Linked List: April 8, 2008

Tuesday, 8 April 2008

‘Or a Snake’ 

Flickr’s new video feature seems to be live. I got to beta test it for a bit, and it’s pretty sweet. I’m sure The Internet is going to complain loudly about the 90-second limit, but to me, it’s analogous to Twitter’s 140-character limit: a constraint that enforces brevity and encourages creativity.

Anyway, one from me, co-directed by my son.

Video on Flickr? 

If Mike Arrington keeps up this hard work, he’s going to pack on another 30 pounds.

Regarding Walt Mossberg’s ‘3G iPhone in 60 Days’ Comment 

I have no idea why so many Mac and gadget writers jumped all over Mossberg’s off-hand prediction that Apple is set to release a 3G iPhone in the next 60 days. I guess the idea is that Mossberg is so juiced in that he knows deep, dark Apple secrets. Guess what, when he does know a secret from Apple, he’s under NDA.

Mossberg’s the same guy who claimed in July last year that Apple would release an iPhone update with Flash support “within the next couple of months”.

Update: Regarding my “I have no idea why…” question, reader S. Ben Melhuish writes: “This one’s easy — it’s because so many Mac and gadget writers want it to be true.” That sounds about right.

The Browser Bunch 

Joe Kissell looks at ten modern Mac web browsers for Macworld.

iCal Events 2.3 

Free Dashboard widget by Ben Kazez, shows you a list of events from iCal for the next few days (as opposed to Leopard’s default iCal widget, which only shows events from today).

The Baffling Thing About HuddleChat 

Kevin Heisler at Search Engine Watch:

The success of Google App Engine depends on developer trust in Google.

So it would seem either Salar Kamangar, Vice President, Product Management had no clue HuddleChat was an “Attack of the Clones” app or he gave the greenlight for a product launch knowing many in the developer community would likely view Google App Engine as a Xerox machine for copycat product developers.

That’s really the baffling thing about HuddleChat. Even if you think it’s OK to copy someone else’s application feature-for-feature, the big fear for developers with something like Google App Engine is that you’re trusting Google with all of your source code. Why should small indie web developers trust Google when the first example app is a Google rip-off of a small indie web app?

It’s not just that someone used Google App Engine to clone Campfire — it’s that Google did it. And you can’t argue that HuddleChat isn’t a Google product: it was developed and “designed” by Google employees, using proprietary Google technology, and is hosted on Google servers. Whatever Google employees develop is owned by Google.

Keyboard Maestro 3.0 

Major update to one of my very favorite Mac utilities, by Peter N Lewis and Stairways Software. Among other features, Keyboard Maestro lets you record macros — sequences of key presses, mouse clicks, etc. — and then invoke them with hotkey shortcuts. It’s also a terrific scripting utility. The change list for version 3.0 is long, but my favorite aspects are the re-organized user interface (simpler by far) and improved scripting support (including support for Unix shell scripts). Keyboard Maestro also now has its own built-in web server, which allows you to execute Keyboard Maestro macros on your Mac remotely.

The whole thing is exquisitely documented, and introductory examples abound. Upgrades from version 2 cost $18, and new licenses cost $36 — but DF readers can save 25 percent ($9 on new licenses) through the end of April using coupon code “DARINGFIREBALL2”.

iPhone OS 2.0 Developer Beta Expired 

Judging by the number of emails I’ve gotten from iPhone developers today, this problem is rampant. Update: Looks like a new beta went out this morning, but many (most?) developers don’t have access to it yet.

Techmeme Coverage of Google App Engine 

If you’re looking for comprehensive coverage of Google App Engine, there’s no better place to start.

Kansas Wins NCAA Championship 

Congratulations to the Kansas Jayhawks — nine points down with just minutes to play, they sent the game to overtime and went on to win the championship. I can’t recall a bigger meltdown from the free-throw line than Memphis’s. Great game.

HuddleChat 

Looking through the “gallery” of demo apps built with Google App Engine, the only one that seems more than half-baked is HuddleChat, written by Google employees Darren Delaye, Braden Kowitz, and Kyle Consalus. But HuddleChat is just a feature-for-feature clone of 37signals’s Campfire. The layout is the same, the tabs at the top of the screen are the same, the right-side sidebar listing participants and file uploads is the same. It even copies Campfire’s trick of formatting a message as “code” if it contains literal newline characters.

Borrowing ideas is fair game, but copying an entire app is wrong. And it’s creepy, in a Microsoft-of-the-’90s way, when it’s a $150 billion company cloning an app from a 10-person company.

Google App Engine 

New web app platform from Google: “Google App Engine enables you to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications.” In part this is a competitor to Amazon services like S3 and SimpleDB, but at first glance it seems more cohesive and more focused — Google is offering to host your entire web app, not just the storage. It lets you use Google Checkout for commerce and Google Accounts for user accounts.

“Additional runtime environments and languages may be supported in the future”, but for now it’s entirely Python-based, and includes support for Django. The “SDK” is a Python staging server that you can run on Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux. Google App Engine is currently in “preview release” and new sign-ups are limited, but when it ships it’s going to offer fairly generous limits for free accounts. A new app shouldn’t cost a penny to host until it’s somewhat popular.