Deconstructing the Web

EFF Posts Apple’s “Top Secret” iPhone Developer License Agreement

2010-03-09T23:21:20Z

So today we're posting the “iPhone Developer Program License Agreement”—the contract that every developer who writes software for the iTunes App Store must “sign.” Though more than 100,000 app developers have clicked “I agree,” public copies of the agreement are scarce, perhaps thanks to the prohibition on making any “public statements regarding this Agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties without Apple's express prior written approval.” But when we saw the NASA App for iPhone, we used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ask NASA for a copy, so that the general public could see what rules conrolled the technology they could use with their phones. NASA responded with the Rev. 3-17-09 version of the agreement

http://www.eff.org/files/20100302_iphone_dev_agr.pdf

via All Your Apps Are Belong to Apple: The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

FFmpeg 0.5 Released

2010-03-03T00:45:02Z

It is codenamed “half-way to world domination A.K.A. the belligerent blue bike shed” to give an idea where we stand in the grand scheme of things and to commemorate the many fruitful discussions we had during its development.

Link: FFmpeg 0.5 Released

Facebook patents News Feed; sets stage for fight against social peers | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

2010-02-26T17:44:06Z

I’m not sure if I like the sound of this…

Facebook patents News Feed; sets stage for fight against social peers | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com.

Google’s Experimental Fiber Network - Google ISP Coming?

2010-02-10T18:36:37Z

I sure hope Google can change the sad state of internet acces speed and connectivity here in the US. Our current regime of ISPs just aint getting the job done (IMHO).

Official Google Blog: Think big with a gig: Our experimental fiber network.

Google’s Undocumented Text-To-Speech API

2009-12-14T20:36:19Z

Check out this example in a new window. Its a basic REST api using GET parameters, so the URL looks like this:

http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=hello+there,+I+am+an+example+of+the+google+text+to+speech+service

Sounds like translation text is limited to 100 charters. Can’t wait until google officially supports this.

The Unofficial Google Text-To-Speech API .

Google Chrome Mac Beta is Now Available!

2009-12-09T17:44:13Z

Google Chrome - Download a new browser.

Google Launches “Google Public DNS”

2009-12-03T19:22:31Z

A bit like OpenDNS but more Googly?

Link: Google Public DNS.

Update: OpenDNS gives their perspective: http://blog.opendns.com/2009/12/03/opendns-google-dns/

Google: Zeitgeist 2009

2009-12-01T21:11:39Z

Google:
Zeitgeist 2009.

Building 3D Models on the Fly Using a Webcam

2009-11-30T18:21:04Z

Cant wait for this to hit the main stream

Building 3D Models on the Fly Using a Webcam « SciTe Daily.

YouTube Rolling Out 1080p HD Video Next Week

2009-11-17T16:46:21Z

If you've been uploading really high-resolution stuff to YouTube, you'll see a real payoff next week. That's when the video sharing service starts streaming videos in 1080p, wide-screen-TV-friendly, high-definition video

via YouTube Rolling Out 1080p HD Video Next Week - YouTube - Lifehacker.

Adobe Flash 10.1 Beta Brings Hardware Acceleration to Web Videos

2009-11-17T16:43:31Z

Yes, you read right—only Windows gets the graphics-card-powered HD acceleration for now. Even though that matches up nicely with YouTube's expected 1080p HD roll-out, it's a shame that Mac and Linux users get left out in the wilds of jerky video. All platforms get support for multi-touch, however, and tweaks that presumably make Flash a tad bit less of a resource hog.

via Adobe Flash 10.1 Beta Brings Hardware Acceleration to Web Videos - Flash - Lifehacker.

Google Could Double Web Speeds With SPDY Protocol

2009-11-16T20:34:41Z

So Google is developing a new protocol, dubbed SPDY pronounced speedy. SPDY is designed, from the ground up, to handle modern Web apps that transfer several smaller files. Without getting too technical, SPDY is able to handle multiple streams of data at once and prioritize on the fly. This means that if the background image of a site takes a long time to load, it doesnt stall the rest of the content from being fed to the browser. SPDY also compresses request and response data which asks for specific content and tells a browser what to display so that multiple requests can be sent at once using less bandwidth

via Google Could Double Web Speeds With SPDY Protocol.

