Linked List: July 15, 2009

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

‘We Came in Peace for All Mankind’ ★

The Big Picture looks back at Apollo 11, which launched 40 years ago.

Tal Leming and Erik van Blokland’s .webfont Proposal ★

A joint proposal to the W3C for a .webfont standard. This is very clever and practical, and I concur with Leming’s conclusion:

We’re hopeful that this is a good format for everyone. It gives users smaller file sizes. It gives the font vendors a simple format that allows them to include information about the font. It doesn’t require entirely new technologies from the browser developers.

Update: Worth noting that this proposal is endorsed by top-notch foundries like H&FJ, House Industries, and many more.

Pogue on iPhone 3GS and VoiceOver Accessibility ★

David Pogue:

But from what I’ve seen of VoiceOver so far, it certainly seems as though Apple has gone to some pretty amazing impressive lengths to make the iPhone friendly to blind people.

Fake Walt Mossberg Answers Reader Mail ★

Hilarious. Plus: bonus points for slagging on Arrington.

Apple Statement on iTunes 8.2.1 and Pre Syncing ★

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris, in a statement to BusinessWeek’s Arik Hesseldahl:

“iTunes 8.2.1 is a free software update that provides a number of important bug fixes. It also disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre. As we’ve said before, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players.”

You can’t accuse them of being coy about it.

New York Nearest Subway Augmented Reality App for iPhone 3GS ★

This is one of the most impressive software demo videos I’ve ever seen. It’s like something from Minority Report. This is holy shit! stuff. The developers, Acrossair, also have a similar app for London; both apps are awaiting approval from Apple.

(Update: I originally stated that the London app was already available; it is not.)

Do Unto Others ★

Mike Arrington, writing late last night at TechCrunch:

Here’s a dilemma: The guy (”Hacker Croll”) who claims to have accessed hundreds of confidential corporate and personal documents of Twitter and Twitter employees, is releasing those documents publicly and sent them to us earlier today. The zip file contained 310 documents, ranging from executive meeting notes, partner agreements and financial projections to the meal preferences, calendars and phone logs of various Twitter employees.

What you may ask, is the dilemma, since it is clear that any decent human being would simply refuse to have anything to do with something so lurid? Arrington’s dilemma is that he’s unsure how to clean the stains from his pants, incurred during his excitement at the opportunity to publish as much of this material as he can get away with.

He is a very sad excuse for a man.

iTunes 8.2.1 Blocks Palm Pre Syncing ★

Not a surprise, considering Apple’s warning last month.

iPhone 3.1 OS Beta 2 Disables Unauthorized AT&T Tethering ★

This is going to keep a lot of people on 3.0 — tethering is simply marvelous.