One thing about Mobile Safari thats always bugged me is that there’s no home button. It’s a common feature of almost every web browser so why exclude it on the iPhone? Firefox recently did something similar with ver3 beta 3 and removed the home button from the top toolbar. This caused a minor stir and they promptly added it back in for the next release.

So why is the absence of a home button such a problem? If a user browses several pages deep there’s no quick way to get back to square one. When my mom gets lost on the interwebs it’s the one button she knows will always get her back to a comfortable starting point. Now I know what you’re thinking… just make a bookmark! Yes that would work… but that would require the user to actually add it to their bookmarks and shuffle through them every time they wanna use it. Seems like a lot of work for an action so common.

Here’s a quick idea for the possible placement of a home button. When the user taps the address bar at the top, the standard navigation bar expands down and a home button is positioned all the way to the left (see the concept below). Currently that space is reserved for page title which is important, however the page title gets displayed in full when the address bar is closed so you never really lose any information or functionality with this layout. With a home icon up on the left the user is two taps away from getting back to their homepage. As for setting a new homepage, this action could be added to the menu that appears when you tap the + symbol on the bottom bar. I’m sure there are other possibilities but this seemed like the most convenient. Check it out:

This year for Christmas I decided to get Mom a netbook! She’s pretty web savvy and needed something ultra portable to surf the interwebs and check email on the go.

After some searching I found a Dell Vostro A90 for only $184! The specs on it are pretty weak but Mom isn’t playing Modern Warfare, strictly web browsing and email.

When it came time to choose an operating system I decided to go with Linux because it doesn’t come bloated with any of the crapware. When I got it in the mail my intent was to customize Ubuntu to mimic XP (which is what she’s been using), however, I stumbled a upon a blog post somewhere about a new OS called Jolicloud which is similar to Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Long story short… I love this little netbook OS. Check out the video above for a quick video review.

Awhile back I followed an Instructables article on how to build flower sculptures out of old hard drive parts. I always thought about trying to make something else with all the pieces but some guy named Miguel Rivera has already taken the idea to a whole new level of awesomeness. Rivera managed to build a motorcycle, go cart, and giant robot. Check out the Wired article for more details.

Director Federico Alvarez just secured a $30m deal to develop a feature film based on his short “Panic Attack.” Alvarez runs a visual effects house in Uruguay and created the short with a mere $500 and some spare time.

The short film is basically five awesome minutes of giant robots blowing stuff up! Now all it needs is a killer story line to make it to the big screen. (via news:lite)

From a development standpoint I really wanted to make use of a few jQuery plugins and advanced CSS. On the landing page I decided to use easySlider to move between featured work. I also created a CSS sprite to combine most of the images and improve load times (good article on what CSS sprites are).

I’m still using WordPress as as the underlying CMS and blogging platform.

Coming up with Halloween costumes every year is one of my favorite things to do. So when I saw this handmade Big Daddy costume my mind was totally blown. For those of you who don’t play video games, the Big Daddy character is from the XBOX 360 game Bioshock. Hit the link to see how it was made!

Wow it’s been a busy month! Sorry for the lack of updates… I’ve been insanely busy with our new website ShirtsTasteGood.com! I’ll leave you with this cool video by Charlie McCarthy titled flight patterns:

Good friend Justin Talbott just launched a new site QuestionSuggestions.com. Small voyages into the collective psyche of humans who ask google questions. Hilarious suggestions made by google’s search engine! One thing that’s super cool is the keyboard controls Justin included. Simply hitting the J or K key moves you through each post, a feature I wish more sites used. Check it out!

I’m very excited to introduce our new website ShirtsTasteGood.com. Our goal is to provide you with the funniest YouTube™ inspired t-shirts on the web! Our team consists of Lou Zell on web development, Doug and George Cline on screen printing, and myself on designing the shirts and front-end web development. Even if you’re not in the market for a new t-shirt the site offers a bunch of fun features for killing some serious time. Every shirt homepage has the embedded YouTube video that we used for inspiration. We also built a suggestion page/feed so visitors can share their favorite viral videos! Head on over and enjoy!

Time for a desktop switcharoo! I’ve had my eye on the 2001 A Space Odyssey icons for awhile and finally got a chance to put this new theme together. Most of the other 2001 wallpapers out there have HAL in the center so I figured I’d show Dave some love on this one.

Wallpaper on Flickr

Icons by Mischa McLachlan