Shattered Glass

GoldeniOS General web node-firefox [hacks.mozilla] is a series of Node modules, built by Mozilla, to help with building open web apps. Tint [trueinteractions] looks like an interesting way to build desktop apps with Node/JavaScript. Cerebellum [github/sc5] is a set of tools for structuring isomorphic JavaScript apps. Here’s a guide to building Ruby gems [blog.engineyard]. Speaking of gems, here are six gems to make Rails development a bit easier [enotagain]. Molengo [github/odan] is an interesting PHP micro-framework. Bond [github/swiftbond] is a Swift binding framework — shaken, not stirred. Here are some classic algorithms implemented in Go [github/arnauddri], useful for learning Go, or algorithms, or both. Hooks [hooks.events] is a service to get desktop notifications with JavaScript, PHP or Swift. Draw Freehand Design The team behind iPad drawing and sketching app Paper have made the full set of (previously in-app purchasable) tools free [news.fiftythree]. Here’s how to give good feedback [wonderfulfeedback]. The latest episode of startup podcast StartUp involves a design sprint with Google Ventures, here’s a behind the scenes look at that process [gv]. Alfred is prepared to get Sassy if that helps [medium/clarklab]. Doctopus SitePoint On SitePoint, Hugo Giraudel unveils SassDoc 2: Shiny Streamy Octopus. Here’s a guide to choosing the right tests and participants for usability tests. And here’s a good guide to processing payments with Gravity Forms. Shattered Glass News/business The New York Times has a pretty interesting story on what went wrong with Google Glass [nytimes]. Essentially, it was Sergey Brin’s fault. Swatch is creating a smartwatch and will release it in the next three months [bloomberg], so definitely expect it to be great and better than the Apple Watch. All your tweets will soon start showing up in Google searches [bloomberg], so soon the choice will be between having a job and being on social media. Apple is ditching iPhoto for a new app called Photos [wsj], which is a radical departure. Here’s what you need to know [imore]. Also, Apple is maybe making a pay TV service [theverge], and/or its own Street View competitor or self-driving cars [sfgate]. In other words, we have no idea what they’re doing. The guy behind encryption software GPG was going broke, until ProPublica wrote a story about him and he received hundreds of thousands of dollars [propublica]. A rare moment of positivity, good job internet. Now you’re feeling positive, read this summary of how the internet is just turning into TV [theawl] and feel terrible again. And lastly, here’s what Bill Gates thinks is going to happen in education in the near future [gatesnotes]. Gear Solid Off-topic MyScriptFont [myscriptfont] is a free online tool to create a vector font from your handwriting. SignupSumo [signupsumo] will let you know when any important people sign up to your service. Finally, this is a machine with a bunch of gears [youtube/arthurganson]. Each gear reduces the previous gear’s motion by 1/50th. There are 12 pairs of gears, so the final gear won’t make a single revolution for, like, two trillion years. So, yeah. There’s that. ~The more you know~ Those are our links for the day and the week, thanks for joining us once again! Feel free to comment on anything in today's newsletter here. With our Google Glass and the coming SmartSwatch, we're going to be the coolest geeks at the ball! See you next week!