In the last piece I used Google image search to find images of famous tech people on the cover of magazines. I then tiled that and played with it in Photoshop. Really nothing to special or impressive.

This time I decided to do something a little different. I enjoyed the magazine covers as a medium so I wanted to continue down that path. The problem with that is I needed more of them… preferably lots more… thousands more. So I started looking for ways to get lots of interesting magazine covers quickly.

After a little digging I realized I could retrieve covers of Time magazine. In fact, every cover ever published… all 4500+ So that is what I did. I haven’t found any spectacular use yet but here is one of the more interesting test runs.

Pinky

Officer Blue

This is what an hour of me surfing the internet looks like. I used a cool little app called ioGraphica. Maybe someday I can get a longer and more active capture.

One of the flaws that has been plaguing me is a missing artist on my play list.  This sounds stupid but I thought I was loosing my mind because I could swear that it was there and that I have heard it play when I was using it as background music.  I finally have conclusive proof that it is there and in fact, there is an odd bug that plagues the iPhone.

Basically I can look the song up by its name but when trying to find it by artist there is no listing.  The really odd part is that for this given artist (Pepper) it occurs on my wife’s iPhone as well.

Is Apple trying to boycott this particular artists? (joking)

The comments section was of course filled with numerous suggestions of how the developers should have spent the money.  One theme that stood out to me was to spend the money on hiring a graphic designer to come in and update the look of their site or perhaps a marketing firm to help them get the word out.

This really resonated with me as I have been contemplating why so few designers donate their time and energy to free products.  It is intriguing that so many great developers are willing to give up their free time to create amazing products while there appears to be a dramatic shortage of designers, marketers, technical writing, and other “support”(for lack of better term) personnel willing to donate their time.

Is it because only developers are using the products?  This certainly isn’t the case considering some of the greatest applications out there are open source.  Perhaps instead it is because the products these professionals are currently using are not opens source.

Perhaps more important than dwelling on why there is a shortage we should be looking for a solution.  I have on many occasions made comments to friends and colleagues about perhaps supporting an open source product by creating a comp, or giving them usability advice.

With that in mind I am guilty of not contributing as much as I should.  Most of my digital exsitence is now dependent on open source products and as of late I have not been contributing.

I have returned safely from my first trip to the east coast/south.  It was a trip filled with firsts; first time I have been to the east coast, first time I have ridden on a subway (it didn’t go so well), first time to experience a vastly different culture in my own country, first time seeing a true “uptown”, first time I have used navigation to save a life.

All in all the trip was amazing.  There was a bit of everything and as usual I didn’t take enough pictures.  To check out those that I did take view my flickr map or if you preferr you can just view the regular flickr.

This one came across my reader today and is definitely worth sharing. If anyone is feeling particularly generous don’t hesitate to drop ship a set to me to match my logo.