Introducing Google “Go”: A New Open-Source Programming Language

2009-11-11T21:23:06Z

Go combines the development speed of working in a dynamic language like Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language like C or C++

via Google Go: An Open-Source Programming Language - Reviews by PC Magazine.

Nginx & Comet: Low Latency Server Push - igvita.com

2009-10-22T20:17:47Z

Turn your Nginx server into a fully functional Comet server with the nginx_http_push_module plugin.

Instead of using a custom framework, Leo's plugin exposes two endpoints on your Nginx server: one for the subscribers, and one for the publisher. The clients open long-polling connections to a channel on the Nginx server and start waiting for data. Meanwhile, the publisher simply POST's the data to Nginx and the plugin then does all the heavy lifting for you by distributing the data to the waiting clients. This means that the publisher never actually serves the data directly, it is simply an event generator! It is hard to make it any simpler then that.

via Nginx & Comet: Low Latency Server Push - igvita.com.

Photoshop on the iPhone, and its Free!

2009-10-09T18:10:48Z

Adobe PS Mobile

A Look Behind The Curtain At Facebook’s Optimization Efforts - TechCrunch

2009-08-31T23:56:25Z

Earlier this week Facebook’s Engineering team posted a note written by intern Zizhuang Yang, who has spent the summer researching how changes in things like load time can affect users. Yang writes about three main experiments he conducted over the last few months, including one involving overall site speed and two in the way pages load, and the results are quite interesting.

via A Look Behind The Curtain At Facebook’s Optimization Efforts.

Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate

2009-07-07T15:38:17Z

The HTML 5 working group is split between supporters of Ogg Theora and H.264. Their inability to find a compromise that is acceptable to all stakeholders has compelled HTML 5 spec editor Ian Hickson to “admit defeat” and give up on the effort to define specific codecs and media formats in the standard itself. This is problematic because the lack of uniform codec availability will make it impossible for content creators to publish their videos in a single format that will be viewable through the HTML 5 video element in all browsers.

via Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate - Ars Technica.

Firefox Aims to Unplug Scripting Attacks

2009-06-30T06:01:28Z

Now the makers of the Firefox Web browser plan to adopt a strategy to help block the attacks. The technology, called Content Security Policy CSP, will let a website's owner specify what Internet domains are allowed to host the scripts that run on its pages.

Link Technology Review: Firefox Aims to Unplug Scripting Attacks.

Introducing Opera Unite - Putting a Web Server in the Browser

2009-06-18T19:32:29Z

With Opera 10, we are introducing a new technology called Opera Unite, radically extending what you are able to do online. Opera Unite harnesses the power of today’s fast connections and hardware, allowing all of us to help define the future landscape of the Web, one computer at a time. Read about how Opera Unite is going to change the way we interact on the Web on labs.opera.com.

Opera Unite

iPhone Art

2009-06-17T20:11:07Z

In a new craze sweeping the world, iPhone and iPod Touch users are producing extraordinary ‘paintings’ on their Apple devices. All the images were created using an application called Brushes and ‘painted’ freehand using fingers and thumbs

Link: Amazing iPhone Art - Telegraph.

Google Search Results, Now With ‘Options’

2009-05-13T16:15:00Z

Click Show options in the blue bar (located at the top of the search results page) to see the available filters and views you can apply to your search results. Click Hide options to remove the options panel from view.

If you forget what options are applied to your results, look at the list of links in the blue bar.

To go back to standard unfiltered Google results, click Reset options at the bottom of the panel.

Link: Search result filters and display options

Kyle Simpson’s SWFObject presentation from JSConf

2009-05-13T16:15:05Z

This episode is solely a recording of Kyle Simpson’s discussion of SWFObject - how it works, recent changes, common problems people have using it, and more.

Link: Episode 65: Kyle Simpson’s SWFObject presentation from JSConf

Version 1.8 of Zend Framework Tagged for Release

2009-05-13T16:15:10Z

It looks like the 1.8.0 version of the Zend Framework was tagged today in the SVN repo: http://framework.zend.com/svn/framework/standard/tags/release-1.8.0/

Here is the the content of the README.txt:

Welcome to the Zend Framework 1.8 Release! 

