Linked List: August 22, 2007

Wednesday, 22 August 2007

Satchmo 

Open source web store written in Python/Django. What caught my eye was the slogan: “The webshop for perfectionists with deadlines.” (Via Simon Willison.) Update: The slogan is a play off Django’s own slogan, “The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines.”

AisleOne 

Speaking of nicely-designed weblogs: AisleOne, “a blog about design, typography and everything else”, by Antonio Carusone.

Top Speed of a Prius 

Alexander Micek concludes that the top speed of a Prius is around 105 MPH — meaning Woz, clocked at 104, was pretty much driving the thing as fast as it would go.

(I very much enjoy the design of Micek’s web site.)

iMovie 7.0.1 

Bug-fix update to the controversial iMovie ’08.

AT&T to Cease Itemizing Every Data Connection on Paper iPhone Bills 

Just today at Starbucks, the barista saw my iPhone and asked me three questions: “Is that an iPhone?”, “How do you like it?”, and “Did you get one of those 100-page phone bills that comes in a box?”

Customer Laptops Stolen From Apple Store 

Casey McNerthney, reporting for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Seattle police, who arrived at the store about 8 a.m. Monday, said there was a large hole in the ceiling of a technicians’ room. A store employee said all laptops that had completed servicing were missing, according to a police report.

HD Trailer for ‘The Nines’ 

Via John August, who wrote and directed it.

Freakonomics: ‘The Last Word (for Now) on Our RSS Feed: An Excruciatingly Long and Boring Post That Will Please Exactly No One’ 

Actually, it pleased me greatly to read this, given that I’m thinking about and working through the exact same issues regarding offering full feeds here on DF. What happened is that the Freakonomics weblog used to offer full feeds, but since starting their partnership with The Times, now only has an excerpt feed. Regarding why they don’t just offer a full content feed with ads:

But the Times and its advertisers aren’t crazy about this option. (Nor are they alone, apparently.) Why? This is the fundamental point: many advertisers do not value feed readers as much as they value site readers, since they believe that feed readers are far harder to measure and track.

It’s certainly true that feed subscribers are harder to measure, but, I think this is shortsighted. Subscribers are readers who, by the act of subscribing to the feed, show themselves to be regular readers. I think that’s a valuable audience — and so far, sponsors of the Daring Fireball feed think so too.

Jason Fried on Doing Original Design Work 

“Whenever I run into designer’s block or just need visual design inspiration I turn to the world of wrist watches.”

BloggingStocks Sees Existence of Refurbished iPhones as Bad News 

Zac Bissonnette:

You can now save $100 on an iPhone by snapping up a refurbished one on the company’s website. So far iPhone sales have fallen well short of expectations, and there are two possible explanations for the refurbished models. It’s possible that they were returned by speculators who were hoping to resell them on eBay but were disappointed when Apple had enough stock.

That may be part of it, but it seems likely that a lot of people are just unimpressed with the expensive new phone.

Um, how about that they’ve sold several hundred thousand of them, and even a small percentage of defective units replaced under warranty results in a sizable number of refurb units for sale. You know, just like with iPods and Macs.

Word Count of the Day 

Word count of Craig Hockenberry’s original weblog post regarding the results of his investigation into the iPhone’s RAM and CPU details: 374.

Word count of Jeff Smykil’s post on Ars Technica’s Infinite Loop linking to Hockenberry’s piece: 440.

Woz Gets $700 Ticket for Going 104 MPH in a Prius 

Speaking of the metric system, Woz got flagged for going 104 MPH in his Prius, went to court and offered the judge the excuse that he’d gotten used to kilometer speeds while traveling around the world.

Priuses go 104 MPH?

What’s a Meter? 

Good Magazine on the history of the official definition of the meter. Includes this humiliating nugget: “There are only three countries that do not use the metric system: Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States.”

(Thanks to Rab Bakari.)

Monoscope 

Just discovered this site. Instant subscription.

iPhone Installer Beta 

Already updated for 1.0.2 iPhone software. I used it last night to restore OpenSSH, Lights Off, and more after I upgraded my iPhone to 1.0.2. By far and away the easiest way to add software to your iPhone.