I love the ringtone at the end of every iPhone television ad. It’s simple, sweet, and unassuming. But strangely, it’s doesn’t come installed on the iPhone. You can’t even buy it from the iTunes Music Store. Fortunately, you can download it here for free:

• Download iPhone TV Commercial Ringtone

To install, just download it. Then, use iTunes to put it on your iPhone.

The original source file actually comes with iLife, which ships with all new Macs. You can find it on your computer at this path:

• /Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/iLife Sound Effects/Work - Home/Cell Phone Ringing.aif

Special thanks goes to Sean for converting the source file into an iPhone ringtone for me.

Enjoy.

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Posted in: Apple, iPhone, Ringtone

When I review a designer’s portfolio, I love to ask: “Which project is your least favorite?”

The answer I loathe to hear is: “Oh, they’re all my favorites and I love them all!”

That’s when my eyes roll.

The answer’s polite. It’s inoffensive. It’s safe. But it’s also the lamest response you can give. I know, you don’t want to trash your work. But saying you love every piece equally is simply a lie.

In any body of work, you’ll always prefer some pieces over others. When was the last time you loved every song equally on an album? And how many of you list the rainbow as your favorite color? Look at it this way. If they’re all your favorites, then none of them are.

I ask designers to explain their least favorite project, because it shows three things:

Click to continue

Posted in: Design, Porfolio

Helpful hacks for becoming a Terminal guru
Ben shows you how to get your Mac geek on with Visor, the other app from Blacktree–the folks that make Quicksilver.

Why I love working with family people
“The stereotypical startup dream hire is a 20-something with as little life as possible outside of computers…I should know. I used to be that gullible and even take an odd pride in being up to the job. But it didn’t take long to catch on to the idea that packing a room full of these people was merely a crutch…”

How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off
“When your alarm wakes you up in the morning, is it hard for you to get up right away? Do you find yourself hitting the snooze button and going right back to sleep?”

The window switcher that’s actually useful
“Have you ever wanted to switch back and forth between windows that don’t belong to the same application? If so, Witch is for you. Witch lets you access all of your windows by pressing a shortcut and choosing from a clearly arranged list of window titles.”

If you’re aching to learn design skills but don’t have the time—or the confidence—then check out Robin William’s The Non-Designer’s Design Book.

The approachable, unassuming, and humorous book explains basic design principles in a way that anyone can grasp—from grandmas in Scranton to art directors in New York City.

So what are these basic design principles? It’s C-R-A-P (Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity). Here’s how Robin explains them in her own words:

Click to continue

Posted in: Books, Design

Mark Roudebush at Method recently sent me two ultra-clever Gmail tricks for tracing and preventing spam. Here’s what he wrote:

1. The Plus Hack

You can create alias emails for things like shopping sites, places you know will spam you, or anything you want to track to see who they are sharing your email with. To do this, simply put a “+” after your account name and add words.

For example, I could do “mrmarkymark+onlinepurchases@gmail” or “mrmarkymark+spam@gmail.com”. All of these will come into my inbox, but they can easily be filtered to a folder, to spam or even to the trash.

Click to continue

Voila! A brand new design for LifeClever is now up. I’ve been toiling on this for the past few months, so I’m very excited to share it with you.

Why just a face lift? I had hoped to do more by migrating to Drupal and adding some cool new features. For example, forums. Unfortunately, Drupal’s way complicated, and I’ve had no luck finding an available Drupal developer who will answer my emails.

If you know an expert developer who can help me move this design to Drupal, please let me know. Otherwise I’ll try tackle it myself, but who knows how long that’ll take. ;-)

Since design doesn’t happen in a vacuum, I’d like to give shout-outs to the folks who’ve helped inspire this design. In no particular order, they are:

• Merlin Mann
• Shaun Inman
• Khoi Vinh
• Collis Ta’eed
• Derek Punsalan
• The Guardian

As usual, everything on this site is a work in progress, but I hope you enjoy.