Going over your allocated bandwidth isn’t the best of surprises.

Orcon Widget for OS X – Download

I made this simple Widget a few years ago to keep track of my internet usage. Coding this up for my current internet provider, Orcon was a simple matter as their usage display mechanism on their website works by identifying your usage by the static IP you have.

The widget displays your total usage (uploads and downloads) and updates as frequently as Orcon updates their usage tally (in other words, it is not real-time).

Edit: Sorry, uploaded the wrong file before. Problem fixed.

Download the widget for Mac OS X

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

I was perusing the interwebs on a click-through adventure, when I stumbled upon Group On, a website offering kick ass deals. But this wasn’t the thing which caught my attention, it was the fact that the site looked familiar, and in some aspects of design, identical. Identical to Grab One.

Spot the difference — Hint: There are no differences

I believe that Grab One was highly influenced by Group On, as Group On seems to have been around much longer. So I’m speculating that Grab One copied Group On.

Here are some uncannily similar coincidences.

• The font used for the header logo is the same. Furthermore the first two letters are exactly the same, “Gr”.
• The menu bar is of the same colour and thickness.
• The colour scheme of the site is roughly the same.
• Social media icon placement is also in the same position, at the top-left of the page.
• The “buy” button/tag is extremely similar, with the placement of the pricing to the left and the “buy!” action button to the right.

I’ve just realised everything else is basically the same, except for the background, so I’ll stop writing.

You see, it is essentially the same site! Despite their similarities, I do think the designer did a better job at putting together GrabOne.

Lately, there has been a great uprising of ugly cars out on the roads, cars so ugly I don’t know why a manufacturer would even consider proceeding further than initial sketches, let alone go on to mass produce it.

The car which immediately comes to my mind is the abstract work by Fiat; the Fiat Multipa.

Beautifully ugly in every single way, and if you squint and rotate your head 45º, you can kind of see it resembling a car. Sure, the bottom half looks like a car, but the top bit looks like some sort of minivan, backed by the fact they added a pair of headlights on that top module.

I don’t think it would be outrageous to assume that Fiat found that it needed to merge two design team’s ideas in an effort to cut down on product development.

The question which complements “why would someone make that?” is “why would someone buy that?” Do people actually know they drive ugly cars? If I were to buy a car of that equal disgustingness, I would be embarrassed to be kidnapped in the boot of that car, or even embarrassed by just standing next to it (just if someone has mentality to even think I own the car).

I bet you this car came with a 100% in-mail rebate. It must have.

Auckland’s councils are combining forces in late 2010 become one mega-super-large-controversial council. So what did they do to save both time, scrutiny and money? They held a logo design competition.

Evolution of the Auckland City Council Logo

What the heck? There is no denying that this logo looks as old as the Queen of England. It can be likened to Apple releasing the next iPhone looking like a beige brick, as large as a brick, with a rotating dialing wheel instead of a touch screen. In fact, it wouldn’t be wireless; it would be wired to the wall.

My educated guess is that this was done because of the tonne of bricks which fell on on the council last time they spent $1,000,000 NZD of tax-payers money on the development on a logo (that blue one in the middle). One should always be aware that competitions are always entered by only namely two people: children and old people who are about to retire. The latter won the competition, which is probably why the logo looks as aged as it does.

The logo looks like it traveled in a time machine from the ‘70s. The colour palette looks faded and it is created from basic shapes. A logo, in general, should be sculpted into its final form, much like Lego – A Lego model looks so much better when made with custom Lego bricks, which intricately define parts of the model, instead of using the stock-standard rectangular bricks.

Another problem was the judging panel. A panel not of the people of the land, but big headed big-heads, and only one of which that has with an eye for things beautiful. That person being Karen Walker, a fashion designer. A lady, I might add. The vast majority of the other judges are old male-men-blokes. I think anything Walker would have strongly disagreed about, would most definitely be overthrown by the white-headed people. Why? Because they are sexist, and don’t care about aesthetics but are more interested in dipping biscuits into their tea and going to the toilet every 5 minutes.

How do I know they are they know nothing about design? Because, when you make stupid, generic, and thoughtless comments, it becomes blatantly obvious.

[A] compelling, elegant and compact [design]

The voice of this quote avoided mentioning the ideas behind the design, colours, composition, nothing in specific at all. Just a useless generalisation for the media to quote him on – A total dunce when it comes to design analysis.

What a disgusting logo, what a shame – I’m sure more money is going to be wasted when the tax-payers start to chuck bricks once again. Looking at it again, it looks more suited to be a paper-coaster design.