Linked List: June 24, 2013

Monday, 24 June 2013

Resources for Mac and iOS Developers 

Dave Mark:

I went looking for a reasonably recently updated list of dev resources to link to from the article. Couldn’t find one I was happy with, then remembered that we included a pretty solid list at the end of the book Beginning iOS 6 Development. Since that list needed to be updated for the iOS 7 rev of the book, I thought, why not pop the list into a blog post. And here we are.

His Song Got Played on Pandora 1 Million Times and All David Lowery Got Was $16.89 

David Lowery:

Soon you will be hearing from Pandora how they need Congress to change the way royalties are calculated so that they can pay much much less to songwriters and performers. For you civilians webcasting rates are “compulsory” rates. They are set by the government (crazy, right?). Further since they are compulsory royalties, artists can not “opt out” of a service like Pandora even if they think Pandora doesn’t pay them enough.

All the Apps Have Been Written 

Kevin Hoctor:

I wrote some advice in an interview with App Camp For Girls recently, “Find something in your life that is broken and write software to fix it.” The best software is personal. It’s something you need. It heals a wound in your life and makes you happy.

(Via MacStories.)

Siri Learns How to Pronounce Names in iOS 7 

Scott Buscemi, writing for 9to5Mac:

As discovered by 9to5Mac reader RY, Siri will ask for help pronouncing a name if it has trouble understanding you the first time you pronounce a name. In addition, we have found that you can simply say, “That’s not how you pronounce [any name]” and Siri will go through the learning process.

Google Mine 

From the unofficial Google Operating System blog:

Google prepares a new service that’s called Google Mine. It’s integrated with Google+ and it’s a way to keep track of the items you own or you’d like to have and share some of them with your circles. Right now, the service is tested internally at Google.

Just tell Google everything you own and everything you’re interested in or like. Sure.

Director Saschka Unseld Discusses Pixar, Photorealism, and the Making of ‘The Blue Umbrella’ 

Pixar continues to push the state of the art forward. Hard to believe this is entirely CG.

NetNewsWire 4 Public Beta 

Looks good, and still feels like NetNewsWire (arrow keys). But syncing is still a work in progress.

What It Would Look Like if Planets Were as Close to Earth as the Moon 

The Daily Mail:

Ron Miller, a former art director for NASA, used digital trickery to superimpose scale drawings of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune over the same landscape, highlighting the sheer size of the planets.

The incredible drawings imagine each planet to be 233,812 miles from Earth - the same distance at which the moon orbits.

Jupiter is terrifying.

Steve Jobs on Technology as ‘Sedimentary Layers’ 

Interesting snippet of an interview, back at the tail end of the NeXT era.

Apple Seeds iOS 7 Beta 2 to Developers, Now Supports iPad 

I was a little concerned about the lack of iPad support in the first beta (and in all the public demonstrations); good to know it isn’t too far behind the iPhone version.