Linked List: August 13, 2007

Lights Off — First Native Game for iPhone 

Excellent freeware game for iPhone, programmed by Delicious Monster’s Lucas Newman and with artwork by Adam Betts. It’s a perfect game for the iPhone: simple, fun, quick, and a natural fit for a touch screen.

This is not a web app, it’s a real native iPhone app. The good news about that is the experience is better than any web app running in MobileSafari could possibly provide; the bad news, alas, is that the only way to install it is through the use of unsupported hacks not for the faint of heart. I played the game on Newman’s iPhone at C4, and it’s worth it. (Lights Off finished second in the Iron Coder contest, behind only Ken and Glen Aspeslagh’s two-way videoconferencing app.)

Jason Snell: ‘The “Stickergate” Kerfuffle’ 

The final word on the saga; well-said.

How to Redesign the Leopard Dock So It Sucks Less 

Rory Prior proposes an improved design for the Mac OS X Dock, emphasizing clarity and simplicity over special effects.

First Look: Numbers 

Macworld’s Rob Griffiths looks at Numbers 1.0.

iPhoto ’08 Tagging 

David Chartier on iPhoto’s new keyword/tagging features.

Dinosaurs with Jetpacks 

Insightful analysis from Shots Ring Out regarding Universal’s “we’re going to sell DRM-free music but not through iTunes” plan.

Michael Tsai on iPhoto 7 

“As with previous versions, the Preferences window looks like a normal window but is actually application-modal.”

Alex Payne’s C4[1] Coverage 

Alex Payne summarizes just about every session from C4[1] over the weekend; great coverage of a great conference.

Bob Keefe’s ‘Intel Inside’ Sticker Article 

The article that prompted The Question. There is an interesting story to be written about this topic, but this isn’t it.

Adium 1.1 

Brand-new tab interface, better AIM DirectConnect reliability, and more.

FlickrExport 2.0.12 Adds iPhoto 7 Compatibility 

Even better, Apple has finally released an official SDK for iPhoto plugins; up until now, FlickrExport had to rely on undocumented APIs.

The King of Web Standards 

The battle for web standards goes mainstream; BusinessWeek certainly gets it.

Pearl Jam Blasts AT&T For Censored Lyrics In Lollapalooza Webcast 

AT&T censored non-obscene, non-profane anti-George W. Bush lyrics from a webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. Disgraceful.

“If a company that is controlling a Webcast is cutting out bits of our performance — not based on laws, but on their own preferences and interpretations — fans have little choice but to watch the censored version,” Pearl Jam said in a prepared statement. “What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it’s about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band.”

Thumbs Surgically Altered For iPhone? Think Again 

There was a story going around last week, originating in The North Denver News, that a man had had cosmetic surgery on his fat thumbs to slim them down to better enable using them with his iPhone. Unsurprisingly, the story was a complete hoax.

Update: Here’s an editor’s note from The North Denver News claiming the piece was intended as “satirical social commentary”.

Conspiracy — Graphing Calculator for iPhone 

Craig Hockenberry’s C4 Iron Coder contest entry: a graphic calculator web app for iPhones.

International iPhoning Results in $3,000 Bill 

Christopher Null:

Those little charges add up fast. $0.02 per kilobyte sounds pretty cheap, right? WRONG. Do the math: A 1-megabyte web page (a very common size) costs almost twenty bucks to open. 20. Dollars. Whoa. Seriously.