Linked List: February 26, 2009

Thursday, 26 February 2009

Mike Monteiro’s List of Words It Is Not OK to Ever Say ★

Every time I hear someone call pizza “za” I want to hurt them.

Translating ‘The Economist’ Behind China’s Great Firewall ★

Andy Baio on a team of volunteers in China who translate the entirety of each week’s Economist, and publish the work as a PDF:

It’s an impressive example of online collaboration with simple tools, a completely non-commercial effort by volunteers interested in spreading knowledge while improving their English skills. In the process, they’re taking a political risk in translating controversial articles about their homeland behind the Great Firewall.

O’Reilly Webcast: Developing Applications for Palm WebOS ★

Webcast presentation by Palm CTO Mitch Allen on developing software for the upcoming WebOS.

My Safari 1.0 Review From January 2003 ★

Me, on the then-one-day-old Safari 1.0 public beta, in January 2003:

Apple’s stated goal is to make Safari the best browser on the Mac. What’s unstated, but clearly their larger goal, is to make it the best browser in the world, period. A noble goal, but clearly reachable. The public beta unveiled yesterday is a remarkable start.

To put how long ago that is in context, Firefox didn’t exist yet, OmniWeb was still using its own custom rendering engine, and the default Mac browser was Internet Explorer. And, more importantly, web browsing on the Mac, using any of the available choices, was significantly slower than browsing on Windows with IE. Times change, huh?

Helvetica Trade Advertising From 1966 ★

“Helvetica, of course.” (Via Mike Davidson.)

Sony, Philips, Panasonic Plan Single Blu-ray License ★

Perhaps this will reduce the “bag of hurt” factor, which has, so far, kept Blu-ray drives out of Mac hardware.

What Paul Graham Has Learned From Hacker News ★

Paul Graham:

Hence what I call the Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you take specific measures to prevent it.

The Evolution of 20 Corporate Brand Logos ★

I love how the GE logo has hardly changed in 100 years.

Zen Bound ★

Gorgeous, fun new $5 game for the iPhone from Secret Exit: “A calm and meditative game of wrapping rope around wooden sculptures.” A simple concept implemented with tremendous panache. Warning: seems like a good way to lose a whole day.