I love this commercial….and I love Discovery Channel. Well done.

[via Coudal]

There was a flurry of activity outside the house today as a film crew prepared to start on a portion of a movie called ‘The Return,’ starring Tim Robbins, Michael Peña, and Rachel McAdams. The house of our neighbors across the street is being used for internal as well as some backyard-pool shots. I’ve noticed a few blurbs in the local news about filming in the area – the crew was in Bolingbrook and Naperville recently – and they’re in our neck of the woods for the next few days.

It’s interesting to see a bit of Hollywood right outside our front door.

I remember being amazed at the satellite views available via Google maps the first time I saw them. Yesterday, I read a post on Download Squad that mentioned Microsoft had added about 3.8 terabytes of image data to its Live Maps.

Of course, the first thing I did was load my home address to see what kind of views of the house I could find. Amazing (and a bit scary even). In addition to the incredible image quality and color, I was floored by the ability to change the direction of the view.

While Google has been soundly beating Microsoft from an innovation standpoint, here is one instance where the old lumbering giant seems to be fighting back and making some headway. Of course, expect Google to respond in kind in short order.

I have to use this next time my daughter complains about her violin lessons…

I ran across a great little Windows tool that fills a need I’ve had for some time.WebShot: A Website and Webpage Screenshot Thumbnailing Utility

Simply enter an URL and WebShot will generate a JPG, PNG, GIF, or BMP of the resultant Web page. This is especially useful when you’re looking at a page that scrolls over multiple screens. It’s free (but do pass along a donation to Nathan Moinvaziri, the tool’s creator) and the download is under 500K and includes a nice, simple InnoSetup installation.

WebShot does the trick and it’s highly recommended.

This morning, on my ritual Sunday Barrington drive, I decided to take a lot of pics to later drop on the map in flickr.

It’s not as accurate as I’d like, but when you see the map for the set, it’s a pretty neat visual summary of my path (I start at bottom near Higgins and Old Sutton, then wind my way around in a clockwise direction).

It’s definitely worth a download.

[via TheUnofficialGoogleWeblog]

I was walking down Michigan Avenue today and saw this wonderful bike rack. It’s not your usual bike rack – the typical, non-descript metal bars banded together to form a place to support and secure your bike – no, this one’s a functional sculpture.Its form advertises its function in such a playful and direct way and you can just feel that someone enjoyed creating it. Each of the ‘handlebars’ has a slightly different design and the wheels are all canted at slightly different angles.

Good simple design like this never fails to put a smile on my face.

Some notable quotes: Mayer on the success of the Google home page “It gives you what you want, when you want it, rather than everything you could ever want, even when you don’t.”; Milton Glaser: “Less isn’t more; just enough is more”