Linked List: May 22, 2009

Friday, 22 May 2009

The Deck Readership Survey 

We, where by “we” I mean the Deck ad network, have never done this sort of thing before, but Jim Coudal and his crew have put together a readership survey. A lot of sites and ad networks do this because it provides information that can help sell ads, but this survey is different. Example questions:

5. Are you one of those people who thinks you’re right all the time, and that if everybody would just listen to you things would be a whole lot better?

And:

7. If you were to become romantically involved with a typeface, which one would it be?

And there’s even a trig question which Jim claims DF readers are faring poorly against. (Update: Don’t look until you’ve finished the survey, but here’s a cheatsheet for the trig question from DF reader Steve Nicholson.)

‘The Variant’ 

John August, screenwriter of such films as Go and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, has self-published a short story called “The Variant”, which he describes as:

It’s a spy thriller with a strong dose of science fiction, in the vein of The Prisoner and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., or the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges.

It costs just $1, either as a PDF or on Kindle. August sent me a pre-release version earlier this week, and I really enjoyed it. (Actually, I went ahead and bought the Kindle version so I could give the new 1.1 Kindle iPhone app a proper test drive.) There’s also a free 13-page preview — give it a read and I bet you’ll cough up the buck for the rest of the story.

“The Variant” is both a good, fun, smart story and an interesting experiment in indie self-publishing for fiction.

Delicious Library 

Delicious Library is a well-designed Mac app that lets you scan and track your DVDs, books, CDs, video games, software, board games, tools, electronics, cameras, jewelry, shoes, and clothes. My thanks to Delicious Monster for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote it.

My favorite feature is its ability to use your Mac’s built-in iSight camera to scan bar codes. Other features include the ability to publish your library on the web (with beautiful page templates and iPhone-optimized pages, of course), sharing over Bonjour, and “three-click” selling of your books and DVDs via Amazon.

University of Virginia First-Year Student Computing Survey 

Remember the survey from UC Davis I linked to a few weeks ago, showing that Mac ownership had tripled from 2006 to 2009? Here’s another similar survey, this time from the University of Virginia, showing similar trends. (Via Glenn Fleishman.)

American Checkers 1.13 

Speaking of updates to 8x8-square board games for the iPhone, the latest version of Igor Diakov’s American Checkers adds a more attractive wooden board style, among other niceties. Diakov also offers a few other checker variants, including Russian and Brazillian checkers. I’ve probably spent more time playing American Checkers than all others on my iPhone combined.

Deep Green 1.1 

New version of Joachim Bondo’s outstanding iPhone chess game, adds cool sounds and improved (but very subtle) animations. Without question the best iPhone chess game — beautiful, fun, and an intricate, thoughtful design.