They recently released @Font-Face Kits, which is a tool that allows you to easily use any of the fonts on Font Squirrel in your web sites. It’s a great tool for using custom fonts but preserving search optimization.

A few of the things I liked:

• The way the video is at the top of the page, but mostly hidden until you click on it.
• The way the navigation bar is a pull down showing extra functionality — it’s not really a navigation bar in the traditional sense.

Hat tip: Josh Pigford.

Interesting way of showing which posts are the most popular.

When you click “Submit Tip” this panel pops up with the giant headline “Boss of the year entry form,” and right under that in small type it says “Now that we’ve thrown ‘em off the trail.” — cool idea!

I liked the search input field design for the way they graphically made it feel important.

Sections are separated with this fantastic divider which shows the number of comments, and lets the user share or get a link.

The calendar showing the number of posts by day, which I find is often useless, looks awesome on this page layout. When you hover over a specific day you get a pop out that shows the number of posts.

So that’s just a few of the things I liked about the current Engadget site design.

What is Ketchup Week? It’s one week where you can “catch up” on all of the projects you’ve been putting aside. It’s the one week when all of your customers are on vacation, and when the phone rarely rings. It is the one week when the office is quiet and distraction free.

So take the mantle, er, the ketchup and get to work on those personal dreams. Start a new business, or make a craft, or just spend time away from the mundane. Have a great Ketchup Week, everyone!

You can follow Ketchup Week on Twitter, or become a fan on Facebook.

We chose to go with a dark background so that the photos would really pop (we also took most of the photos). We then used some of the orange color tones in our design that the store is using in their other branding, and in the store design.

Press Coffee home page.

The food menu layout.

On their site, you can order live Maine lobsters and other shellfish. I’ve got to hand it to them for using real photos which absolutely make the web site.

I ran across the James Hardie web site today and instantly liked the design.

I really like the graphics on the Burton web site. Check it out.

It’s not the best way to show data, but it’s new and interesting.

Here’s how Brian describes it: “You put your grandfather IN the grandfather clock!”

Some amazing photos of a man who paints himself. Via Matt Linderman.

Some of my favorite statistics:

• How many minutes of video were viewed in a time period
• Attention span — time viewed on a video (fall off rate)
• Bandwidth
• Embeded views

The Punched Out Font (free on dafont.com) gives you a way to create cut-out letters which you can form into words. Perfect for your 15-minute break!

My startup is called Minuteglass and it is quite simply a tool for tracking time. I’ve used or tried dozens of time tracking applications over the years and Minuteglass is our response to the question of “what could be better in time tracking.”

I’m so excited by time tracking that I started a blog devoted to the topic.

Currently Minuteglass is in private beta. We’ve released to a few select friends and as soon as we have our bug list whittled down we will be releasing to our 500+ person beta invite list. Right now we have 49 bugs / improvements we’re working on.

Most startup founders are programmers or business guys. I’m different in that I’m a user interface designer. While I’d love to be a developer I wouldn’t trade what I do for the ability to code. I love approaching the world from a design perspective.

In the coming months, I hope to share more about Minuteglass and the process I’ve gone through to get to this point (along with my excellent team).

Typekit is a new startup designed to make it easy to embed fonts in your web sites. It’s a subscription service with annual price plans based on bandwidth. They have a free plan for testing it out, so it could be fun to experiment with some of the fonts on low-bandwidth sites.

The entire site is made with Flash and besides the great product photography, they have some great background textures. And most of the textures are fabrics like those from Converse shoes.

Many of the products have hand drawn illustrations for a backdrop. It works surprisingly well and fits the theme of the site.

I’d also guess that it remains in its current form because it exemplifies Buffett’s outlook on spending — which is to be conservative with money.

The design leaves a lot to be desired, but you must admit it gets the job done. The site is usable. I can find the annual report, or the GEICO affiliate link for goodness sake.

I have been thinking about this for a few days and something about it really irks me. It is that design doesn’t need to be expensive. My guess is that Buffett wants his investors to perceive the company as thrifty. By leaving the site as it is, and publishing annual reports without a thought given to the design he most likely achieves this goal.

But does he accomplish one purpose and miss another? Does the Berkshire Hathaway brand suffer because of a lack of design or does it succeed without it?

I believe that a good designer could give the Berkshire Hathaway brand some incredible design weight while holding to the values Buffett wants to convey.

This post was originally inspired by a post on Hacker News about this topic.

Whenever people ask me what I dressed up as on Halloween I always say “myself.” Artist Eric Testroete took that concept a step further and created a 3D model of his head to wear as a costume. The result is really stunning. Click here to see the photos (scroll to the right).

Hey BrainFuel readers, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about Arizona’s first ever TEDxPhoenix event which is scheduled to take place this Friday, November 6th from 6pm to 9pm at the Mesa Arts Center.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with TEDxPhoenix, it’s a local and independently organized event operated under license from TED. TED which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design is the world famous conference that has been sharing it’s amazing TEDTalks with people around the world for several years now.

Anyway, so why the heck should you care? Well the answer to that is two-fold.. okay tri-fold.

First, our inaugural event has speakers who encompass a variety of disciplines, but unfortunately design isn’t one of them… yet. I’m hoping that local Phoenicians and Arizonans can come out to the event and think up of ways to incorporate some of the Valley’s local thinkers and doers in the design world for future events — we’ll take all the help we can get!

Second, TEDxPhoenix is a place to meet individuals who are interested in leveraging ideas, design, and education to help create a better future for the Valley and beyond.

Last but not least, TED is allowing local communities to bring their own independently organized TED-like event to your neck of the woods, so if you’re not in Phoenix, then check to see if there’s a local TEDx event scheduled for your home town. If not, then you might want to think about organizing a TEDx event for your community.

If you are in Phoenix, then I really hope you will join us this Friday; here are all the event details for your viewing pleasure:

• Homepage: www.tedxphoenix.com
• Event Date & Time: Friday, November 6th, 2009 from 6pm to 9pm
• Location: Mesa Arts Center – Google Map
• Tickets: $5 – Get your tickets here

Sincerely,
~Tomas

Post Scriptum: TEDxPhoenix is proud to be the unofficial kickoff event for the first ever GeekWeekAZ; check out the site to see all the other amazing events happening around the Phoenix-Metro area.

One thing you don’t want to miss is their blog. It has some cool typography design effects and experiments.

I’m an avid reader of Hacker News (a site for startups) and today one of the topics of discussion was about A Story Before Bed.

First of all, the design of the site is absolutely beautiful. It’s similar to Mac application Deliicious Library which also has the “bookshelf” theme.

I could envision this sort of a site being the type that Amazon would snap up.