David Emery OnlineFriday Links XXXIX
23 November 2007
OmniFocus Public Beta
Quite interesting looking, and it’s good to finally have a go at playing with it after all the hype, but I wish it wasn’t quite so tied into the whole GTD thing. Making it a more abstract task manager without all the inbox and context rubbish would be really nice.
My Favorite Book Covers of 2007
I like the one for “One Red Paperclip”.
Micromarketing on micromedia
I really like this concept of micromarketing – it remains to be seen if it can really work, though (I hope it does).
Taking the canvas to another dimension
I do quite like the idea of native 3D in the browser, but I think this is far too complicated. We should treat 3D models like we do images, and be able to embed them easily then control them with JS. Also, it’s worrying that even at this early stage we have two different implementations from Opera and Mozilla.
PayPerPost Bloggers Get Slammed By Google
I don’t think the PayPerPost situation is quite as clear cut as Duncan makes out here, and I don’t think Google should have removed people from their search index. Penalise them, sure, but removing them completely reeks of anti-competatorism.
MySpace To Finally Get a Redesign?
I do like the design of Vimeo, so obviously has the potential to be quite good. What are they going to do about all the people that have loaded up their pages with all sorts of CSS to change the look, though – surely it’s all going to break hideously? Although even if it did, maybe no-one would notice…
Wolff Olins
Really nice new site design.
15 Things I Just Learned About the Amazon Kindle
It amazes me how few file types this thing will read, and how convoluted it is to get things onto it.
Think globally, mark locally
A very clever usage of all that “wisdom of crowds” and “user generated content” rubbish.
Safari Microformats plugin
Very nice implementation. I’ve played around with microformats before, but – due to the lack of a good problem being solved by them – most of the time I can’t really be bothered. The more things like this that appear, the more likely that I – and everyone else – might start using the damn things.
Zune trumps iPod as Amazon.com’s top seller
...because they’ve slashed the price in utter desperation. Which is exactly what I said they’d have to do over a year ago when they launched.
Do Canonical Web Designs Exist?
Brilliant essay. I think the web design vs graphic design point is a very important distinction.
In Defense of Graphic Design on the Web
...which is not to say that graphic design on the web isn’t important as well.
Digital Music Startups: Asking Permission vs. Begging Forgiveness
I’m not sure how I feel about this article – on one hand I think generally asking forgiveness is the way to go, but on the other you are essentially basing your business off someone else’s IP – they could quite easily sue you and then you’d be utterly screwed.
On Wired: Flickr and CC Licenses
I think it’s a real shame that Wikipedia seems to think it’s “above” these things. Too big for their boots and all that…
Trent Reznor Ponders Music’s Downward Spiral
It’s such a shame that the sillier laws and lawyers that surround the music industry could prevent such an interesting sounding project.
Flux Adds Content Sharing And Embedding; Quietly Building Excellent Platform
Maybe something like Flux, with its decentralised social networks, will be thing the thing that topples Facebook.
Sony BMG And Yahoo Sign Music and Video Deal
Is an all new Yahoo! Music site on the way? If Yahoo! could get some of their A-Team developers (maybe some of Yahoo! Brickhouse?) to do something music related it could be very interesting.
“I’m feeling lucky” button costs Google $110 million per year
I love the way tiny things can really add up when exposed to a huge userbase.
Understanding Web Design
“Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.”
Brilliant.
Posters
I was wondering that too.
Seth Godin: Thanks
The only thanksgiving message I’ve seen that didn’t make me feel slightly queasy.
Music & Copyright: An Overview
A very worthwhile read, although Alexander makes the age old mistake of assuming all record companies do is distribute the music, which magically becomes popular all on its own. Record companies are all about promotion, not distribution.
Incorporating hAtom into Textpattern
Very useful, although I’m a little put off by the classes everywhere that hAtom (and all Microformats) require.
Giant Global Graph
Well, GGG is better then bloody Web 3.0…
Load OSX 10.5 Leopard on the eeePC
Please Apple – can we have something like this from you at the MacWorld Expo in January? Thanks!