20 BLOGS TO KEEP YOU ENTERTAINED WHILE THE BOSS IS ON HOLIDAY

{INTRO}


The boss has waved the office a fond farewell, and you and the rest of
the team now have a week or so of slightly less hassle, slightly more
relaxed deadlines, and the luxury of leaving on time without guilt.

You might also have time for a little light web browsing, an opportunity
to catch up on what's new, or broaden your horizons to find some blogs
that would benefit from regular visits in future.

Allow us to help you on that front. We've been doing some browsing on
your behalf, hunting down the best blogs in four categories: Mac/Apple,
Art/Design, Productivity, and Entertainment. We think these sites are
among the very best of their kind, and deserve a place in your bookmarks
list.

Standard advice for blog browsing these days is to use an RSS reader
(such as NetNewsWire, Vienna, or Google Reader) to keep an eye on the
headlines and read articles in full, where they are offered as part of
the feed. But that said, some of these sites demand a visit in a browser
to fully appreciate the imagery or design. Consequently, we've spelt out
our reading recommendation (feed or browser) in each case.






{BODY COPY}

Category: Mac / Apple

Daring Fireball www.daringfireball.com RSS

Consistently scooping everyone else on Mac news, tech pundit John Gruber
sets an example for others to follow. He has both the technical
expertise and the network of contacts to get the right mix of insider
tips and discoveries of his own. His sardonic tone isn't to everyone's
taste, and his tongue-lashings for bloggers who get things wrong are
fierce indeed. But he's the closest thing the Mac community has (outside
of Apple itself) to an agenda-setter.


TidBITS tidbits.com BROWSER

Almost as old as time itself, TidBITS is as much a part of Apple history
as the Mac and the iPod. Although it started (and thrives to this day)
as an email newsletter, in recent years the web version has taken on
bloggish stylings, and TidBITS flavoured content can be grabbed as
podcasts, RSS feeds, or even via Twitter. The contributors are a galaxy
of Mac hardware and software experts. Prolific, intelligent, and always
downright useful, TidBITS is an essential bookmark.


Call me Fishmeal wilshipley.com/blog RSS

Wil Shipley's company Delicious Monster makes Delicious Library, but Wil
Shipley himself has much more to offer the world than just cool OS X
applications. He is a man with opinions, with stories to tell, and the
reputation and humour to pull them off. Shipley's lengthy rants might go
off on tangents, and might not actually appear very often; but when they
do, they are must-read material. His July 7th post on bug-killing is a
classic in its own right.


MyAppleMenu myapplemenu.com RSS

Heng-Cheong Leong maintains this personal Mac news blog with a great
deal of care and investment of time and effort. Rather than attempt to
cover all the Mac news of the day, he carefully pulls out the best, most
informative articles from a wide selection of sources. Very
occasionally, the author adds a personal remark or aside, but the
editorial input is mainly restricted to the excellent choices of links.
A refreshingly simple, low-key blog with personal appeal.


Infinite Loop arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/ RSS

Ars Technica has always enjoyed a reputation for decent coverage of
serious technical matters, and its Mac blog is no exception. The posts
here benefit from a degree of expertise and a devotion to good research
that most blogs don't even bother to dream of, and couldn't afford to
pay for even if they did. The clean design, and refreshing restraint on
the part of whoever sells the advertising space, make the site easier on
the eye than most.





Category: Design / Art / Photography / Illustration / Typography


We Make Money Not Art (www.we-make-money-not-art.com) BROWSER

R'gine Debatty curates this endlessly interesting mashup of art,
architecture, design and creativity. Her discoveries straddle the global
arts scene (but are mostly concentrated in Europe) and constantly push
new ideas into an otherwise stale blogosphere that repeats itself too
often. Spurning the push of PR waffle (the site makes its feelings
plain: 'PR people: we're not interested'), WMMNA provides a platform for
students and experimental creatives, people whose voices might not
otherwise be heard amid the din. An essential read.


I Love Typography www.ilovetypography.com BROWSER

Barely a year old, this lively blog began life as British expat John
Boardley's attempt to 'bring the subject of typography to the masses'.
And that it does, with great style and splashes of plain talking, common
sense, and good humour. Too often, typographical discussion gets mired
in jargon, but Boardley's light touch makes the whole site accessible to
all, yet still interesting to experts. That, combined with extras like
the irresistable Font Game, makes this an excellent bookmark for any
designer.


Sleevage sleevage.com BROWSER

Assuming you're old enough to remember when music came on black vinyl 12
inch disks, you probably have an appreciation of the art of the record
sleeve. This blog is here to celebrate that strange niche with lovingly
crafted and well researched essays that dissect each sleeve, breaking
down the component parts of design, artwork, typography and photography.
Even if you're not old enough to remember vinyl, the celebration of
sleeve art keeps pace with modern releases, both CD and digital.


COLOURlovers www.colourlovers.com/blog/ BROWSER

Devotedly exploring the colour palette in every shade and hue,
COLOURlovers lives up to its name. There might be only one post a day
here, but each one's a treat. Some might interest only the keenest of
colour nerds ('try to guess the exact hue'), although every page is a
visual feast. And it's more than just a blog - there are references
pages for hues (add tags, mark your favourites) and a thriving community
section where users show off their palette creations.


