By John Gruber
WorkOS launches auth.md — an open protocol for agent registration.
Linked List: February 7, 2008
Thursday, 7 February 2008
- Twitter Blog: The Case of the Missing Updates ★
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Biz Stone from Twitter:
We know about and are currently investigating an issue some people are having regarding updates not getting delivered consistently.
- FancyZoom 1.0 ★
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Cabel Sasser’s super-smooth animated JavaScript image zoomer. Free for non-commercial use, $39 for commercial use.
- A Coda on Less is More ★
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Sven-S. Porst on the crummy content of Coda’s built-in reference books. E.g. the JavaScript reference makes no mention of either Firefox or Safari.
- Is Adobe Flex Really Accessible? ★
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Aaron Cannon, after attempting and failing to use Adobe’s supposedly accessible Flex web apps using the Jaws screen reader:
I find this situation to be quite disappointing, as Adobe has done a lot for accessibility in the past. However, as it stands now, the claim that Adobe Flex is accessible seems to be nothing more than marketing hype.
- Perian 1.1 ★
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Terrific open source QuickTime component that enables playback for a slew of video formats, including AVI and DivX. I just chipped in a donation.
- Complicated, Eh? ★
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Bruce Schneier in Wired:
Your iPhone comes with a complicated list of rules about what you can and can’t do with it. You can’t install unapproved third-party applications on it. You can’t unlock it and use it with the cellphone carrier of your choice.
That doesn’t sound very complicated to me.
- AnandTech on MacBook Air Battery Life ★
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AnandTech runs battery life tests against the MacBook Air:
Apple’s 5 hour claim is laughable but not as much as I expected. If I wanted to I suspect I could hit 5 hours by making the web browsing test less stressful, but my focus was on real world usage scenarios, not proving Apple correct. Regardless, 4 hours and 16 minutes doing what I consider to be the intended usage model of the Air is respectable.
The 4:16 result came from a test with web pages being frequently loaded while iTunes plays music — a pretty reasonable test. I’m curious how this jibes with Jacqui Cheng’s inability to coax more than 2.5 hours out of it.
- Survey Update ★
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Alas, after accumulating the 5,000th response, the survey I set up yesterday with Google’s new spreadsheet forms feature crapped out and began generating errors when you attempt to submit the form. (Looks like 5,000 rows is the limit?) My thanks to everyone who participated, and my apologies to everyone who attempted to submit their response after the 5,000-row limit was reached. I’ll publish the results in some form tomorrow.
- Snake Oil, Eh? ★
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Jack Schofield raises a stink in The Guardian because the chart Steve Jobs used in his Macworld keynote to depict current U.S. smartphone market share was in pseudo-3D perspective, which made Apple’s 19.5 percent slice look bigger than the 21.2 percent slice for “Other”:
Apple boss Steve Jobs is the king of snakeoil salesmen, and his Macworld Expo keynote included a great example of manipulation.
It’s a shame Jobs seems to be a fan of pseudo-3D anti-Tufteian chartjunk, but this is pretty weak sauce. What’s next? A complaint that the MacBook Air doesn’t look quite as cool in real life as it does in Apple’s promotional photographs?
Schofield also complains:
Another great piece of deception is deciding to illustrate market share by brand. Anybody who wanted an honest appraisal of the market would look at it by operating system, because there are several operating sytems used by many different smartphone suppliers.
Exactly as with its computer business, Apple, unlike Microsoft, is not in the business of licensing an operating system. Apple is in the business of selling phones.
- Gawker: ‘Patriots Triumph in Boston Globe’s Sad Fantasy World’ ★
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I can’t get enough gloating in regarding the Patriots’ epic Super Bowl collapse. Here’s more from Gawker on The Boston Globe’s ill-advised “19-0: New England’s Unbeatable Patriots” book:
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- Give ’em Hell, Thomas: The Memoirs of President Dewey
- Mission Accomplished: Iraq’s WMD Arsenal, and How We Found It
- The Onion: ‘Patriots’ Season Perfect for Rest of Nation’ ★
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From The Onion: “The utter lack of humility they displayed alongside an equal lack of any joy in the game, that toad of a coach, and that cologne-ad quarterback… If they have to act that badly while playing that well, you really want to see them fail in the biggest way possible. Thank God almighty, that’s what we got.”