Linked List: August 21, 2007

Tuesday, 21 August 2007

2008 SXSW Interactive Panel Picker: ‘Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Great Design Hurts’ ★

Speaking of the SXSW 2008 panel picker, if you’re going, consider voting for this session from Michael Lopp and yours truly. It’s not a panel discussion; rather, it’s a dual presentation.

Back in March after SXSW 2006, I had this to say about this year’s mix of programming:

Panels are good for an introduction, and they can be entertaining in the way that a talk show is. But there’s no sustained narrative, no way to build a case or leave the audience with a strong impression. I’m guilty as charged; both times I’ve spoken at SXSWi have been on panels. But I feel like I conveyed 50 times more information in my hour-long lecture at C4 in October than I did as one of three panelists in an hour-long session at SXSWi this year — and I thought our panel went well. Panels are dessert, lectures are meals. The mix at SXSWi this year was far too sugary.

Consider this proposal Michael’s and my attempt at adding some meat.

Airbag: Cross ★

Greg Storey:

There are six-hundred-and-eighty-three proposal submissions for next year’s South by South West, and once again it’s up the the Internet to filter through all of them and choose which ones are worthy of becoming real events.

How absolutely absurd.

Be sure to check out Hugh Forrest’s comment.

Getting Things Done in VoodooPad ★

Perfect example of a scriptable application being extended in unforeseen ways.

Groupware Bad ★

Classic 2005 piece by Jamie Zawinski:

If you want to do something that’s going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.

(Via Anil Dash.)

Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings ★

Jakob Nielsen:

I’ve been reluctant to discuss one of the findings from our eyetracking research because the conclusion is that unethical design pays off.

In 1997, I chose to suppress a similar finding: users tend to click on banner ads that look like dialog boxes, complete with fake OK and Cancel buttons

Mac Gems: HandBrake 0.9.0 ★

Terrific guide by Dan Frakes regarding how to use HandBrake 0.9 to rip DVDs to files usable on Apple TV, iPhone, and iPods.

Apple’s Notebook Market Share Climbs to 17.6 Percent ★

Jim Dalrymple:

According to NPD, Apple’s U.S. retail notebook market share for June 2007 was 17.6 percent, an increase of 2.2 percentage points over the same period last year when Apple posted a 15.4 percent market share.

Craig Hockenberry on iPhone Hardware Specs ★

Craig Hockenberry:

The iPhone technical specifications mention nothing about how much RAM is included nor how fast the CPU is running. Now that I have a toolchain, it was a simple task to take some code from iPulse to investigate.

iPhone Software Version 1.0.2 ★

The entirety of the currently available release notes: “Bug fixes”. Thanks, Apple.

No entry on their Security Updates page yet, either. If any of you notice what’s actually new, let me know.

Financial Times: ‘Apple Secures Europe iPhone Revenue Deals’ ★

Astrid Maier and Volker Müller, reporting for The Financial Times:

The contract, which was signed by three European mobile operators in recent days, requires that the operators hand over to Apple 10 per cent of the revenues made from calls and data transfers by customers over iPhones.

The contract was signed by T-Mobile of Germany, Orange of France and O2 in the UK, people familiar with the situation told FT Deutschland, the Financial Times’s sister paper.

(Via Scott McNulty.)

iPhone-Style On/Off Switching in Leopard? ★

What’s weird to me isn’t the iPhone-style switch button, but that the words “ON” and “OFF” are set in all-caps Helvetica.

Comparison of Photos Taken With and Without Flash ★

The difference is very noticable. (Via Khoi Vinh.)

I Believe Elizabeth Arden Ripped Off Mondonation ★

Shameless. (Via Swissmiss.)

Putting the ‘S’ Back Into SSH ★

Dave Dribin:

Yeah, okay, you can now get into remote machines without typing a password, but so can someone else if they get access to your account. Leaving your private key unprotected without a passphrase is like not having a PIN on your ATM card. It’s just asking for trouble.

Update: Dribin has a follow-up with some caveats regarding SSHKeychain.

Adobe Adds H.264 Support to Flash Player 9 ★

My bet is that it performs like total crap, at least on OS X, but I’d love to be proven wrong.

Thinking Outside the Opera Box ★

Andrew Orlowski interviews Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner on the business of making web browsers.