Lens Culture lensculture.com BROWSER

An online magazine and blog with contributions (mostly in the form of
web-based galleries) from an eclectic mix of photographers, covering all
manner of sub-genres from photojournalism to the most experimental of
photographic artworks. Each gallery is accompanied by a short essay
explaining the photographer's background and work, and many of them also
have audio interviews with more detail. A thoughtful and
thought-provoking web site that offers plenty for the photography
enthusiast, whether amateur or professional.





Category: Productivity / Work tips

Lifehacker lifehacker.com RSS

Lifehacker posts a bewildering array of tips and tricks every day. A lot
are quite technical and cheerfully encourage readers to try out all
sorts of software downloads from the web, but the writing is of high
quality and you can be sure that all recommended hackery has been tested
by the authors first. They have to cater for all, so much of it is
Windows-related, but there's enough Mac and general-purpose non-computer
content there to make up for that.


Web Worker Daily webworkerdaily.com RSS

Some might argue that the era of web applications began with Hotmail
back in the mid 1990s. Today we have whole suites of web apps, some of
them trying hard to take customers from the comfy world of Microsoft
Office. Web Worker Daily is the newsletter of record for all things
webapp related, and is an essential place to find out the latest news
from the world of web startups. An interesting regular read for anyone
whose work centres on the web.


43Folders 43folders.com RSS

Merlin Mann has a good attitude to Getting Things Done: he thinks you're
much better off sitting down and doing things than you are wasting hours
trying to think of methods, concepts, or hacks that will make doing them
easier. Just get on with it, he says. Merlin's wit helps, too, as he
takes the self-help gurus of this world head on and makes self-help
more, well, helpful. The forum is usually good too (although offline for
renovation right now).


Fortuitous fortuito.us RSS

Matt Haughey is probably better known for creating and curating the
hugely popular community blog Metafilter (www.metafilter.com) and its
various offshoots. But what with that and the other web projects he's
managed over the years, he's learned a few things about running small
businesses - and that's the knowledge he shares here, at yet another
offshoot project. The posts are few and far between but each one is
detailed and often a goldmine of useful advice. Worth keeping an eye on.


The Four Hour Work Week www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog RSS

Tim Ferriss seems to delight in causing controversy wherever he goes.
The self-proclaimed 'professional polymath' claims to have reduced his
working hours to just four per week, and spends the rest of his time
plugging his book that tells the likes of you and I how to do the same -
funny, that. Even if you do decide to take that with a skipload of salt,
you might still find Tim's blog posts (about life, adventure, computing
and productivity) of interest.





Category: Entertainment / Humour


Speechification speechification.com RSS

A small team of dedicated speech radio nuts listen to the wireless for
you, and pick out the best bits. They also, rather helpfully, present
MP3 files of their recommendations so that you can listen to them at
your leisure, as a podcast. The subject matter is as varied as you'd
expect. Most of the material is from Radio 4, but not all. As well as
other UK stations, the occasional gem finds its way there from elsewhere
on the global radio map.


The 'blog' of 'unnecessary' quotation marks quotation-marks.blogspot.com
RSS

If quotation marks used 'unnecessarily' make you as angry as incorrect
punctuation makes Eats, Shoots & Leaves author Lynn Truss, then this
'blog' will be just your 'thing'. The aim is simple: seek out pointless
quotation marks, grab photographic evidence of their wrongness, and post
it on the web (along with suitably sarcastic quip) for the world to
enjoy, then shake its head sadly at how dumb people can be. Readers are
encouraged to 'join in' with their own 'contributions'.


Perversion Tracker perversiontracker.com RSS

The team that once gleefully ripped bad OS X software to shreds is back,
once again inspired to entertain us with more reviews. But this time,
Perversion Tracker's focus is on iPhone applications: the bad, the
awful, and the barrel-scrapingly dire. They download the App Store's
most cringe-making offerings so that you and I don't have to. Then they
suffer their downloads, and write withering hate notes to them. We
shouldn't just laugh, we should say thanks.


Fail Dogs faildogs.com RSS

If LOLcats have lost their LOL factor for you, perhaps fail dogs might
be able to cheer you up. The content here is minimalist, but then how
much context do you need for a picture of a dog looking spectacularly
stupid? Because that's all there is here: stupid dogs, pulling stupid
faces, frequently in stupid circumstances. It's a one-joke blog, but the
joke just carries on being funny. As a bonus, it appeals to everyone -
dog lovers and dog haters alike. Woof.


Questionable Content www.questionablecontent.net BROWSER

Not so much a blog, as a cartoon soap opera, QC follows the lives of a
group of 20-something Americans as they sleep with one another, argue
with their psychotic (and strangely iPod-like) robots, and discuss the
merits of obscure rock bands the rest of us have never heard of. Start
at comic 1 and read all the way through to discover the truth about
Martin, Faye, Hanners and Dora. And Pizza Girl. An acquired taste, but
worth acquiring.