A Movement Of John Cage's 4'33'' Free On iTunes

For today only, the first movement of John Cage's controversial 4'33'' is free on iTunes.

Thanks, kottke.

Webisode Watch: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Apparently Joss Whedon got bored during the Writer's Strike and this project came forth. I'm willing to say it's the best thing to come from the WGA ordeal because it is completely excellent. Starring Neil Patrick Harris as a the budding titular supervillain and the always great Nathan Fillion as his nemesis, the show is formatted in part as a video blog and in part as a musical.

Highly, highly recommended - just get it now.

Some iPhone SDK Disappointments

The simulator not supporting Open GL is definitely a bit of a downer, but the Core graphics set is pretty decent for a lot of uses (although obviously not for rotating a 3D teapot, for instance).

I didn't realize, though, that the SDK does not seem to support accessing the iTunes library for playback. This really seems like a fairly strong handed restriction - I could see restrictions on manipulating the library itself but removing access completely shuts out a large portion of the functionality. So no new visualizers, music based games, podcasting, or mix software for you. I can't see where there's a DRM issue here, it's not like you'll be burning CD's off the thing ... so it really feels more like a stranglehold on the iTunes experience.

Also the SDK's dev site has a bit to be desired. There's no real search functionality, Getting beyond the surface topics and basic tutorials are difficult at best and OS X topics are interwoven with the iPhone ones with the occasional "has not been reviewed for accuracy" on the latter note. For instance, I can't even find a page that overviews the above and if you google "iPhone SDK restrictions", two full pages of result don't include any information from Apple.com itself.

I was going to take some time today and try and port my old visualizer code over to the iPhone ... but apparently that's out...

Wii Transfer Rocks - Also Gives Away Wii

I saw on TUAW that Riverfold is giving away a Wii to some lucky winner and they won't even make you buy their quite wonderful Wii Transfer software to do it. Although that be a bit of buying the horse and all that.

Though if you're an OS X user and have a Wii already, I highly recommend Wii Transfer. Well, if you have an iTunes you like at least. It's basically makes a website that you can hit your iTunes, iPhoto and converted movies with - and naturally it runs just dandy on the Wii's Internet Channel. Waiting on my registration key now.