Linked List: August 6, 2008

Wednesday, 6 August 2008

Derek Sivers: ‘Ideas Are Just a Multiplier of Execution’ 

I love this short piece by Derek Sivers from back in 2005:

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Using OpenDNS for Phishing Protection 

Rob Griffiths:

Consumer Reports touted Firefox or Opera over Safari because of the built-in anti-phishing tools in those first two browsers; Safari has no such built-in capability. There is, however, a free service you can use that will give every browser on your Mac a full set of anti-phishing tools (and additional tools, if you choose to use them). This service is called OpenDNS, and it’s a free replacement for your Internet service provider’s (ISP) domain name servers.

The other thing about OpenDNS is that it is fast, fast, fast — for me, it makes web surfing noticeably faster than using the default DNS servers I get from Comcast. I was on the other side of the fence about OpenDNS’s “DNS+” a few months ago, but I’ve come around again.

Apple’s Ability to Deactivate Malicious App Store Apps 

Jonathan Zdziarski claims to have identified the URL of a blacklist Apple has created in case it needs to remotely disable an app distributed through the App Store.

Scott McNulty Joins MacUser 

Ever notice how good writers leave TUAW for other weblogs, but never the other way around?

Microsoft Misses Windows Mobile Sales Target 

Good post from Paul Thurrott on the news that Microsoft, after proclaiming several times over the last year that it would sell “more than 20 million” Windows Mobile licenses in fiscal year 2008, missed the mark by over 2 million, and is now trying to spin it as no big deal.

If, say, Apple were to fall short by 10 percent on its prediction of 10 million iPhones sold in calendar 2008, somehow I’m guessing it’d be considered a big deal.

The Lightroom vs. Aperture Plugin Situation 

John Nack:

Pound for pound & click for click, “external editor presets” in Lightroom 2 and “plug-ins” in Aperture are the same thing. In both cases you pick the external engine that you want to use on your image; jump into that editing environment to make adjustments; and return to your LR/Aperture library with an edited bitmap image that sits alongside your original raw file. You get the same results with the same number of clicks.

I upgraded to Lightroom 2 last week, and I’ve only had time to scratch the surface with regard to learning what’s new. But so far, every single change that I’ve noticed has been for the better. It’s a remarkable improvement over what was already one of my favorite pieces of software ever.

The Ampersand 

Now this is a focused weblog. (Via Bryan Bedell.)

The Talk Show, Ep. 25 

New episode of America’s favorite podcast; this week’s topics include the upcoming Kodak Zi6, NetShare, the 2.0.1 update to the iPhone OS, and our new Talk Show Call-In Hotline. I don’t know if it’s a good episode, but the ending is great.

From the DF Archives: Ronco Spray-on Usability 

Thanks to a link at the end of Matthew Paul Thomas’s free software usability piece and subsequent discussion on Slashdot, etc., this piece I wrote four years ago is the most popular article on DF this week. Holds up pretty well.