Closure Compiler - actually more of a JavaScript optimizer than a compiler - it removes unnecessary parts, compacts the code, cleans up some slow things and replaces them with more efficient variants and also provides some static tests on the JavaScript code. Once blogged about for company projects.
Archive 23. January 2010
django-history-tables - could be interesting for a project at the company, there is also the requirement for a history of data changes.
EZ430-Chronos - Texas Instruments Embedded Processors Wiki - technical details about the portable embedded system from TI.
Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International - well, Facebook fails again with high-grade nonsense and user mockery. I'm just curious when my RFC1437 vanity URL thing will disappear ... (I only use Facebook as a super-aggregator for my various outposts and even then only rather incidentally - I have the gigantic amount of a total of 2 friends!)
How to create offline webapps on the iPhone - terrible page layout, but interesting documentation on how to build web applications for the iPhone that work offline thanks to the HTML5 Application Cache. After I thought for a moment about whether I should buy such a TI watch, and got annoyed that it doesn't exist as a pocket watch version, I was able to think clearly again and remembered my iPhone ... (sometimes the obvious is too obvious)
Inheritance Patterns in JavaScript - interesting article about which class and inheritance strategy to prefer in JavaScript. Mainly interesting for JavaScript framework hackers, as for the others, a technique will usually have been chosen by the frameworks.
Syntensity - looks interesting, something like an open-source counterpart to Unity 3D. Currently no Mac client, but with open source the chances are quite high that something will come.
TI hits home run with Chronos sportswatch wireless dev kit - that's interesting. A wristwatch to hack - wireless, accelerometer, pressure and altitude sensors, LCD display, temperature sensor, and a developer kit and tools (hardware tools in this case). And also affordable (50 dollars for the watch!). So if you want to tinker with a small embedded system and always have it with you, why not take a wristwatch?
Well, I'm Back: Video, Freedom And Mozilla - why Firefox does not include support for H264. I personally think it would be better to use the technically available codecs of the installed system and leave it up to the user which codecs they want to have. I do understand Mozilla's argumentative position on this matter, but I think it could be rather negative for the spread of Firefox in this case - or in the long run could lead to a fork of Firefox and Firefox+OS codecs. His arguments about "pushes software freedom issues from the browser to the platform" are, in my opinion, nonsense - because he himself writes about the Flash video fallback, which requires a non-free Flash plugin ...