By John Gruber
WorkOS launches auth.md — an open protocol for agent registration.
Linked List: April 2, 2009
Thursday, 2 April 2009
- The Omni Group ★
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How can you not love a company that sponsored this site’s RSS feed for four straight weeks, and, for their final ad, chose to write the following:
John Gruber once described one of our applications as “vaporware”. Another one he referred to as an “over-designed turd”. Truth is, we kind of like John best when he’s pulling no punches — even if we totally disagree with him.
Pretty cool if you ask me, and their software isn’t too bad either. Omni Group, I thank you.
- Tropicana OJ Sales Plunge 20 Percent Post-Rebranding ★
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This might go down as one of the worst rebrandings in history. AdAge reports:
A spokeswoman for Tropicana in an e-mail said, “No dots to connect here.” The company did not respond to further requests for comment.
Now’s a good time to recall the words of Peter Arnell, mastermind behind the rebranding, on what it all meant:
“Now, the reason why that’s all important is because of course squeeze maintains a certain level of power when it comes to this notion emotionally about what squeeze means, like when I squeeze, or gimme a squeeze, or the notion of a hug, or the ideas behind the power of love and the idea of transferring that love or converting that attitude between mom and the kids.”
Uh, OK. (Transcription courtesy of Cabel Sasser, very fast typist.)
- Get the Mac Box Set for $135 at Amazon ★
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Leopard alone retails for $129, so it’s like getting the new iLife and iWork suites for $6.
- A Quantum of Utility ★
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Paul Graham, in a Hacker News comment thread regarding yesterday’s DF essay:
“How small? How simple?”
We advise startups to launch when they’ve added a quantum of utility: when there is at least some set of users who would be excited to hear about it, because they can now do something they couldn’t do before.
Along similar lines, here’s a bit of sage advice from longtime DF reader Don O’Shea, who teaches optical engineering at Georgia Tech:
The mnemonic that I give my students for setting priorities for features in an optical design is NUN: Necessary, Useful, and Nice.
- Designing Convertbot ★
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Mark Jardine on the design process behind Convertbot, the new iPhone unit converter from Tapbots. I adore the way their apps look and sound.
- The Voice of Yankee Stadium May Retire ★
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Bob Sheppard is 98 years old and has been the P.A. announcer at Yankee Stadium since 1951:
He did his first Yankees game on April 17, 1951, announcing a lineup that included Phil Rizzuto, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra.
- Free Online Stanford Course on Developing iPhone Apps ★
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Should be available this week through iTunes U.
- Palm Pre Video Walkthrough ★
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PreCentral has a hands-on video from this week’s CTIA conference. Looking good. Palm has also started rolling out a private beta of the Mojo SDK for WebOS.