There’s a lot of talk every time Apple releases a new product. The vast majority of that judgement comes without ever having seen or touched the new product. Hey, I can do that too.

I almost wasn’t going to share my thoughts after reading Jeff Croft’s blog post about the iPad this morning. But I’m hardly one to be shy.

I think the iPad is the future of the PC. Period. Looking at the specs, it’s easy to dismiss the iPad as just an up-sized iPhone. The fact of the matter is, it basically is. So how is “now” equal to “the future”? The answer, lies in Japanese mobile phone habits.

In Japan, a majority of people count their mobile phone as their primary computing device. Their phones are typically capable of many more things than your typical handset. Until the iPhone went on sale in Japan, non-Japanese phones sold very poorly in the that market, because they couldn’t handle the day-to-day computing that people had become accustom to. For the past ten years, the mobile web has been a part of daily life for many Japanese.

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The crazy thing about the return of Elvira, Mistress of The Dark to the small screen is that it’s taking place on ThisTV. Crazy because all us people who don’t have cable still have a chance to watch. I was too young in the 80’s to appreciate her sense of humor and the campy horror movies she shared. I’m excited to check out the show.

• Elvira Returns To The Small Screen
• A thorough interview from a couple years ago, Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark

• Elvira, Mistress of the Dark at Amazon.

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Even if you’ve never made a purchase from Woot, and when they sell stuff like “bags ‘o crap” I wouldn’t blame you, you should read the hi-larious post about the acquisition.

I know I say this every time I find a picture of an adorable kitten, but please set aside 20 minutes to carefully read this entire email.

This is way too big an event to simply “share on Facebook.”

A user on Metafilter gets contacted by an old friend and student about coming to the States and getting a job in NYC. She traveled from Russia with a friend and her communications started raising flags that she might be in over her head. Worried that human trafficking might be involved and distant from the situation our hero starts a thread at Metafilter and the community goes to work…

Help me help my friend in DC. (via Boing Boing)

After reading the first chapter of A List Apart’s foray into books I can’t wait for it to arrive.

After HTML 4.01, the next revision to the language was called XHTML 1.0. The X stood for “eXtreme” and web developers were required to cross their arms in an X shape when speaking the letter.

No, not really. The X stood for “eXtensible” and arm crossing was entirely optional.

Matt Katz recently sent in an email regarding the code we use to display our OPML lists. He needed a second pair of eyes to go over his new class. Turned out the bug wasn’t in his display function but the once over highlighted some other issues with ours.

The pages here are now updated but we can’t keep this all to ourselves. Here’s the updated code for traversing an OPML file.

function displayChildrenRecursive($xmlObj,$depth=1) {
	$outPut = "";
	if (count($xmlObj->children()) > 0) { $outPut .= str_repeat("\t",$depth).'<ul class="opmlGroup">'."\n"; }
	foreach($xmlObj->children() as $child) {
		if (isset($child['htmlUrl']) || isset($child['xmlUrl'])) 
		{
			$outPut .= str_repeat("\t",$depth).'<li>';
			if (isset($child['htmlUrl']))
			{
				$outPut .= '<a href="'.htmlentities($child['htmlUrl']).'"';
				$outPut .= (isset($child['description'])) ? ' title="'.htmlentities($child['description']).'"' : '';
				$outPut .= '>'.$child['text'].'</a>';
			}
			else
			{
				$outPut .= $child['text'];
			}
			$outPut .= (isset($child['xmlUrl'])) ? ' [<a href="'.htmlentities($child['xmlUrl']).'">XML Feed</a>]' : '';
			$outPut .= '</li>'."\n";
		} 
		elseif (isset($child['text']) &amp;&amp; !isset($child['xmlUrl'])) 
		{
			$outPut .= str_repeat("\t",$depth).'<li><h'.($depth+1).'>'.$child['text'].'</h'.($depth+1).'>'."\n";
		}
		$outPut .= displayChildrenRecursive($child,$depth+1);
	}

	if (count($xmlObj->children()) > 0) { $outPut .= str_repeat("\t",$depth).'</ul>'."\n"; 
		if ($depth > 1) { $outPut .= str_repeat("\t",$depth-1).'</li>'."\n"; }
	}
	return $outPut;
}

While working on a friend’s wedding web site an oddity in Chrome’s handling of @font-face came to light. Paul Irish’s code works wonders for enabling the inclusion of alternative typefaces across browsers. Using Goudy Bookletter 1911 on a production site is exciting. But the navigation breaks when I load up my site in Chrome 3 at work.

