It’s Blue Beanie Day, so come show your support for web standards by sticking one of these babies on, snapping a pic, and using it for the day in place of your normal photo on sites like Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and so on.

(Mine is obviously Photoshopped. I couldn’t find a blue one, but I happened to have a photo of myself wearing a black one while standing in Times Square a couple of weeks ago.)

Solidarity now!

Just one thing to say today about the looming ban on plastic bags in major supermarkets and pharmacies in San Francisco:

Congratulations to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors for having the guts to do the right thing.

Now, if only the rest of the country would follow their lead.

There’s a difference between the Rolling Stones and a Rolling Stones cover band, and we all know what it is.

When you copy a great product instead of create one of your own, you’ve already lost a big chunk of what makes a great user experience.

Namely, the anticipation, surprise, and joy a person has when experiencing a great product for the first time.

Apple has a cult-like following because they put out great stuff reliably, not simply in response to someone else’s innovation. And they solve problems in really compelling ways, not just by stealing ideas from different places and hodge-podging them together. Because of this, Apple’s new releases are welcomed with much anticipation, excitement, blog posts, rumors, and everything else most companies wish they could achieve. All of this is part of the Apple experience.

Sony, Motorola, and others can’t create a true iPhone challenger without first doing what Apple did - not literally, but in spirit. You have to take a fresh look at the problems with cell phone interfaces, and come up with something that solves them in an amazing way. Then you have to follow through, 100%, to make every last detail of your phone superior to all the others. You can’t just design something that looks and works similarly to the iPhone and expect it to do well. The market doesn’t like copycats - it likes the real thing.

To earn the same response and respect that innovators earn, you have to create something just as great or better that solves the problem in a completely different way. You have to earn your own user experience points by doing something new and brilliant, that has a real chance of capturing the attention of the market.

Throw out the copycat notebook. Solve problems in your own way instead of rehashing someone else’s great work.

Interesting conversation over on the IxDA list about what everyone thinks are their tenets of design. These are mine.

1. Challenge standards, all the time, every time, because they can always be improved. This includes design and process standards.
2. Never, ever stop asking questions (”What does this mean? Where can I learn more? What if we changed this color? How can this label be better?” etc.) . Somewhere underneath all those questions is some illuminating truth that you can learn from and use in the future.
3. Never be afraid to make decisions. All decisions are temporary. Make them, and be willing to be wrong. The only way to get better is to learn from your mistakes and accept that you’re only as good as you can be in any given moment.
4. Always be your own worst critic, and never stop critiquing your own work. Great work is the result of a whole lot of bad work.
5. Find fault in every design. There’s always something wrong. There’s always something that can be improved. Find it, and obsess over fixing it. (Of course, to temper this, you should also be sure to praise valiant efforts, treat people well, give credit where credit is due, etc.)
6. Solve for the moment
   

There are more, I’m sure. But I think this is the heart of what I believe.

Starting Monday, for the low price of $399, you can not only give an XO Laptop to a child in a developing country, you can also bring one home to give to your own child or to pass on to your neighbor’s kid.

Pass it on!