Quixotic Bravado

Recent links for http://del.icio.us/quixado:

• How To Set an Apple Touch Icon for Any Site ? All in the head On adding a page to the home screen, Mobile Safari looks for a file in the root of the site called apple-touch-icon.png. If that file exists, it?s used. Simple as that. Or add: <link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”/customIcon.png”/>
• MacThemes / [Growl] iPhonesque ? ala the dialog box on iPhone
• iPhone window.onorientationchange Code on devphone Apple has put up some sample code that shows off the new window.onorientationchange and window.orientation ability that lets you detect the orientation of the iPhone.
• Enable Data Detectors in iChat You can enable Data Detectors in iChat messages by entering the following into the Terminal (when iChat’s not running): defaults write com.apple.iChat EnableDataDetectors 1 To disable this, just reenter the code into Terminal, changing the 1 to a 0.

I do a lot of surfing from my iPhone. When I’ve got some time to kill waiting for a plane or something, reading the blogs I subscribe to is a quick hit of content to pass the time. Google Reader is my feed reader of choice.

Recently, Google introduce an iPhone-specific version of many of its mobile sites. Previously, I just used the default mobile ones. One thing I noticed however is that you can’t use a secure HTTP connection on the Google iPhone version, but you can with the regular Google Reader Mobile one.

Since I sometimes hop on the wireless networks of hotels, conference center, and other networks not under my control, I look for whatever practical ways I can to keep as secure as possible. So for now I just keep the regular mobile version bookmarked and use that. Truth be told, the UI isn’t much different; I’ll forgo the Ajaxy-goodness for now.

If you surf the mobile web, something to be aware of.

Recent links for http://del.icio.us/quixado:

• Don?t Forget Your Trailing Slash | Standardzilla : Search, Standards and Accessibility
• colr.org Play with colors and color schemes!
• Color Palette Generator Enter the URL of an image to get a color palette that matches the image.
• IMG2TXT: ASCII Art Made Easy! This script takes the URL of a GIF, JPG, or PNG image and converts that image into ASCII text or colored HTML. Not very useful, but pretty cool.
• 50 Best WordPress Plugins for Power Blogging
• Iconize Textlinks with CSS - pooliestudios
• iGoogle’s Winter Theme javascript:_dlsetp(’preview_skin=skins/winterscape.xml’);void(0); go to iGoogle, paste the code in the address bar, press Enter and click on the Save button in “Select a theme for this tab” to keep the new theme.
• Micromat - Syphone Syphone is a freeware Macintosh utility for use with Apple’s iPhone. The program installs on your Macintosh and does not alter the iPhone in any way. This application lets you view, save, and back up your SMS messages.
• Riding Rails: Rails 2.0: It’s done! gem install rails -y –source http://gems.rubyonrails.org
• Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: A spider’s view of Web 2.0 We’ve compiled some tips for creating Ajax-enhanced websites that are also understood by search engines.
• Begley’s Blog: Time Machine Menu Bar Add-On Goes in: “/System/Library/Core Services/Menu Extras”
• Guarding Your Social Security Number - TIME
• Long and shortened URL scripts Applescript and quicksilver
• Terminal Commands for Hidden Settings in Leopard
• Top 15 Terminal Commands for Hidden Mac OS X Settings
• BetterZip Quick Look Generator | MacItBetter Don’t you wish Leopard’s Quick Look would let you inspect the contents of compressed archives? Supported archive formats are: ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ARJ, LZH, ISO, CHM, CAB, CPIO, RAR, 7-Zip, DEB, RPM, StuffIt’s SIT, DiskDoubler, BinHex, and MacBinary.
• BetterZip Quick Look Generator | MacItBetter - Don’t you wish Leopard’s Quick Look would let you inspect the contents of compressed archives? Supported archive formats are: ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ARJ, LZH, ISO, CHM, CAB, CPIO, RAR, 7-Zip, DEB, RPM, StuffIt’s SIT, DiskDoubler, BinHex, and MacBinary.
• IconGrabber - Got files? Get icons -

So somehow in a near miss of dropping the iPhone last night, I managed to post a one character tweet on Twitter: “c.” This got me to wondering why someone hasn’t already tried something like a bastardized 26-degrees kind of thing?

For example: If I posted “A,” someone following me might post “@quixado: B,” someone following them might post “@so-and-so: C.” And so on. It’s a lame, but somewhat effective way to discover the reach of your tweets beyond who follows you. I guess if you wanted to be more creative, you could add to a growing narrative like a Twitterized Ficlets. Granted I’m no super-Twitter scholar; I’m liking it because I’m more apt to post things while out and about from my iPhone and like that 140-characters keeps it short and to the point.

Just a thought.

Recent links for http://del.icio.us/quixado:

• A half dozen fun undocumented iPhone preferences - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) - Not all preferences appear in your iPhone Settings application. As I discussed rather thoroughly in my Modding Mac OS X book, it’s not that hard to dig through applications and discover undocumented…
• Genfavicon. Free Online Favicon Generator. Icon Generator. - A favicon (short for ‘favorites icon’), are litle icons associated with a particular website or webpage, shown next to the site’s name in the URL bar of most browsers.
• Safari Microformats plugin - The Safari Microformats plugin notifies you when the author of the website has published Microformats and allows you to easily import hCards and hCalendars in Address Book and iCal.
• De-lameify your dock and menubar - Make your Dock be flush against the corner of the desktop, instead of centered vertically or horizontally. Turn off menubar transparency on 10.5.