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

Linked List: January 8, 2007

Monday, 8 January 2007

This is not news — apparently it was released months ago and I just hadn’t heard about it — but Apple now offers a web-based interface for your iDisk. The UI is good and performance is great. It’s clearly the iDisk sibling to the new .Mac webmail UI.

What’s sick is that performance using the Finder is still so poor — there’s something inherently wrong that a web UI for iDisk is faster than using the Finder.

Cabel Sasser: Apple’s Next-Generation User Interface Themes ★

Cabel Sasser on an Apple patent filing for resolution-independent user interfaces, and the screenshots of an apparent user-interface theme design tool revealed within the patent filing.

(There’s an interesting tidbit at the end of his article, for those of you attending Macworld Expo.)

WSJ Reports Apple and Cingular Launching Cell Phone ★

No details, but the fact that it’s The Wall Street Journal carries a ton of weight. The Journal had the “switching to Intel” story before WWDC 2005.

Update: Here’s the link to the story on wsj.com; the full article is only available to subscribers.

2nd Update: Thanks to DF reader Sean O’Leary, here’s a link to the full Journal story on another web site. It’s kind of a shitty story, really; one thrust of it is that iPod growth is slowing significantly, but they base this largely on projected iPod sales figures for 2007 from Morgan Stanley.

John Siracusa’s MWSF 2007 Keynote Bingo ★

Don’t be fooled by imitators; Siracusa’s is the original keynote bingo. Siracusa writes:

The way I see it, the most important part of keynote bingo is the card itself. The choice and arrangement of squares documents the hopes and fears of the card maker, and perhaps the larger Mac community, at a particular point in time. And the detailed definitions for each square provide important context for each prediction.

Both diagonals look like possible winners to me.

Special Twitter Page for Macworld-Related Updates ★

Might be a good place to follow along for live updates from keynote attendees.

The Macalope’s Macworld Predictions ★

Not a bad batch of predictions, except the one about Leopard shipping “earlier than expected, possibly right after the keynote”.

Attack of the Zombie Computers Is Growing Threat ★

Front page story by John Markoff from yesterday’s New York Times about how zombie PCs — Windows machines controlled by malware — are a burgeoning plague. One small line about the Mac:

So far botnets have predominantly infected Windows-based computers, although there have been scattered reports of botnet-related attacks on computers running the Linux and Macintosh operating systems.

Scattered reports from whom?

Nisus Writer Pro Pre-Announced ★

Not shipping until later this year, but judging from the announced features, looks like a pretty interesting word processor.

Toast 8 ★

Roxio’s new Toast 8 Titanium includes TiVoToGo support:

Toast 8 brings TiVo and the Mac together for the first time, enabling users to enjoy their favorite TV programs on their Mac, burn them to disc, or easily convert them for viewing on a mobile device such as an iPod or PSP.

Still no support for smoke special effects, though.

Tabbed Editing Coming Soon to SubEthaEdit ★

Including the use of drag-and-drop to rearrange tabs and to drag tabs out into their own windows. (Thanks to Jesper.)

Matt Neuburg: PreFab UI Browser 2.0 Better Than Ever ★

Matt Neuburg in TidBITS:

PreFab UI Browser is a scripter’s tool. You don’t need it unless you need it, but if you need it, it’s exactly what you need.

Anime-Style Portrait of The Simpsons Cast ★

Love the Marge.