evolution: add features and processes over time, learning from past mistakes and feedback along the way.

Scott Thomas: Designing the Obama Campaign from 99% on Vimeo.

“Apple said Monday that it sold more than 300,000 iPads on the day of its launch, ushering in a new era of people buying things to find out what they are.”
– Seth Meyer for Weekend Update on SNL. (via Konigi)

• The iPad is a toy — Konigi
• Facebook introduces community pages — TechCrunch
• Facebook sets up Google-war with vast expansion through Open Graph — Times Online
• YouTube turns 5: from a clip about an elephant to internet mammoth — Sydney Morning Herald
• iPad, tablet projections escalate — Min Online
• The scariest pricing idea ever. That works. — The Freelancery
• Will this be the new Google design? — Six Revisions
• Lessons to take away from marketing’s leading innovators — Advertising Age

 
Do not covet your ideas

An excerpt from the late Paul Arden’s book, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be.

Paul Arden was a talented and influential creative with Saatchi & Saatchi and the author several best-selling books. He passed away in April of this year.

• 9 ways to improve the SEO of every website you design — Six Revisions
• Viral Cameron: forget health, kill a kitten — Sydney Morning Herald
• How to build engaging one-of-a-kind Facebook fan pages — TechCrunch
• Charts of the week: Here’s how much a unique visitor is worth — Business Insider
• It’s not about web traffic anymore — Inc.com
• How Starbucks builds meaningful customer engagement via social media — Open Forum
• Why web design doesn’t cost £40 — Grace Smith
• The 5 best backlink analysis tools — David Naylor
• Holistic web browsing: 4 trends of the future — Smashing Magazine

 
New keyboard from Fast Finger: Includes LOL, BRB, THNX, IMO and ASAP keys!

Get one here »

• 6 ways brands are using social media for real-world action — Mashable
• Consumers engaged via social marketing more likely to buy — Fashionably Marketing
• Review: HTC HD2 on T Mobile — TechCrunch
• New iPhone operating system to allow multitasking jobs — Sydney Morning Herald
• iPad Peek — Check out how your website will look on the new iPad
• 2000-2010: A decade of technology — Times Online
• Google Maps envelopes — Incredible Things
• UX lessons learned from offline experiences — feedgrids
• Where it’s @ – symbol time forgot becomes modern icon at a stroke — Times Online

 
Ad Age curated the YouTube home page with the best of viral advertising. See the entire playlist here.

Price: $2.49       Get it from iTunes →

So you have an iPhone or an iPod touch and aren’t particularly impressed with the quality of the pictures it takes. Quite frankly, no one is (are you listening, Steve Jobs?). But the folks at Never Center decided that we could at least have fun with our crappy photos by recreating the effects of some of the iconic toy cameras of the past.
 

Choose from vintage, polaroid, lomo (LC-A, Holga or Fisheye), infrared, and magazine filters and play around with the settings for image size, cropping and border effects. You can even double up your filters by saving an image, re-opening it in CameraBag and applying a second effect.

Do more with your mediocre iPhone shots and turn them into impressive, artistic photos that are worth sharing with your friends!

“If you buy just one filter app, make it CameraBag.” – New York Times.

4 stars

• Facebook visits finally surpass Google — Min Online
• The top 100 Internet sites — BBC News
• Design better websites by thinking about your kitchen cabinets — Brian Cray
• “Calls to action” buttons: guidelines, best practices and examples — Hongkiat
• 15 desktop and online wireframing tools — UX Booth
• OpenHallway: unmoderated remote usability testing with screen recording — Konigi
• Forms on mobile devices: modern solutions — Smashing Magazine
• Google Analytics in depth: goals and funnels — Six Revisions

 
The Ten Commandments Of User Experience: Nick Finck and Raina Van Cleave’s presentation slides from the SXSWi talk.