For your early-afternoon entertainment, I have the story of Mike Giepert, who happened one day to spell something clever with the icons in his dock.

His website, in fact, has a whole raft of these sets, including those submitted by his readers, to spell everything from "vamp" to "agoraphobic."

What can you come up with? Feel free to take your own screenshots, add them to our TUAW Flickr Pool and leave a comment!

With the release of iPhone OS 3.0, I was wondering if emoji icons still worked (they do), and then it finally dawned on me: why not iChat? A quick search turned up exactly what I was looking for: Emoji for iChat. This free downloadable icon pack basically adds the iPhone Emoji icons to iChat, accessible from the standard smiley-face dropdown menu. For it to work, however, both sides have to have it installed; if your recipient does not use the tool, all they'll see is gibberish.

Emoji for iChat is a free download from Einar Andersson & Tor Rauden Källstigen. The download includes an installer which will require you to restart iChat.

The guys over at the RetroMacCast sent us a link to their latest episode, featuring an interview with none other than Rob Janoff, the designer of Apple's old rainbow Mac logo. The interview starts a little less than halfway into the show, and it's cool to hear a voice right out of Apple's past.

They talk about the inception of the logo -- how Apple came to Janoff's firm and what they originally asked for in terms of a design. He actually had very little guidance when first creating the logo, and in fact hadn't seen any of Apple's branding or even heard of the company before he created the now-iconic image. He also talks about how lucky he was in choosing the image -- he saw it as a pretty obvious choice to use a picture of fruit for a company named after said fruit, but like any great logo, there ended up being layers of meaning behind that apple bite (or byte, as he points out).

Nothing really earthshaking in the interview (he hasn't had contact with Apple since, and even he says that the mythology behind the company has much more to do than just the familiar logo), but hey, if you're hanging out today during Memorial Day and need something interesting to listen to while barbecuing, you can tune in and learn a little bit about Apple's corporate history.

Welcome to another edition of Mac 101, TUAW's series for beginners. Today, we show you how to get more bang for your desktop real-estate buck with Finder icon labels.

Have you ever wanted to know how large a picture on your Desktop was, but didn't want to open it (or even just hit ⌘I to get info)? Or instantly know how many items were in a folder? Mac OS X lets you display that information right under (or next to) the icon itself.

How? Easy! Click on your Desktop, and choose Show View Options from the View menu (or just hit ⌘J.) Then, click the radio button next to Show item info. Voíla! Instant metadata for your Desktop files and folders. For pictures, the Finder will show their width and height in pixels.

You can also adjust the position of the labels associated with the icons on your desktop. Instead of having the file and folder names beneath your icons, why not have a change and put them to the right? Just click either Right (or Bottom, if you prefer the default) under Label position.

For other awesome beginner tips, visit our Mac 101 category.

One of the most common ways to customize your tried-and-true desktop is by changing the wallpaper. While easy and effective, the wallpaper switcheroo is not the only trick up the sleeves of the customizers among us. For some, the most rewarding customization results from replacing icons.

There are many reasons to do this, including replacing system and application icons to create an overall aesthetic, easing the identification of a particular external hard drive by using its product image as an icon, or even replacing poorly-designed icons entirely (we're looking at you, Adobe).

We Love Icons aims to make it easy for icon lovers to discover new icons from around the web that are free for personal use. In their own words, designers Dan Wiersema and Nando Albuquerque started We Love Icons because, well... they love icons! The site itself is very well designed and easy to navigate; there is even an easy-to-spot option for filtering icons based on type: Mac-compatible, PNG file format, or Windows-compatible.

Further adding to the greatness of this site, the How-To page is a great resource for those new to the icon-customization game. There are links to external content on the history of icons, tutorials on changing icons, and even design-related icon articles. The How-To area also features an Apps section which lists several useful programs for replacing and creating icons. Each application list item includes a one-sentence summary, the application's platform (web, Mac, or Windows), and also the application's price.

Overall, I am impressed with the content of the site and the quality of its presentation. We Love Icons has secured a bookmark in my "Icons" folder right next to the link to InterfaceLIFT's icon section. Dear readers, I present this question to you: in my never-ending search for the best icons, do you have any favorites that you have either designed or found? Hit up the comments and share the love.

