Facebook Gifts artist cops to con
Wired has a kind-hearted story about original Mac icon designer Susan Kare. Kare's the one behind those cloying Facebook "gifts" cluttering up your News Feed. So far, Facebook members have exchanged more than 20 million of Kare's tiny graphics. And the suckers are paying up to $1 for each. Kare's thrilled to be a con artist, of course. "I can do things in gifts that I never could in UI design," Kare told Wired. "Screen icons have a job to do — they're more like traffic signs than illustrations. But the gifts don't have to be anything other than what they are." Which is, she surely meant to go on, a way to tell your friends that you're thinking of them, but too cheap to get a real present. Also, don't miss the funny tidbit about Kare's attempt to sneak a pot brownie onto Facebook for the 4/20 holiday. That's when I really knew this was a puff piece.