Easy-er Mac

Albeit, Easy-Mac is already pretty damn easy to make, but I propose an idea to make it even easier. I have run into this problem before: Easy-Mac in hand, faucet available, and a microwave available. Now I'm fairly savvy in my culinary endeavors, so without a measuring cup, estimating one cup of water isn't terribly difficult.

But for a 9-year-old, who is more likely to make Easy-Mac, to estimate a cup of water might be a little difficult... you can forget about them being able to estimate 2/3 a cup required to make one packet. That's why I propose to Kraft a simple solution to this.

All they need to do is print a few extra lines on the package that holds the dry noodles (A). As far as production goes, nothing extra is being added. The bag already has "Tear Here" printed on it, so it's only a simple adjustment. To measure 2/3 cup of water required to make one packet, fill to the bottom line. To measure one cup required to make 2 packets, fill to the top line.



After you add a couple simple lines and the words "For One Packet" and "For Two Packets" all that's left to add is another diagram to the cheese mix pouch (B). And now you have yourself Easy-er-Mac... simple as that.

Kiosk 37 & Smashing Magazine

It's already made an appearance before, but Kiosk 37 has once again been featured in a Smashing Magazine post. This time, it was featured in Creative Print Typography Layouts. Check it out, there's also a wealth of inspirational work that's definitely worth a look.

It was also featured in the June of 2008 post Beautiful Brochures and Booklets. Smashing Magazine is an online magazine/blog tailored to the creative industry. They always have some great posts and a huge subscription base, which means a lot of exposure. If you're not familiar with it, it's worth adding it to an RSS Feed.

Blogger's "Reaction" Feature

I don't think it's new, but I just found Blogger's "Reaction" widget. I've been interested in adding something similar to Facebook's "Like" feature and what do you know? Blogger was way ahead of me.

How To Add

In Blogger, go to (1) Layout (2) Page Elements and in your "Blog Posts" module click (3) Edit.



By default, Blogger gives you 3 categories: Funny, Interesting, Cool. You can add more or remove some if you want. In my case, I only wanted one; a "Like" button.



If I kept everything as the default settings, it would give me something that looks like the first image shown in this post. Not quite a "Like" button, so I had to edit the code myself. To do so, I made only one category simply labeled "Like" and after saving all my progress, I moved into the "Edit HTML" module. I clicked "Expand Widget Templates" to show all the code. This line of code was made from the settings I had just set up:

<span class='reaction-buttons'><b:if cond='data:top.showReactions'><table border='0' cellpadding='0' width='100%'><tr><td valign='center'><span class='reactions-label'><data:top.reactionsLabel/></span></td>
<td><iframe allowtransparency='true' class='reactions-iframe' expr:src='data:post.reactionsUrl' frameborder='0' name='reactions' scrolling='no'/></td></tr></table></b:if></span>

It's a little messy and it had some things in there that I didn't want. The following line is the code that renders the word "Reactions" (or whatever you decide to name your categories). In my scenario, I didn't want it shown at all, so I just deleted the line:

<span class='reactions-label'><data:top.reactionsLabel/></span>

Some of the other code was formatting for tables. Since I only have 1 box, I don't need to worry about how multiple boxes will look. With that said, I cleaned the code even more. This is the final code that simulates the "Like" feature I was going for:

<span class='reaction-buttons'><b:if cond='data:top.showReactions'>
<iframe allowtransparency='true' class='reactions-iframe' expr:src='data:post.reactionsUrl' name='reactions' scrolling='no'/></b:if></span>