As someone who follows browser development pretty closely, a friend sent along this perfect summation of Google’s open source strategy a la Andriod and Chrome by Dan Lyons (formerly known as Fake Steve Jobs):

[Android is] the desktop Linux of mobile phones — a solution in search of a problem that doesn’t exist. Or, to put it another way, Android was indeed created to help solve a problem, but it’s not a problem that customers have, it’s a problem that Google has. Same for Chrome, when you think about it. Google is all about solving the world’s most difficult problems — specifically, those problems that prevent Google from owning every last piece of the world.

I couldn’t ask for a more succinct, merciless quote about these two products. And from the linked FT article:

Disparagement of Android has touched on everything from an alleged lack of sophistication and stability in the software, to the fact that successful devices such as the iPhone and the BlackBerry are based on a different technology model. “The best experiences out there today are ‘vertical’ experiences, where the hardware and software come from the same company,” said Tom Conrad, chief technology officer of Pandora, whose internet music service is one of the most popular applications on the iPhone.

Critics asked why consumers would buy the phone when there was no “killer app” to set it apart, in the way Apple’s iTunes service helped to sell iPhones. “If I was a customer I would say ‘I get Google on my iPhone or my Nokia N95, why do I need this?’”

A friend of my wife is visiting us from Lisbon. Because of the really, ahem, skewed exchange rate between the dollar and euro (or between the dollar and every other currency), our friend has been tagged by her other friends in Portugal as a mule to bring cheap goods back from the New World.

Packages have been arriving each day from all corners: cameras and fancy lenses, hard drives, SD cards, iPods, not to mention the goods that our visitor will purchase for herself before she leaves. I’ve no doubt hoarded my own loot onto international flights in years past, but it’s been purchases specific to the country of travel, like Havaianas in Brazil or wine from France, not general consumer goods. So as each package piles up in our house destined for export, it’s a visual reminder of the sad state of the US economy.

We’ve been busy the last seven weeks, so I forgot to tell you.

Q: The nutrition community is fascinated by the French paradox — the fact that the French eat seemingly fattening food but don’t get fat. In your book you describe an American paradox. What is it?

A: Americans are a people so obsessed with nutrition yet whose dietary health is so poor. That strikes me as a paradox. We worry more about nutritional health, and we see food in terms of health. Yet we’re the world champs in terms of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and the cancers linked to diet. I think it’s odd. It suggests that worrying about your dietary health is not necessarily good for your dietary health.

The above passage comes from a Michael Pollan interview. I read and thoroughly enjoyed his Omnivore’s Dilemma, especially for its behind the scenes look at the organic food industry. That book prompted me to see him speak in Seattle last month, and buy his newest book, In Defense of Food, which I haven’t yet read. But little revelations like this make me look forward to it all the more.

Graphic designer Michael Bieruit was recently interviewed by Newsweek about the achievements of Obama’s design:

He’s the first candidate, actually, who’s had a coherent, top-to-bottom, 360-degree system at work. Whereas, I think it’s more more common for politicians to have a bumper-sticker symbol that they just stick on everything and hope that that will carry the day.

The thing that sort of flabbergasts me as a professional graphic designer is that, somewhere along the way, they decided that all their graphics would basically be done in the same typeface, which is this typeface called Gotham. If you look at one of his rallies, every single non-handmade sign is in that font. Every single one of them. And they’re all perfectly spaced and perfectly arranged. Trust me. I’ve done graphics for events —and I know what it takes to have rally after rally without someone saying, “Oh, we ran out of signs, let’s do a batch in Arial.” It just doesn’t seem to happen. There’s an absolute level of control that I have trouble achieving with my corporate clients.

Then if you go to the Web site, it’s all reflected there too—all the same elements showing up in this clean, smooth, elegant way. It all ties together really, really beautifully as a system.