Linked List: February 8, 2010

Monday, 8 February 2010

LESS CSS App for Mac OS X 

CSS nerds: have you checked out LESS? If so and you dig it, you might be interested in this.

Panelfly 

Gee, I wonder if e-comic-book distributors are excited about the iPad?

Wolf Rentzsch: MobileSafari Is Not the New IE6 

Wolf, responding to PPK’s argument that MobileSafari is the new IE6:

Mobile web developers, like most developers, are future-focused. We’d rather all mobile phones catch up with the iPhone we have in our pockets today, rather than bend over backwards to accommodate the current majority.

When Koch damns developers for professional hypocrisy and incompetence, I see a quiet revolution of mobile developers waiting for other phones to catch up to the iPhone.

Count me in with Wolf on this one.

An Even-Tempered Apology From White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel 

Apologies to the Hulu-less.

‘Who’s Scruffy-Looking?’ 

Philip Elmer-DeWitt on the highlights of this week’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco:

John Gruber. The ill-tempered author of the widely read Daring Fireball blog is flying from Philadelphia, presumably without his “What Are You Looking at Dicknose?” t-shirt, to discuss the “top 10 issues facing our world.” Friday 4:30 p.m. PT

First, “ill-tempered”? Second, everyone knows that shirt doesn’t have a question mark.

How the Letterman-Oprah-Leno Super Bowl Ad Came Together 

My favorite commercial of the night by far.

‘The Gadget Disappears’ 

Love this line from the New York Times’s David Carr on the Charlie Rose show, regarding the iPad:

One thing you have to understand about this gadget is that the gadget disappears pretty quickly. You’re looking into pure software.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Carr is a business reporter, not a tech reporter. He sees the forest, not the trees. But this is really astute. I’ve been using a Nexus One Android phone for the last few weeks, and Carr’s quote summarizes the fundamental difference between Android and iPhone OS. On the iPhone, once you’re in an app, everything happens on-screen, with touch. Everything. You go outside the screen to the home button to leave the app or the sleep button to turn off the device. On Android, many things happens on screen with touch, but many other things don’t, and you’re often leaving the screen for the hardware Back, Menu, and Home buttons, and text selection and editing requires the use of the fiddly trackball. An Android gadget never disappears.

Before You Place Your Bets on Retrevo 

Keep in mind that back in August, Retrevo released survey results showing that Apple’s MacBooks were getting killed by netbooks in the back-to-school market. That didn’t exactly pan out.

Retrevo: iPad Doubters 

Retrevo, which bills itself as “the ultimate electronics marketplace”, has been getting a lot of attention in recent months for its consumer surveys on Apple products, including this one from Friday:

As we like to say, it’s the apps that sell smartphones like the iPhone and it could very well be those same apps that motivate buyers to run down to the Apple Store and get in line to buy a shiny new iPad. Whether this device becomes a big hit is anyone’s guess but based on this study it sure looks doubtful.

So let’s mark them down as bearish on the iPad.

Let’s also keep in mind that Retrevo is the same outfit who, just three weeks ago, released survey results showing that the most important features in an (at the time, hypothetical) Apple tablet were “long battery life”, “3G”, and “an e-book store with big selection” — and that the main thing people did not want was a required monthly data plan. Oh, and the price needed to be under $700. Sounds like something familiar.

Saints Beat Colts 31-17 to Win New Orleans’s First Super Bowl 

A great win by a great team from a great city. Sports at its best.

Sketchpad 

Simple web-based painting/drawing app. No Flash.