Laughing Meme » apple

Space for a real website around iTunes app store

Kellan — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:18:08 +0000

I haven’t poured hours into it, but I have looked around a bit trying to find good iPhone apps, and I find the conversation frustrating and fractured — echoing and empty. And I think Apple’s its-a-webiste-but-not-really iTunes store is the problem. It is definitely a 2nd class web citizen, and one that has rather aggressively not learned the lessons of Web 2.0.

I’d love to see someone do a full on iPhone-apps-as-social-objects site as a translation layer on top of the iTunes store. It would be easy, and it would be awesome. And if Apple weren’t Apple (say if they were Amazon) you could earn a nice affiliate income stream. As it is you’d probably wake up every morning and check your inbox for a C&D, but still it would be great. You should build it.

Photo from Paul Hammond

Photos from an undiscovered country

Kellan — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:28:19 +0000

Checkout the cluster of photos appearing in the Yellow Sea mapping its emergence.

http://www.flickr.com/map?&fLat=37.7432&fLon=122.4371&zl=7&order_by=recent

Khoi Vinh: Investing Strategies for iPhone Customers

Kellan — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:04:14 +0000

“It’s certainly not as steep a trend as my iPhone’s devaluation, but it’s significant. In the year since I bought my first iPhone, AAPL has gained roughly 50% in value. If I’d spent that original US$599 on Apple stock instead, I’d be able to buy a new iPhone 3G and have about US$599 in assets to my name. Oh well.”

http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2008/0609_investing_st.php

Wired: Why Is DRM-Free Music Tagged With Name and E-Mail?

Kellan — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 03:14:39 +0000

I don’t know — maybe because it is the most effective, least invasive version of copy protection/DRM ever invented? No surprise to anybody who has bought a Pragmatic Programmers ebook.

Dori Smith, for Apple Widget Evangelist

Kellan — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 22:10:37 +0000

And yes, this is what job searches should look like. (via brent, rafe)

http://www.backupbrain.com/2007_01_14_archive.html#a005004

exploding dog: my powerbook g4

Kellan — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 19:19:00 +0000

ode to a titanium powerbook

http://www.explodingdog.com/powerbookg4/

“…and resolved that he just couldn’t understand … that was until he ordered the monitors.”

Kellan — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 10:19:00 +0000

Yeah, that was the punchline, but still.

http://www.horsepigcow.com/2006/08/sephora-another-girly-post.html

Swift: Safari on Windows

Kellan — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 02:55:00 +0000

Sweet.

http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2006/08/09/safari-on-windows/

Collaboration, an open source CalDav from Apple

Kellan — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:01:00 +0000

I missed it, I’d even seen the inimitable Wilfredo on the lists and it went right by me, but I ran into Nat last night at Buzz’s WWDC party, and he rather riveted my attention (as I think he knew he would), that iCalServer announced yesterday? Turns out its an open source CalDav server, written in Python (Twisted), Apache 2.0 license, with great unit test coverage. (which bodes well for the trial by fire known as interop)

Btw. Collaboration’s homepage seems to be a Trac install which is sputtering, and crying. Under load?

update: Um, and how long as Cyrus Daboo been signing his emails “Apple Software Engineer”? Yup, I was asleep.

update 2: wsz confirms trac unhappiness (and my Twisted inside observation), I guess I just got in in time, if you email me, I’ll send you a tarball of the src.

Live from WWDC 2006: Steve Jobs keynote – Engadget

Kellan — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 22:18:00 +0000

TimeMachine is software as service? More info needed.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/07/live-from-wwdc-2006-steve-jobs-keynote/

random($foo): MacBook Pro Arrives: Good and Bad

Kellan — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 16:57:00 +0000

“It moos, whines, and buzzes!”

http://randomfoo.net/blog/id/4072

“Photocasting”

Kellan — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 07:36:00 +0000

James Holderness (check the comments)

Do you ever think maybe the Apple guys are just winding you up? Nobody could possibly be that stupid.

Maybe, though I tend to share Phil’s skepticism. Lets start the with the name, “photocasting”. Worst name I’ve heard since “MacBook”. I’d speculate that Apple’s marketing department recently started outsourcing to Engineering, except I’d be slandering my own profession. That’s a minor thing, aesthetic really, but dear god, how could they screw up the RSS? Again? (especially as I know people at Apple who are not only smart and clueful, but get XML)

I mean the iTunes name space was a train wreck. (though truth be told podcasting for some reason produces the scariest, wackiest feeds on the planet, at one point roughly 1/3 of the feeds Odeo was crawling had serious errors)

User agent detection? Of RSS? In 2006?!? Come again?

Embedded CSS? Misformatted dates? Random, namespace-less new elements (PhotoDate?) A new standard for including comments within an item.

See Phil’s comment, Sam, Dave Winer

Hey Apple, consider hiring someone who knows something about syndication, it’s worth it.

Take a look (unless of course you’re using Firefox).

update: [2005/01/18] MarkP on “photocasting”. It’s not just bad, it’s spectaculary bad. (via)

Ted has a good list of reasons to be disappointed with the new Probooks

Kellan — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 16:26:00 +0000

no battery life info in sight, capped top speeds, slow disks

http://www.sauria.com/blog/2006/01/11#1455

Apple – MacBook Pro

Kellan — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 21:57:00 +0000

the only thing keeping me to the “wait for 2nd generation” course of prudence? The lame name. MacBook? Good engineers, bad copywriters.

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

rc3.org: Changing the rules

Kellan — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:19:00 +0000

Sony is changing the cost/benefit analysis of buying CDs vs buying tracks at Apple’s iTunes.

http://rc3.org/2005/11/changing_the_rules.php

MarkP: “it appears that iTunes uses a real, draconian, namespace-aware XML parser… “

Kellan — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 02:38:08 +0000

except that namespaces are case-insensitive. (just keeps getting better)

http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2005/06/28/Podcast-Specifications-Questions#c1120421138

Edd’s first look at iTunes RSS extensions

Kellan — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:09:42 +0000

Verdict: gob-smackingly ignorant, daft, and nuts. (okay, he thinks they did a decent job in a handful of cases)

http://usefulinc.com/edd/blog/contents/2005/06/28-rss-apple-itunes/read

Stop the presses, Dave Winer makes sense, sounds reasonable

Kellan — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:04:00 +0000

Takes Apple to task for their lame podcasting extension. They make MSFT look clueful. (Yes prefixes are syntactic sugar, but that isn’t how they’re used in the RSS community)

http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/2005/06/28#a682

DarwinPorts

Kellan — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 20:47:44 +0000

I realized recently that I had given up on Fink months ago, and have been building everything from source for a while now. I’m comfortable with apt-pinning and regularly scare my sysadmin friends by running frankenstein Debian systems, but I’ve never figured out Fink, and it never seems to have the package I want in the release I’m using.

Woke up this morning and realized that I had a long todo list for the weekend, and so of course I decided to switch over to using DarwinPorts.

So far, so good.

I find it deeply disturbing that a core member of the IETF Calsch WG doesn’t know what iCal.app is.

Kellan — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 04:29:45 +0000

Though perhaps that points as to why it is the now defunct working group

http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/ietf-calsify/2005-February/000440.html