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Linked List: December 4, 2006

Monday, 4 December 2006

Wife, Daughters of Missing CNET Editor Found Alive ★

James Kim is still missing, but his wife and two daughters were found alive.

Web apps don’t really have version numbers, but if they did, this would be version 2.0 of the Joyent Connector suite. Very nice refinements to the UI, and tremendously improved performance. The new bookmarks app is very well done, including thumbnail screenshots of the pages you bookmark. It’s obvious in hindsight that I should have made bookmarking one of the apps in the original system that debuted last year.

I’m hopelessly biased, of course, because I worked for Joyent for all of 2005 and the beginning of 2006, and I helped design this UI. But if you decide to sign up for a Joyent account, use this affiliate link and 15 percent of your recurring fees go to me. I’ll toss in a free Daring Fireball membership to anyone who signs up for a Joyent account using this.

The Onion on the U.S. Ban of iPod Sales to North Korea ★

“This won’t do a damn thing. Everybody knows Zune is the preferred MP3 player of the Axis of Evil.”

Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Admits His Kids Have Downloaded Music From P2P Networks ★

Nate Anderson:

Still, this shows just how normal young people consider file-swapping to be. When your dad runs one of the largest music labels on the planet and you still turn to P2P networks to discover new tunes, it’s clear that the issue isn’t just lack of access to music. Or money. This is now considered a “normal” way of checking out digital content.

Dan Cederholm Redesigns SimpleBits ★

Great typography, great colors, great layout, great spacing.

Update: Great new logo, too.

E. Coli Sickens More Than 35 in N.J. and L.I., Everyone Stricken Had Eaten at Taco Bell ★

Run for the border.

Agostino Ramelli’s 1588 Design for a Rotary Reading Desk ★

The rough equivalent of tabbed browser windows for the 16th century.

Blech at 2lmc Spool Asks Whether Leopard Is Vaporware ★

Mac OS X 10.5 is definitely vaporware, too, albeit a mild variety. Anything announced but not yet finished and released is vaporware. But there are degrees of vaporousness; Mac OS X 10.5 gains points (where more points = less vapory) for the pre-release developer seeds that are available, and for the concrete information about new APIs and developer tools released at WWDC. It loses points for the “secret” as-yet-unspecified features and for the vague “spring 2007” release date. But it’s nowhere near as vapory as the initial release of Mac OS X was back in 1997 through 1999.

Another example: the new version of Windows was really vapory back when it was called Longhorn. It became a lot less vapory when Microsoft changed the name to Vista and cut most of the really cool features (like WinFS). It crossed the line from vaporware to a real product last month when the final versions were released (even though not yet to retail).

Alastair Houghton: ‘DMG Vulnerability Debunked’ ★

Alastair Houghton analyzes the recent MOKB DMG kernel crasher in painstaking detail, and finds that it is not possible to exploit it to execute arbitrary code. A crasher, yes, and since it’s in the kernel, it brings down your system. But a lot of these security cowboys like to pretend that every crasher is also a potential exploit to execute arbitrary code, but leave the proof as an exercise for the reader.

BBEdit 8.5.2 ★

Nice list of bug fixes and minor new features.

Matt Neuburg: ‘Get a Piece of the Thinking Rock’ ★

Matt Neuburg’s TidBITS review of Thinking Rock, a freeware Mac OS X app with an awful UI but which apparently does a good job mapping the official according-to-Hoyle GTD system.

The Wild World of U.S. Cellular Networks ★

I know next to nothing about the technology behind the cell phone market, so I found this primer from Steven Frank highly informative.

Firebug Public Beta ★

Firefox extension for web developers — adds a slew of features like JavaScript debugging; JavaScript, CSS, and HTML syntax checking; live HTML editing; on-screen rulers for CSS layouts; and profiling tools for measuring performance. (Via Jesper via AIM.)

Kevin Rose ‘Confirms’ iPhone ★

Notable only because he did get the scoop on the original iPod Nano, but that one came right before it actually debuted. The “possibly touchscreen” bit is a lame hedge; it’s “possibly an anti-gravity device” and “possibly a perpetual motion machine”, too. The bit about dual batteries — one for phone, one for iPoddery — is an interesting idea, though.

Sony’s Lame Parody of Apple’s ‘Get a Mac’ Campaign ★

PC is still a square white guy in a suit. Mac is still a hipster white guy in a hoodie. But Vaio is a cute teenage girl. In other words, Vaios aren’t just “PCs”.

It’s unbecoming for a major brand to resort to parodies of their rivals. I was going to say that you’d never see Apple do that, but then I remembered the old toasted Intel-guy-in-bunny-suit commercial.

Steven Johnson, Looking Sharp in The New York Times ★

If you want to look your best on TV or in a photograph for a big-time newspaper or magazine profile, then you ought to wear your Daring Fireball t-shirt.