The Talk Show: Live From WWDC
7:00pm Tuesday  •  California Theatre
Tickets Available  •  Fun Will Be Had

Linked List: January 30, 2007

Tuesday, 30 January 2007

One Slot in the Deck for February 

Jim Coudal:

One slot in The Deck for February is open. If you have a product or service that could benefit by being in front of millions of creative, web and design professionals, and you can pull the trigger quick, give us a holler. We’ll cut you a nice deal.

MacZealots Looking for Writers 

Justin Williams:

Because of this, we are now accepting third-party writers to contribute articles. We are still striving to deliver feature-length articles and tutorials just like before, but we need a little bit of help to keep the site going on a consistent basis.

(Take note of Gus Mueller’s comment underneath, too.)

Friggin Lawyers 

Damn frigtard lawyers
Force Fake Steve to walk away.
Hope this, too, is fake.

BetterZip 1.4 

New version of my favorite archive tool for Mac OS X.

Other Web Apps for Organizing Meetings 

Regarding the aforelinked Diarised, a bunch of readers sent in links to other web apps for helping teams agree on meeting times, including MeetWithAproval, Meet O Matic, and Doodle.

Jayson Stark: Greatest Hits, in the Palm of Your Hand 

Jayson Stark, ESPN:

It’s hard to say exactly which moment it was that we realized the iPod had taken over our entire civilization. But it might have been this one:

The day we first heard, last summer, that baseball players were using their iPods to do their pregame video studies — as opposed to, say, their pregame Shakira video studies.

MacNN:

In total, Apple was ordered to pay nearly $700,000 — a small amount for a company that reported nearly $1 billion in profit in the December quarter, but a large moral victory for bloggers, journalists and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which helped defend against Apple’s subpoenas.

Apple pretty much got creamed in this case.

BSOD Through the Ages 

Nice collection of photos of crash screens from various operating systems. How come Vista still uses that ugly DOS terminal font? (Thanks to Rich Siegel.)

Rands Interview With Allan Odgaard 

TextMate author Allan Odgaard, in an interview with Rands:

So what is stopping me from open sourcing TextMate? Basically two things:

1) if TextMate is open source, can I make any money?

2) if TextMate is open source, will people actually contribute?

Answers: “No”, and “Maybe, but probably only the easy stuff”.

Blockhead 

Rob Enderle:

Which brings us to the iPhone. Is it just me, or did anyone else see the launch of Apple’s new iPhone as a security nightmare in the making? I’m talking about the increasing number of employees who will be buying these things, putting company information on them, and then losing them.

For once, I completely agree with Enderle. Corporate IT departments should block the iPhone, at least until June.

Why It’s Taking So Long for Adium to Get to 1.0 

They committed to using a bunch of Java library dependencies, then Apple deprecated the Cocoa-Java bridge.

KnowledgeBase: USB Storage Device Supported Formats and Protocols for AirPort Extreme Disk Sharing 

Supports HFS+, FAT16, and FAT32:

The AirPort Extreme (802.11n) shares storage devices based on the format used to initialize the storage device. For example, if HFS-plus formatting was used, AFP and SMB/CIFS protocols are used to share the device on the network. If FAT16 or FAT32 was used, SMB/CIFS protocols are used.

(Via Jesper, who quipped that he has a bridge for sale to anyone who still doubts that the new AirPort Extreme base station is running an embedded version of OS X.)

Apple Offers Free Demo of Vortex iPod Game 

Free two-level demo version of a game that looks like a cross between Tempest and Breakout.

Daylight Saving Time Changes vs. Old Versions of Mac OS X 

Andrew Laurence in TidBITS:

Unless updates are issued for prior releases of Mac OS X, the clocks on computers running 10.3 or earlier will not show the correct time for three weeks in March and one week in November, in perpetuity.

I suspect Apple’s unofficial stance on this is that users of pre-10.4 versions of Mac OS X are on their own and need to manage these time changes manually.

SubEthaEdit 2.6 

Now with tabbed editing. I love the drag-and-drop implementation — you can drag to reorder tabs within a window, drag tabs between windows, and drag tabs out into their own new windows.

However, it highlights an ever-more-common conflict in Mac OS X’s standard keyboard shortcuts. SubEthaEdit 2.6 still binds ⌘T to Show Fonts and sticks New Tab with ⌘⌥N. Long-term, I think Show Fonts needs a new standard shortcut; ⌘T belongs to New Tab.

Pilotless Drone 

The San Francisco Chronicle has started podcasting voicemail from crackpot readers. This first one is pretty funny. (Via Andy Baio.)

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 

Available for pre-order today, expected to ship in mid-February. $199 through the end of April, then the price goes to $299. I still think adding “Photoshop” to the name is silly, but in practical terms, Lightroom is clearly a worthy rival to Aperture, and is highly innovative both in terms of its UI and its programming architecture (with significant chunks written in the Lua scripting language).

USA Today: ‘Verizon Rejected Apple iPhone Deal’ 

Leslie Cauley, reporting for USA Today:

Verizon Wireless, the No. 2 U.S. cellphone carrier, passed on the chance to be the exclusive distributor of the iPhone almost two years ago, balking at Apple’s rich financial terms and other demands.

Among other things, Apple wanted a percentage of the monthly cellphone fees, say over how and where iPhones could be sold and control of the relationship with iPhone customers, said Jim Gerace, a Verizon Wireless vice president. “We said no. We have nothing bad to say about the Apple iPhone. We just couldn’t reach a deal that was mutually beneficial.”

I’m sure Apple negotiated with all the major U.S. carriers, but if their last talks with Verizon were two years ago, I’m not sure how close to a deal this could have been.

AirPort Extreme 802.11n Enabler for Mac 

Apple’s 802.11n $2 upgrade for Intel-based Macs is now available. For those of you who still think Apple is doing this for the money, check this note at the bottom:

Note: The software license for the 802.11n Enabler software allows you to install and use it on all computers under your ownership or control.

Color iPod Shuffles 

Now available in orange, blue, green, and pink. Unsurprisingly, I still like gray the best.

Diarised 

Super-simple new web app. You set up a meeting with a couple of proposed dates and times. Diarised emails the attendees, asks them which times they prefer, then reports back to you with the best times for the meeting.

Jerks 

Remember that Kettle chips “beta” flavor promotion back in November? The winning flavor was Island Jerk, which, to be honest, I thought tasted pretty foul. My vote was for Twisted Chili Lime.

Mitchell and Webb 

The new U.K. “Get a Mac” actors are in fact a long-standing British comedy duo, David Mitchell (PC) and Robert Webb (Mac). Their shows include Peep Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look.

Unsurprisingly, there are a ton of clips on YouTube and background information on Wikipedia.

(Thanks to everyone who sent email about them.)