Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of ‘Friendster’ Civilization

To show a client what their website (brochure, postcard, book design, etc.) might look like with content, designers use placeholder dummy text. Most likely that dummy text is lorem ipsum, seemingly random strings of Latin text that looks something like this…

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi a nibh nunc. Sed lacinia urna et ante consequat ultrices. Suspendisse faucibus elementum erat. Suspendisse tempor convallis nisi, eget porta lectus congue sed. Nunc in enim magna, vitae ultricies metus. Aliquam malesuada enim at massa sagittis porttitor. Sed a tortor diam. Proin tortor quam, consectetur eu venenatis eu, sollicitudin eu tortor.

It was crafted to simulate size and spacing of English sentences so lorem ipsum is neither random nor truly Latin but it can get kind of boring.

To help break the monotony, here are some of my favorite alternative lorem ipsum generators:

• Hipster Ipsum - the ispum that is too cool for school
• Gangsta Lorem Ipsum - the best ipsum Snoop Dogg has to offer
• Bacon Ipsum - a “meatier” ipsum
• Vegan Ipsum - not to be out done by pork, the vegetarian ispum
• Cupcake Ipsum – the “sugar-coated” ipsum
• Samuel L. Ipsum – cupcake ipsum too sweet, nothin’ a little Sam King of Cool can’t fix
• Greeking Machine – covers classic Latin plus Techno Babble and Hillbilly too
• Fillerati - the high-brow literary ipsum
• Fillerama – the low-brow television ipsum, from The Simpsons to Futurama

As expected, Facebook officially rolled out the Timeline feature for brand pages yesterday at their Facebook Marketing Conference. There will be plenty of blogging over the next few weeks as companies flesh out their histories online. With the ability to go back 100 years, that’s a whole lot of fleshing. Some brands already fleshed out include Ford, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Old Spice. Check them out for inspiration for your own brand and then head over to Mashable for Facebook Timeline for Brands: The Complete Guide.

This month’s Cool Tool post goes to FFFFallback, a handy little bookmarklet that lets web designers easily test different fallback fonts for their web-based creations.

To install, simply drag the bookmarklet to your browser’s toolbar (only works for browsers that use WebKit such as Chrome, Safari, and FireFox). To use, simply click the bookmarklet and it will scan the current web page’s CSS for existing Web Fonts and list them on the right side of your browser along with input fields for changing the fonts and font styles (e.g. font-size, color, line-spacing).

FFFFallback was created by two self-proclaimed “professional nerds” Josh Brewer and Mark Christian who eke out a living at a little known company called Twitter. You can download the source code on github.

Looking for Web Fonts to fill out your @font-face tag, start with Google’s open-source fonts (with over 400 fonts). If you don’t mind paying a monthly fee for fonts then try Adobe’s Typekit (with over 700 fonts). There is a free plan under Typekit but you only have access to a “trial library”  (at last count 192 fonts) and requires you to display the Typekit badge.

The first Facebook Marketer Conference will be held in NYC on February 29, 2012, but it is by invitation only. However, if your invite got lost in the mail, you can still catch some of the event real-time on the fMC website, including key presentations from Facebook’s global marketing solution team (i.e. Sheryl Sandberg, Chris Cox, and David Fischer).

One of the hot features to be unveiled at the conference is Facebook Timeline for Brands. Timeline for individuals was introduced at F8 in September as a new profile page format which generates scrapbook-like collages of status updates, photos, and videos spanning user’s entire history on Facebook (watch video below). For brands, it is an opportunity to create a more intimate relationship with the user by “seamlessly” integrating with their daily lives.

Timeline, along with Facebook’s other new feature Gestures, opens up the door to a more meaningful way for brands to interact with consumers. But just like the Photo Tagging Auto-Suggestion of last June it is a slippery slope, raising concerns over privacy and the perception that we are commercializing our most private moments. These things tend to be self-correcting though and can’t honestly fault companies for exploring new avenues of engagement. For now, it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.