I recently received my iPhone 4 in the mail, and I have to say, this thing is a beauty. But aside from all of its robust features, the most impressive improvement for me would have to be the retina display. It’s unbelievably sharp. It’s so clear in fact, that looking at my older iPhone screen feels like I’m looking at pixilated image.

Even though the new retina display is pretty awesome, it has left most apps with the dilemma of needing updated graphics. I’ve noticed that the apps that don’t have new hi-res icons stick out like a sore thumb. I’m sure that within the next couple of months though, most apps would have updated images to look clear in the new screen.

Before a couple of days ago, I wasn’t aware that you could customize a web clip icon for the iPhone. I though that only an app from the app store could have that feature, and that the most you could do for any website was upload an image that automatically got cropped and had a glare added to it by the phone. I noticed Fifty of Fifty, a neat photography project by Rick Nunn I came across, had a custom icon. He was nice enough to show me how it's done. It’s really simple actually. You make your custon icon, (114 px x 114 px for the retina display), and set it with a rel of ‘apple-touch-icon-precomposed” in the header code. This way, the iPhone won't add any effects to it.

So if you have an iPhone, be sure to click the “Add to Home Screen” button to see my new icon!

Over the holidays, I decided to treat myself to a new external hard drive. I wanted something I could use on my desk for backups, and even some general storage. My current drive at the time was just about to top off and I didn’t want to risk losing any backups. So I did my normal research online, looking for something both reliable and visually appealing.

I discovered these hard drives by LaCie that look amazing. The drives are actually in collaboration with designer Philippe Starck, a world-renowned designer. I actually new about Starck from the watches he designed for Fossil, so I was really excited to find these drives he designed as well. Also, LaCie is a very trusted hardware company, with a great track record in creating good hard drives, so I new they were reliable.

I‘ve had the desktop hard drive for about a month now, and it has worked wonderfully. It also makes my desk look that much nicer. The only thing I could say that bugged me a little was the default drive icon the popped up on my Mac when I plugged it in, (kidding). Nevertheless, I decided to create an icon for it, so that it would look as nice on my desktop as it does on my desk.

LaCie | Starck Hard Drive Icon (click image to download)