Graphic design doesn’t make up a huge part of my daily activities, but when I have a project on my to-do list, it’s all-consuming. The biggest problem? Explaining to colleagues that, no, I can’t use that headshot posted to your Facebook profile because (a) it’s terrible and (b) it’s about 37 sizes too small. I’m waiting patiently for the day when the general population understands the difference between 72 dpi and 300 dpi — or, alternately, the day that graphic design goes the way of the stereopticon. (Guess which’ll come first!)

On occasion, I’m forced to dig for high-res images on services like iStockPhoto, which is interesting (because there’s a lot to choose from), but also frustrating (because so much of it is terrible). Thankfully, someone with nothing better to do has begun a small but important blog to document the worst of the lot: iStockHell. May it grow and prosper in 2010.

AT&T’s corporate communications team is just terrible. Seriously: tar-and-feathers terrible. I mean, I’m sure the Joe Schmoes and Jane Roes who do most of the heavy lifting are fine, but the company bobbleheads AT&T puts on national television to speak to the public? Train wrecks, all of ’em.

For example, many users blame AT&T for the terrible performance of the Apple iPhone. AT&T spokesmodels, however, lays the blame at the feet of Apple and says that users don’t know how to use the phone. And while there’s got to be some truth in that — especially the part about the hardware being imperfect — to say that the AT&T network is hunky-dorey when I’m sitting in the front room of my house in downtown New Orleans, and I’m getting two whole bars of reception…well, that’s idiotic.

So, someone has crafted a plan to show AT&T how craptacular their network really is. I have no idea how many people will actually do this, but I may give it a shot. I mean, what else have I got to do at 2pm CST (12pm PT) this Friday?

Subject: Operation Chokehold On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. The goal is to have every iPhone user (or as many as we can) turn on a data intensive app and run that app for one solid hour. Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments. The idea is we’ll create a digital flash mob. We’re calling it in Operation Chokehold. Join us and speak truth to power! [more at FakeSteve.net]

Power to the iPeople, y’all.

Prostitution has long been legal in some parts of Nevada. But, until recently, that freedom only applied to sex workers who had the right parts themselves: Language in health codes required all prostitutes to have regular cervical exams, effectively making male prostitution illegal. Last Friday, that changed. Nevada brothels can now employ both men and women. [Salon via BoingBoing]

I don’t know what it is about Junior Boys that works for me. I mean: yes, I totally love electronica — always have — but their music is far more spare than most of the stuff I keep in heavy rotation. Also, like a lot of gay men (I don’t really understand why), I prefer female vocalists to male. But despite all that, there’s something about JB’s tone and sound that’s just…well, “transporting” is about as good a word as I can think of without waxing totally emo on you guys.

Oh, and their videos don’t hurt, either:

[via The Boyfriend]

Thomas Hoving (seated) with Yousef and Estrellita Karsh

Thomas Hoving, the charismatic showman and treasure hunter whose decade-long tenure as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art fundamentally transformed the institution and helped usher in the era of the museum blockbuster show, died Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 78….

He became its seventh director and, at 35, its youngest. And during his tumultuous reign, the museum did many things it had never done before, often for the better, sometimes for the worse: it formed a contemporary art department and displayed Pop painting alongside Poussin and David; regularly draped the now-familiar banners on its facade to advertise shows; created the enlarged front steps that have become Fifth Avenue’s bleachers; paid $5.5 million for a single painting (the Velázquez masterpiece “Juan de Pareja”) while quietly selling works by Van Gogh, Rousseau and others to help pay for it….

In his establishment-rattling mission to make the art museum a more populist institution, Mr. Hoving was “probably the most influential and innovative museum official of the postwar period,” Michael Kimmelman wrote in The New York Times.

–full obituary at NYTimes.com

Remember my adventures in speech-to-text? Well, they’ve gone mobile. Dragon just launched an iPhone version of its NaturallySpeaking software [iTunes link], and it’s free for the time being. Even better: it works like a charm. Look:

C’mon. Like you didn’t know that was going to be the first thing out of my mouth.

Screw the jet packs. I’ll settle for this, thankyouverymuch.