November 2005
Nov. 1, 2005
About the Mac OS X 10.4.3 Update. Includes an updated Safari that passes the Acid 2 test.
World’s 10 Tallest Buildings—SkyscraperPage.com (via) This site is the Wikipedia of skyscraper pixel art.
Yahoo! Autos Custom. I guess you could call this the Flickr of custom cars.
Ross doesn’t trust Microsoft’s approach to Web. Scoble nails the reasons smart web developers avoid the MS stack.
Taking charge of your own destiny
Scoble has posted 12 reasons that Web 2.0 entrepreneurs are steering clear of the Microsoft platform. It’s an interesting list (the comments are full of treats too) but for me it misses the key reason that open source development tools are so compelling: they put you in charge of your own destiny.
[... 367 words]Oracle 10g XE and PHP. HarryF has a handy tutorial on getting started with the new free Oracle version.
Nov. 3, 2005
Yahoo!’s new twist on mapping APIs
One of the most exciting things I’ve seen at Yahoo! since starting here has finally been made public: the new Yahoo Maps. The map application itself differs from many other recent map sites in being rendered entirely in Flash. This leaves far more scope for interface niceties, but doesn’t it reduce the scope for hacking that made things like Google Maps so much fun?
[... 623 words]Local Events Browser. The Yahoo APIs mega mashup.
Super-mashup with Yahoo! APIs: event browser. Chad describes the local browser mashup.
Local Event Browser Demo. Edward Ho on the Local Events Browser, with a neat new use for term extraction.
geobloggers, Yahoo! Maps edition (via) Dan Catt’s geobloggers, now with a Y! Maps Flash interface.
Toolkits for user innovation (via) Jon Udell’s last two paragraphs resonate strongly with me:
Von Hippel advances the notion of user innovation toolkits. The Apache Web server, with its modular architecture, is an example of such a toolkit. In the hands of skilled programmers, Apache can be, and often is, tailored to specific needs. When such customizations are shared, other users benefit. But so do Apache's developers, who, by observing what's done with the toolkit, can more intelligently evolve the core product.
Web-based software delivered as a service is, at its best, another kind of innovation toolkit. Users bring the data; developers wrangle the code; more useful innovation happens faster than it otherwise could.
Nov. 4, 2005
New features for extension developers in Firefox 1.5. We’re going to see some amazing innovation in extensions in the next few months.
XML.com: REST on Rails. Matt Biddulph’s Rails mixin provides an instant REST interface to an ActiveRecord model.
Web bugs for job scheduling: hack or solution? HarryF reviews ingenious PHP tricks for simulating cron.
Localization and Internationalization in Django. Another major community-driven Django feature.
TurboDbAdmin. Ajax phpMyAdmin clone built on Dojo. Worth trying the live demo.
Nov. 5, 2005
Microsoft Team RSS Blog : Feeds and well-formed XML (via) Wow. IE7 will require RSS feeds to be well-formed XML.
HOWTO Use Your Mac From Anywhere (via) A screencast tutorial by Mark Pilgrim.
Nov. 6, 2005
Yahoo! Maps—Flash API—The killer app for online maps. Rev Dan Catt is the guy who got me excited about the Flash API in the first place.
Liquid—a new Rails template system (via) Heavily inspired by Django. I’m flattered!
Nov. 7, 2005
Ajaxy Exception Catching. Watch the screencast. This is awesome.
Nov. 8, 2005
Rich Text Editing With Dojo. Utterly fantastic. Beautiful API, and it even works in Safari.
Maps that are Consistent with YOUR design. This is why Flash Mapping apsis are cool. Especially the pirate one.
We need a Django Developer. Another great Django job at the Naples Daily News.
Nov. 9, 2005
Social engineering and Orange
I had a call on my mobile earlier today from a lady claiming to be from Orange (my phone service provider) who told me that my contract was about to expire. She asked me for my password.
[... 311 words]Nov. 10, 2005
Tom Hume’s report on MoMo London. Nice to know that my enthusiasm is appreciated.
Opera Browser Wiki: Patching start.com (via) Technical hacks for getting start.com to work in Opera.
Nov. 11, 2005
Hexten: More Phishing. Wow. Lloyds Bank cold call asking for your password as well!
Musings on Mouse Hover. Astute observations from Bill Scott.