Linked List: March 17, 2010

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Windows Phone 7 to Ship Without Copy and Paste ★

Chris Ziegler:

Microsoft just mentioned in a Q&A session here at MIX10 in no uncertain terms that clipboard operations won’t be supported on Windows Phone 7 Series.

Catching up is hard. And based on what I’m hearing about iPhone OS 4.0, it seems likely that Windows Phone 7 is going to fall further behind before it even gets a chance to ship.

The Movie Studios’ Big 3D Scam ★

Excellent critique from Alexander Murphy (pseudonymous Hollywood visual effects supervisor) explaining what’s wrong about all the recent 3D live action films other than Avatar — they were made “3D” in post-production rather than being shot in true 3D with dual cameras. I didn’t even like Up in 3D, which wasn’t live action. The one and only 3D theatrical film I’ve ever seen where the 3D made the experience better rather than worse was Avatar. (Some of the 3D attractions at Disney World are good, too.)

Another Backup Lecture ★

Great tip from Merlin Mann on off-site rotation:

Peg your off-site rotation to a date-certain (like how you probably changed the 9-volt in your smoke alarm for Daylight Savings Time yesterday). I do my rotations within the first five days of each new month. So, yes, do automate the creation of backups, but then also do the physical rotation like you’d pay your mortgage. On time and without fail.

If there’s a weakness in my own system, it’s that I don’t do this often enough. I like the idea of doing it on the first of the month.

Respectfully Yours, Clint Eastwood ★

Speaking of Clint Eastwood, Letters of Note has a letter he wrote to Billy Wilder in 1954.

‘Evening Walk’ ★

Speaking of The New Yorker, this week’s issue sports another cover painting by Jorge Colombo, made on his iPhone using Brushes. I wonder whether this will be the last one he makes on an iPhone rather than an iPad.

The Movies of Clint Eastwood ★

Fascinating New Yorker essay by David Denby on the career of Clint Eastwood.

iLounge: Apple Removes Protective Screen Film From Its Retail and Online Stores ★

iLounge:

In communications with vendors that have been ongoing for “some time now,” according to one company, Apple has said that it will remove both film-only solutions from its stores, as well as any case or other accessory that includes film protection as part of its package, such as cases that include film screen protectors.

Odd.

Update: Here’s an interesting comment on the iLounge piece:

I’m an Apple Retail employee who has applied roughly a million of these films. A couple months ago, it became our policy not to help apply them, because they’re so difficult to get perfect and it became a liability issue (“There’s a speck of dust, give me a new one free.”). Unless you’re in a vacuum, there’s a chance of picking up dust between opening the package and putting the film down.

Thinking about this some more, I think it’s about avoiding the suggestion that you should use such a film/protector thing. I.e. that if Apple is selling them, some number of iPhone/iPod buyers assume they ought to buy one. Whereas I think the iPhone is very much designed to be used as-is — no case, no film. The 3GS oleophobic-coated screen feels just perfect.

Microsoft Promises HTML5 Video Support in IE9 ★

HTML5 marches ever forward:

The presence of MP3 and AAC audio support in the browser preview, and the promise of MPEG-4 and H.264 video support in the final version of IE9, raise the question of what role Flash and Silverlight, which are commonly used to handle these functions, will play in IE9. Hachamovitch did not comment on this, but pointed out that with IE9’s video, audio and SVG capabilities, “you have an HTML 5 browser that does audio and video without plugins”.

No canvas support in IE9, though. (Yet?) And, if you’re keeping score on codec support in major browsers, IE joins Safari and Chrome in supporting H.264 for video; Firefox, Opera, and Chrome support Ogg Theora.

I wonder whether Adobe expected Microsoft to support HTML5 video in IE9.

Articles — Wikipedia iPhone App From Sophiestication ★

There are a bunch of dedicated Wikipedia iPhone apps, and there are several I like. But I like Articles, a brand new $3 app by Sophia Teutschler, best. It’s fast, it looks great (including the formatting of articles), and it has a very clever MobileSafari-inspired UI.

John Cassidy on the Lehman Report ★

John Cassidy:

Until now, my answer to the first question has been that while much of what the bankers did was reprehensible, it was perfectly legal. I still think this is the case—in finance, it is often the case that the biggest scandal is what you can get away with within the law—but the Valukas report raises the possibility that I was wrong, and that the big Wall Street firms were engaged in Enron-style accounting fraud.