By John Gruber
WorkOS launches auth.md — an open protocol for agent registration.
Linked List: December 14, 2006
Thursday, 14 December 2006
- Real-World Passwords ★
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Bruce Schneier looks at a collection of actual MySpace passwords (gleaned from a phishing scam) and concludes that real-world passwords are getting better. The most popular was “password1”.
- FastScripts 2.3.1 ★
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Nice little update to one of my favorite utilities.
- OmniOutliner 3.6.2 ★
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Lots of bug fixes and minor improvements.
- Wii Transfer 1.1 ★
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Nifty little $9 utility by Manton Reece converts QuickTime movies into a format compatible with the Nintendo Wii and copies them to an SD card. (Via Dan Benjamin.)
- Gizmodo’s Brian Lam: iPhone Will Be Announced on Monday ★
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Seems highly unlikely anything new would be released — or even just announced — seven days before Christmas, but Lam “guarantees it”. This is either a huge scoop or he’s a huge jackass. Update: Gizmodo has changed the verb in the headline from “released” to “announced”. Still sounds like odd timing to me.
(Thanks to Daniel “Waferbaby is still on hiatus” Bogan.)
- Uli Kusterer on ‘The Iniquities of the Selfish’ ★
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Uli Kusterer:
Unless one of those who took the deal speaks out otherwise, I really don’t see what John’s rant is all about that he couldn’t have said without doubting the business skills of the involved developers. In particular, if this article really is about distributing profits equitably, as John claims.
I certainly wasn’t pointing out anything that the participating developers didn’t already know. My intention was to dispel the misconception held by others that the lion’s share of the MacHeist profits were going to the developers.
- Adobe to Release Beta of Photoshop CS3 Tomorrow ★
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Universal binary for Mac OS X, but also available for Windows XP. If you’ve got a license for CS2, you’re in like Flynn; otherwise you can still download it but it expires after two days.
- Separate Headphone Volume Level on Intel Macs ★
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I did not know that: Intel-based Macs remember different sound volume settings when you have headphones plugged in. (Thanks to Eric Demay.)
- Leslie Harpold Remembered ★
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One of the great pioneers of the independent web; she was both a talented designer and a wonderful writer.
- Wall Street Analysts Using MacBook Pros ★
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BusinessWeek’s Arik Hesseldahl has some very interesting observations from an HP analyst meeting earlier this week: a bunch of the analysts were using MacBook Pros. HP CEO Mark Hurd went so far as to call one out during the meeting. Her response:
“My problem isn’t with HP notebooks,” she said. “It’s with Microsoft.” Concern about viruses, spyware and the many hours of lost productivity that derives from them was the reason for her choice.
What Hesseldahl doesn’t mention is that until recently, it was common for these PC industry analysts to call for Apple to drop the Mac OS and focus on producing “stylish” computers running Windows.
- The Association: Pistons MP3 Player ★
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These guys actually believe this is a real iPod Shuffle. My best guess is that it’s one of these rip-offs from Luxpro. Update: Just to be clear, I’m not attempting to mock them for thinking this is a real Shuffle; I point this out because several readers emailed last night to argue that “everyone” knows this thing is a knock-off, not a real iPod.
- Google Patent Search ★
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Unsurprisingly, way better than the search feature from the U.S. Patent Office. (Via Andy Baio.)
Update: Here’s a patent for an Apple phone.
- How to Choose CD/DVD Archival Media ★
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Taiyo Yuden media are the best, and DVD+R is superior to DVD-R. There’s a ton of useful information here if you’re concerned about the long-term viability of the discs you burn.
- DragThing 5.7 ★
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Now out of beta. There’s a nice deal where you can buy it bundled with PCalc for $14 less than their regular combined prices.
- A Little 37signals Redesign ★
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A nice refinement overall. The extra emphasis on their three flagship apps is the key improvement.
But here’s a quibble: I think they’re overusing the yellow highlight effect. At a glance it looks like they’ve highlighted half the sentences; that just makes it hard to read. The effect would be much more powerful if they highlighted just one sentence. Maybe do something fun with JavaScript where it highlights a different key sentence on each page view.