Catch up

22 October 2007

Right.

I’m back.

And what a lovely time I did have. I’m not going to bore you all by force-feeding you holiday snaps, but if you’re that way inclined feel free to check them out on my flickr. On my return I came back to 9622 unread items, so today I thought I’d do a quick roundup before getting back into the swing of things properly tomorrow.

Yes, it’s Friday Links on a Monday.

Total Music, Uh-Huh
I don’t really understand how they (Universal) think that their position is tenable in any way shape or form.

The Second Step in Photography
When reading posts like this (in fact, almost anything in the giving-advice-on-the-internet genre) it’s always worth remembering that other people’s situations are totally different from yours. As I mostly do gig photography (without a press pass, and hence never close enough) I have never wished for a wider lens (on my G7 it goes to 35mm at its widest); in fact, I very rarely shoot fully wide open at all.

Apple’s iTunes Plus now world’s largest DRM-free music catalog
Can I get a ‘hell yeah’? I do love what a bit of competition will do.

P2P vs Radiohead’s “free” Rainbows: why P2P can be a hard habit to break
Utterly unsurprising – peoples habits are hard to break. Also, the wide miss-reporting that the minimum price was £0.46 (1p+35p credit card charge) can’t have helped.

Apple to open iPhone, iPod touch to third-party developers in early 2008
It’s fairly obvious that we’re going to get an iTunes Mobile Application store; I wonder if they’re operate it like they do the Podcast directory (essentially open to all)?

BBC iPlayer goes cross-platform with Flash, downloading still limited to Windows
This is a pretty smart move, if you ask me. All they need to do now is produce a little WebKit based wrapper app that’ll do full screen and I’ll be happy.

iPhone Apps Have to Pay Their Way
Hear hear.

Findings From the Web Design Survey
Interesting mostly in that it correlates almost exactly with what I thought.

Analytical Breakdowns
Data processing can be hell.

Spot the difference
Last.fm users in they-like-Radiohead shock! On a more serious note I would be very interested to know what the UK sales figures of the download were – I’m sure it’s more then the 49012 sales Stereophonics sold to get to the number 1 album spot this week.

Pitchfork In Rainbows Review
Check out the score. Pitchfork really get the snark spot on sometimes…

The Hype Machine
Love the new redesign – simple but right.

BusinessWeek Drops the Serifs
Really like the design of some of the inner pages – I’m starting to get a chunky-underline itch I may need to scratch.

WebKit Does HTML5 Client-side Database Storage
Ooh, this looks useful – especially for iPhones and Dashboard (remember that?) widgets.

Creating a Visual Language
I think Amazon have over complicated their buy buttons somewhat, but the cohesion is nice.

I Heart Zappos
Above and beyond the line of (customer service) duty.

Death Cab for Cutie guitarist’s album disappears down the DHS memory-hole
Backup you fools!

If It Looks Like a Cow, Swims Like a Dolphin and Quacks Like a Duck, It Must Be Enterprise Software
Enterprise software sucks. It just does.

Maniacal Rage
Lovely design.

Automattic Acquires Gravatar
Great – now we call all start using it again.

Wiki Server. Collaboration for teams.
This – surprisingly for Apple, it has to be said – looks pretty neat. Apple is a good web developer – who’d have thought?

From: Articles

22 October 2007