David Emery OnlineFriday Links XXXX
30 November 2007
In Defense of Lurking
I am a king lurker, it has to be said. For some reason I’ve just never got on with posting on forums…
Apple VP: third-party iPhones apps to use digital signature
Hopefully this won’t mean that it’s difficult to get apps on the iPhone – I hope they don’t screw things up by making the digital signing process convoluted for developers.
Fray
Beautiful design.
New Label Models: Which Will Survive?
My vote goes to the 360 deal model, but most of these options have merit.
Zip Quick Look Plugin
Very useful – I love how quickly QuickLook plugins have spring up.
TuneCore Stocks Videos in iTunes for a Price
An interesting insight into how much it costs to get videos on iTunes.
Would You Watch Commercials Like Music Videos?
The most effective commercials are the ones that contain genuinely interesting content, so there’s no reason that people wouldn’t want to watch them. They’d watch them on YouTube, though, not some completely pointless niche competitor.
Screen Resolutions and Aspect Ratios Worldwide
Mmmm, statistics. One thing this does highlight is the spread of widescreen displays, which adds a whole other element to the whole fluid width vs fixed width debate.
The new BBC homepage
Well, this doesn’t look particularly good, does it?
BBC R&D Live Events project
...which is not to say the BBC can’t do good design – I love the use of diagonals here.
The next step in Digg clones
Surely what you’d want to be able to do is just subscribe to specific people – some your friends and some people like Scoble – and see what they post? And isn’t that just what delicious is anyway?
UK TV Houses Join To Create Online Video On Demand Service
All these services use the same shitty WMV-DRM based technology behind the scenes, so this isn’t exactly an exciting development.
Candybar 3
Dear god Panic are on form at the moment – great UI work here, as always.
Google’s Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal
Do you ever get the felling that Google might be diversifying just a little too much?
Bumpy Map Mashups with Google Terrain
Oooh – they look nice. The map view was always a little plain, and the satellite view was always a bit illegible – this is a nice balance between the two.
Datejs
This looks fantastically useful.
CASH Music: Pay Zero to $1,000 for Varying Levels of Access to Music
This looks very, very interesting; I could totally see it working on a small scale for established acts with a pre-existing audience. I love the use of Creative Commons licences.
Consensus is for losers
I could not agree more. Spot on.
Rock Music or Non-Rock Music?
So are British Sea Power rock music or non-rock music?
Corbis Offers Free Photos to Bloggers – With a Catch
Well, this is sort of interesting. As you may have gathered, I’m a big fan of using photos to illustrate things and it can be very tricky to source appropriate images for specific topics (especially if you’re writing commercially) so this sounds like a very interesting idea. However, the implementation looks like it kills it – overlaying the image with irritating animated crap and using flash is not the way to go here.
Straight Out Of Left Field: Google Experimenting With Digg Style Voting On Search Results
Google seems to be getting totally on board with user-generated content enhancing their data what with this and the recent additions to Google Maps – it’s a nice direction to be heading in.
remix.nin.com
Pretty cool stuff going on here – shame it’s all in Flash though, as it makes getting around it pretty difficult.
The Rissington Podcast
Their new site design is utterly brilliant – try resizing your window!
MySpace Friend Updates Arrive. Is Anyone Still Using MySpace?
Yeah, MySpace aren’t worried about Facebook at all, are they?
The Times finally gets the Leopard story
Except of course there is no Leopard story – I (and everyone else I know using it) have been running it for weeks now without any issues. It’s much, much better then 10.4.
Warner Music Group: Going the Way of the Dodo
”...That’s right, even by the most critical of earnings estimates, Radiohead made between half and as much as twice what the entire Warner label made in profit this year.”
Slow March To DRM Free Music Becomes A Sprint
Note that Warner is probably the least receptive to selling their music DRM-free.