Linked List: August 13, 2007

Monday, 13 August 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.