As you can see here, the letter spacing of .2em is not applied to the typeface.

But as soon as I remove the “Goudy Bookletter” declaration from the CSS it magically starts working.

A search through Google produces nothing relevant so I thought I’d document the problem here. Considering this does not affect the latest version of Safari I have no problem waiting for the fix to work its way into Chrome.

Update: Just to clarify, Chrome 4 fixes this issue.

Tim O’Reilly is getting a lot of links to his “War For the Web” piece. For the most part it’s worth a read. However, I wonder what goes through a “guru”‘s mind sometimes when they write lofty pieces like this. Do they just run it off all in one blast, (like I will on this post) or do they let it sit a couple days, edit, rethink and then post?

I ask because in the middle of his piece, where he names those who “threaten” the future of the open web, he goes after Apple’s App Store policy, exposé-style:

The Apple iPhone is the hottest web access device around, and like Facebook, while it connects to the web, it plays by a different set of rules. Anyone can put up a website, or launch a new Windows or Mac OS X or Linux application, without anyone’s permission. But put an app onto the iPhone? That requires Apple’s blessing.

There is one glaring loophole: anyone can create a web application, which any user can save as clickable application on their phone. But these web applications have limits – there are key capabilities of the phone that are not accessible to web applications. HTML 5 can introduce all the new application-like features it wants, but they will work only for web applications, and can’t access key aspects of the phone with Apple’s permission. And as we saw earlier this year with Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice application, Apple isn’t shy about blocking applications that it considers threatening to their core business, or that of their partners.

So, because Apple limits what apps can be on the phone, they’re closing down the web? Um… wha? The iPhone is a bit more than just a web-access device, by the way.

He says “one glaring loophole” as if Apple mistakenly forgot to lock down Safari to only approved websites. Name the last time Apple forgot to lock something down in error. The iPhone is not the web. iPhone Apps don’t alone give access to the web. The device, although popular with geeks, doesn’t have the marketshare it’s influence might lead you to believe.

Secondly, there’s nothing in HTML5 that is available in the iPhone that Apple only allows access to by an App. No, a web app doesn’t have access to various APIs available in the iPhone, but those functions aren’t part of the (actually still incomplete) HTML5 specs. In other words, Apple hasn’t broken anything web related. In fact, they should be given credit for a) bringing HTML5 to the mobile world b) being a forebearer of HTML 5 in the first place… hello? WebKit? You know, free, open-source and the same thing Chrome and a number of mobile browsers are based on? C) bringing the real web of any kind to a phone.

I’m all for a transparent App Store review process, and I’d love to see Google Voice natively on the iPhone. But this passage simply lacks logic. It’s more as if Mr O’Reilly needed more big names to bash in his piece.

If this isn’t a joke about open-source design, I don’t know what it is.

Is this like Apple’s Magic Mouse?

It’s almost the complete opposite of Apple’s approach with their new mouse. The Magic Mouse has one giant button that can do 10 things, we have 18 small buttons that can each do two or more things. And a scroll wheel. And a joystick. And 512k of memory.

There’s a reason Apple is the most successful consumer goods company in the world, and why your company has the tasteful name “WarMouse”.

How do I hold the mouse?

We have found the most effective way is to rest your first three fingers on the mouse with your thumb on the joystick. Your index finger controls the first two vertical rows, your middle finger utilizes the two middle ones and the scroll wheel, and your ring finger the last two rows.

If you need a FAQ about how to hold a mouse with 18 small buttons, and a scroll wheel and a joystick… then perhaps it’s not the most ideal device for an appendage with only five digits.

Seriously, someone tell me this is a joke.

Don’t miss last night’s Castle. Along with the Halloween humor there is a glorious reference to Firefly in the first few minutes.

Makes me consider “space cowboy” for next year.

Castle on Hulu

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