By John Gruber
WorkOS launches auth.md — an open protocol for agent registration.
Linked List: January 31, 2007
Wednesday, 31 January 2007
- Nolobe Acquires Interarchy From Stairways Software ★
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Stairways:
Stairways Software Pty Ltd today announced the acquisition of Stairways Software’s flagship program, Interarchy, by Nolobe Pty Ltd. In what amounts to an employee buyout, lead developer Matthew Drayton has formed Nolobe Pty Ltd and acquired all rights to Interarchy, the award winning file transfer and web maintenance client.
Matthew Drayton has been leading the development of Interarchy for some years now, so customers can expect the same level of quality software development and innovative features as Nolobe continues to develop and enhance Interarchy going forward. Nolobe will honour all existing licenses, and expects to release a new free upgrade (8.5) soon before continuing work on the next major release (9.0) due out later this year.
I’ll have more on this tomorrow.
- Michael Dell Back as CEO of Dell ★
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Tom Krazit, reporting for CNet:
Dell announced Wednesday that Kevin Rollins has resigned as chief executive officer, and company founder Michael Dell will be retaking the helm of the PC company.
My advice: Sell the company’s assets and give the money to the shareholders.
- Boston Blows Up the Mooninites ★
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Typical Red Sox fans — scared silly.
Update: Now they’ve arrested the guy who put these things up, “charged under a new statute that makes it a crime to place, transfer or possess a hoax device that results in panic” — despite the fact that they weren’t intended as anything other than innocent advertisements. In what way is this a hoax? Ludicrous.
- Yankee Stadium to Host 2008 All-Star Game ★
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I’m not sure what the big deal is — every game is an All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium.
- Molly Ivins Dies at 62 ★
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Sad to see her go; she was a terrific columnist.
- We’ll See ★
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From a CNet report on Windows Vista:
If you are in the market for a new Windows PC because your old computer is outdated or otherwise failing on you, Vista is your best bet, all experts agree. That’s even if you’re considering buying a Mac, said David Litchfield, a noted security bug hunter.
If you’re looking for “a new Windows PC”, yeah, a Mac probably isn’t a good choice.
“If you’re looking to buy a new computer, the security features built into Vista tip the balance in its favor over other options such as Mac OS X,” Litchfield said. “We’ve moved beyond the days of lots of bugs and worms. Recent history shows that Microsoft can get it right, as they did with XP SP2. With Vista, they will again demonstrate that.”
I hope he’s right. I bet he’s wrong.
- Bearskinrug, The “Signal Flares” Page ★
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Relive all the excitement from Kevin Cornell’s guest stint back in December at Coudal.com.
- Java’s Ridiculous URL Comparison Method ★
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Wow, is this stupid. (Via Simon Willison.)
- Patching Panther for New Daylight Savings Time Dates ★
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John Poole shows how to hack a 10.3.9 or 10.2.8 system with the new dates for Daylight Savings Time in the U.S. and Canada.
- iRed Lite ★
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Lets you use your Apple Remote to control any app; it’s a freeware rival to Twisted Melon’s $16 Mira. (Via Lifehacker.)
Update: There’s also Remote Buddy, which costs €10 and supports a bunch of third-party remote controls.
- Anil Dash: ‘I Am Okay With My Yahoo Sign-In’ ★
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Anil Dash on the odd backlash against Flickr’s requirement that early Flickr adopters soon switch to using a Yahoo ID to sign in:
Any information that users are afraid of Yahoo having is clearly already available to the company, since the servers are all hosted in the same place and connected together — this is just a formality. Frankly, I watch online communities a lot and am only rarely baffled by the vagaries of mob justice. But this one has me stumped.
- Skype for Mac 2.5 ★
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Fresh out of beta, with better video and SMS support.
- iLounge: ‘Five Key Facts on Apple’s Colored iPod Shuffles’ ★
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iLounge:
Last year’s silver Shuffles shipped with Apple’s old, somewhat uncomfortable, and bass-weak earbuds, even though the Shuffle came out after two new iPod/iPod Nano models that had lighter, better earbuds. Today, all of the Shuffles come with Apple’s latest earphones, which are also sold separately for $29 as Apple iPod Earphones.
- Clint Ecker on the iPhone/ARM/LLVM Speculation ★
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Clint Ecker does a nice job connecting the dots, and the answer seems to be that the iPhone is using a Samsung CPU, probably either the ARM1156 or ARM1176 — neither of which has actually been released yet. Perhaps that’s why Apple’s been so tight-lipped regarding the CPU — that they’re under NDA from Samsung until the processor has been released.
- Apple Contributing to LLVM ARM Backend ★
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Apple’s Chris Lattner, in a post to the LLVMdev mailing list:
I’m happy to announce that Apple is contributing some major extensions to the LLVM ARM backend. The improvements include support for ARM v4/v6, vfp support, soft float, pre/postinc support, load/ store multiple generation, constant pool entry motion (to support large functions), and support for the darwin/arm ABI.
In other words, more evidence that the iPhone is using an ARM processor, and that Apple is using LLVM to get higher performance out of what is, compared to a Mac, the iPhone’s wimpy CPU and GPU. (John Siracusa had some good background pieces on LLVM a few months ago.) It’s worth pointing out that Lattner declined to comment on whether this was actually related to the iPhone, but, well, come on.
Wes Felter says VFM support implies that it’s not an Xscale CPU, which I think narrows it down to Samsung.