Linked List: October 1, 2009

Thursday, 1 October 2009

Joby Gorillamobile for iPhone 3G/3GS ★

$40 iPhone-specific case/tripod combination from the makers of the excellent Gorillapods. (Thanks to Rich Siegel.)

Walt Mossberg Reviews Sprint’s HTC Hero ★

Mossberg:

Overall, I found the HTC Hero to be the best Android phone I’ve tested, and a worthy competitor to the iPhone, the BlackBerry and the Pre.

Thank goodness they boogered up the front display with big “HTC” and “Sprint” logos. It retails for $280 but there’s a $100 mail-in rebate, and it only ships with 2 GB of built-in storage. That compares really poorly to the $99 no-rebate-necessary 8 GB iPhone.

Update: I should mention that Dave Nanian (of Shirt Pocket Software) has a Hero, brought it to C4 last weekend, and was kind enough to let me play with it for a few minutes. The Hero is clearly way better in every single way — way, way, way better — than last year’s G1. However, if I had to buy a non-iPhone today, I’d probably get a Pre, because the WebOS web browser is arguably as good as the iPhone’s, whereas Android’s is still behind, and Safari is by far my most-used iPhone app.

Ten Years of Coudal.com ★

No surprise to any of you, of course, Coudal.com is one of my favorite things ever made. Congratulations.

The Original IBM ThinkPad ★

Lovely.

PCalc 1.8 Prevents iPhone Profanity ★

Never again will a child’s innocence be lost after turning a number like 5318008 upside-down. (Doesn’t yet filter out my personal favorite, though: 3704558.)

Peter Hosey on Uniform Type Identifiers ★

Good piece from Peter Hosey last week showing how UTIs are in no way a replacement for creator codes.

While I’m revisiting the topic, I should mention that I realize there are many people who are pleased by the change in Snow Leopard whereby Launch Services no longer looks at a file’s creator code when determining which app should open it, and that there are several completely reasonable arguments to be made in favor of said change. It’s a matter of preference, and I prefer otherwise. What is not reasonable are blathering arguments that UTIs are in any way a replacement for creator codes.

Use Dropbox iPhone App to Automatically Import Photos Into Yojimbo ★

Clever Dropbox/AppleScript/Folder Actions/Yojimbo hack by Ken Clark. I wouldn’t exactly call it a “Yojimbo iPhone App”, but it’s still a neat idea.