This weekend, I found some time to check out the second installment of the Design Triennial, on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Design on Manhattan’s Upper Eastside (until January 25, 2004).

The exhibits celebrates the technological innovations, artistic evolution and cultural impact of design, and reviews new ideas and future horizons across the fields of current practice, from architecture and interiors to product design, fashion, graphic design and new media. It is the only exhibition of its kind in the nation.

It is unique, indeed, and it was a fantastic experience for someone so connected to design. I’ll talk about the designers in the coming weeks, but I hope that I won’t need to convince you to go check it out yourself…

Ahh, finally some news that ought to make it to the masses. New York Magazine portrayed in their November 10 issue the ” New York Weblog Explosion (that) has created a new wave of chattering-class grandees. So what if they’re sitting at home in their bathrobes?”

No, seriously. The article looks at a handful of the most compelling players around, and you’ll have to agree that they have a loquacious, funny, erratic, bitchy and passionate voice worth hearing out:

Gawker | Choire Sicha | Anil Dash | Meg Hourihan | Nick Denton | Jason Kottke | Elizabeth Spiers | Jennifer Iserloh

The other evening, I was looking for a particular font. After a little browsing, I came across Randy Pavelich’s site - nice design, and tons of free fonts. Thought you might want to know. Alas, didn’t find the one I was looking for in the first place.

Browsing through the recent literature, I came across a Journal of Organic Chemistry article by Stephanie Chanteau and James Tour from the Center for Nanotechnology at Rice University. “What the heck?” was my initial response. No, their research didn’t deal with the Heck-reaction, but with anthropomorphic molecules, which they call “NanoPutians”. At first, I was sure that this is a Halloween-inspired joke, but reading through the experimentals they really have put some effort into this. I can only hope that no NSF/NIH-grant money went towards this endeavor. Check out their article…