Anyone who owns a laptop knows the pain and suffering that comes from a lack of USB ports. I, myself, rely on the additional USB ports on the external display as well as a USB octopus. Even then, I don’t have enough. Lucky for us, the world is full of creative industrial designers who come up with perfect solutions, like InfiniteUSB. Unlucky for us, it’s still a concept. Regardless, I will gladly pick up a set when they come to fruition, as it is one of the best solutions I’ve seen yet.

via Design You Trust

One thing I have always hated about OS X is the Apple Mail icon. It is way over the top, displaying a stamp with a photo in it and the stamped mark saying “Hello from Cupertino.” Johan Prag decided to take things into his own hands with a series called Redesigning OS X on his blog, &seen. It’s simple, identifiable, and beautiful. I, for one, am glad to have it in my dock.

via swissmiss »

Ajaxload is a nifty tool for the Web 2.0 crowd. With a few simple steps, it will generate one of the ever-popular, animated loaders. As you can see from the menu below, there’s a whole slew of them. The bonus of Ajaxload is that you can specify the foreground and background colors, including transparent as an option.

via Ben Kutil »

QLOCKTWO goes straight to the list of Things to Buy If Money Were No Object. It’s such a gorgeous clock with a fantastic idea behind it. I immediately thought, this would look great in my office, right? Unfortunately, the downside of this beauty is the $1200 price tag. Maybe someday, when I get back into Arduino programming, I can build one myself.

via Design Milk »

I can’t believe I haven’t posted this free gem yet, especially considering summer’s end is near. smcFanControl is an oldie, but a lap-saving goodie. It lets you manually set the minimum RPM of your computer’s fans, in case your palms are frying and OS X doesn’t smell the burning flesh.

I’m really loving these tea kettles by Vessel. They recently won the Tea Off! Tea Kettle Design Competition. Adding Space Invaders to anything makes it an instant winner in my book.

via Gizmodo »

Lifehacker has this fantastic article on how to Turn Gmail Into Your Ultimate Getting Things Done Inbox. One of their readers reveals some really simple tricks to clean things up, which have been working wonders for me lately.

Prior to reading this, I did use Superstars to differentiate priority, but only had one separate inbox for all of the emails. Now, I have five, divided into Immediate, Eventually, Ready, Reference, and Drafts. The first three speak for themselves, but Reference is specific to my “customer support” job with DestroyTwitter. Whenever I ask someone to send me their settings folder for me to debug, I can easily mark it as Reference and get to it when I can.

For a while, I was searching for a way to change the startup image. In OS 10.4, Apple indicated they were onto us hackers by requiring more than a simple switch of a PNG. Up until now, I only found Terminal-based solutions that scared the dickens out of me. BootXChanger makes it too easy by letting you switch the image through a single drag and drop. Now, you can impress your hipster friends with the 80s Apple logo, or come up with something more unique like this.

via Smoking Apples

I found Umbrella Today earlier this week and just love the idea. It strips the weather down to the essential question. Though the website’s simplicity is what draws me to it, I’d also like to see Jacket Today and Shorts Today at some point.

This single-function-website trend is really starting to take form. I find myself using websites like Down For Everyone or Just Me and Does Follow on a regular basis. There’s also Do I Need a Flash Intro, which is perfect for a good laugh.

Post any other single-function websites you know of in the comments. Maybe I should change my site to Destroy Today?. (wink)