On a recent trip to the Bell TIFF Lightbox we stopped in for a cocktail at LUMA, their inhouse bar. 

Any movie house that has a cocktail lounge built into it is already on the right track; one that creates its cocktail list based loosely on the films they show pushes it even further in the right direction.

The Amélie immediately caught my attention (probably because it's one of my favourite movies) as did the Beetlejuiced. But we settled on a delicious Rum Diary instead.

I can only hope that these cocktails will rotate on a regular basis, bringing new twists to an already great menu.

click to embiggen

Giving the sometimes irreverent nature of their coverage it shouldn't surprise me when they so nail a piece of their interface. In order to enlarge the video they take a cue from two pop-culture icons: The Simpsons and André The Giant. I could just mouse over that little guy all day.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to use "embiggen" to prompt the user to click for a larger image, but it's nice to know that the Giant Bomb crew and I are on the same page.

The desktop version of the software brings everything over with it from iOS and even adds a few thing. My favourite is the way in which it displays the number of unread articles in the dock icon itself. The slightly recessed nature of the numbers, the perfect angle and perspective just show much care and effort went into making this product the best that it is.

click to embiggen

I've recently gotten hooked on buying tshirts from the internet. Especially ones that have to do with Dr. Who and other geeky subjects. TeeFury, a website that offers up a new tshirt design every day, has quickly become one of my favourites.

What I love about TeeFury is that they've streamlined the buying process so well that before you know it, it's being shipped to your door.

And I think that the most significant key to this is a simple button placement and some cheeky commentary that goes along with it.

click to embiggenThe "unnecessarily large button" is a user's dream. A lot of sites clutter the checkout experience to the point that you never know exactly what you need to do to complete your transaction. Not so here, and it's appreciated.

You know the pesky little things I'm talking about. Whenever I see that little slot with the key in it my stomach drops a little. Not because I have a problem with using them as an incentive to return the carts to their proper place but because I almost never have change for them. And if I do, it never seems to be the amount those carts want, nay demand from me.

So I withdrew twenty bucks from the ATM, stood in line for the customer service person and asked her for change for the lock. Without blinking she opened up her till, handed me a quarter and told me to "Just bring it back when you're done shopping, honey".

That might not seem like much, but it sure made my day.

The app is free to download and use, but the display will degrade over time if you don't pay for the application. Soon the screen is filled with static, the horizontal hold starts going haywire and everything becomes pretty hard to make out.

click to embiggen

Where most trials simply time out, they've built a system for a paid upgrade that is actually feels like a natural limitation of the technology they are graphically mimicking. It makes for a beautifully integrated incentive for upgrading.

Using an airport terminal board as a visual metaphor, the Arrivals page on their website is a great representation of their progress.

click to embiggen

It's a great way to see what features you can look forward to in the future, and in the case of cloud syncing (their most requested feature) knowing that it's arrival is imminent could keep a customer from jumping ship to a competing product.

I even like that they post "secret project" statuses, but then again I've always liked a tease.

The hover-state for the Privacy link in the footer for Wordpress is both cheeky and refreshing:

click to embiggenAbout Us and Terms of Service also follow suit. Go check it out for yourself.

So it's nice to see them loosen their brand a little around the holidays and transform their normally black headlines into shiny, Christmassy red versions. They even replacing their buttons with the colourful variant.

click to embiggen

This is a win-win situation for Apple. It makes the email stand out from their normal line of communications as well as reinforces their holiday gift buying message. And it's pretty.

The wintery images used throughout are also a nice, seasonal touch.