Linked List: July 1, 2009

Wednesday, 1 July 2009

Kroc Camen: Video for Everybody 

No-JavaScript HTML 5 markup from Kroc Camen that works across browsers and platforms and requires only two video source files: H.264 and Ogg Theora. (In browsers that don’t support HTML 5’s <video> tag, it falls back on Flash, QuickTime, and Windows Media.)

Ian Hickson on Codecs for the HTML 5 ‘audio’ and ‘video’ Tags 

The goal was for there to be at least one standard video codec that would work across all HTML 5 browsers — one format that would work across browsers and platforms with no plugins.

But, alas, the result is an impasse. Apple won’t support Ogg Theora, and Mozilla and Opera won’t support H.264. (Google, admirably, is willing to support both in Chrome, but they don’t consider Ogg good enough to use for YouTube.) So there will be no standard HTML 5 video codec. So it goes.

(Let it be said that Ian Hickson is the Solomon of web standards; his summary of the situation is mind-bogglingly even-handed and fair-minded.)

PragPub 

The Pragmatic Programmers’ new free monthly programming magazine, edited by Michael Swaine, former editor of Dr. Dobb’s Journal (and, once upon a time, an excellent columnist for the old MacUser magazine). Available in PDF, mobi, and epub formats. (Via Michael Tsai.)

Chris Anderson’s ‘Free’ Contains Numerous Uncredited Passages From Wikipedia 

Waldo Jaquith, at The Virginia Quarterly Review:

In the course of reading Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Hyperion, $26.99), for a review in an upcoming issue of VQR, we have discovered almost a dozen passages that are reproduced nearly verbatim from uncredited sources. These instances were identified after a cursory investigation, after I checked by hand several dozen suspect passages in the whole of the 274-page book.

Jaquith includes half a dozen incriminating examples. Plagiarism is a strong word, but there’s no other way to describe some of these passages.

Anderson has responded, acknowledging it as a “screwup”, on his Long Tail weblog.

An Ant, Close Up 

GigaPan:

This ant is composed of 400 pictures, and it’s magnified 400× using a scanning electron microscope. The ant was given to us to image by Brian Fisher an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences.

The intersection of horrifying and wonderful.

Layer Tennis 2009 Finals 

On the one side: Gregory Hubacek, who played his way out of the qualifiers and had the toughest draw in the playoffs. On the other: defending champion Shaun Inman. In the commentary booth: Jason Santa Maria and yours truly.

See you next Friday, July 10.

The Em and En of iPhone 3.0 

Jeff Richardson wonders why Apple didn’t also add the en-dash when they added the em-dash to the iPhone OS 3.0 keyboard.

Meg Hourihan on the iPhone as a Computer 

Gina Trapani asked her Twitter followers if they were planning to buy a 3GS, and she compiled the 175 answers into a single post for her weblog. I love the first one, from Meg Hourihan:

Yes, iPhone = my computer, and $399 is worth it. Haven’t bought new laptop since late 06 and don’t plan to for long time.

This, to me, gets to the heart of the revolution at hand. A decade ago, my first PowerBook was a secondary machine to the desktop anchored at my desk. Now, my main machine is my MacBook Pro, but it feels a bit like an anchor now. My mobile secondary computer is my iPhone.

iPhone 3GS TV Ads 

The iPhone’s new copy and paste is so good they’ve made a commercial about it.

App Store WTF of the Week (App Store Link) 

New iPhone game named “Mariolife”, featuring Mario. What makes it a WTF is that the game is clearly neither from nor licensed by Nintendo. It boggles the mind that this made it into the App Store.

Can’t wait for the sequel starring Mickey Mouse. (Via Brian Ford.)

Update: Ends up the App Store review team simply doesn’t deal with copyright and trademark verification (with the exception of enforcing Apple’s own trademarks, of course). Any beef Nintendo has (and trust me, they’re going to have a beef with this app) is between Nintendo and Mariolife’s developer. Makes sense.