Click Here: October 2007
Comments/feedback Archives: 2007 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11
- Joel Spolsky: The Big Picture #
- Review of Scott Rosenberg's Dreaming in Code. Kicks off with a neat analogy to human eyesight, then: "Still, it's a great look at one particular type of software project: the kind that ends up spinning and spinning its wheels without really going anywhere because the vision was too grand and the details were a little short. Near as I can tell, Chandler's original vision was pretty much just to be 'revolutionary'."
- CARS: Leopard Review #
- A very technical analysis.
- YouTube: Hitler Banned From iSketch! #
- Holy crap, this was funny. If you watch just three YouTube videos this year...
- WTF: Security by Insanity #
- This is the kind of crazy story that Raymond was an excellent purveyor of.
- Diagram Showing Why Sony Is Fucked #
- Only time will tell if the PS3 is a truly monumental fuck-up, but Sony are certainly making a good fist of it.
- Firefox 3: Beautiful on XP, Vista, OS X; SNAFU on Linux #
- Here's some Linux for you. Aargh! Just wait though. Here's some Java Swing! AARGH! MY EYES! LIKE ACID, THEY BURN!
- Ze Frank: A Social Network for Two #
- Great little short from the master.
- YouTube: Flying Kiwi (Mad World Version) #
- If you watch just two YouTube videos in 2007, make the second one Flying Kiwi (Mad World Version). Damn, how powerful is that song? Ridiculously powerful.
- JWZ: Backups #
- A sound strategy. "The universe tends toward maximum irony. Don't push it." I quite liked his advice for Windows users, but see also.
- Flickr: Indian Matchboxes #
- "They are a treasure trove of quirky graphic design and bad spelling."
- The Map is About to Change #
- 1984, people. In terms of market cap, Apple just eclipsed IBM.
- YouTube: SNL - People Getting Punched Just Before Eating #
- If you watch just one YouTube video in 2007, make it People Getting Punched Just Before Eating. Update: removed for copyright violation - new link.
- Cringely on the Apple/Google Collaboration (or lack of) #
- Interesting analysis backgrounded with a fascinating little bit of Silicon Valley history.
- Gmail gets IMAP #
- Yay! Yay yay yay! Yay! I honestly can't believe that anyone still uses POP. I rate it up there with Windows 3.11. I'm not sure if Thunderbird is fully Gmail-compatible with regards to labels, etc, but I imagine it will be soon. Update: Official Gmail Blog chimes in, mentions Thunderbird yay!
- DF: Applewards #
- "Apple sold 2.2 million Macs in the quarter - 34 percent higher than the year-ago quarter, and 400,000 more than the previous quarterly record (which was just three months ago). During yesterday’s conference call with analysts, Apple stated that half of the customers who bought Macs in Apple’s retail stores were new Mac users." Gruber examines the drivers behind this long-awaited shift.
- WebKit Does HTML5 Client-side Database Storage #
- They're really starting to make Mozilla look bad over there at Apple. This feature is like cookies taken to a completely new level - an offline storage mechanism allowing, for example, use of your webmail while you can't connect to the network.
- Comcast Blocks Some File-Sharing Traffic #
- In and of itself, ugly and deceptive but not too bad. The implications, though, they chill.
- Rands: The Gel Dilemma #
- Two things I'd like to do before I die: own a good pen and a moleskine. (If this sounds boring to you, I'd love to hear how that bungy jump you did is going to change the world.)
- The Subliminal Persuasion Myth #
- Fascinating debunking, followed by deeper analysis: "The history of the subliminal controversy teaches us much about persuasion - but not the subliminal kind. If there is so little scientific evidence of the effectiveness of subliminal influence, why then do so many Americans believe it works? In a nutshell, I must conclude, with Feynman, that despite enjoying the fruits of science, we are not a scientific culture, but one of ill-directed faith as defined in Hebrews 11:1 (KJV): 'Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen'." Also, it's nice to occasionally read something on the internet that has a massive list of references at the bottom.
- TMN: Lone Star Statements #
- "The following are excerpts from actual one-star Amazon.com reviews of books from Time’s list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to the present."
- Pilotless Drone #
- The shortest, funniest podcast of all time.
- YouTube: Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs #
- Riffing at Macworld '99.
- CARS: Apple Announce iPhone SDK, Unlocked iPhones in France #
- Allowing third-party software to eventually run on the iPhone. And, good old France. Imagine that, a country where the laws aren't written by multi-national corporations.
- Star Potter and a New Stone #
- In case the first Harry Potter premise seemed a little familiar to you.
- Percentage of Chart Which Resembles Pac-man #
- Pure genius.
- SEOing the Google Homepage #
- "Yes, we got the word 'search' into the page 9 times!" Worth a Goomark.
