Linked List: October 4, 2007

Thursday, 4 October 2007

Why SpamSieve Doesn’t Bounce Spam Messages ★

Michael Tsai:

Since bouncing doesn’t work, it would be a waste of your time and network resources to do it. Including such a feature in SpamSieve would fill out the feature checklist but give the false impression that the feature should be used.

(And another good tip for SpamSieve users here, regarding forged spams “from” your own address.)

TUAW Interview With the Pixelmator Team ★

Saulius Dailide, in an interview with TUAW’s Mat Lu:

Also, Pixelmator made $60,000 the first day, and sales are still outstanding. So, our budget for future versions is not as ridiculous as it was before.

Accidental Caps Lock Defense ★

Wolf Rentzsch:

Apple’s Caps Lock key has undocumented anti-jab protection.

‘Embedded Web Fonts Return. Uh-oh.’ ★

Stephen Coles on the announcement of WebKit’s support for embedded TrueType fonts:

This reopens the legal can of worms that falls off the shelf every time we talk about font embedding. Good fonts cost money. Like most software, each user or CPU must be licensed to use commercial fonts. When you start talking about every visitor of a web page downloading fonts, well, you enter very sticky territory indeed.

The conundrum is that most of the fonts worth using can’t legally be shared as free downloads, and most of the fonts that are legally shareable aren’t worth using.

‘The Real Toy Story’ ★

Those aforelinked Chinese toy factory photographs are the work of Michael Wolf, as part of a larger art project regarding Chinese-made toys. (Thanks to Ramanan Sivaranjan.)

Visualizing Fitts’s Law ★

Kevin Hale’s terrific explanation — replete with well-designed, informative illustrations — of Fitts’s Law, one of the most important concepts in human-to-machine interface design. (Thanks to Jacob Rus.)

CARS Announces New Books ★

Two new books from Crazy Apple Rumors Site author John Moltz.

WebKit Now Supports Downloadable Fonts ★

Dave Hyatt:

WebKit now supports CSS @font-face rules. With font face rules you can specify downloadable custom fonts on your Web pages or alias one font to another. This article on A List Apart describes the feature in detail. All of the examples linked to in that article work in WebKit now.

Strong Words ★

Verizon Wireless Chief Marketing Officer Mike Lanman, on the upcoming LG Voyager phone:

“We think it’ll be the best phone ... this year. It will kill the iPhone.”

Um, OK.

Photographs From Inside a Chinese Toy Factory ★

Interesting, amusing, moving, and disturbing.