Digital Media Minute

Google Treats

Here is Google’s answer to the question: How do you create and maintain efficient JavaScript code that downloads quickly and works across different browsers? The Google Closure tools package contains a Javascript compiler/optimizer, a library Java and Javascript, and template system for both as well. Totally different area: have you seen Google Dashboard yet? It’s info on all [...]

ServerSocket API In AIR 2 Demo

Christian Cantrell wrote an app called HTTPeek, to validate AIR 2 new ServerSocket APIs. It is a proxy server sitting between your browser and the network that shows HTTP request and response headers. Have a look at the demo video.

Code Highlighter

Here is a short list of code highlighters, just to have a few choices in one place for when the day comes that I want to run a systematic comparison of them all. In the meantime I’d very much appreciate any opinions of these, or any reader favorites. Simply enter your code into the Quick Highlighter [...]

Hardware Hacking

Chiphacker bills itself as user-edited Q & A site for Electronics & Robotics Hardware Hacking. Not the first of its kind, but simple and well executed, and I’ll point to it just because most geeks I know have parallel interest in physical computing. I love the smell of solder in the AM, how about you?

Git Lessons Learned

Here’s a concise account by Adam Esterline about using Git in a team environment, just a process overview that could be viewed as a short tutorial as well.

Tools For Web Designers

Here’s a list of 50 open source tools for web designers. I don’t know about you but I always like to see if there’s anything that I might use to fill gaps in my toolbox, especially as things change so quickly and new tools are created all the time.

How Twitter Lists Can Kill Google

The title ‘Twitter Lists And Electric Implications Thereof’ was much too pretentious, so I toned it down. Twitter Lists… Tweets and retweets from out of the blue from folks that you follow will broaden your awareness, but they are hardly comprehensive. You might choose to follow someone new to you based on a thoughtful post or [...]

iPhone Or Droid

Here’s is one geek’s detailed comparison of iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid. Props to him just for stepping into the comment war that an article like this was sure to inspire. Hey, take half a step back and think how unlikely this comparison would have seemed, say five years ago. You mean it’s a contest between [...]

Doctorow on Mandelson’s ‘3 Strikes’ Law

Here’s a well-argued piece from Cory Doctorow, speaking out against the shortsightedness of Mandelson’s ‘3 Strikes’ law in Britain. It’s hard to believe they’re talking about trying this in 2009. Anyone ever heard of a proxy? I can’t sum it up better than this: It is not the job of government to guarantee that the [...]

Simplicity In Interface Design

Feel like a little user interface inspiration on a Friday? Take a look at this representation of relative sizes of a coffee bean down to a carbon atom, controlled by the user with a slider. Talk about form and function working together.

Cool IPhone App Of the Day

Speech-to-speech language translation is cool, but it’s another one of those things that has a completely different usage if it is portable. Well it’s on the verge of being portable, for English/Spanish anyway– meet Jibbigo. Everything happens on the device, so no data charges. On iPhone 3GS the app is bi-directional, meaning that you can [...]

Google Groups Spam Fail

John Resig walks us through his contention that Google Groups as a public discussion medium has become basically unusable due to spam. Efforts that Google makes to continuously improve its offerings becomes much less impressive if it can’t or won’t aggressively fight the sort of problems that Resig outlines here in painful detail. I don’t [...]

Virtual Tourism

Sometimes I’m so proud to be a geek. Andrew Lim shows us his homemade virtual reality goggles that make use of the accelerometer in his Android phone, Google Street View and some sexy plastic goggles to give him an immersive experience ‘in’ cities around the world. Throw in some augmented reality and you have to [...]

Web Design Helpers

This is what bookmark functionality was created for. From Dominick Gatto, here’s a large list of resources that will help web designers do all the relatively simple, less exciting stuff that webpages need. You have Background Generators, Miscellaneous Image Generators, Favicon Generators, Color Generators, Flash Generators, CSS Generators, Email Generators, Form Generators, Text Generators. Very handy.

Mozilla Raindrop

Raindrop is Mozilla Labs’ attempt to help you manage all the communication you do over disparate services like Twitter, Facebook, email, YouTube, etc., through an interface that aggregates it all and separates ‘bulk’ messages from personal ones directed specifically to you, regardless of the source. Obviously there’s a huge need for some form of message [...]