Linked List: January 13, 2009

Tuesday, 13 January 2009

Palm WebOS and Third Party Applications 

Andrew Shebanow (formerly of Adobe) is now working at Palm:

The main thing I’m responsible for is third party application distribution, and although we’re fairly far along in this area, its not too late for your input to count. So let me know what you’d like to see and/or not see. Here are a few questions to get things rolling, in no particular order.

Good questions. I don’t recall seeing anyone from Apple seek feedback from the developer community on a single one of these issues regarding the iTunes App Store.

Update: Shebanow has yanked the original post:

The popularity of my post has caught me and Palm by surprise, and my boss has asked me to hide the post while management decides what they want me to do about it.

Update 2: It’s been re-posted to the official Palm Developer Network weblog.

More on Google’s New Favicon 

I’m with Andy Baio — I like the original version submitted by student André Resende better.

The Remnants 

Web pilot written and directed by John August during the writers strike last year. Cast includes Ze Frank and Justine Bateman. Love the bit about the surface texture of refrigerators.

Safari RSS Security Vulnerability 

Brian Mastenbrook:

I have discovered that Apple’s Safari browser is vulnerable to an attack that allows a malicious web site to read files on a user’s hard drive without user intervention. This can be used to gain access to sensitive information stored on the user’s computer, such as emails, passwords, or cookies that could be used to gain access to the user’s accounts on some web sites. The vulnerability has been acknowledged by Apple.

Choose a default RSS reader other than Safari (in Safari’s preferences) and you should be safe.

Update: Mastenbrook has updated his advisory, indicating that you need to do more. Download RCDefaultApp and disable or change the assignments for the “feeds:” and “feedsearch:” URL schemes, too (that’s in addition to the “feed:?” scheme, which is what gets changed when you use Safari’s preference to set the default RSS reader).

Feltron Eight 

What a great tradition.

Google Quick Search Box 

New Mac utility from Google: Quick Search Box. Sort of like a cross between Quicksilver and the iPhone Google Search app. The Quicksilver similarities aren’t surprising — one of the Google engineers responsible for Quick Search Box is Quicksilver auteur Nicholas Jitkoff. It’s like a re-thinking of Quicksilver from the ground up, with a lot less fiddliness.

Calling it a “developer preview” seems apt at this point, though — it hung on my machine several times in the hour or so I’ve been trying it. Lots of promise though, including a plugin system that, as far as I can tell, isn’t yet documented anywhere. (Look inside the app bundle and you’ll see that most of its features are implemented as plugins.)

Remember When Slashdot Carried Cutting-Edge, Breaking News? 

Also: remember when Slashdot was relevant?

Update: Here’s a story from Slashdot two years ago regarding this same topic.