The popular airline teamed up with website topguest.com which provides social media solutions for loyalty programs. Topguest monitors social media activity and rewards linked up members with bonus points for their activity.

This is quite a clever concept and I look forward to trying it out next time I am near a Virgin America terminal. Now, Virgin America could make this a lot easier for me if they would just start flying to Portland (PDX).

When I was a young child, I spent countless hours browsing our family’s extensive collection of National Geographic Magazine. At the time, my english skills were non-existent or severely limited, so my focus was on viewing the awe inspiring photography that captured my imagination.

Fast-forward to the year 2011 where, in the name of profit centers, editorial photography and the craft of photojournalism have been slashed down to the absolute minimum by magazine and newspaper editors alike. More than ever, profit and sensationalism takes priority over the quality of imagery or the reporting.

Thankfully, the staff at The Guardian still believes in the power of a well captured photojournalistic image and they have teamed up with Canon and National Geographic to produce “The Guardian Eyewitness“. Eyewitness is an iPad app that brings you up to 100 photographs at a time. Photographs produced by some of the best photojournalists of our time.

Picture of The Guardian Eyewitness iPad app in action.

The app presents these images as photo spreads one image at a time. Each photo comes with a caption and a Pro Tip that provides a technical detail about how the image was captured. Swiping left and right allows for easy navigation between images. With a simple touch gesture, all user interface elements fade away. All that the viewer is left with is the photograph itself. The app also allows for a little bit of pinch zooming into the image. One can mark it as a favorite for easy access later on or share it via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook. That is all there is to the app. Simple, beautiful, well done.

You can download The Guardian Eyewitness app from the App Store.

EA op

pp

o

decade after plans to oomanufacture Apple products in Brazil never materialized, the Brazilian Ministry of Science & Technology confirmed to Brazilian news portal G1 that Apple contract manufacturer Foxconn will begin iPad 2 production in the country by the end of August or early September.Epe

Of
Foxconn is in the process to add additional manufacturing capacity at its plant in Jundiaí, São Paulo. This is great news for the Latin American market where Apple products
Pr have been pextremely expensive due to high import tariffs. Local production should lower the current R$1,649 (US$1,000) price tag of the entry level iPad 2 by up to 40%.

Will Apple begin to manufacture computers in Brazil as well? One can only hope.

Here is what I imagine most people would attempt to do:

1. Log into the Groupon website.
2. Select “My Account” from the drop down in the upper right.
3. Click on the “Cancel my account” button.

Unfortunately, this easy 3 step recipe fails at the final step. There is no account cancellation feature on that page or any other page on the Groupon website. The FAQ does not list: “How do I cancel my Groupon account?”

I tried a similar approach on the Living Social website. Again, I was disappointed by the lack of an easy out.

Out of curiosity, I checked Amazon.com to see how easy it would be to close an account with them. Not that I would ever do that! The world’s largest on-line retailer offers a help-topic on the matter but doesn’t make the process easy either. They simply ask those wanting to close their account to contact them. That is one step better than what Groupon and Living Social have to offer.

I have sent support requests to both deal websites. I’ll update this post once I hear back from them and in the meantime I have unsubscribed from their distribution lists.

The lesson from this experience is that I will check account cancellation policies and procedures before I sign up for any new websites.

Update 1 (June 19): My Groupon account is now closed. I had to follow up with customer service as they first simply unsubscribed me from their mailings but they kept my account alive.

Update 2 (June 21): Still waiting for Living Social to get back to me.

C. Scott Andreas tweeted about this more than 12 days ago. And the Map of the Week blog wrote about this situation in a post titled ‘Quebec’s Longest Highway‘ on June 1st:

Quebec Route 366, according to Google runs from Atlantic City, New Jersey to Astoria, Oregon-aka U.S. Route 30.

You’d think this kind of mistake would be corrected very quickly, but here we are 16 days later and Quebec Route 366 is still running through Portland.

Update: According to a Google Maps help forum, Google is working on a fix.

Update – June 23rd 2011: Just received word from the Google Maps team:

The Google Maps problem you reported has been escalated to the appropriate team. We don’t have an immediate fix but are working hard for a resolution.

Via laughingsquid.com:

Richard Branson keeps his own blog and maintains a twitter account.

Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail BridgeCam—OHSU view, looking northeast (Source: TriMet)

The first camera is looking northeast at the construction site down from OHSU. The second camera is installed on the Eastside at OMSI and is looking southwest.

The new bridge is part of the $573 million Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Project which will connect downtown Portland with the City of Milwaukie in Clackamas County via southwest and southeast Portland by 2015.

View from the south side bike and pedestrian path, looking east. April 2010 visual representation. (Source: TriMet)

It will be the first bridge construction project across the Willamette River since the mid-1970ies and it will be the first bridge to exclusively carry non-auto traffic. Besides Light Rail Vehicles, the bridge will carry pedestrians, cyclists, buses and, streetcar vehicles.

Update: Here is a new video that gives a nice overview of the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Project:

Mette, together with food writer and friend of the studio Jen Stevenson, created a truly superb food guide to our lovely city, Portland, Oregon.

The guide is titled Portland’s 100 Best Places to Stuff Your Faces and it is available on-line now and at your favorite local bookstore very shortly.

I was watching Jen and Mette collaborate on this project and it was very inspiring to see this come together from draft to the final beautifully illustrated book that it is.

Jen spent countless hours scouting Portland’s food and restaurant scene and countless hours more editing her work down to 100 solid reviews of the best culinary delights that Portland has to offer.

Mette used her attention to detail and awesome design skills to make Jen’s work shine.

The result is a beautiful pocket sized guide that is perfect for Portland locals, newcomers and visitors alike. It would also make for a great gift for anyone that loves food and Portland.

The book comes with over 80 illustrations and beautifully drawn maps for easy cross referencing.

As an added bonus, the book is 100% Made in Portland! From the locally owned businesses reviewed in the book to the final product, printed and bound by a local printer.

In the article titled Team Effort, Portland based sportswriter John Brant writes about what it’s like to train and fundraise with Team in Training. He joined Team in Training in the 2009 Fall training season and chronicles the experiences and motivations of several participants. He also describes the symbiotic relationship between cancer and endurance sports. A well done article well worth reading.

The 2011 Summer Season Team in Training doing the traditional Go TEAM cheer