Linked List: November 2, 2009

Monday, 2 November 2009

Exchange Access for Droid: $15 Extra Per Month 

So starts the Verizon nickel-and-diming. (Via Dave Nanian.)

Update, 4 November 2009: Looks like the $15/month charge is only for business plans, just like with AT&T.

Put This On, Episode 1 

New from Jesse Thorn and Adam Lisagor, “a web series about dressing like a grownup”. Exquisite.

Chris Foresman on Adobe’s Orwellian ‘Open Government’ Push for PDF and Flash 

Chris Foresman on Adobe’s “open government” website, which is entirely implemented in Flash:

After just a cursory browsing, here are some of the usability and data accessibility issues we observed. You can’t select, copy, or paste any text. Your browser’s font override features won’t work, so you can’t adjust the font or its size to be more readable. Your browser’s built-in in-page search won’t work, and you can’t use the keyboard to scroll through the text. You can’t parse or scrape the data in any way; the design is fixed-width, so it’s not going to work well on different screen sizes; and browser plugins, like Greasemonkey, can’t adjust anything. Basically when it comes to text at all, if you don’t like the style or are visually impaired, you’re screwed.

Adobe Is Bad for Open Government 

Adobe, in their “open government” whitepaper (which, of course, is a PDF):

Since the advent of the web, an entire infrastructure has evolved to enable public access to information. Such technologies include HTML, Adobe PDF, and Adobe® Flash® technology.

Clay Johnson responds:

This is nonsense. The fact is, sticking to open, standards based technologies like HTML, XML, JSON and others are far more important and useful in getting your information out to the public than the proprietary formats of Adobe. Here’s a hint — if the data format has an “®” by its name, it probably isn’t great for transparency or open data.

Dropbox iPhone App Now Runs on OS 3.0.1 

Now in the App Store: an update to the Dropbox app that’s compatible with iPhone OS 3.0.1, for those holding on to it for the samizdat tethering hack.

Ibis Reader and BookServer 

Upcoming e-book reading software for iPhone, Android, and WebOS, but written as a web app with local storage on the device via HTML5’s offline storage. Thus, it will completely route around the App Store. No DRM on the book content, no DRM on the software. A great idea — let’s hope the implementation is good.

Chinese iPhone Has No Wi-Fi 

Glenn Fleishman on the Wi-Fi-less iPhones now on sale, officially, in China:

There is some suspicion that WAPI’s authentication aspect, in which a login would be required to join a network securely, was partly desirable to track users, too. This would eliminate the “problem” of untrackable connections to Wi-Fi hotspots, coupled with security that would prevent local interception.

Ball Cap Sticker Removal: A Helpful Lesson for the Youngsters 

No matter which team you’re rooting for in this great World Series, I think we can all agree on the importance of this piece by Craig Robinson at the excellent Flip Flop Fly Ball.