Spill the Beans

Hy There General web Awesome Public Datasets [github/caesar] is a collection of large-scale public datasets, including climate data, physics data from NASA, and open government data. Worth keeping an eye on for sure. Here’s a collection of browser experiments [christmasexperiments] under the auspices of the holiday season. It’s like an advent calendar except it’s “incredible internet things” instead of “chocolate”. So, not quite as good as an advent calendar. Hy [docs.hylang] is a Lisp dialect embedded in Python. Speaking of Lisp, AeroNotix [github/aeronotix] is a Lisp browser built on WebKit. Meanwhile, the npm blog has a guide to getting started with npm [blog.npmjs].

Font Loaded Design WhatFont [whatfontapp] is an iOS app that helps you inspect web fonts on your phone. PaymentFont [paymentfont] is a collection of SVG webfonts containing icons for every major payment types and providers. Here’s a collection of animated UI experiments/ideas [michaelvillar], some of which are actually really great.

Spill the Beans SitePoint On SitePoint today, we had a look at creating nice JavaScript alerts via sweetAlert. We then looked at the challenges associated with integrating social media into a site, without making it harder to use. Then we looked at a better way to perform code review, with Beanstalk. And lastly for this section, we had a look at three ways PHP devs can create cross-platform desktop apps.

CAPTCHA the Flag News/business Google has unveiled its replacement for reCAPTCHA, No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA[googleonlinesecurity.blogspot] which involves clicking a button to confirm you’re not a robot. It’ll work out if you’re lying based on your behavior on the page before, during and after the click. In less impressive Google news, a former Googler has no idea what the company is doing with Google+ [medium/chrismessina]. To cover off Google for the day, the company has also started a laudable initiative to help developing nations have access to Android development tools. To get around bandwidth limitations, the company is sending packages of DVDs containing everything you’d need to develop for Android [arstechnica]. Buzzfeed takes a look at the Sony hack, which they declare is pretty much as bad as it gets [buzzfeed]. Speaking of bad, Apple deleted songs downloaded from competing services from users’ iPods [blogs.wsj]. Deleting songs from users’ devices, putting U2 songs on users’ devices — make up your mind guys.

Two-Faced Off-topic Get a load of the Yotaphone [yotaphone], it’s twice as screen-ey as a regular phone, with an e-ink screen on the back. The Atlantic has a heartwarming eulogy for Clip Art, in Clip Art [theatlantic]. Here’s an interesting look at how an online ad auction works [radar.oreilly]. Might not be new to some of you, but well-explained nonetheless. Here’s an amusing video explaining the idea of “Vemödalen”, or the frustration of photographing something awesome — that has been captured thousands of times already [boingboing]. Finally, statistical news site FiveThirtyEight finally takes on a question worthy of its passionate, nerdy focus: Which Star Wars actors had the worst careers after the original trilogy? [fivethirtyeight]

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