West Coast 2012 →
I just uploaded some pictures from my trip to the west coast of America, when I visited Vancouver, San Francisco, Carmel, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, and Scottsdale.
Flickr Flow
Ever since Socialite introduced the Explore section of Flickr to me, I had always been fascinated by the range of high-quality photos picked out by the Flickr community. However, I quickly grew tired of the unread-item guilt and the cluttered appearance of the app and left it behind in favour of Reeder and Twitter for Mac. There was no way of exploring Flickr on my iPod touch or iPad which was simple, clutter-free, and allowed me to easily favourite my favourite photos.
Hence, Flickr Flow was born.
Flickr Flow is a simple iOS app which solves this need. Photos can be browsed and favourited. The interface really gets out of the way: the description bar fades away automatically allowing you to just see the photo. The landscape iPhone view is a clear demonstration of this: it’s just about the pictures:
To favourite the image, just tap on the image to display the description view and hit the favourite button:
Flickr Flow has enabled me to explore the vibrant and interesting photos available on Flickr on my iOS devices without the clutter. If you’re interested, download it from the App Store for free.
Note: I haven’t posted for a while but am trying to post longer-form articles less frequently instead of simply being a news aggregator.
PHP: a fractal of bad design →
Wow, PHP is bad.
Mountain Lion →
John Gruber:
Handshakes, a few pleasantries, good hot coffee, and then, well, then I got an Apple press event for one. Keynote slides that would have looked perfect had they been projected on stage at Moscone West or the Yerba Buena Center, but instead were shown on a big iMac on a coffee table in front of us. A presentation that started with the day’s focus (“We wanted you here today to talk about OS X”) and a review of the Mac’s success over the past few years (5.2 million Macs sold last quarter; 23 (soon to be 24) consecutive quarters of sales growth exceeding the overall PC industry; tremendous uptake among Mac users of the Mac App Store and the rapid adoption of Lion).
And then the reveal: Mac OS X — sorry, OS X — is going on an iOS-esque one-major-update-per-year development schedule. This year’s update is scheduled for release in the summer, and is ready now for a developer preview release. Its name is Mountain Lion.
Messages Beta →
Finally, iMessage has been brought back to the Mac. iCloud sync is brilliant.
Adding a Custom DuckDuckGo Search Bar to Your Site →
I’ve switched this site’s search to DuckDuckGo using this guide by Pat Dryburgh.
Binary 2.0
Binary 2.0 by Jeroen Krielaars
Binary 2.0 is available for purchase from Calango.
On the Proprietary Nature of the iBooks Author File Format →
John Gruber:
It’s the difference between “What’s the best we can do within the constraints of the current ePub spec?” versus “What’s the best we can do given the constraints of our engineering talent?” — the difference between going as fast as the W3C standards body permits versus going as fast as Apple is capable.
Apple’s concern is not what’s best for the publishing industry, and it certainly isn’t about what’s best for the makers of (and users of) rival e-book reading devices.
In some sense this is like a rehash of the App Store debate — iBooks Author is a developer tool for the iBooks platform. As I’ve said regarding the App Store, Apple’s priorities are as follows: Apple’s best interests first, users’ second, developers’ third.
Most Amazing High Definition Image of Earth — Blue Marble 2012 →
Apple’s Monster Quarter In Charts →
Dan Frommer:
