James Surowieki wrote an interesting article in the New Yorker last week about Groupon. The piece has a couple really keen observations about web-based businesses that a surprising number of people don’t seem to get. Couple quotes …

Most of the companies that have transformed the Web have certain things in common. They have distinctive technologies. They benefit from what are usually called network effects: the more people who use the service, the more valuable the service becomes. (You’re more likely to use Facebook or Twitter when lots of your friends have signed up, and the more people there are who use Google the more accurate its searches become.) Most important, they scale easily, meaning that they can grow very big without much additional effort. To be sure, the more users Twitter and Facebook have, the more servers they have to buy, and so on. But the genius of these companies is that their users do most of the work and create most of the value; once the ball is rolling, it’s the users who keep pushing it along.

When we think about the Internet, we often think of businesses in black-and-white terms: either they’re huge, world-changing hits or they’re flops. But that’s a false dichotomy. These days, the Web is full of good, solid businesses that may not be remaking the world but that are helping give people what they want. If that’s what Groupon ends up being, well, there are worse fates.

From Timothy Lee’s blog. A post for UI geeks. You might not be interested if you don’t know what UI stands for, but maybe.

The hallmarks of a good user interface, then, are simplicity and consistency. Simplicity economizes on the user’s scarce and valuable attention; the fewer widgets on the screen, the more quickly the user can find the one she needs and move on to the next step. And consistency leverages the power of muscle memory: the QWERTY layout may have been arbitrary initially, but today it’s supported by massive human capital that dwarfs whatever efficiencies might be achieved by switching to another layout.

As the team was melting down Sunday, so was the Dallas Cowboys’ website.

The club apparently forgot to renew its registration on the dallascowboys.com domain and the site was pulled Sunday night, replaced with a generic page indicating the address was available for purchase from Network Solutions LLC.

The Starbucks Digital network launched today. I’m not a big Starbucks fan, but this is just plain smart — for Starbucks and the content providers involved. Via Mashable.

Brotman describes SDN as a localized five channel network with curated content from the best sources in the following categories: News, Entertainment, Wellness, Business & Careers and My Neighborhood.

In the News channel, customers will have unfettered access to the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The New York Times. Brotman explained that access to the latter of the two will be the paid versions not available for free to readers anywhere else.

When it comes to entertainment, Starbucks will offer free Apple iTunes downloads. Brotman promises even “more exciting Apple stuff” in the future, noting that the two brands have a strong relationship. Nickelodeon is offering free access to Nick Jr. Boost via SDN. The offering should appeal to parents trying to entertain their kids by giving unrestricted access to educational games that aren’t usually free.

Gap’s new branding (yes, that was the new logo on the right) has been met with near universal disdain, if not outright hostility. As a result, Gap is scrapping it and reverting back to the old logo.

One can see what the rebranding was meant to accomplish, but this logo misses the mark. Instead of looking modern and forward-looking, it looks like a logo for an IT company — circa 1998. No retail allure.

As before, it is not a list of my favorite typefaces, nor is it a list of the most popular typefaces. Instead, it is a list of typefaces that have been “important” for one reason or another.

Our good friends and colleagues in Kerala, India celebrated the Onam festival a couple weeks back. Sheeba sent me this Pookalam that was in her office. What you’re looking at is an intricately laid-out arrangement of flower petals. The more I see and hear about this place, the more I want to go!

Photo by Jen Heinrich