If you've always wondered how to draw a "ball of nodes" as featured in a variety of Mac OS X icons, wonder no more: Mike Rundle of flyosity.com has written a tutorial to show you how using Photoshop.

Rundle discusses "spheric realism," the process of understanding the materials, reflectivity, and roundness of a sphere, and how to accurately illustrate it digitally.

Clever users can easily adapt the technique for Illustrator, Acorn, or many other compositing tools that feature blur and blending mode support.

Rundle also offers a PSD file containing the artwork with no strings attached.

Thanks Todd!

Gedeon Maheux has an post about how an icon is designed from the aptly-named Iconfactory (specifically the Frenzic app icon), and while I don't have any design skills to speak of at all, it's an interesting look into how those little snippets of art are made.

Icons are increasingly important, especially on the iPhone and OSX, as Apple leverages icons more and more in their interfaces, from the Dock to CoverFlow to the iPhone's home screen. He sounds a little sheepish that they obsess over icons, but why shouldn't they -- every time you decide whether or not to buy or use an app (some might say the most important part of an application's lifeline), you're likely looking right at the icon.

There are a few things to take away here: they designed the icon not by itself, but right alongside all the other icons on an average iPhone screen -- in context, where people would see it. And they walked a thin line: while they wanted it to stand out as something you'd chose even among the apps you've already purchased, they didn't want it to be so bright or flashy that it broke the UI. Truth be told, Frenzic's icon still looks a little bright to me, but the lesson is good: the UI comes first.

Ged closes with a sentiment I've agreed with for a while: while there's a disturbing trend of adding "On Sale" or "New!" to icons in the App Store (not to call anyone out, but ahem) that doesn't serve the developers or their customers. An icon, just like your app, should be subtle and simple and beautiful. After all, isn't that why we're all using Macs in the first place?

With the introduction of EPEAT Gold rated MacBooks and MacBook Pros last week, Apple has definitely been warming up to the environmental movement lately. So, it was only fitting that they would change a small part of System Preferences to reflect the EPEAT rating.

That's right, the Energy Saver icon has changed from an old incandescent bulb to a newer, more energy-efficient fluorescent bulb. Now you will only have to change the energy saver icon every 7 years, but be careful when you dispose of the old icons because they contain mercury (just kidding).

This change has only shown up on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Do you think Apple will eventually update their entire line to have this new icon (and, of course, be EPEAT Gold rated)? We definitely hope so!

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

I'm eager to test out Apple's upcoming MobileMe service, the .Mac replacement scheduled to launch in a few weeks. Unfortunately for many, my enthusiasm is matched by disdain for the MobileMe logo.

Gawker says "...it should be on a package of Japanese soap." Paul Thurrott notices a similarity between MobileMe and Microsoft WindowsME and Manhattan Offender asks flat-out: "Is 'MobileMe' the worst logo in the history of Mac?"

First of all, Manhattan Offender, Apple is the company that produced MobileMe and its graphic representation, not "Mac."

Remember, Apple is pushing this (get it?) as "Exchange for the rest of us." It's not a corporate product, but a consumer service with corporate-like features. We think the logo is airy and fun.

What's your take? Decent enough or utter garbage?

[Via Geek & Mild]

This is going to sound sad, but the one application that I have missed the most in upgrading to Leopard is CandyBar 2. I've always been something of a customization addict, and being able to take advantage of some of the beautiful icons that artists have made over the years to make OS X look its best is something I can easily spend hours doing, productivity be damned

Fortunately for me, Panic (the guys behind Transmit and Coda) have just released the Leopard-only CandyBar 3, meaning I can now resume wasting time making my desktop look its prettiest. CandyBar 3 adds more than just Leopard compatibility - it is a pretty substantial program overhaul. Not only can system icons be changed, the dock can be now be customized too (free Icon and Dock sets available from the geniuses at Iconfactory). Additionally, Panic and Iconfactory have merged the CandyBar and the Pixadex (kind of like iTunes for your icon sets) applications together, providing icon management and customization in one package, instead of two.

