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Links of Interest (September 29th 2008 Through October 17th 2008)

Friday, October 17th, 2008

Glassbooth – Quiz to help you choose best 2008 presidential candidate: Glassboth lets you see where each candidate stands in relation to the issues that matter to you through the used of a weighted quiz. Slick interface that I found very easy to use and understand. Even if you’ve alredy made up your mind I recommend you check it out.
Tags: reference, politics, usa, vote, Glassboth,
Byline – Google Reader on the go.: If you use Google Reader, and you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch you should check out Phantom Fish’s Byline. Byline is essentially a Google Reader client that syncs so you don’t need a network connection at all times (and it offers features missing from Googles own iPhone interface, like an oldest post first view). It’s not perfect, but I find it a vastly preferable in most cases to the Google Reader iPhone web interface.
Tags: software, RSS, iPhone, iPod Touch, Google-Reader, news, Byline, Phantom-Fish,
Shyamalan Talks ‘Unbreakable’ Sequel: Seems to me that M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t exactly rule it out, but there’s no “it’s happening” in here. Still “Ubreakable” is probably in my top 10 list of films, and I’d love to see where it goes next.
Tags: M-Night-Shyamalan, Unbreakable, movie,
My Life With Gwen Stacy,Or, How an audiobook narrator redeemed his misspent youth reading comic books by getting to the bottom of the greatest comic book mystery of all time: Who killed Spider-Man’s girlfriend?: Scott Brick, one of my all time favorite audiobook narrators, recounts the story behind his 1998 Comic Buyer’s Guide article “Who Killed Gwen Stacy?”, which delved into the creative decisions behind killing off Spider-Man’s girlfriend in 1973. Like most of Scott’s posts it’s also available in audio.
Tags: comics, Scott Brick, Comic-Buyers-Guide, Spider-Man, Gwen-Stacy,
Web 2.Rockstar: The robotic tale of Jonathon Coulton: Ars Technica offers a nice JoCo primer, and how he succeded where the underpants gnomes failed. “When I first started the important thing was audience: if I can reach enough people, that’s leverage, or power, and maybe that leads to something that does make money.” Has some interesting thoughts on labels, and what may replace them in the future.
Tags: Jonathan-Coulton, Music,

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Links of Interest (May 9th 2008 Through May 29th 2008)

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

IETester: IETester is a tool that runs the rendering and javascript engines from IE8b1, IE7, IE6, and IE5.5 in a single process so you can see how each one mangles your site in it’s own unique way (currently in beta).
Tags: IETester, Internet-Explorer, webdesign,
POC : Implementing HTML 5 Video Element using JavaScript and Flash: A proof of concept allowing use of the ‘video’ tag from the HTML5 draft spec, and having it work, even though browsers don’t yet support it.
Tags: standards, html5, webdesign, hacks, javascript, flash, video,
Audible.com and Blackstone Audio Royalties: SFFAudio shares some information from Robert J. Sawyer on the royalties he receives from audiobooks.
Tags: Blackstone Audio, audible.com, Audiobooks, Robert J. Sawyer, royalties,
Characteristic Confusion: While investigating line-height Eric Meyer used font-family: Webdings to display “Oy!” (Webdings doesn’t contain ‘O’, ‘y’, or ‘!’). Firefox 3 unexpectedly displayed “Oy!”, which, it seems, is technically correct, leaving him asking “which is less correc
Tags: CSS, font-family, line-height, Eric Meyer, unicode, webdesign,
Growl for Windows – alpha now available: Growl is one of the three apps that excited me enough to buy a Mac, and it’s one I really miss when I’m on my Windows box.
Tags: Growl, software, windows, notification,

Popularity: 1%

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X-UA-Compatible: Sensible Defaults

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

I’ll keep this short1, because last time I rambled, and basically failed to make clear what I thought the problem was. In the end, my problem with the whole X-UA-Compatible concept was really in what IE8 planned to do when it was absent, which was to pretend it was IE7.

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Notes

↑1 well, short-ish

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Links of Interest (January 8th 2008)

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

An Interface of One’s Own: Virginia Heffernan covers alternatives to Microsoft Word for writers including Scrivener (my personal favorite), Ulysses, WriteRoom, and Nisus Writer.
Tags: Virginia Heffernan, software, Writing, Scrivener, Ulysses, WriteRoom, Nisus Writer
Future of Ajax.NET Professional: With the release of VS2008 and .NET 3.5 Michael Schwarz is ending development on Ajax.NET Professional (an alternate Ajax toolkit for ASP.NET that predates Microsoft’s own).
Tags: Ajax.NET, ASP.NET, development, .NET, .NET 3.5
The Secret Lair: An all new podcast hosted by Chris Miller and Kris Johnson.
Tags: Chris Miller, Kris Johnson, podcast, KJToo, The Secret Lair
The transformation of a writer with Mur Lafferty: Wayne Sutton interviews Mur Lafferty about social media (video).
Tags: Mur Lafferty, Wayne Sutton, interview, video
IE7.js version 2.0 (beta): Dean Edwards IE7.js has been updated after a long period of inactivity. The new version is split in two files IE7.js brings IE5+ into the same level of compliance as IE7, while IE8.js contains further standards compliance fixes beyond what IE7 currently
Tags: browser, IE7, IE8, ie, javascript, Dean Edwards, IE7.js, standards, webdesign

Popularity: 1%

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Links of Interest (August 16th 2007 Through August 22nd 2007)

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

Launch: Google Earth Adds Sky: Google Earth adds a “Switch between Sky and Earth” button. The Sky view is made up of over 1 million photographs. Nice!
Sigler v. Hendrix Webscab Smackdown: On September 19th 2007 Terry Bison will moderate a debate between Scott Sigler and Howard Hendrix revolving around releasing works of fiction online for free (you know, webscabs).
That Yawn After Lunch Is Perfectly Normal: Feel sleepy after lunch? Here’s why. I agree with the suggestion of a short nap. Around 2pm on weekends I usually hit a wall, after which I’m not productive. A 10 minute nap is enough to stave that off for me.
Where you fall in poll of U.S. reading habits: Apparently one in four Americans read no books last year. Those who did, read four on average. I wonder if the poll took audiobooks into account.
Warner Bros. Follows the Yellow Brick Road: Warner wants to create a new Oz film. Todd McFarlane is involved. I love the Oz books. I do not have high hopes for this movie.
Sucking it up with the new Roomba: C|NET looks at the new Roomba 500 series from iRobot. We’re pretty happy with our existing Roomba. My kids talk to it sometimes.
The Best Software for Mac OS X: I’m new to Mac OS X, but this looks like an worthwhile list of applications.
Author King ‘mistaken for vandal’: Stephen King was mistaken for a vandal when he started signing books in an Australian book shop. I admit I’ve imagined having books on the shelves and just going in and signing them. Never really thought it through though.