RELEASE INFORMATION
---------------
Zend Framework 1.8 Release (revision 15226).
Released on April 30, 2009

NEW FEATURES
------------

* Zend_Tool, contributed by Ralph Schindler
* Zend_Application, contributed by Ben Scholzen and Matthew Weier O'Phinney
* Zend_Loader_Autoloader and Zend_Loader_Autoloader_Resource,
    contributed by Matthew Weier O'Phinney
* Zend_Navigation, contributed by Robin Skoglund
* Zend_CodeGenerator, by Ralph Schindler
* Zend_Reflection, Ralph Schindler and Matthew Weier O'Phinney
* Zend Server backend for Zend_Cache, contributed by Alexander Veremyev
* Zend_Service_Amazon_Ec2, contributed by Jon Whitcraft
* Zend_Service_Amazon_S3, Justin Plock and Stas Malyshev
* Zend_Filter_Encrypt, contributed by Thomas Weidner
* Zend_Filter_Decrypt, contributed by Thomas Weidner
* Zend_Filter_LocalizedToNormalized and _NormalizedToLocalized,
    contributed by Thomas Weidner
* Support for file upload progress support in Zend_File_Transfer,
    contributed by Thomas Weidner
* Translation-aware routes, contributed by Ben Scholzen
* Zend_Json expression support, contributed by Benjamin Eberlei and
    Oscar Reales
* Zend_Http_Client_Adapter_Curl, contributed by Benjamin Eberlei
* SOAP input and output header support, contributed by Alexander Veremyev
* Support for keyword field search using query strings,
    contributed by Alexander Veremyev
* Support for searching across multiple indexes in Zend_Search_Lucene,
    contributed by Alexander Veremyev
* Significant improvements for Zend_Search_Lucene search result match
    highlighting capabilities, contributed by Alexander Veremyev
* Support for page scaling, shifting and skewing in Zend_Pdf,
    contributed by Alexander Veremyev
* Zend_Tag_Cloud, contributed by Ben Scholzen
* Locale support in Zend_Validate_Int and Zend_Validate_Float,
    contributed by Thomas Weidner
* Phonecode support in Zend_Locale, contributed by Thomas Weidner
* Zend_Validate_Db_RecordExists and _RecordNotExists, contributed by
    Ryan Mauger
* Zend_Validate_Iban, contributed by Thomas Weidner
* Zend_Validate_File_WordCount, contributed by Thomas Weidner

A detailed list of all features and bug fixes in this release may be found at:

http://framework.zend.com/issues/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?requestId=11002

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
-------------------

Zend Framework requires PHP 5.2.4 or later. Please see our reference
guide for more detailed system requirements:

http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/requirements.html

INSTALLATION
------------

Please see INSTALL.txt.

QUESTIONS AND FEEDBACK
----------------------

Online documentation can be found at http://framework.zend.com/manual.
Questions that are not addressed in the manual should be directed to the
appropriate mailing list:

http://framework.zend.com/wiki/display/ZFDEV/Mailing+Lists

If you find code in this release behaving in an unexpected manner or
contrary to its documented behavior, please create an issue in the Zend
Framework issue tracker at:

http://framework.zend.com/issues

If you would like to be notified of new releases, you can subscribe to
the fw-announce mailing list by sending a blank message to
fw-announce-subscribe@lists.zend.com.

LICENSE
-------

The files in this archive are released under the Zend Framework license.
You can find a copy of this license in LICENSE.txt.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
----------------

The Zend Framework team would like to thank all the contributors to the Zend
Framework project, our corporate sponsor, and you, the Zend Framework user.
Please visit us sometime soon at http://framework.zend.com.

The Art & Science of Seductive Interactions

2009-05-13T16:15:15Z

This one was brought to my attention by Jonathan Moore of New Ezra. A great run through of the psychology behind a great user experience.

To be good user experience folks, we need to crack open some psych 101 textbooks, learn what motivates people and then bake these ideas into our designs.

Link: The Art & Science of Seductive Interactions

Polaris Brings Google Analytics to Your Desktop

2009-04-27T16:58:58Z

Polaris is a free Adobe AIR application that brings Google Analytics (Google's statistics tracking tool for web publishers) to your desktop with an attractive look and feel.

via Lifehacker - Polaris Brings Google Analytics to Your Desktop - Featured Download.