Linked List: May 26, 2009

Tuesday, 26 May 2009

iLounge Has a Mock-Up Showing the Purported Next-Gen iPod Nano 

The screen gets wider, the click wheel shrinks (to accommodate the bigger screen), and a camera is added to the back.

Star Wars ABC — Illustrations by Michael Fleming 

“A is for Ackbar.”

(Thanks to Daniel Bogan.)

On Redesigning the Front Page of Talking Points Memo 

Alexander Shaw on the redesign of Talking Points Memo, one of my favorite web sites.

Ovi Store Launches 

Nokia’s answer to the iTunes App Store. Reaction seems negative thus far.

Claim Chowdhry 

Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry, in an interview with Reuters:

Investors should not think the upcoming version of iPhone 3 is going to be as successful as iPhone 2.0 because it will have solid competition from Palm Pre, developed by ex-Apple designer Jon Rubinstein.

Palm Pre has a superior operating system than iPhone. It runs on a better network — Sprint CDMA — versus iPhone which runs on GSM.

I think Palm’s WebOS looks very good. Maybe it will prove itself better than iPhone OS, even. But given that it’s not even out yet, it seems a little early to make that call. The bigger error, though, is in thinking that there’s only room for one mobile OS. I expect iPhone sales to grow this year regardless of how well the Pre sells.

Bruce Lawson Interviews Ian Hickson, Editor of the HTML 5 Specification 

Ian Hickson, asked whether browser makers have too much influence on the spec:

The reality is that the browser vendors have the ultimate veto on everything in the spec, since if they don’t implement it, the spec is nothing but a work of fiction. So they have a lot of influence—I don’t want to be writing fiction, I want to be writing a spec that documents the actual behaviour of browsers.

Whether that’s too much, I don’t know. Does gravity have too much influence on objects on earth? It’s just the way it is.

I’m just a spectator, albeit a very interested one, but I have long thought that Hickson possesses just the right mix of pragmatism and idealism for this job.

Kindle Formatting for Web Geeks 

John August on the simple HTML formatting supported by Amazon’s Kindle publishing system. (Sounds like a good match for Markdown.)

Roast Pork Sandwiches 

Peter Mucha makes the case for roast pork as the best sandwich in Philly. Tony Luke’s and DiNic’s both make great ones.

Obama Selects Sonia Sotomayor for Court 

The New York Times:

President Obama announced on Tuesday that he will nominate the federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in Bronx public housing projects to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice.

Says Jeffrey Toobin:

She’s a prudent, careful liberal, respectful of Supreme Court precedent, but willing to push its limits to defend the rights of the individual.