I was pleasantly surprised in the last few weeks when opening several newly purchased Blu-ray movies. Upon opening these cases I found that I had in my hands a new type of eco-friendly packaging design I had never seen before in my life.
After some research online, it appears this case is called the Viva Eco-Box, and is also available for DVDs and Video Games. I for one am glad to see this kind of thought being taken in the production of a product that uses wasteful products like plastic. According to the Viva Eco-Box webpage these cases are also 100% recyclable, but there is no exact figure as to the total plastic saved in each case. I would be very interested to find out such a figure if anybody knows.
From the limited use I’ve had so far the case seems to work extremely well. The weight is reduced, but the strength is still present as well as the protective ability of the case. I’ve seen many complaints floating around online about these cases, and I’ve yet to really understand what there is not to like about these cases.
I can only hope that this type of packaging becomes the norm. I also highly encourage you to support the companies that have been willing to embrace this design.

To say that Tweetie for Mac is my new favourite desktop Twitter application would be completely incorrect. What I should really tell you is that I could not find an application to hold that title before Tweetie came along. Everything I tried before suffered from either serious problems in aestheics, overuse of screen real estate or poor user interface. Tweetie seems to have solved nearly all those problems and appear to be constantly improving their product.
Tweetie began as an iPhone Twitter application from the great people over at atebits. Tweetie for iPhone has been my default mobile Twitter application and it appears they have brought everything they learned on the iPhone into their new desktop program.
Tweetie has a very elegant design with large buttons for your Timeline, @ Replies or Mentions, Direct Messages and Search. The layout at the top of screen feels very familiar if you use the iTunes store, and shows where you’ve travelled if you start wandering through other peoples posts and replies. Conversations between yourself and other twitterers are very easy to follow and can be brought out into separate screens. These separate screens can also seemingly be used for many other aspects of the program as well. You can also view nearly full information on any twitter user who’s name is in your timeline, including profile photo, description, their posts, friends and followers. There are options for static or auto rolling scroll bar when new posts are made, as well as a menu bar icon that lights up when those posts arrive. For those power users Tweetie on both desktop and iPhone supports multiple accounts.
Tweetie for Mac comes in two flavours currently. One being the free version with very limited advertising presented in your regular timeline, the second being a paid version without advertisements for the price of $19.95, currently discounted to $14.95 as of the time of writing this post.
This application comes very highly recommended, and I can only imagine the beautiful things to come from the people at atebits with the support of dedicated twitterers who value the products they use.

Today I received the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had the chance to set as my background on my MacBook.
My fiance, who after nearly two years is getting to know me too well made me this collage background with my favourite colour, and text from my favourite author.
I’ve included the background here for you if you are interested. Its encoded for 1280×800, but I think if I asked nice and enough and had enough demand, it could be found for other screen sizes.
Thank you fiance for making something beautiful, and thank you Neil Gaiman for providing inspiration.