David Emery Online

Friday Links XXVI

18 August 2007

.Mac Web Gallery – We recommend the following browsers. – Come on Apple, you can do better then that. And don’t get be started on the 400KB+ of javascript it uses as well…

My iTunes – interesting to see Apple finally waking up to the marketing opportunities available on the social web.

Change of Face – nice subtle tweaks from Mr Hicks.

ISPs to BBC: We will throttle iPlayer unless you pay up – this is pretty much extortion, as far as I can see. Especially when you consider that most people are on data-transfer limited connections anyway – they’re just trying to blame the BBC for the limitations they’re trying to force onto people.

Music DRM in critical condition: Universal tests DRM free music sales – no real surprise here, and not doing it with iTunes makes sense if they just what to test the waters (and also hopefully boost iTunes competitors miniscule market share in the process). Interesting to note they include Amazon on the list of retailers, as they still haven’t launched their MP3 store – it must be going to hit any day now on this evidence.

Freedom from the press: Google News lets newsmakers comment on stories – an interesting development, although done in a very old school way – it would be much more interesting if anyone could comment, as well as the identity verification process.

Radio Pop – I love the design and data presentation – be great to see this properly launched on the BBC site.

C4 in a Nut – “This is all your app is: a collection of tiny details.” – Will Shipley. So true for so many things.

Two-way Video Conferencing for iPhone – this is just amazing, even if it is completely impractical.

Clipboard and Text Selection : iPhone :: Arrow Keys : Original Macintosh – all good points; just because an action is ingrained by 20 years of desktop use doesn’t mean it’s the best solution for a handheld device.

David Weiss: Numbers – it’s going to be an interesting fight between Office ‘08 and iWork ‘08.

The myth of content and presentation separation – I don’t really agree with this; I’ve certainly redesigned sites without changing markup before, and even if I have needed to make changes (new features etc) they’ve been very minor.

Wireframework – I completely agree; Blueprint looks interesting but I’m never going to use it as it’s far to limiting in real life usage. I disagree with the bit about Javascript frameworks, as I don’t think it’s worth spending the time reinventing the wheel, but I guess it all depends on the scale (and hence time you have to spend) of the sites you’re developing.

Alexa Says YouTube Is Now Bigger Than Google. Alexa Is Useless – It would be lovely if somehow people were mandated to reveal their site stats, but that isn’t going to happen, is it? Alexa and the link are the best we’re probably going to get until then.