Linked List: July 15, 2008

Tuesday, 15 July 2008

M.G Siegler:

Google accounted for a ridiculous 69.17 percent of all U.S. search in June, according to new data from Hitwise. What’s even more ridiculous is that the search engine is still adding market share. One year ago it accounted for 63.92 percent. Just last month it was at 68.29 percent.

Revealing Hidden Assumptions in Estimation 

Classic post from 2005 by Jamis Buck at 37signals, on users’ estimations for how long and how difficult new features might be:

Imaginary work is always easier to do than real work. It is much more attractive (being more quickly done) and once you see the imaginary work, it can be very difficult to identify the real work it masks. People estimating imaginary work often assume they have all the facts in hand when making their estimates, which assumption leads them to believe that there is no “big technical hurdle” preventing its implementation.

These users are inevitable, and they never cease to annoy. But no product team will ever be successful without the confidence to know when to ignore them. What these users want is everything, and if you try to do everything, you will fail.

Ars Technica’s Extensive iPhone 3G Review 

Some nice photos showing the details of the new hardware.

Jeremy Horwitz’s Extensive iPhone 3G Review 

He reports that the audio improvements are for real.

Felix Sockwell’s Icons for the NY Times iPhone App 

Splendid icons, and a great look at the iterative design process they went through. (Via Armin Vit.)

Byline — Google Reader Client for iPhone 

Phantom Fish’s very impressive $10 feed reader for the iPhone. Syncs over the network with your Google Reader account, not just for subscriptions and read/unread status, but also for saving web pages for offline reading. Very strong rival to NetNewsWire. Be sure to check out the video tour.

Review: MLB at Bat for iPhone 

Jeff Smykil reviews MLB at Bat, one of my very favorite iPhone apps so far. The UI is effective, intuitive, and attractive. (Too bad Smykil boogered up the screenshot with unnecessary labels and boxes; check out the screenshots in the App Store to see what it really looks like.)

iPhone 3G Sold Out in 21 States 

Still long lines, too.

Twitter Buys Summize 

What was Summize is now search.twitter.com.

The Loopt SMS Mess 

Merlin Mann:

Friends, my patience with organizations that feel you should have to email them in order to not have your private information abused has passed the breaking point. If Loopt chooses not to see this nonsense as an invasive and potentially costly breach of many people’s privacy, then I pity the actual Loopt users who agreed to let these people publicly announce where they are all the time. Suddenly this goes from “potentially kinda creepy” to “Holy mackerel, what the fuck were you thinking?”

Update: Loopt has disabled this feature for the next update to the app.

The Clang Static Analyzer 

Quentin Carnicelli on Clang’s static analyzer, a source code analyzer for C and Objective-C about which I’ve heard nothing but raves.

iCal, Google Calendar, BusySync, and MobileMe 

John Chaffee of BusyMac on how MobileMe affects calendar sharing and synching for BusySync users.

The Letters of Stanley Kubrick 

A genuine treasure trove. Includes the letter Kubrick wrote to Arthur C. Clarke suggesting a collaboration to create “the proverbial really good science-fiction movie”, Laurence Olivier backing out of the role of Humbert Humbert in Lolita, and Kubrick’s camera advice to fellow gadget-nut Peter Sellers.