Linked List: December 6, 2005

Tuesday, 6 December 2005

Very nice free screensaver from Russ Warneboldt. Hooray for Quartz Compositor.

Nice intro to SQLite from Aaron Hillegass. Includes a pointer to Tito Ciuro’s QuickLite project, a lightweight Cocoa SQLite wrapper. (Via Brent Simmons.)

Web.py ★

Aaron Swartz is working on a new web app framework for Python:

And so, Lisp and Django found wanting, we’re left with web.py. I’d like to say that web.py learned from these mistakes and was designed to avoid them, but the truth is that web.py was written before all this and managed to avoid them anyway.

The Reddit team rewrote their app from Lisp to Python using web.py, and presumably they’re using web.py for Aaron’s secretive Infogami start-up.

OmniOutliner 3.5 ★

Interface tweaks, AppleScript improvements, and additional localizations.

Dave Girard Reviews Aperture 1.0 for Ars Technica ★

He pretty much pans it, and is especially critical of the quality of the RAW importer. Some of his criticism seems to be that Aperture isn’t nearly as good as Photoshop at editing features, however, but I don’t get the impression that it’s intended to be.

Vintage Red Cross Calendar Builder ★

Nifty web app lets you build your own calendar comprised of vintage Red Cross artwork; proceeds benefit your local chapter of the Red Cross.

John C. Welch: Why I Hate Haxies ★

John C. Welch, writing from his perspective as an IT admin:

The problem I have with haxies cannot be truly appreciated unless you’ve ever had to ask someone over the phone, “Have you done anything to your system recently, like installing new software or utilities?” (For more fun, make sure you’re in Massachusetts, and they’re in a dialup-only hotel in Malaysia.)

You always know what the answer will be: “NO”. Even if they’re registering WindowShade while they’re talking to you.

Adobe ‘Flashrobat’ Player FAQ Change ★

This sounds much more appetizing:

Of course, we will continue delivering the Flash Player as a small, efficient runtime for content and applications on the web, and Adobe Reader for viewing and interacting with PDF documents and forms. The integration of these technologies into a unified framework creates a ubiquitous platform that runs on virtually every device, and dramatically expands the opportunities to create compelling solutions.

Panic iPod Nano Giveaway ★

Purchase Unison (just updated to version 1.7) before Dec. 30 and you’re automatically entered to win a special-edition Panic-logo-engraved iPod Nano.

Apple Adds New TV Shows to ITMS ★

Bunch of shows from NBC, USA, and the SciFi Network, including some classic stuff (e.g. classic episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and clips of their late night shows — not whole episodes but five- to ten-minute clips, I say.

Adobe ‘Flashrobat’ ★

From the company’s FAQ regarding the now-completed acquisition:

How long will it take to integrate Flash Player and Adobe Reader?

It will be a multiyear effort. Ultimately, our goal is to combine both in a single client. Combining PDF and Adobe Reader with Flash and the Flash Player will allow us to deliver a truly ubiquitous platform that sits on virtually every device. We will build on that to create compelling customer solutions.

Boy, does that smell like a frankensteinian combination.

Recall this prophetic joke from my “Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Adobe’s ‘FAQ’ Regarding Their Acquisition of Macromedia”, where I wrote, in the faux voice of Adobe:

Where by “complementary” we mean “the two leading technologies that irritate people when they’re used in lieu of regular web pages.” Note that we’re using PDF to serve this very FAQ — in our synergistic future, perhaps we’ll serve our FAQs in a hybrid PDF/Flash format. One can dream.