Now this is something special. Some ingenious chap has actually created a recreation of the classic arcade shooter Defender, wait for it… as a website favicon.

You know favicons, they’re those teeny tiny little icons you get next to a website address bar which show the company’s logo or something and get saved when you bookmark it. They’re only 16 pixels square, so to get even the most crude version of Defender running in there is mind boggling.

I found this via Andy Bennett, but don’t take our word for it, head over to the page and try it out for yourself. Amazing.

I think my favourite website is currently www.barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com which is a little oddity created by Matthew Honan who says of the web “I loved that I could pluck some odd thing out of my brain and someone, somewhere out there would relate to it. Might even love it.”

The page just serves up short phrases, some of which are really lovely and poke affectionate fun at the feelgood Obama factor. Have a look and refresh the page a few times, there are some great lines on there. The new bicycle trend has now spread, there was also a Hillary Clinton version (it’s down now) and yes, John McCain has one too, although it simply says JOHN McCAIN IS SUPER AWESOME! no matter how many times you refresh it. Hmm…

My guerrilla efforts at work to pin up a few of the Obama phrases around the studio also resulted in some McCain retaliation:

Let’s hope his aim isn’t so good these days…

Brand Tags is a fascinating little site. In it’s own words: “The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people’s heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is.”

The idea is, of course, fascinating because it is true, even if the word ‘is’ gets in the way. The site then goes on to show you a logo representative of a brand (some of which us UK people might not know as there is a bit of a US bias at the moment) and then you are prompted to enter your first thought. It’s like Mallet’s Mallet but with brands and without the ludicrous spectacles.

After you have entered in a word or phrase you get another brand and so on… You can look at all the words and phrases the brand has been linked to by other people and you can even get presented with the words and try to guess the brand from that. The tags are shown in a nice typographic DNA cloud-like list and some of the results might surprise you.

A great idea, and nicely done. It’s interesting to see just how different your perception of something might be to other people’s, or indeed be validated by your spot on response. Just goes to show how ephemeral brands really are, they’re not logos but psychology after all.

Thanks to Gianni for the link.

If you never managed to get an invite to Ffffound!, then try I ? IT which is open to all. I haven’t played with it much but it appears to be much the same, even with a lot of the same graphics and ladies, although it brings in tagging and more of a social networking aspect. I’m not sure if I like that, I felt quite liberated by Ffffound!, not having to slavishly tag everything, but at least with I ? IT you’ve got a half decent chance of finding something again in the future…

Test out your typographic recognition skills with The Rather Difficult Font Game which is doing the rounds at the moment. It’s nicely done and worth a look.

Before you ask, I got 27 out of 34 which I guess isn’t bad, although the leaderboard doesn’t even extend that far. I’ve replayed it since and its easy to get them all once you’ve got into the groove, but it’s that first score that counts!

Yes that’s right, the rumours have been proved true, Flickr now does video. At the moment it’s for Pro users only but someone at Flickr has obviously decided they can give YouTube a run for their money. Let’s hope the quality stays high and it becomes a source of interesting footage rather than Jackass style japes and high school student miming…

Check out the Flickr blog for more info and check out the group to watch some.