Truly excellent archive of television commercials from every U.S. Presidential campaign since 1952, assembled by The Museum of the Moving Image. What’s particularly interesting is the prevalence of cartoon animation and jingles in the first few elections, and how they quickly gave way to more serious, documentary commercials.

Round-up of online tools for calculating how much you’ll pay in taxes under the proposed tax plans from Barack Obama and John McCain.

Modernist re-interpretations of recent films seen through the lens of branding. Quite beautiful.

Well-designed, cross-platform utility for synchronizing folder contents between multiple computers. Currently in public beta.

Not to be missed opportunity to see this well-respected digital artist in a very intimate venue.

A promisingly impressive demonstration of a new feature in the forthcoming update to the behemoth image-editing program. Via Virginia.

Back story on her experience writing about the positive side of design awards for Eye Magazine. “Designers? Awards? Positive outcome? Everyone knows it’s much cooler to complain about how awards are rigged/racist/sexist/a rip-off/judged while drunk/just plain wrong.”

“Because he is losing right now, McCain is on a more urgent mission to turn around his campaign. Because he is under attack, Obama feels the need to show he won’t let his rival push him around. The effect is the same, which is to degrade the political dialogue at a moment when the nation faces some of the most difficult challenges in a generation or more.” This qualifies as a ‘must read.’

Among the findings: “The majority of bloggers we surveyed currently have advertising on their blogs. Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is US$1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is US$6,000 with US$75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.”

An amusing ad campaign from Ikea. “One day a tortoise raced a hare. He won.”