Delicious (a Yahoo! property, formerly del.icio.us), is a handy way to collect and share links online. For awhile now they’ve been working quietly on a redesign, which finally launched today. And it’s beautiful, with more social Digg-like features and a terrific looking UI. Really digging that flexible, rotating JavaScript banner on the homescreen, too.

Read the development team’s blog entry for the launch: http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2008/07/oh-happy-day.html
Synopsis of new features: http://delicious.com/help/whatsnew

Check out the new Delicious at http://delicious.com

The upcoming Multitouch Framework project is working to develop a common, familiar-to-OS X developers API for creating multi-touch applications. And they’re using the iPhone as a convenient input device.

Check out the video:

While I’m still skeptical about the comprehension and retention of text read using Spreeder (http://www.spreeder.com), a JavaScript-based speed-reading tool, they do provide a handy bookmarklet and Opera plugin that makes using the service more efficient. For the bookmarklet, simply drag this spreed! link to your bookmarks bar. Then, make a selection of text in your browser and click the bookmark.

Also, on the Spreeder site, be sure to take a look under the Settings menu, as well as the Advanced Settings. You can change how Spreeder reads your text, including placing slightly more natural pauses (which might help with reading comprehension).

More info here: http://www.spreeder.com/plugins.php

Thanks to Ryan Lanciaux for this tip.

http://stupidfilter.org/main/

An effort to recognize (and filter out) stupidity in blog comments via weighted Bayesian analysis. Useful for filtering out excessive “LOLs” and too many text-message style abbreviations, I think this is a brilliant idea.

Also, love this from their FAQ (emphasis in italics mine):

Q: Do you really expect to be able to detect and filter anything that’s conceivably stupid?
A: No, of course not. You’d need real AI for that, and beyond a certain point it’s simply subjective; after all, a sufficiently advanced AI would probably filter out the whole of human discourse, which isn’t the idea. 

Adobe is offering Flex training on their developer site using videos and supplemental PDFs. Check it out here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videotraining/

As of this writing, days one through three have been added.

I currently have five four invitations to Aviary (http://a.viary.com/) if anyone is interested.

A new search engine started by former Google employees called Cuil (and pronounced “cool") launched today. It is said to search 121 billion pages, ranked by “content and relevance”. Cuil seems to run very fast, and they seem to have better designers than Google did when they first started.

My opinion: they must be still working on indexing all those pages, because right now, Cuil sucks.

I found this usability-testing screen capture application really interesting when I first read about it in February on Vitamin: http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/how-to-recreate-silverbacks-parallax.
The article wasn’t about the software itself, but about the cool parallax background effect on the website. Which it is certainly still cool and all, but the Silverback software is definitely more useful.

In a simpler time, when software was much less complex, software makers would do usability testing. They would record real live people actually using their applications and record their actions, and then use the information they gathered to improve the quality of their product. Or file it away and forget about it…

But with the ultra-fast get-it-done-now speed-driven nature of web-based software development, usability testing has gone by the wayside. And Silverback aims to solve that.

Take a look at the video:

Silverback screencast from Jeremy Keith on Vimeo.

Website: http://www.silverbackapp.com/

Does your company do usability testing? Let me know in the comments.

via John Gruber

No need to check every evening after 9 on Apple’s availability page if you plan on purchasing from an Apple retail store. The iPhone availability page, made by Chris Barnes, uses Apple’s JSON inventory feed which is updated every 15 minutes throughout the day: http://www.topmuffin.com/3g-iphone-availability

Ryan Lanciaux, a friend of mine and .NET developer, will be giving a talk for the NW Ohio .NET User Group on building web applications using the ASP.NET MVC framework, Tuesday, August 19th. Find out more at http://www.nwnug.com/PermaLink,guid,7d6f35d0-0156-4d5e-9ec5-885db293b610.aspx

Also, check out Ryan’s site where he writes (mostly) about .NET topics at http://frickinsweet.com/ryanlanciaux.com/