Links from 2009

This is a quick augmented reality demo showing live Pachube data displayed in realtime ‘on top’ of Arduino sensor boxes. This could provide an easy way to inspect rooms (or streets) full of environment and sensor data via a camera (e.g. iPhone) or even AR goggles!

Provides a method for a web interface to use SVG images as icons, while being loaded from a single file. This reduces the amount of HTTP requests, offering the same kind of benefit available with CSS sprites.

As well as realtime spriting, Aptimize are using data: URIs in their Website Accelerator tool and doing so for >IE7 using an MHTML workaround. Clever.

"Deron Beal and the US Network made no comment." Says it all, really.

More on OOCSS. "The cascade is a poker game, but we've been playing our cards all wrong. Here Nicole suggests we stop trying to play to win to prevent code bloat, and simplify the cascade, using the order of the rulesets to allow overrides."

The GitHub Pages feature allows you to publish content to the web by simply pushing content to one of your GitHub hosted repositories.

Helps you easily make interactive arts and craft. You can quickly make a bracelet that changes color when shaken, a pet collar that blinks in the dark, or a dress that twinkles when you get a phone call. Weave it into tapestry, or make a custom bike light.

Whilst the advertising industry has one of the longest histories of trying to understand interaction, it’s a very different set of tools that digitalness brings; ones that designers at the coal face of web and mobile encounter every day. Everything can be considered in context, be timely, reactive, and data-driven. I’m going to try to outline some dimensions to think about, with some incredibly quick, simple, off the cuff dumb ideas (All brands are impersonated. Badly.) that hopefully push the advertising into being more useful or interesting.

Using Changes app with svn, git etc.

Set TextMate as default git editor

Lots of caveats but useful under certain circumstances.

Covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing - and will change - human beings in fundamental ways.

An Open Source (GPL 3) video player. Highly skinnable and extendable.

Good memory jogger.

Ugly but useful.

Hurl makes HTTP requests. Enter a URL, set some headers, view the response, then share it with others. Perfect for demoing and debugging APIs.

Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word alea, meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s). The term is most often associated with procedures in which the chance element involves a relatively limited number of possibilities."

"In 1996 Brian Eno released the title "Generative Music 1" with SSEYO Koan Software. In so doing he popularised the term "generative music", describing music that is ever-different & changing, created by a system."

A talk delivered in San Francisco, June 8, 1996

"The British Library launches the ICA Talks from the 1980s online [...] The recordings feature a kaleidoscopic range of leading cultural figures debating the social and artistic currents of the 1980s". Salman Rushdie, Steve Reich, Richard Dawkins, Alan Moore...

With Twenty Systems, Edwards creates twenty tracks, one for each of the years between 1968 and 1987, and each built using just one synthesizer. The list of makes, Moog, ARP, Roland, Serge, Korg, Yamaha, Oberheim, and models used is likely to send shivers down the spines of many aficionados, and the accompanying liner notes provide much needed information on each machine.

Runs from East Croydon to Newhaven via the South Downs, Seven Sisters, Surrey Hills etc. 66 miles, goes mostly through open countryside and woodland.

Long distance routes for walking, cycling and horse riding through the finest landscapes in England and Wales. In Scotland the equivalent trails are called long distance routes.

A magnificent ridge-top route crossing Dorset's rural heartland.

With mobile on my mind, I was blown away by the awesome performance tips in this blog post: Gmail for Mobile HTML5 Series: Reducing Startup Latency. This post hits on the main point of my recent book - the impact of loading JavaScript. This is the #1 performance issue for today’s web apps.

Lots of useful-looking django apps.

Zen Coding lets you use syntax that looks very much like CSS selectors to write HTML

"A [front end developer] is responsible for everything that sits on the client side of the web stack — the content, presentation and behaviour layers. Few other roles touch so many other key aspects of a business as does a [front end developer]’s." Amen to that.

Early days but looks promising. "I have decided to use cpython as platform, django as web framework for the server and Fabric as library to automate the task execution."

Aims to provide an easy to setup continuous integration server and client. The server side infrastructure is built on top of django. The tasks are described using fabric.

New Django mag.

A configurable set of panels that display various debug information about the current request/response.

Lets you debug web hooks by capturing and logging the asynchronous requests made when events happen. Make a PostBin and register the URL with a web hook provider. All POST requests to the URL are logged for you to see when you browse to that URL.

Do you want to test your next Mac OS X-to-Arduino project without always having the Arduino available? Do you want to test you cool Processing application when your mate hasn't finished writing the Arduino sketch? Do you want to do test driven development of your Mac OS X based application without dependency on your microcontroller?

The acrimonious split follows unsatisfactory negotiations which could have given Freecycle's UK moderators the ability to localise their web pages and allow them to serve the community better [...] The UK is probably the most enthusiastic Freecycling country in the world, hosting just 10% of all the branches but handling 27% of all Freecycling activities.

Font-as-a-service.

We are making more of our geological data available in open formats so that they can be used in mashup type applications within software such as Google Earth (please note the terms and conditions of use for Google's and any other software). We hope these services stimulate innovative uses of our data and promote interoperability.

Many of the BGS's most popular datasets are available to search and view online.

"Enables you to easily add Microsoft Ajax Library and jQuery scripts to your Web applications" if, horror of horrors, you should need to do something involving MS Ajax.

Provides digital distribution for artists, labels and organizations through custom download cards and personalized web platforms.

Downloady music card thingummies. Still haven't found a way of getting them into the shrinkwrap without tremendous expense.