Linked List: October 18, 2013

Friday, 18 October 2013

Podcast App Playback Speeds 

Speaking of podcasts and Marco Arment, it ends up that playback speeds like “½×” and “2×” may not mean what you think they mean.

‘One for the Pedants’ 

New episode of my podcast, The Talk Show, featuring special guest Marco Arment. Topics include speculation regarding what Apple will and won’t announce at next week’s special event in San Francisco — iPads, Mac Pros, MacBook Pros, iPods, Apple TV — jailbreaking as a reason for holding on to iOS 6, and Microsoft’s coolness (or rather, lack thereof).

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CSS Transforms: An Interactive Guide 

New e-book for iBooks by former Safari technology evangelist Vicki Murley. Deeply interactive, and self-referential — the CSS transformations she defines and explains are shown in live examples. Well-designed and clearly-written, too. A steal at just $4.

Siri, Now a Real-Life Pokédex 

Mike Wehner, writing for TUAW:

The massive information engine Wolfram Alpha just added a whopping 649 pokémon to its database. For fans of the games, that fact is pretty cool all on its own, but if you happen to own an iPhone or an iPad with Siri, it’s even more awesome. You see, thanks to Siri’s ability to search Wolfram Alpha for information, your iDevice is now as close to a real-life Pokédex as you’ll probably ever have.

See also: Announcement from Wolfram Alpha.

In iOS 7, the Final Straw for Newsstand 

Marko Karppinen:

For years, I’ve argued that choosing Newsstand is the best thing — the right thing — to do when publishing periodical content within the Apple ecosystem. But with the redesigned app, and with automatic content downloads no longer a being a Newsstand exclusive, the balance has finally shifted.

We think publishers should skip Newsstand and publish their iOS apps as regular non-Newsstand apps instead.

1946–47 Sporting News: Sketches of Major League Parks 

Splendid work by Boston Globe cartoonist Gene Mack, during a tour of major league ballparks in 1946–47. They don’t make them like the Polo Grounds any more. (Via Coudal.)

8-Bit Cinema: The Shining 

Kubrick’s classic, retold in the form of an 8-bit video game. (Via Golan Klinger.)

Elon Musk to Make James Bond Submarine Car a Reality 

Peter Valdes-Dapena, reporting for CNN Money:

When the car-turned-submarine from the 007 classic “The Spy Who Loved Me” was sold at auction in September for nearly a million dollars, the identity of the buyer was kept secret, as it usually is in collector car auctions.

Thursday night, a Tesla Motors spokeswoman confirmed that the submarine, modeled after a Lotus sports car, had been bought by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk plans to take the movie prop and turn it into an actual car that transforms into a submarine, the very thing it was built to portray in the movie.

Fucking-A.