JasonMorrison.net

Nelson reminded me today that I didn’t have a favicon for this site. I took a few moments and created the amazing little pencil that’s sitting in the address bar above.

For all the non-techies and new webmasters out there who have stumbled across this page, a favicon is the little icon that show up next to a web site’s URL and next to the page’s title in your bookmarks. They’re very small (16 by 16 pixels) but they can add a dash of branding to your site and are a helpful visual signal for bookmark navigation, increasing the information scent.

Want to create your own favicon? You can draw one pixel-by-pixel at this site, but I’d recommend busting out Photoshop and creating one yourself. Try to pick initials, a logo, or an object that can be expressed very simply - I used an apple for Mealographer, for example. You can go as simple as a couple of squares that fit your site’s color scheme and still create a memorable association for your users.

Modern browsers like Firefox allow you to use .gif and .png files directly, with some code like this:

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/png href="http://www.jasonmorrison.net/favicon.png" />

That means you can have an animated favicon… just make sure you’re doing it for some useful or artistic purpose, otherwise you will annoy your users.

From what I’ve heard Internet Explorer still has some issues, so you may want to use the older .ico format. This site will convert the image for you.

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/ico" href="http://www.jasonmorrison.net/favicon.ico" />

If you want to get really crazy, you can use Javascript to dynamically alter the favicon, which is great if you want to play Defender on the smallest display ever.

Nokia has announced a new phone, the N81, which looks suspiciously similar to a certain Apple phone.  What’s more, Nokia is launching a music download service which will allow people to download songs directly to the phone, instead of going through iTunes on their Mac or PC as iPhone users must.

Is this a bad sign for Apple?  Does it mean Apple had merely a fleeting lead over the competition?

I wouldn’t worry too much.  Nokia is a successful company that makes some great phones, but  Apple is playing a completely different game, the game that Motorola played with the Razr.  When it first came out, people heard about the Razr, they knew what it was, and they knew it was very thin and stylish.  After the success of the Razr other manufacturers came out with thin phones, but apparently copying the form factor and giving the device a serialnumberesque name is not enough.

My guess is it will be the same with the iPhone - every time Nokia tells the press and customers “The N81 is just as great as the iPhone” people will hear “Mumble mumble great mumble iPhone.”  I’m not a marketing expert, but it seems like a branding mistake to me.

The real way to steal the iPhone’s thunder is to figure out what people would like to do with a mobile device and an internet connection and better support that user experience.  From the review on Gigaom, I’m not sure that’s the case here.