- The New Yorker: Downpaging #
- "Our wasteful consumer society buys, reads, and discards more brand-new hardcover fiction in a single day than the rest of the industrial world combined. I find that statistic staggering."
- Windows Vista: Why Nobody Cares #
- He argues that the operating system isn't really important anymore. Or Microsoft is so dominant it's boring? Well, whatever. I think nobody cares because Microsoft doesn't really do anything new. Less security holes, less UI inconsistencies, sundry features from OS X ... rather hard to get excited about. Or to put it another way: I don't know anyone who is even considering upgrading.
- The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot #
- Not exactly a "find" on my part, but a great poem.
- YouTube: I Promise to Tap Your Phones #
- ... Collect more bad intelligence, and trap us even deeper in Iraq. Seriously, what the fuck kind of message is this? I didn't think there were still that many stupid Americans.
- Macworld Boston 1997 #
- Where Steve Jobs returns to Apple. The audience basically thinks it's the second coming of Jesus. And in a way, it is. I love how Jobs just stands up there and lays it out. Have I ever told you to watch Pirates of Silicon Valley?
- ABM: Arrogance and Humility #
- "Arrogance without humility is a recipe for high-concept irrelevance; humility without arrogance guarantees unending mediocrity."
- Ten Ways to Make More Humane Open Source Software #
- The inclusion of Emacs is hilarious beyond words, but despite that, some good thoughts.
- Dear Abby #
- "I became very upset - I tend to be the jealous type - and threw it out the sunroof of my car onto the freeway on my way home."
- CARS: Her Warm, Moist Vista #
- Also, great description of a days work, reminds me of uni.
- YouTube: How to draw a car in MS Paint #
- Yeah, so, wow.
- Flickr: Kierkegaard Kitty #
- I believe Azrael is trying a similar approach.
- The Powerbook! The Powerbook! The Powerbook's on Fire! #
- The most well-written consumer electronics disaster story I have ever encountered.
- Joel Spolsky: California #
- The iPod is "Designed by Apple in California", but the Zune says "Hello from Seattle". I love how Joel just tears this apart left, right and centre. It's a classic example of copying an idea without ever thinking gee, I wonder why they do this?
- YouTube: Eagleman #
- "Considered by some the worst commercial ever created."
- Used All Black Team for Sale, $1 NR #
- A bit of hahahaLOL to soften the blow. The All Blacks were bundled out of the world cup after putting in a performance below that of their French opponents (but rather better than the referee). Given that their first knock-out game was also their first game against serious opposition, it all seems a bit trivial. How strongly can you apply a label on the basis of one game in four years?
- The Vista nerd rage feedback loop #
- "Out of the tech-savvy people I know, only a couple have reinstalled XP after trying out Vista." Well, there's some damning with faint praise. Gruber made a good point, though, in noting that Vista's security record seems very good.
- CSS Downloadable Fonts in Safari #
- There is life after Arial, Verdana and Georgia. Well, sort of. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
- Dear Can of Baby Corn #
- "Baby Corn, your persistence is unsettling. The can of Haggis, I married into that. Bryan keeps it in the cupboard as an uproarious pantry joke."
- Apple's Anti-CAPSLOCK #
- If you love usability as much as me, you'll get a kick out of this. So bloody well thought out. I would love to work for a company like that.
- eBay's $4 Billion Lesson in the Value of Hype #
- I find these kinds of things hilarious. I'm getting some first-hand lessons these days in how promotion up the corporate ladder happens most for, incredibly, the least competent.
- DI: Sympathy for the Devil #
- Not quite as DI as some of their other stuff, but a quick rundown of Stockholm Syndrome, one of those fascinating human conditions.
- RIAA: Still Insane #
- "Gabriel asked if it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music which they have purchased, even just one copy." Guess what they said. I dunno. Is it wrong for us to breathe? Can we do that?
- DF: The New Zunes #
- Bit of a snoozefest. Wi-Fi is the main iPod differentiator, but it is still hobbled with DRM. Pictures.
- The Software Development Lifecycle #
- You've probably seen this before, but it's just too damn awesome to not link. Nearly every square is a highlight.
- Radiohead's New Album: Self-Distributed, User-Priced #
- "After years of cryptic delays and tribulations with record labels, Radiohead is distributing the record themselves, allowing buyers to set their own price for a downloadable copy." Seriously, you get a textbox and type in what you want to pay. Crazy - I love it.
- The Histogram as the Image #
- Genius, that is.
- DI: Living in the Moment #
- Man, I really enjoyed Memento. My personal experience of amnesia is very limited but quite unsettling to contemplate, like touching the void.
- DY: LOLCUSTS #
- HahahaLOL!
- Cabel: I'm On My Fifth Xbox 360 #
- Remember that Xbox is Microsoft's current big success story in their product line-up.
