For this weeks PhotoFriday, I thought of a picture I took a couple of years ago in Stockholm. As I usually do, I searched to see if I’d used the same image for any other challenges. It turns out I had. For a challenge titled, “Contrast.” Well, at least I’m consistent.

The above image, of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, has pretty much the same idea.

• Apple’s Three Laws of Developers – The hidden link from sci-fi books to the App Store. Only funny because it’s true…
• Biting the source that feeds you – “Keller, a journalist of unimpeachable accomplishment and stature, just had to trash a guy whose organization has struck the most powerful blow against official secrecy in a generation, somebody who may yet be jailed for what he did, an eccentric but unquestionably transformational media player.”

Then I heard about GetLocalization (whose name needs localising!), a site which allows you to “crowd-source” translations. I honestly don’t know if it will work but I thought it was a good idea and something worth trying and supporting.

• The Mac App Store: It’s an honor thing – “Apple’s approach is simple. It’s an honor thing. The company believes that, given the choice, people will do the right thing. It also understands that anti-piracy techniques don’t stop pirates, but they do get in the way of honest users.”
• Nokia’s 15-year tango to avoid Microsoft – “[PC manufacturers] found it wasn’t worth the effort to differentiate their PCs from the competition, in what had become a commodity business.” The reason’s behind Nokia’s original decision not to licence code from Microsoft in the nineties hasn’t really changed, which makes today a sad day.
• Doctor Who Infographic – Everything you ever wanted to know about Dr Who but were too afraid to ask…

Even in December, with the fog, rain and setting sun, this view of the meeting of the European and North American tectonic plates in Iceland is pretty spectacular. Breathtaking you might say. And, for the sake of this weeks PhotoFriday challenge, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

• 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.

This weeks PhotoFriday theme is one you’d think I have many possible choices: “Travel.” I note that a few of the earlier entries are pictures taken while travelling which I don’t think is quite the same thing.

My entry is about the process of travel, the open road, the destination being far away. This is also a sort of timely image, since it was taken in Egypt, a country that’s currently very much in the news.

• 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?

One of the great things about Norway is that you’re never very far from the country-side. Even in Oslo you’re only twenty minutes on the t-bane from Nordmarka. I couldn’t find a picture of that that I was happy with, though, so I went for the above image taken overlooking Bergen (the fjord capital of Norway).

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Human Form.” I’m entry number 165.

It’s hard to explain to someone who is not already a programmer the kinds of things that you have to do when building an application. The thing you’re trying to explain is often very abstract and the answer frequently would involve lots of code.

That’s why I thought this particular problem might make an interesting discussion. In talking about this very simple problem we can talk about the things that developers deal with every day and, hopefully, the process can be followed by most people who have used an iPhone (or, actually, any computer). You won’t be a programmer at the end but you might have a greater appreciation for what happens behind the scenes.