Opinion BY Armin

Herb Lubalin Called, he wants his Typography Back

To stick with our recent, technology-things-on-the-web theme — and, honestly, because it’s been a slow summer for identity changes — we’ll turn our attention to a new tech/gadget site that doesn’t even exist yet, but it comes with some major clout. To be launched this fall by Joshua Topolsky, former editor-in-chief of blog powerhouse Engadget from 2007 to 2011 and resident tech expert at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Verge will be, well, another technology news site. At least it has the advantage of launching a fresh publication as opposed to the sometimes clunky design updates of 10-year-old sites. Topolsky will be joined by other former Engadget editors and other tech writers. On their current site, This is My Next, they sort of explain the new project and the genesis of it.

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Opinion BY Armin

The Internet Called, it wants its Hexagons Back

Based on the amount of tips I received about this, it seems we have a very healthy amount of harder-core developers reading Brand New than I thought. So for those of us whose knowledge of the web stops at “Add to Cart” here is the basic premise: First released in 2010 Node.js is a platform based on JavaScript to build websites or online applications that make the best use of connection times, only pinging the system when it needs rather than constantly. Or something to that effect. Node.js has a vibrant and passionate community around it of developers using the platform. Last week they introduced a new logo designed by Chris Glass.

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Opinion BY Armin

Bitmaps are so 2011

Launched in 2005, TechCrunch is a blog dedicated to covering all things web: software, gadgets, start-up, geek, venture capital, and more as long as it’s techie and it generates pageviews. Originally independent, TechCrunch was acquired by AOL in 2010. Its numbers are impressive: it attracts 12-plus million unique visitors a month that generate 53-plus million pageviews on top of the 2.2-plus million RSS subscribers. Along with sister (yet rival) AOL site, Engadget, they pretty much rule tech journalism. On Monday, TechCrunch unveiled a redesigned website and identity by New York-based Code and Theory.

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Opinion BY Armin

Name.com

Established in 2003, Name.com is an ICANN-accredited domain registrar, perhaps most well known for also providing the Whois Lookup service that allows you to see who is behind any given domain name. A new logo and a new hand-drawn look has taken over their website recently.

Thanks to Nodws for the tip.

Guest Opinion by Roy Levitt posted BY Brand New

Time to Gogo?

In 2008 Gogo — an inflight Wi-Fi hotspot service, offered by Aircell — revolutionized commercial airline communications for passengers. Available above 10,000 ft. over U.S. air space Gogo provides access to the Web, e-mail, instant messaging, and corporate VPNs. Gogo is available on all AirTran Airways and Virgin America flights, and select Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, Frontier, United, and US Airways flights with various pricing options.

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Opinion BY Armin

Manymoon

Manymoon is a cloud application that adds all kinds of task management functionalities to, and integrates with, Google applications. It was recently acquired by Salesforce.com.

Thanks to Austin Bales for the tip.

Opinion BY Armin

Cerner

Established in 1979, Cerner is an IT service provider specializing in the healthcare industry or, in their words, they “optimize processes for health care organizations ranging from single-doctor practices to entire countries, for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, and for the field of health care as a whole.” Cerner recently updated its logo and has this to say about it: “The bars now flow smoothly out of the ‘C’, conveying that Cerner is collaborating with all stakeholders in health, from professionals to individuals, to change the way we all think about health.” A bit more where that came from here.

Thanks to Shane Adams for first tip.

Opinion BY Armin

Frog Loses Battle to Speech Bubbles

Launched in 2009, yfrog — a subsidiary of ImageShack, the provider of free (or paid) image hosting — is a free platform made specifically for sharing images through Twitter. TechCrunch reports that, according to Quantcast, yfrog has 500,000 uploads every day and almost 20 million unique visits a month. That’s, like, a lot. Although not, like, enough to beat its main competition, TwitPic, which gathers about 30 million uniques a month and seems to be the most recurring spot to be directed to to see images from Twitter. In a complete rethinking of the service yfrog has transformed into a full-fledged social platform with user profiles, celebrity yfroggers, the ability to comment directly on photos, and other accoutrements of sharing and liking. Along with the new website, comes a new logo.

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A B-Side BY Armin

AVOS

AVOS is a “new Internet company” launched by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, co-founders of YouTube (now owned by Google after a $1.76 billion purchase). AVOS has recently made big news as they have just acquired Delicious, the “leading social bookmarking service for saving, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks”. The AVOS wordmark is composed of two different typefaces: Brandon Grotesque for the “A” and “V” (the “V” is turned upside down to make the “A”) and Plau for the “OS”. Yup, weird. But none of us are billionaires, so what do we know?

Opinion BY Armin

Chrome Loses Volume

First released for Windows XP in December of 2008, Google Chrome is a browser developed by, yes, Google. Versions for Mac OS X and Linux followed a few months later and since then Chrome has become one of the most popular browsers — 19.26% of you are reading Brand New on Chrome, in third “place” behind Safari and Firefox. Chrome’s most current stable release is version 10.0.648.134 (but you knew that, right?) and currently in development is dev version 11.0.696.12 which is not released to the public yet but for those that are taking it for an early spin they have gotten a glimpse at the new logo for Chrome. The new logo for Chrome surfaced after a new logo for Chromium — the open source version of Chrome — made its debut earlier this year.

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