IN THE annals of fashion the snap-fastener, or press-stud, holds a humble place. Few care that it was invented in Germany, as the Federknopf-Verschluss, in the 1880s. Not many appreciate that some varieties have discs and grooves, while others boast sockets with studs. And almost no one considers that they give a man style. But Jack Weil did.

Mr Weil reckoned that a cowboy on a horse, if wearing a shirt with buttons, was liable to get snagged on sagebrush or cactus or, worse than that, get a steerhorn straight through his fancy buttonhole. He was pretty certain, too, that a cowboy losing a button would feel disinclined to sew it on again. The answer to all those difficulties was to make shirts with snap-fasteners. And for 62 years, in a red-brick warehouse in the LoDo district of Denver, Mr Weil did exactly that.

Jack Weil, apparently, was an old time innovator. Not only did he create clothing that fit the needs of cowboys, he created a style that is as American as the Cowboy himself.

Rest in Peace.

Tiled backgrounds designer (bgpatterns.com)

I freaking love this. I’m a total sucker for patterns and so naturally, tiled backgrounds are something I’m really passionate about. I stumbled across this today and wanted to share. It has a really simple interface: you select colors, canvas texture, icon to repeat, and rotation. You can get pretty nice images with pretty little effort. Really nice little tool.

While we’re on this topic, check out www.stripegenerator.com. It’s an equally cool stripe background image generator.

Description from the SoundManager 2 site:

SoundManager 2 is an attempt at providing the sound API which Javascript has been missing. It’s a Javascript library which wraps and extends Flash’s sound capabilities, bringing cross-platform audio functionality to Javascript.

SoundManager 2: Javascript Sound for the Web

The iPod® Gramophone from Hammacher Schlemmer

Handcrafted entirely of slip-cast ceramic to replicate the curvature and passive amplification of a French horn, this is the iPod® gramophone that augments sound from an iPod® without requiring auxiliary power or speaker components.

I received my Hammacher Schlemmer catalog this week and was taken by what was on the cover. There are so many iPod accessories/companion electronics out there now, that finding anything that is even mildly original is tough. The iPod Gramophone from Hammacher Schlemmer, however, stands apart by being a one-of-a-kind accessory. In this product, there is a juxtaposition of the old and the new. It is interesting, fun, cool, and even useful as it doesn’t require additional power for the amplification component.

Nice.

This isn’t really innovative, it’s just dang sweet. A sink shaped like a shell so the water spirals down the drain. Very cool.

• Nice pictures and description from Trendir
• Actual Product Page

A New Layout Technique

Here’s an article that was posted on A List Apart the other day. It’s a pretty cool way to handle some of the problems that arise when using the modern table-less layout techniques (floats and absolute positioning).

I haven’t had time to try it for myself, yet, but it’s pretty cool.

Tableless Calendar

Now, I was to preface this with saying I don’t have a problem using tables for calendars. Tables are designed for tabular data and calendars are basically tabular. However, semantically, it might make more sense, at times, to present that information in a list. For example, the following is very logical to me:

• Day
  • Event
  • Event
• Day
  • Event
  • Event

Then, furthermore, when you take into consideration that oftentimes the same data is being accessed by multiple types of devices, presenting the information as a list begins to make even more sense.

So, in light of that, here’s a great article about styling CSS lists as calendars.

The styling in the author’s examples is kind of weak, so I’ve tried my own. Check it. I haven’t resolved all the issues in this example, but it works well in the Fox, and Safari. There’s a small spacing issue in Safari. It displays pretty close in IE6, but the numbers from the <ol> don’t show.

That’s all for today, friends. Enjoy.

I’m a web designer and I love this. It could be considered quite innovative.

This seems like a clever idea to me. These wallets are all polymer which means none of the troubles that come along with natural material (limited availability, ethical concerns, extra care to keep nice, etc). They are water proof and very durable.

Go see: Dosh

Geneva drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Geneva drive or Maltese cross is a mechanism that translates a continuous rotation into an intermittent rotary motion. It is an intermittent gear where the drive wheel has a pin that reaches into a slot of the driven wheel and thereby advances it by one step. The drive wheel also has a raised circular blocking disc that locks the driven wheel in position between steps.

Maybe I’m a nerd, but this is really cool to me. The animation is kind of mesmerizing. I like it.

Two things it seems that you always need to have near are a pen and a fork (or spoon/knife). Here’s a wonderful solution! These were designed by a group of designers from Italy for a design contest at Designboom.

Check it out »