I'm a fan of StumbleUpon, a service that helps the bored surfer find random websites that fit within user-defined criteria. It’s also part community and another part rating system for the web. Also, yet another part of StumbleUpon is a handy toolbar for your Firefox browser that makes it easy to send your preferences to StumbleUpon’s massive database of web sites, allowing future sessions to be even more precise.

This morning on my pre-work Stumble session, I came across a pretty impressive graphic displaying Apple’s history in pictorial format. It may not be complete, yet it is nonetheless, a lovely snapshot of a product that has defined many a designers’ lifestyle for nearly 20 years.

If you're a designer, we implore you to turn your back on the poorly designed community sites out there and have a peek at a standards-compliant community called Virb.

While your friendly designers and coders at theMechanism usually spend our days holed up in our Creative Bunkers in New York and London making magic, on occasion we must leave the confides of our software apps, sketchbooks and meetings to explore the outdoors. And by “outdoors,” we're referring to the “new outdoors” -- free of menacing bears, wolves, intellect-enhancing novels and games of Go -- online communities.

For the mighty Margaret Martin in London, her solace is sometimes found in the World of Warcraft. For Standardista Jeffrey, it's the singular joy of his Flappy. Many of our entertainment-based clients have dived headfirst into the most fiendish of web site communities known as mySpace. And while mySpace will hopefully soon be swallowed under it's own bile due to the overabundance of creeps looking for dates, we were recently alerted to a nicely designed web community called Virb.

Virb functions in a similar manner to the brainchild of Marketing hero Seth Godin’s online community called Squidoo, by taking a very clean, clear approach to design and modularization of content. Virb was made by the same folks who made a little-publicized, but lovely musician site called PureVolume. While we all agree that there are too many online communities vying for the attention of kiddies, teens, and eventually creeps, we're hoping Virb's ease of use eventually buries mySpace. However, our resident Standardista, Jeffrey Barke reminded me that the mighty mountain built by mySpace may be too hard to climb by any competitors.

In the meantime, I'm leaving the "new outdoors" to dip my toes into the "old outdoors," by re-reading The 48 Laws of Power. By the time I'm finished, what we know now as the web will be carried around in our pockets -- and desktop computers will be the devices of the aged.

Dave Fletcher is a Founder and Creative Director of theMechanism, a maxi-media firm in New York City and London. He ranted about mySpace & the Dumbing of Design in July of 2006 and hopes that he lives to see the day that online communities appreciate the importance of a standards-based approach.

PC World’s Eric Butterfield recently tried to damage the freshly birthed iPhone by putting it through a series of “stress tests.” While I predict that soon enough, a bevy of companies will be offering tasty carbonite sheaths to coddle your $500+ investment – for now – watch this video to see how the rapturous little device is holding up to Butterfield’s physical persecution and torment...