New Guinness Record for largest chocolate sculpture – 18,000 pound Mayan temple

A California dessert and pastry school, located in Irvine, has just broken the Guinness World Record for the World’s Largest Chocolate Sculpture: To celebrate our 30th anniversary, Qzina Specialty Foods, has broken a Guinness World Record for building the largest chocolate sculpture. The sculpture models an ancient Mayan temple and weighs 18,239 pounds, far surpassing the previous record set in Italy …

Sir Jonathan Ive – Apple’s chief designer is knighted

Jonathan Ive – the British designer responsible for Apple’s iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad – has been knighted at Buckingham Palace. The 45-year-old said the investiture in front of the Princess Royal was “really thrilling and particularly humbling”. Now based in the US, Apple’s senior vice-president of industrial design flew in to the UK with …

Flickr releases “liquid” layout – joins “responsive design” trend

We’re releasing a new “liquid” layout. Flickr’s “liquid” design adjusts the photo page and image size based on the size of your browser window. With that your photos will look great on a laptop screen, and look even more stunning on larger screens.  With the new design: The biggest photo size is shown depending on your …

Unemployment rate at 8.1% – job growth seen in manufacturing, architecture, engineering, and computers

Hiring continued its slow pace in April as employers added a modest 115,000 jobs to their payrolls. The jobless rate inched down to 8.1% last month, the Labor Department said Friday, but that wasn’t because more people were employed. Rather, the rate fell as more workers dropped out of the labor force (about 342,000 workers). …

Photos from inside Apple Headquarters

It’s the Chocolate Factory for tech nerds. Search the web for “Apple HQ,” and most of the results you get will be pictures of Apple’s Cupertino headquarters — from the outside. Usually with some fanboy standing next to the “1 Infinite Loop” sign. But what we really want to see is what’s inside the ultra-top-secret place …

Blog Design – the ultra-minimalist brigade

When I first started blogging, Jason Kottke, of kottke.org, was a sort-of hero for what I wanted to do. His style of blogging is very similar to mine and so are his design aesthetics. As time has progressed, I’ve switched from the hero archetype to more of a hopeful-peer. My delusions of equality were boosted …

Tickets available for the 2012 Newport Beach Film Festival

This will be my second year attending the Newport Beach Film Festival. Last year I watched a film about sharks and listened to Aaron Sorkin speak about writing. I loved it. This year is looking to be just as good and I’m excited to see movies about the ocean, surfing, design, and drama. One things …

Toronto – “a strong latent demand for more walkable neighborhoods”

The map above shows Toronto’s walkability, with the lighter portions indicating greater walkability (‘utilitarian walkability” being how easy it is to walk to do utilitarian things — get to work, shop — as opposed to for pure recreation). It’s striking how much high walkability follows the boundaries of the old City of Toronto. There are …