The Breakroom

Forget ghosts, goblins and things that go bump in the night. Every mac user knows the true meaning of fear. It goes by many names: The Spinning Beachball of Death. The Marble of Doom. The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Ok, maybe not that last one. But the OS X spinning wait cursor is well-known and well-dreaded by Mac users around the world.

Now there is a fun way for Mac users to band together, share their frustrations and take solace. Thanks to the marvel of the Internet, MarbleofDoom.com lets Mac users vent their collective annoyance at being held hostage (5 or 10 seconds at a time) by this unwanted glassy harbinger of OS X.

Photoshop hung up for almost a minute? Is Xcode showing you the beachball love? Spin on over to MarbleofDoom.com and select the appropriate application, and the time spent waiting for it to relinquish control of your system. A running total of all the time wasted is displayed for all the world to see. We’ve also included a more detailed data page where you can see how much time individual apps have contributed to the total. If misery loves company, then MarbleofDoom.com is our way of organizing one big, online therapy session for frustrated Mac users everywhere.

So don’t just powerlessly shake your fists in rage! Powerlessly shake them, then tell the world how long you were shaking them. We hope you’ll spread the word far and wide, and remember, it’s all in good fun. Enjoy!

Digg It!

Here at the Iconfactory, the steady creep toward October means just one thing – Halloween baby! That’s right, in just a few short days, switches will be flipped, graves robbed, spooky links posted and long dead pixels will be re-animated to send shivers up your mortal spine. But in order to keep the marching throngs of zombies placated, we need plenty of Halloween related links to throw at them.

This is where you come in. If you run into any particularly scary or clever Halloween blogs, websites or online activities, take a minute and send them to us. We’ll be posting the best all through the month of October along with all new spooky icon sets, desktop pictures and a few surprises thrown in for good measure. Now, go in search of spooky goodies and remember to bring your cross and holy water while you’re at it. You never know who’s watching.