About This Site

Mike Industries is the personal site of me, Mike Davidson. It is littered with original articles, shared items (mainly found video and links, via Tumblr and Delicious), and overshared items (mainly thought vomit, via Twitter). If you’re here because you found something interesting on the site, I humbly invite you to subscribe to the Mike Industries RSS feed so you never miss a new item.

As for me, I live in Seattle and am known for several things, none of which will be remembered in 1,000 years:

  • I am founder and CEO of Newsvine, which was recently acquired by msnbc.com.
  • I invented sIFR, a technology which has enabled tens of thousands of designers to beautify the web with tens of thousands of typefaces.
  • I led the redesign of the first major media site to support web standards, ESPN.com in 2003.
  • I have no tolerance for the intolerance of imperfection on the web.
  • I went to school with Leonardo DiCaprio and appear adjacent to him in our 3rd grade yearbook.

So now it’s time to decide what you want to do here:

Shared
PBS Frontline - Breaking the Bank: An entertaining and illuminating hour-long look by PBS into the near collapse of the U.S. banking system. Frontline has done an excellent job of covering the financial crisis over the past year. Lots of good Ken Lewis/John Thain footage in this particular episode.
Long exposure shot of a Roomba cleaning a room — I owned one of these things and found it to be substantially more trouble than it was worth. While this shot makes the coverage area look good, a lot of “stuff” collects near the edges, cords and other impediments often stop the thing, and it just doesn’t pick up enough at the end of the day. Great photo though.
LogoLounge: Trends in 2009 Logo Design
A nice roundup of what's going on in the world of logo design. Looks like we're finally moving away from the whooshes and ovals of the last several years. Good stuff.
Using brain waves to levitate ping pong balls: Amazing implications for biofeedback, video games, and our future as a bunch of sedentary Wall-E characters (via Scott Adams)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: The Unstoppable Skyhook - “I don’t recall ever being blocked by someone who was guarding me.” I’ve always wondered why NO ONE in the NBA has made the skyhook their go-to weapon. It is the most unstoppable shot ever invented and yet no one learns it anymore.
Why Did the Cat Skip Town? Ouch.
The Best Free Photos on the Web (Where to Find Them and What to Do With Them) (via John Nack)
Rands In Repose: A Deep Breath
If reading this doesn't make you feel like an inadequate manager, you must be really really awesome. And people wonder why Apple makes such awesome stuff...
Now you got a crapload of squares (via igotyourcrazy via jimray)
TiltShift Generator - Need to get myself a legit tilt-shift lens. Until then, I am more than happy to roll faux with this slick online tool.
How to create an HDR effect using only Lightroom and Photoshop
Great tutorial by Russell Brown. I really need to get up to speed with editing photos in RAW mode. Then again, I'm sure cameras will automatically take bracketless HDR photos within a few years as well.
Scripts which create interesting effects in Adobe Illustrator CS
... and here I am not even knowing you can run scripts in Illustrator.
Share Your Google Analytics Data With Everyone
Apparently, Google Analytics has a public API now. Pretty cool. Not sure this is enough to get me off of Mint, but maybe I'll start running both for a little while.
Veerle shows how to make beautiful posters using Illustrator blends and masks
Hivelogic's Top 10 Monospaced Fonts for Coding
Will have to try out Consolas and Inconsolata. I've always been a staunch Monaco 9 guy, but hey, might as well get ahead of my eventually failing eyesight.
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