Linked List: June 30, 2008

Monday, 30 June 2008

Wal-Mart Logo Timeline 

They should totally go back to the one they used from 1964-1981. Dress everyone in the stores up in cowboy outfits and sheriff badges, the whole nine yards.

Brand New: Less Hyphen, More Burst for Walmart 

Armin Vit on Wal-Mart’s upcoming new logo:

The change to title case helps humanize Walmart with a name that reads more like John, Albert, Sarah or Wilbur; it really looks very different and sets a different tone. The wordmark is nice and friendly and has enough customization to feel more proprietary than out-of-the-box. The new icon, however, is very questionable. It reflects technology start-up or telecommunications company before it does discount retailing that will make anyone live better. Sure, it might represent a flower or a sun, but the execution is too modern and cold to be seen as a natural element.

Gallery of Sawn-In-Half Cameras 

Fascinating cross-sections of German cameras and lenses.

EveryBlock Philadelphia 

Outstanding: EveryBlock has expanded to two new cities, Charlotte and Philadelphia. More from Adrian Holovaty at the EveryBlock weblog.

Working With History in Bash 

Useful Bash tips from Allan Odgaard. There’s also some great stuff in the comments, including this gem from Pádraig Brady — I’ve always wished the arrow keys worked like that in Bash.

Development Phase Code Signing 

Daniel Jalkut explains the practical benefits of code signing.

Mac OS X 10.5.4 

Includes (among many other things) another useful Spaces improvement:

Addresses an issue in which switching from a space with a Finder window keeps the Finder as the active application instead of the application residing in the destination space.

This one, too, was apparently a very significant (read: “data loss”) bug:

Resolves an issue with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 files on a remote server.

EA Veteran Starts iPhone-Focused Mobile Game Studio 

Neil Young in an interview with Gamasutra regarding his new mobile game publisher Ngmoco:

So if you think about what Apple’s doing with the App Store, they’re really turning mobile on its ear. They allow you to control the pricing yourself. They’re taking a distribution fee for distributing your software, but they’re really allowing users to choose what to put on their phone and how they want to enhance their device. And that is a fundamental shift.

It’s interesting that from the perspective of Mac OS X and the Mac software market, the iPhone seems very restrictive — but from the perspective of those used to dealing with the mobile phone market or Nintendo’s and Sony’s handhelds, it seems free.

Cornerstone 1.0 

New $59 Subversion client for Mac OS X, from Zennaware. At a glance, the UI details seem very thoughtful, including an optional widescreen layout. The file comparison tool can compare both text and images. Extra credit for debuting with a proper 1.0 version number, unlike Versions, which debuted as (and remains) a public beta.

It strikes me as an odd coincidence that two serious Subversion clients would debut at a time when many developers are starting to switch away from Subversion to distributed revision control systems such as Git and Mercurial.

George Carlin Would Have Enjoyed This One 

Steve Benen:

But the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website takes the phenomenon one step further with its AP articles. The far-right fundamentalist group replaces the word “gay” in the articles with the word “homosexual.” I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.

The problem, of course, is that “gay” does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle reported this morning that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had “fixed” the article.

Conglomerate 

Sony CEO Howard Stringer:

“Apple is a marvellous company, but it is a boutique. We are a giant conglomerate.”

Update: As for just how giant, Sony’s current market cap is about $44 billion. The boutique’s market cap is about three times larger, at $149 billion. In terms of net income for the most recently reported financial year, Sony’s was $3.7 billion; Apple’s was $3.5 billion.