Beam me up, Lang and Appleyard
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MIT scientists perfect the use of light beams as a tweezer-like tool for manipulating microscopic objects.
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Okay, non-interview stuff first. I've recently picked up several 'shortcuts' from O'Reilly and Addison-Weseley.  I love this format.  For about 10 bucks, you can get a PDF only copy of a 50-100 page "book".  The shortcuts (so far at least) have been very focused, which allows them to cover a reasonable topic in sufficient depth without creating a monstrous 600+ page tome.  The shortcuts I've looked at so far have been timely, useful, and a great value.  October marks the beginning of Apress' push into Ruby and Ruby on Rails.    Apress also has Practical OCaml coming out soon to help soothe your inner functional programmer.  Now, on to interview news!
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Christopher Breen  takes us on a tour of Apple TV that begins with downloading the software update and ends with the big questionââHowâs it look?â To which Breen responds, âDarned good.â After renting Live Free or Die Hard. Breen reports that â the picture is great on my 42-inch Panasonic plasma display. With a digital audio cable connected to my AV receiver the movie caused the receiverâs 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio light to glow and the resulting sound was bigger than anything Iâve heard come out of the box previously.â
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Designer James Carpenter understands the poetics of light and material, working with architects to enhance public places. Fourth in a series profiling this year's MacArthur 'genius award' winners. By Kari Lynn Dean.
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TIME.comix on a pair of outstanding showcases
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âItâs an improvement on an already stellar computer,â says Katherine Boehret (The Wall Street Journal), referring to the new iMac. âThe keyboard is radical-looking. Itâs much flatter and sleeker than typical desktop PC keyboards. I found it easier to type with.â Boehret goes on to explore iLife â08, âI quickly picked up on how to use the new features in iPhoto and iMovie, thanks to unintimidating, self-explanatory icons.â She continues, âMy video camera was instantly recognized when I plugged it into the iMacâ and âin just about 15 minutes, I created a short movie.â Boehret concludes, âThe new programs in iLife â08 are a pleasure to use, and the new iMac is a great way to experience them.â
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Arts & entertainment: Why Alan Plater and Peter Maxwell Davies are bringing a riotous Scottish speakeasy and its boozy owner back to life. By Alfred Hickling.
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1. "T is for Trespass" by Sue Grafton
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Over the last week, I've been writing about the disconnect between flow and rank. Paradoxically, sites that are ranked high don't always deliver a lot of hits when they link to you. On the flipside, there are some sites that are rarely on Top 100 lists, or talked about very much, that deliver substantial flow. Two of them stand out, one a veteran site, and the other a relative newcomer. 1. Daring Fireball is a thoughtful blog written by John Gruber that focuses on the Macintosh. Since I've returned to the Mac in 2005, and have been writing more about Mac issues, I've started getting links from this site, and when I do, they usually send between 1000 and 2000 readers my way. And they're generally interesting people with useful information and ideas. I follow Gruber on Twitter and have learned that he is a Phillies fan and therefore disappointed this year. His posts are interesting there too, and irreverent, which I like of course.  2. A Digg-like memetracker, news.ycombinator.com is in the same league as TechMeme, about 1000 hits for a highly ranked piece. I don't know much about the site, I'm not a regular reader, and I don't know much about the people who visit from this site.
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Tycho:  I've been au Canada at Hothead since Monday, making a final pass on the entire script and writing new stuff for things we managed to fit into the first ep.  After two days of this process, I feel as though my brain has been dragging a plough through a stubborn field.  Like every other part of this adventure, it's been profoundly educational.  I enjoy it, but there is a constant electrical hum in my skull that I assume is the byproduct of creating a universe in real time.
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Here's an interesting Howto on connecting FlickrFan to the Mac desktop. I love this stuff.  Here's a movie that demonstrates this coolest of hacks.
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Well, this is some news I've been wanting to share for a while, but I've had to wait until everything was ready.  During the summer, I spoke at RubyConf*MI, one of the first regional Ruby Conferences (I think San Diego held the only one earlier than the Michigan folks).  At the time, they filmed all the presentations.
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David Crystal explores the development of the English language, shining a nonjudgmental light on alternative forms and newer variants.
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Juce in the spotlight Hands on Last month I looked at Qt, the popular C++ cross-platform framework which underpins the KDE desktop, and a whole lot more. This time, I'm continuing that same theme by taking a look at another cross-platform C++ library called Juce (OK, no jokes about Apple Juce!)â¦
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Tycho: Some of you have probably already heard it, since I put it up yesterday - but we're trying new hosting for the podcast, and I wanted to make sure everything made sense before I dropped it on the front page. The podcast is for Wednesday's strip, "The Ungift, Part Two." You can download it here, or subscribe to the feed here. The levels are a little crazy in a couple spots, for which I apologize. I think we've got those ironed out, now. (CW)TB
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Keynote Kathy Sierra gives designers the antidote for apps that can't read faces, movement, tone or anything: Give users a way to express themselves. Plus: TV panel goes rogue. In Listening Post.
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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls... It's with much anticipation that I say this. I have a new product that may be familiar to those of you who used Radio 8, and in other ways may be completely new.  The idea is simple.  There's a convergence between big screen high-definition televisions, and photography as an Internet based activity. The purpose of this product is to smooth that convergence, to make it easy to set up a connection between the Internet and your television. To allow photography to come into your living room in new, powerful and easy ways. Think of it as the networked living room and you'll understand the vision. Some of the work I've done is technical, some is user interface, and some is working with media organizations to try to create a comfort level, or at least a spirit of Let's Give This A Try. In the latter case, it's much like working with the NY Times to get their news headlines and summaries to flow through Radio's RSS aggregator in 2002. Only this time we're working with photographs, and we think, the best news photographers in the world. And the pictures are beautifully high-def, they look really great when displayed on LCD and plasma screens. I use it with my 52-inch Samsung and 46-inch Sony. Of course what looks great on a wall, also looks great on a 15-inch Macbook or 24-inch iMac.   And while we connect those pros with your TV, it's equally important that we connect your friends and families too. One of the early testers found the pictures that Doc Searls uploads to Flickr a great revelation. Me too. That's because Doc is not only a great photographer, he's also a great story-teller. I find that I can follow the lives of far more friends visually than I can through text messages (which I love to do too!). Viewing great photos on bigscreen TVs, desktops and laptops -- that's one focus, but not the only one.  I wanted to provide a complete two-way tool for people who love Flickr, as I do.  Why Flickr? Well, they've got this great thing called an API. It makes it possible for people like me to make software that runs on a desktop computer that does things like automatically backing up your new photos every night, and providing a drop-folder on your desktop for quick uploads. (It understands tags too, it's incredibly simple.) We also made it easy to post pictures you like to Twitter. Why Twitter? It's that API thing again. They made it easy for us to love them. I wish more network service developers understood how powerful this outstretched hand is.  But that's not all! Not by a long shot. The reason all this will be so familiar to Radio 8 users is that it builds on the same engine, the one that was released as open source in 2004. So I've been working on other tools to drop into this base platform and once we have a good-sized base of people using it for "really simple photos" on the desktop, there will be other tools. And because it's an open platform, other developers can do the same. Not saying they will, but they can.  Anyway, I'm in the last stages, preparing the download site, and a FAQ, and tweaking the installer. One caveat, the first beta release is Mac only. That's because I'm doing all my work on the Mac, and this is a one-man show. Later we will work it out for Windows too, and with a bit more work and a bit more luck, for Linux.  It should be ready before the sun goes down today.