Katelyn M. Thompson’s Blog

I’m sure you have see the image below. Do you see a vase or two faces?

Well, now you can Turn Your Head into a vase.

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via SwissMiss

I recently posted about the skinny stairs, which provided a space saver for those small city apartments. However, that’s not always feasible for those who may not be as skilled at walking down the stairs as others. Well for you I present the counter stairs:

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via SwissMiss

Andrew Byrom has created some cool typefaces, most not intended to be used in word processors, or even computers for that matter.

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via SwissMiss

Jakob Nielson says so!

“Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn’t even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures.”

There are times when there are people looking over your shoulder when you enter your password. Perhaps you’re borrowing a friend’s computer to check your e-mail. Or even a stranger’s computer [yes, I have been asked by a stranger to use my computer to check their e-mail. I obliged.].

I do however see Jakob’s point that it is really annoying! The iPhone does a nice job of allowing you to see the letter until you type the next one it. It’s invaluable, and I assume if I actually used an iPhone keyboard on a regular basis it wouldn’t matter quite so much, but then again I couldn’t imagine not having it.

I’m torn, but I probably wouldn’t go as far to say that they are uncessary, especially with as secure information as banking or investment.

In small city apartments or condos, space is everything! Misterstep has created a staircase which addresses this issues of tight space. Afterall, you really only step on half of the stair each time, anyway.

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via Core77

This will come in handy when I become famous! It’s a purse with a built in flash trigger light. Surprised no one has thought of this before. Then again, I think secretly some people want to be captured by the paparazzi.

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via Core77

CAPTCHAs are those annoying things that you have to read and then type in order to prove you are in fact human. They are insanely hard, and Audio CAPTCHAs are even more impossible. Perhaps by illustrating them, it will be easier for people to fill in the correct words.

Andrew Wirtanen posted his interpretation of “airlifts john”.

Buzzfeed and Something Awful provide forums for users to post their creations.

Here are some of my favorites:

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via Andrew Wirtanen

Unlike many other people, I love the new Office 2007. I think a big part of that is I actually took the time to figure it all out – the Reference tracker in Word and easy integration between Excel and PowerPoint.

Information is beginning to be released about the new Office 2010, including the fact it will have a free online aspect as well (move aside Google Docs?).

One cool aspect of the new Excel is sparklines “which are essentially tiny charts that appear within a single spreadsheet cell, giving you at-a-glance access to trends”. Seems pretty cool. One bad thing about the charts in Excel have been how they can take over a sheet, so it will be nice to have some graphical information that can be contained to a cell.

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via @trokair

A collection of visualization methods and examples of them. Nice to see them all in one place.

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via CoolTools

Oh no, you’ve just left for a long weekend and you forgot your cell-phone charger. Maybe your friend has the same phone as you? Nope. Maybe you can just leave your phone off for most of the weekend to converse battery power? Well, in the future [or just the EU], everyone will have the same chargers, microUSB. And good, because my GPS can be powered by that too!

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via Gadgetell