Linked List: December 17, 2010

Friday, 17 December 2010

Sourcebits 

My thanks to Sourcebits for again sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Sourcebits is a contract developer specializing in iPhone, iPad, mobile, Mac, and web software. Their iPhone apps have been downloaded over 4.5 million times from the App Store, and they have a growing list of Android and BlackBerry apps, too. If you’re looking for software development services, check out Sourcebits’s website for examples of their work — for the iPhone, the iPad, Android, and more.

The Des Moines Register’s Bob Feller Tribute Page 

Terrific list of links to Feller stories and footage around the web. Among numerous gems I found via this page, this piece by Frank Deford in 2005 for Sports Illustrated:

Ted Williams once said, “Three days before he pitched I would start thinking about Robert Feller, Bob Feller. I’d sit in my room thinking about him all the time. God, I loved it…. Allie Reynolds of the Yankees was tough, and I might think about him for 24 hours before a game, but Robert Feller: I’d think about him for three days.”

And this piece from Jayson Stark, putting Feller’s career in perspective:

Imagine this kid, at 17 years old, pitching an exhibition game in 1936 against a Cardinals team still rolling out most of the lineup that had won the World Series in 1934 — and striking out EIGHT of the nine hitters he faced. Imagine this kid, a few weeks later, making the first start of his big-league career, and whiffing 15 St. Louis Browns. Imagine him, three weeks after that, ripping off 17 K’s against the Athletics — the biggest strikeout game in American League history at the time. Now imagine him, just a couple of weeks later, heading back home to Iowa — so he could ride the SCHOOL BUS with his sister and finish high school. All true. It all happened. In real life. He was the LeBron James of his era — except with a 12-to-6 curve instead of a learning curve.

And this touching tribute by Joe Posnanski:

The tape recorder was off and my notebook was put away and so I cannot write here what he said word for word. But I remember the important part. He told me that I was lucky, that what you need to succeed in this world is a father who believes in you. And he told me that his father believed in him. Funny thing, though, he said Bill Feller never once said, “Bob, someday you’re going to pitch in the big leagues.” No, there were no words. There are some things that cannot be said with words. There was only those sweaty Iowa afternoons and those chilly Iowa evenings, and the sun setting, and a baseball going back and forth. Everything he needed to know about life was in that back-and-forth.

Bill Feller died in 1943, while his son Bob was at war. He had seen his son become the best pitcher in baseball.

RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie on Their Competitive Position 

Jim Balsillie:

I think the PlayBook redefines what a tablet should do. I think we’ve articulated some elements of it, and I think this idea of a proprietary SDK and unnecessary apps — though there’s a huge role for apps — I think is going to shift in the market, and I think it’s going to shift very, very quickly. And I think there’s going to be a strong appetite for web fidelity and tool familiarity. And I think there’s going to be a rapid desire for high performance. And I think we’re way ahead on that. And I think CIO friendliness, we’re way ahead on that.

They can keep saying they’re “ahead” of the iPad, but, uh, they haven’t shipped anything yet. It’s that simple.

The Most-Read Man in the World 

Nice profile of type designer Matthew Carter by Glenn Fleishman.

What’s Next for Delicious? 

The actual blog is slammed, so here it is from Google’s cache:

Is Delicious being shut down? And should I be worried about my data?

No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.

What is Yahoo! going to do with Delicious?

We’re actively thinking about the future of Delicious and we believe there is a home outside the company that would make more sense for the service and our users. We’re in the process of exploring a variety of options and talking to companies right now. And we’ll share our plans with you as soon as we can.

Note that Yahoo does not dispute that the entire Delicious team has been fired, though. What kind of sense does this make? We’d like to sell the service, find it a new home, and to help, we’ve fired the entire product team, effective immediately.

‘The City’ 

Wonderfully detailed, evocative miniature dioramas by artist Lori Nix.

The Championship 

Speaking of Jim Coudal and Jeffrey Zeldman, this season’s Layer Tennis Championship is this afternoon. Mig Reyes faces Noper, with Z in the booth.

Pay No Attention to the Numbers Behind the Curtain 

The Star, on RIM’s latest quarterly results:

But subscriber growth was weaker than expected, coming in at 5.1 million new users, consistent with the company’s guidance but below the analyst forecast for 5.2 million. RIM said it shipped 14.2 million BlackBerries in the quarter, up 40 per cent from a year earlier. The result brings its base of subscribers to 55 million.

RIM says it will no longer report subscriber growth in future quarters.

Recall Michael Mace’s critique of RIM from earlier this week. Subscriber growth is a key metric.

Word Lens 

This seems impossible — an augmented reality app for the iPhone that translates words on-the-fly. Mind-bending — as though near-future time travelers started sending us apps instead of terminators.

The app is free, and there are separate English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English dictionaries available as $5 in-app purchases.