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Linked List: April 26, 2007

Thursday, 26 April 2007

Confidant and aide of President Lyndon Johnson, better known in recent decades as the spokesman of the MPAA.

Mac Developers Contributing Sales to Virginia Tech Memorial Fund ★

A bunch of indie Mac developers are contributing the proceeds from the sales of their software on May 2 to a fund to help victims from last week’s tragedy at Virginia Tech.

Stanford Magazine Profile of Donald Knuth ★

From Kara Platoni’s profile of computer science demi-god Donald Knuth, regarding why the poor state of technical book typesetting in the 1970s led him to create TeX:

“The worst of it was the spacing, the way the letters would jam up against each other,” Knuth says. “It was like if you took every letter and you wiggled it and made some of them go up and some of them go down. It wasn’t random — it was systematically bad.” Because the letters in some words got smooshed together, it gave them the illusion of being darker than the others. The eye is naturally drawn toward dark spots, so the reader’s focus would jump all over the page. By 1976, when it was time to print a second edition of Volume 2, Knuth could no longer stand to look at his own work, and he felt that other scientists were getting a similarly raw deal. “We didn’t want our papers just to be there, we wanted them to be beautiful,” he protests. “I wouldn’t have wanted to write The Art of Computer Programming if it was going to look ugly.”

(Thanks to Jonathan Delacour.)

Google Desktop 1.0.1.216 ★

Performance improvements and bug fixes to Google’s Spotlight competitor.

Channel 4 Documentary on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ ★

9-minute clip on YouTube from a Channel 4 documentary on the greatest film ever made, hosted by James Cameron. Via Jim Coudal, who like me, now seeks the entire documentary.

Update: The film’s title is 2001: The Making of a Myth.

Eddie Jabbour’s Unofficial NYC Subway Map ★

I can’t believe anyone doesn’t think Jabbour’s work is better than the official map from MTA.

Delivery Status 3.2.3 ★

Perfect-looking package tracking Dashboard widget by Mike Piontek. Freeware, but donations are welcome — I’m sending some cash now.

Apple Stock Price Way Up ★

Blowout profits combined with the SEC’s exoneration of the company in the options backdating investigation.

Mailboxer ★

Free utility from Earthlingsoft, creates smart mailboxes in Apple Mail based on contacts and groups in Address Book.

Anil Dash: Is Pidgin the Firefox of IM? ★

Anil Dash on Pidgin, an open-source multi-network IM client for Windows and Linux:

The evolution of the naming of these clients doesn’t just reflect the incessant legal sniping over IP and branding that a lot of small projects face, but is also a measure of a focus on the image of the projects. This is somewhat atypical for a lot of open source projects, as some contributors can see a focus on branding as irrelevant to, or even contradictory to, making a good product. But while the Pidgin site lacks some of the slickness and polish of the Firefox site, it’s still miles better than the standard “choose a SourceForge mirror for your tarball”-style experience that a lot of comparable projects present to the world.

I enjoy Pidgin’s clever URL: “pidgin.im”.

Interviews, Email or Live ★

Dan Gillmor:

Every journalist should have the experience of being covered by journalists. Nothing would improve the craft more.

The Obsolete Interview ★

Jeff Jarvis has some very thoughtful observations regarding the Vogelstein/Calacanis/Winer interview flap.

I’ll add this to my comments from yesterday, based on some pushback from a few journalist readers of DF: If you’re writing a lengthy, in-depth profile, then yes, absolutely, meeting the subject in person (and recording the audio of your discussions) can give you insight you’d never get from email alone. But that’s not what this case with Wired, and most interview situations, are about. This is about getting a few comments to add color to a piece.

Michael Tsai on Large Cocoa Projects ★

Michael Tsai adds his own suggestions and commentary regarding Brent Simmons’s post. See also Daniel Jalkut’s and Jon Rentzsch’s takes.

Brent Simmons: ‘Thoughts About Large Cocoa Projects’ ★

Very thoughtful real-world advice on managing and designing large Cocoa projects. What Brent calls “researchability” is sort of a “remind-me-how-this-thing-I-haven’t-looked-at-in-a-long-time-works” factor.

Galen Gruman Reviews InDesign CS3 for Macworld ★

4.5 mice; high marks for the revamped palette organization and the improved Find/Change dialog. The improved scriptability, which includes hooks to attach scripts to menu items and other UI elements, sounds intriguing.