You wouldn’t think we’d have to write articles defending “proper” spelling, but after a recent Wired article arguing against standardized spelling, Lee Simmons, a copy editor at Wired, has penned a lovely rebuttal. Simmons points out that while textisms may be acceptable in texts and tweets, they have no place in professional writing where standardized spelling aids communication and enhances clarity. Well said!

This is fun — the Macworld | iWorld folks are having a t-shirt contest (dry, thank you, we’re geeks) to shine a light on some of the coolest t-shirts in the Apple world. We’re planning to hunt through our massive collection of vintage Mac shirts for some suitable entries.

It’s always interesting to calibrate one’s view of the world against the aggregate behavior of others, and Amazon’s recently released “Best of 2011” lists offer just this sort of insight. They compile Amazon’s best-selling, most wished for, most gifted, and most positively reviewed products of 2011, and it’s particularly fascinating to see which products appear multiple times. No Apple products make the cut, unless you count Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” biography.

Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design, Jonathan Ive, can now demand that his employees and everyone else address him as “Sir.” He’s been made a Knight Commander of the British Empire for his design work at Apple. Although Ive worked at Apple for several years, the arrival of Steve Jobs as CEO in 1995 launched an industrial design revolution at the company that has dramatically influenced products and design aesthetics worldwide.

After an April Fools’ Day joke about gorillas using iPads, Scott Engel, who works with orangutans at the Milwaukee County Zoo, decided to set up an iPad enrichment program for the zoo’s orangutans. Brian Cecente of Kotaku writes about how the orangutans are getting started with the iPad, and how other zoos are considering adding iPads to their primate enrichment programs as well.

This is truly bizarre. It appears, from a blog post that has gone viral and been read by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, that there are entire Apple retail stores in China (and other countries, to judge from the comments) that are complete fakes. But these aren't cheap fakes; from the photos, they're tremendously well-executed fakes. The mind boggles.

Elcomsoft is best known for its software that allows forensic cracking of passwords for wireless networks, Adobe PDF files, and Word documents. The company knows how to break weak passwords, and thus it knows how to make strong ones. The company's Password Store delivers virtual scratchcards with unique codes. For a small fee, Elcomsoft can provide forgotten passwords, too.

What medium survives an electromagnetic pulse, stores compactly, and works far into the future? Paper, of course. Online storage firm Livedrive has released a QR Code based permanent backup solution that densely writes up to 2 MB per A2 sheet (16.5 x 23.4 inches). It's a brilliant idea, marrying digital and analog.