Today, I had the pleasure of watching “Star Trek” on the big screen. It’s one of those rare movies that actually lived up to my high expectations. I also came to the realization that I was a bigger J.J. Abrams fan than I ever knew — from “Felicity” to “Alias” to “LOST” (heck, I even enjoyed the recent issue of WIRED that he was the Guest Editor for!).

In a recent 10 Questions for TIME magazine, Abrams was asked, “Have you developed your own style, a J.J. Abrams touch? ,” to which he replied that he didn’t have one. After watching “Star Trek,” I think it’s less of a style, but more of a theme that resonates throughout most of the things he touches. The theme of normal everyday people faced with a calling of having to be more excellent than they ever thought they could be — James T. Kirk in “Star Trek;” Sidney Bristow in “Alias;” John Locke in “LOST;” The dude from “Dawson’s Creek” in “Fringe.” (OK, Felicity Porter, not so much.)

And it’s not so much in the types of characters, but more in the way Abrams crafts their stories. He takes you through a spectrum of emotions, but never rushes things. He concentrates on the journey, not necessarily the destination. This is where J.J. Abrams-esque shows like “Heroes” sputter — it’s all too easy to get careless with rushed plotlines, where things can spiral out of control real quick. The beauty is that as much as his characters can get frustrating to the point of delirium, you always end up rooting for them because ultimately, you believe in them.

It’s the J.J. Abrams Style. And we always come back for more…

SVA Dot Dot Dot Lectures: Jason Santa Maria from MFA Interaction Design on Vimeo.

The talented Jason Santa Maria gave this insightful talk as a part of the SVA’s Dot Dot Dot Lecture Series last week. In it, he talks about his early beginnings in print design; how it inspired what he does on the web; and more importantly, the differences between them as a medium for storytelling — all in about 10 minutes!

This is a really great clip to show to an old-school print designer who can’t understand why web design is such a different beast than print…

Related Links:
- jasonsantamaria.com
- SVA’s MFA in Interaction Design program

Everyone and their mother’s friend hates the Facebook redesign, ain’t no secret ’bout that. But rather than bitch and moan about the redesign, I’ve decided to take a more proactive approach and offer two simple design suggestions on how to make people a bit happier with it (or at least make me happier!).

My only real problem with the redesign is that I no longer have a way to filter content. With the current Twitter-like open stream of “What’s on your mind?” posts, I’ve found that I’ve been missing a ton of great Status Updates from my friends during the course of the day. It’s way too cluttered with who took what quiz or who posted what message to whose Wall.

My design suggestions are rather minimal:

1. Bring back the “Status Update” filter (fig. 1). It’s weird: they kept the “Photos,” “Videos” and “Links” filters, but totally dropped the “Status Update” one that they used to have. I just wanna be able to scan my beloved Status Updates, dammit!
2. Upon further wishing, I thought it would be rather excellent to be able to have a customizable “Favorite Friends” filter (fig. 2), so I can get a quick view of updates from only the people I actually care about (rather than ones from all 579 of my “friends”).

C’mon, Facebook! Help a brother out. Heck, you may even help yourself out…

Apparently, my good friend and former colleague at NYTimes.com, John Niedermeyer done got under my skin — in the best way possible. When I first launched this blog, after more than a dozen posts, John had pointed out to me that he couldn’t figure out when the site had been updated, due to the fact that I had a 6-column format (above).

Originally, I thought it would be cool to have a blog that had six different tracks that the reader could follow. But in a lot of ways, John was right: a blog should be able to be perused chronologically from top to bottom. I sort of had that, but on six tracks. And yeah, that is confusing!

So I’ve decided to go ahead and re-theme this blog with a very bare bones, stripped design (the theme is actually called “Stripped.”).

Thanks, John. You were absolutely right!

Totally useful, especially if you’re confronted by a 3 year-old with a fake knife or water gun!

This trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s forthcoming movie “Inglourious Basterds” looks pretty badass. I’m not too sure about Brad Pitt’s attempt at a southern accent, but man am I pscyhed to see that Neal Schweiber from Freaks and Geeks AND Ryan from The Office are in it!

Please let this movie be awesome…

Recently, I was quoted in an article from Folio magazine about the TIME.com redesign that launched last October.

So aside from linking to that short piece, I figured that this would be a fine opportunity to further shamelessly plug myself by linking to the more in-depth article about the redesign, from the Society of Publication Designers that my colleague Shivani York and I were interviewed for, just in case you wondered about some of the thinking that went behind it. Going back to the SPD.org site to find the article, I was pleasantly surprise to see that, for the first time ever, my name was in a 300 x 250 ad promoting the article (see above)!

Related articles:
- “What Makes a Good-Looking Site Click?,” from Folio magazine
- “Time.com’s Redesign: A Q&A,” from SPD.org

The Grammys are never what I would categorize as “awesome,” and this year was no different. Here is my quick wrap-up:

- Radiohead, by far, was my favorite performance. The USC marching band was a stroke of genius and was a perfect fit for the song, “15 Step.” According to guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, “the marching band was an idea that he and Yorke brought with them to L.A. “ Great first Grammy apperance, indeed (although I felt bad that the rest of band had to sit the perfomance out).

-Coldplay was pretty wack. Enough with the Les Miz costumes already! And Chris Martin, stop trying to be Bono, circa Live at Red Rocks.

-Do you anyone who has actually listened to the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss album? Me neither. I was kind of hoping that Robert Plant would break out and start singing “Whole Lotta Love…”

- Jonas Brothers + Stevie Wonder = not horrible (surprisingly).

- Miley Cyrus + Taylor Swift = fast-forward DVR, immediately!

- Paul McCartney, with Dave Grohl seemed like a pretty pointless pairing. Although, I did love that Grohl looked like Animal from the Muppets headbanging away on his drums in the background.

- Though he talk/sang through most of the song, I loved that you could hear everyone in the audience singing along to “Sweet Caroline” with Neil Diamond.

- Blink 182 is reuniting. Zzzz…

- Jennifer Hudson has an insanely powerful voice.

- The blues tribute to Bo Diddley was a sloppy mess. What a shame.

- I think I’m officially sick of Justin Timberlake.

- Kanye West and Adele’s performance of “American Boy” was pretty dope. And for some reason, I actually like the Jermaine Jackson look that Kanye’s trying to bring back!

- I fast-forwarded to the performances and have no idea who won what. (Does it really even matter who won?!)

- M.I.A….M.I.A….M.I.A…

Here’s a clip of the unlikely duo of Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and Janet Jackson’s ex-boyfriend Jermaine Dupri singing the Cuomo-penned “Can’t Stop Partying.” It’s an odd pairing with an equally odd cast of five acoustic guitarists, a few people on shakers and one excellent flautist, but for some reason the whole of them together makes for a pretty great performance.

And you gotta love the lyrics: “I gotta have Patrón; I gotta have the E; I gotta have a lot of pretty girls around me…”

Not really a viral video, but I’d like it to be!

Courtesy of Stereogum’s “Decomposed” sessions.

About four years late to the party, I finally started watching seasons 1 and 2 of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on my iPhone while commuting to and from work. With episode titles like “The Gang Gets Racist,” “Gun Fever” and “Charlie Got Molested,” you can pretty much expect some kooky and absolutely hilarious stuff.

This show sort of reminds me of the random, off-the-wall and oh-so-wrong humor of the (sadly) short-lived “The Knights of Prosperity.” But unlike “Knights,” thankfully, “It’s Always Sunny…” didn’t get cancelled after the first season and is still going strong.

If you haven’t watched the show yet, I suggest you get your ass over to Hulu* the FX site ASAP!

Half Alien TV Show Rating: Hell Yeah! (x10!)

* Apparently, as of January 25th, Hulu will no longer have all of the episodes of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on their site. Oh well.