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Linked List: December 13, 2007

Thursday, 13 December 2007

The Rankin/Bass-style “Santa Claus” one is great. And if you think about “Misprint”, there’s a subtle branding point that’s emphasized, which is that Hodgman’s PC character represents PC computer hardware, not Windows. It’s a great way to make a complex point in a funny way — that even if you do want to run Vista, you can do it on a Mac and it’ll work well.

‘But I Think It’s Got Something to Do With Loneliness’ ★

Great find by Kottke: a transcript of Michael Silverblatt’s terrific 1996 interview with David Foster Wallace on the publication of Infinite Jest.

DFW: I guess I, when I was in my twenties, like deep down underneath all the bullshit what I really believed was that the point of fiction was to show that the writer was really smart. And that sounds terrible to say, but I think, looking back, that’s what was going on. And I don’t think I really understood what loneliness was when I was a young man. And now I’ve got a much less clear idea of what the point of art is, but I think it’s got something to do with loneliness and something to do with setting up a conversation between human beings.

Pixar In-Jokes ★

Jim Hill’s extensive, illustrated list of in-jokes and cross-movie references in Pixar’s films. (Via Kottke.)

Apple Working on Improved Exchange Support for iPhone ★

Another interesting job opening at Apple.

BetterZip Quick Look Generator 1.1 ★

Cool update to Robert Rezabek’s already-nifty freeware Quick Look generator for most common archive formats. Improvements from 1.0 including hierarchical disclosure dingers and the option to specify which columns to show.

Interview with Nicholas Jitkoff on the Future of Quicksilver ★

From an interview with Lifehacker’s Adam Pash:

Jitkoff: I’m inclined to encourage users to move over to the more stable and well supported alternatives like LaunchBar. Right now QS 54 (ed: the current build) accomplishes everything that I really need, the problem is stability, which for some reason most people seem to be ignoring.

I like LaunchBar a lot, and have switched back and forth between it and Quicksilver over the years. But I wind up back with Quicksilver because it does a few things better.

Google Zeitgeist 2007 ★

A great Google tradition. “iPhone” leads both the U.S. and global lists. Love this nugget.

Flickr Stats ★

Referrer-tracking shows where people come from when they look at your photos.

Mitchell Report on Steroids in MLB Implicates Top Players, Including Roger Clemens ★

Former senator George Mitchell’s “Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation Into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball” implicates a slew of top players, including Yankee pitchers Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, and, of course, Barry Bonds. Fucking cheaters. The full report runs 409 pages (PDF).

Just Use Magic ★

Dan Frommer has figured out how Palm can come back and beat the iPhone and BlackBerry: Flash.

By linking with Adobe, Palm would probably alienate its existing community of Palm OS developers, but let’s face it — that’s cutting bait at this point. If Palm and Adobe could work together on a stunning user interface and offer the massive community of Flash developers wide-open access to a solid phone platform on good-looking devices, it could be a huge hit.

Sure, and maybe they can wave the same magic wand and make chips run faster and cooler and have batteries that last for weeks without recharging. Frommer also thinks Palm’s new hardware engineering chief Jon Rubenstein was a “design guru” at Apple, when, of course, he was head of Apple’s Macintosh and, later, iPod hardware engineering divisions.

Also, by the way, there already is a Flash mobile platform, and — guess what? — it sucks compared to the mobile version of OS X.

Fake Steve vs. Press Release Copying ‘Reporter’ ★

When Daniel Lyons delves into media criticism on the FSJ weblog, it always seems a bit out of character for “Fake Steve”, but it’s usually very good. This week he’s slagging on Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, an eWeek columnist who regurgitates press releases word-for-word and puts his byline on them as original reports — and apparently sees nothing wrong with it.

Blown Away ★

Microsoft test engineer Hilton Locke, on his weblog:

I will say that if you are impressed by the “touch features” in the iPhone, you’ll be blown away by what’s coming in Windows 7.

What’s great about this is that no one believes it. Everywhere I’ve seen this comment linked this morning, it’s been mocked. Microsoft is like the little boy who cried wolf — long after everyone has stopped believing their “the next version is going to be awesome!” proclamations, they still haven’t learned that they should shut the fuck up, build something that actually does blow people away, and then let the product speak for itself.

Also, the fact that they’re bragging that the next version of their full PC OS is going to compare favorably to Apple’s handheld OS is a little embarrassing.