Web Design for ROI by Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus contains a bevy of smart tips for designers to get the most out of building user-friendly web experiences, especially those with a commerce element to them. The book often focuses more on the question of why rather than how, which is great for those who may not have a lot of experience designing web applications and need to get a general understanding of approach.

Fellow Chicagoans 37 Signals self-published their business opus Getting Real in 2006, so admittedly I’m a bit behind in getting around to this one, considering I read it mid-2009. It’s a worthwhile read, however, chock full of useful advice on everything from software development to customer service, business philosophy, and so on. It’s also a quick read at about 200 pages and the book’s layout brings to mind a literary journal or book of poetry, which adds to its appeal.

When I hear the term “multicam” used in reference to a shoot I’m going to work on, I, like many video folk, am both thrilled and a little worried.

On the one hand, multiple cameras provide exponentially better coverage and lead to great, professional looking final pieces. However, in an edit, video synchronization can be a giant headache. Now, if you’re running master time code from a fancy outboard device to multiple cameras, that’s fantastic. You get to use terms like “black burst” and “global dropframe tc” and that’s just fun. But I don’t have that stuff, and so for the most part have had to line up my footage manually, which sucks. Ask anyone who has spent endless hours lining up clips ‘till their eyes bleed and they’ll say “For the love of Pete will someone give me a Kleenex to get this damn blood out of my eyes?! How gross is this?!” And then they’ll tell you that manually lining up clips to sync sucks.

Google has introduced their own operating system for desktop systems and netbooks.

Speed, simplicity and security and the tenets around which they are building this new OS, which is based on the Chrome browser. The goal is to get users started up and on the web within a few seconds and provide a minimal interface that doesn’t get in the way of user experience. The underlying security architecture is being rewritten so users shouldn’t have to deal with viruses and endless security updates as well.

An animated exhibit for the Shedd Aquarium offers some unique production challenges.

We recently created a twelve-minute animated 3D penguin habitat scene for the John G. Shedd Aquarium as part of the Oceanarium Reimagined, a significant overhaul to that portion of the museum. At twenty-five feet wide by fifteen feet tall and spanning across three HD projectors, the animation provided many opportunities for us to roll our sleeves up and put on our technical problem solving caps, not the least of which was the fact that it needed to nestle snugly into the organic crevices of a man-made rock formation.