• The rise and rise of the cognitive elite – “It seems unfair that footballers, bankers and tycoons earn more money than they know what to do with whereas jobless folk and single parents struggle to pay the rent, notes Mr Saunders. Yet it also seems unfair to take money from those who have worked hard and give it to those who have not, or to take away the profits of those who have risked their life savings to bring a new invention to market in order to help those who have risked nothing.”
• Jaguar E-Type turns 50 – Some designs can stand the test of time. The Jaguar E-Type is one of them.
• iOS Debugging Magic – Some great iOS debugging hints.

• How the iPhone mail app decides when to show you new mail – This is a really cool, very subtle detail seen in the Mail app on the iPhone.
• The end of the net as we know it – “ISPs are threatening to cripple websites that don’t pay them first.” ISP’s want to be considered common carriers (i.e., not responsible for the content on their network) when it suits them and also charge more for some data. Surely they have to pick one?

• Nov. 10, 1999: Metric Math Mistake Muffed Mars Meteorology Mission – Sometimes the simplest of mistakes have the most dramatic consequences.
• Linotype: The Film – The revolution in printing before DTP… soon in documentary form.

• Aerial views of New York – Neat pictures of Manhattan (and bits of New Jersey).
• Wallace and Gromit to appear on Christmas stamps – For once: Christmas stamps that I approve of.
• My First Week with the iPhone – I always assumed that a touch device like the iPhone would be pretty much useless for blind users. It’s good to be wrong.

• Catholics, it’s you this Pope has abused – Why even Catholics should Protest The Pope.
• There’s more to colour than meets the eye – Nice discussion of colours and what they “mean.”
• Compromising Twitter’s OAuth security system – " What it comes down to is that OAuth 1.0a is a horrible solution to a very difficult problem. It works acceptably well for server-to-server authentication, but there are far too many unresolved issues in the current specification for it to be used as-is on a widespread basis for desktop applications. It’s simply not mature enough yet." This is pretty much what I found implementing OAuth for Yahoo! in Yummy.

• The origins of abc – “We will begin where civilisation began, meander through the Middle Ages, race through the Renaissance, and in doing so discover where our alphabet originated, how and why it evolved, and why, for example, an A looks, well, like an A.”
• Icelander’s Campaign Is a Joke, Until He’s Elected – This is brilliant. “A polar bear display for the zoo. Free towels at public swimming pools. A “drug-free Parliament by 2020.” Iceland’s Best Party, founded in December by a comedian, Jon Gnarr, to satirize his country’s political system, ran a campaign that was one big joke. Or was it?”

• Urbanized – After Helvetica and Objectified, Gary Hustwit’s next documentary is about the design of cities. “Urbanized looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design, featuring some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers.” Can’t wait.
• 8-Bit Cities – This is awesome: maps of cities in the style of 1980’s video games.
• iPhone 4 – Case Program – I’ve not had any reception problems with mine but I’m not one to pass up free stuff…

One thing that I hear from time-to-time is that Yummy, my iPhone application, lacks “polish.” But what do people mean when they say that?

When I ask, what I usually find is that these people have never actually used it. They have probably looked at screen shots, maybe one of the screencasts. They can see that there are few graphics and little animation.

That’s fair — it’s absolutely true — but that’s not what I think of when I think of polish.

• June 22, 1783: Icelandic Volcano Disrupts Europe’s Economy – It’s not just 2010 where this was a problem…
• WWDC – The Acceleration – “But at one point everything exploded and there was no way to keep up with all the new API:s and all the new things Java was attempting to do. I feel that we’re approaching that point with iOS (formerly known as the iPhone OS).” As someone who does this in my spare time, this is certainly something that I’m feeling right now!
• I’m Comic Sans, Asshole – Your favourite font responds to criticism…

• Rejoice this day! – My sentiments exactly!
• Lost labels for your DHARMA Initiative needs – This is great. I think I’m going to have to re-label everything in the cupboard at home!
• It must have been a slow news day at ZDNet – These arguments against iPhone development come up all the time on places like StackOverflow. This is a great explanation of why they mostly make no sense.