Links for Monday January 24th 2011

  • Lost Bomber – Techbelly
    Mentally link this with the story of the woman the other week who was looking to put her disabled daughter into care, because she couldn't cope with the cuts. Futher thoughts: anecdote != data, but anecdote is useful to understand and connect with data.
  • Ben Bashford – Notebook of Things – Emoticomp
    Interesting idea to bear in mind when designing apps/systems – how to give it an emotional face, that it is consistent, and ideally, compelling.

Links for Monday January 17th 2011

  • DeDRM AppleScript for Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6 « Apprentice Alf’s Blog
    I would not, of course, ever think of doing such a thing myself, in order to read my legitimately purchased ebooks on whatever device I wished.
  • Stupid legal threat of the young century – Boing Boing
    I'm sure loads of people will have done something like this, and you're bound to have seen the link, but essentially, lawyers for a website called Academic Advantage are sending websites that contain the words "academic" "advantage" and "scam" cease and desist letters claiming "There is absolutely no helpful reason for the website to have the words 'Academic,' 'Advantage' and 'Scam'". I disagree. There's a very helpful purpose – letting people know when the lawyers they retain engage in legal bullying that is completely groundless, and bring their client's name into disrepute.
  • Top Ten Typefaces Used by Book Design Winners | The FontFeed
    Just in case I ever need to to design an award winning book. Or something. Oh, just go look at the lovely fonts, will you?

Links for Friday January 14th 2011

  • Confused by Constellations? Find out about your new star sign!
    You may have seen reports on the internet about some sort of change to star signs caused by some kind of science, and you may be wondering what this means for your horoscope. Because I am a basically helpful person, I have put together this site, to help people who are confused by the whole thing. Please spread this link far and wide, as I would hate for people to be confused by astrology.

Links for Thursday January 13th 2011

  • A List Apart: Articles: A Simpler Page
    Discussion of laying out text for ipads (or similar) on the web, and a library to to the rendering. Particularly like the three modes – bed, knee and breakfast pretty neatly describe all the ways I use my device.
  • Come out of your comfort zone, disability living allowance cuts are relevant to all | Society | guardian.co.uk
    An excellent article on the cuts to DLA. Cannot quite believe that even this government of utter shits would essentially say "one in five people who have previously been assessed as needing help now won't get it". And yet they are. There's no suggestion that the previous tests were flawed. There's no (credible) suggestion that fully one in five of disabled people are OK, really, and just scrounging. They're hiding behind "we can't afford it". Which makes my blood boil. Surely, even in a time of national austerity, the one thing we should bend over backwards to afford, the one thing we should scrap all manner of other things to pay for, is caring for the most vulnerable members of our society.

Links for Friday January 7th 2011

Links for Wednesday January 5th 2011 through Thursday January 6th 2011

  • The Tearoom of Despair: Last night The Invisibles saved my life (24-month countdown remix)
    If you have not read the Invisibles then you should have. If you have read the Invisibles then you may enjoy this reminiscence of the experience of reading it for the first time.
  • Ninth Art: for the discerning reader
    Minor pleasure of the day: getting 9A back on one of it's original two domains. If the person who jumped on ninthart.com the instant that ISP incompetence cause it to lapse is reading this: please can we have it back? There's still hundreds of links pointing to your site that are dead. I will buy you the domain of your choice in exchange?
  • Android Isn’t About Building a Mobile Platform | TightWind
    Solid analysis of Google's behaviour and strategy in respect of Android and the bigger picture. It's why I tend to call bullshit on their mantra a bit re: their evilness, because I would prefer to be the customer, not the product sold. I will admit that for a company set on selling me as a product, they provide a much better service than most in exchange, but even that's not all good, as it means they tend to blow away paid-for competition that does stuff (or might do stuff) better than they do.