From the CandyBar 3 release notes:

• Integrated CandyBar together with Pixadex with an entirely new interface
  
• Added large (512 x 512) icon support
  
• Leopard dock customization
  
• Additional system icons
  
• Quick Look integration
  
• More reliable system icon restoration, and much more

The program can be downloaded for a 15-day/250-icon limit trial here. The program is $29 for new users. Owners of either CandyBar 2 or Pixadex 2 can upgrade for $24. Owners of both Pixadex and CandyBar 2 can upgrade for $19. Any user who bought CandyBar 2 or Pixadex 2 after October 1, 2007 qualifies for a free upgrade.

Now, if we can only get a Leopard-version of Shapeshifter out - I can totally optimize my interface!

Thanks, Sebastian

This one is a little bit of inside (blogging) baseball, but I know a lot of our readers blog themselves and so might find this tip handy. Ankur Kothari (whose Quicksilver customizations we've mentioned before) has cooked up an excellent little Quicksilver plugin called IconGrabber that does exactly what it sounds like. It allows you to easily create an image of an application icon at an arbitrary resolution in one of several popular image formats. Using a few simple terminal commands to change the defaults you can select the default image size and format. So, for instance, here at TUAW we post lots of icons at 125px wide in the jpeg format. With IconGrabber I can now create those images in one step as you see above, where I'm saving the Time Machine icon to my TUAW pictures folder. If you're not a Quicksilver fiend, Ankur also has a stand-alone application to do the same thing. In any case, if you regularly need to extract icons as images, IconGrabber is a godsend.

IconGrabber is a free download for either the Quicksilver plugin or the stand-alone application. The instructions for customizing are in the announcement post and the comments below.

Many folks commented on our recent post about adding those gorgeous drawer icons to your Stacks. As great as the originals are, however, a lot of you also wanted to know how to customize them. Fortunately, the original author was kind enough to make the blank drawer PNG available, so in this little tutorial I'll show you how to make your own customized drawer icons using nothing more than Preview. Obviously you can get much sophisticated results using a more serious image editing application, but Preview can do enough to get you the results you see above and since everyone has it, I thought it best to focus on using it despite its limitations.

Reader Fredrik L sends word (thanks!) that Samuel Svensson is back from India, and that means his little mini-application, Refresh Finder, has been updated and is Leopard-ready.

There's not much more to say about this one-- you can probably guess what Refresh Finder does from its name, and while it is small and simple, it's also proof positive that even small and simple things can make life a lot easier. Keeping your Finder windows up to date isn't hard, but it's definitely helpful.

If you're at all like me, you didn't wait for too long after the last Stevenote to scour the Internet for that "blades of grass" Leopard wallpaper, just so you too could pretend it was October already and you were using 10.5.

Those of you out there (I have no idea how many of you there are-- we're all Mac nerds, right? ...right?) will have to join me in applauding reader Sebastiaan, who noticed that there was a new System Preferences icon in the latest Leopard build, and put it up for download. Spreading the actual icon (and the actual wallpaper, actually) is a no-no, but Sebastiaan's icon is only based on the same design, and not a copy of the icon itself.

And even if you aren't into deluding yourself about your version of OS X, it's still a good looking icon. Changing the icon yourself is possible, but using CandyBar is infinitely easier. You too can pretend, at least for a few months until Leopard actually releases, that you're a Leopard-using rockstar.

After my minor gripe that the iPhone's calendar app displays the proper date on its icon, even though Mac OS X's still doesn't, a few readers directed me towards iConiCal. Basically, all iConiCal does is start up up iCal to update its icon, then it quits both iCal and itself so you don't have extra apps eating up system resources, but you also gain an iCal Dock icon that keeps you up to date. iConiCal also gives you some icon customization options, offering two alternative colors for iCal's icon both in its dormant state and after it is updated. Of course, this app also has a 'start at login' option so your iCal icon can get set right when you log in or start up, so you won't have to think about it for the remainder of your session. For anyone clamoring to have an up-to-date iCal icon and those who aren't up for adding the date to their menubar by tweaking the Date & Time System Preferences pane, iConiCal sounds like a fine solution.

iConiCal is donationware available from BlockSoft.