• "I wanted it to be always on, with no dialling up required, and for it to automatically recover from network outages. I wanted the display to be big, but not intrusive. I didn't want a video conference. I didn't want people to be able to log in from home, or look back through recorded footage. I wanted to be able to wave at the folks in the other office every morning and evening, and for that feel normal." This is very good, and Tom is smart.
  • "My challenge to you is as follows. Design a game which is appealing to play, which will go on to be a huge commercial success and yet illustrates through its systems the abject and total horror, the inhumanity, the alienation, the banality, the evil, and the hell-on-earth of a socio-political practise taken to extreme. The game must be named honestly. It must be easy to learn. It must be a game for all the family." As expected, this is great, but of course it is, because Martin is great. More to the point: it's shrewd and useful. (And: excellent nous from Cara to pick up this piece from someone who clearly could become a major games journalism talent. Please keep commissioning this "Martin Hollis")
  • "Python has one. Ruby has one. Clojure has one. Now PHP has one too. Boris is PHP's missing REPL (read-eval-print loop), allowing developers to experiment with PHP code in the terminal in an interactive manner. If you make a mistake, it doesn't matter, Boris will report the error and stand to attention for further input." I use PHP increasingly little, but the lack of a REPL drives me insane. This looks… useful, at the very least.
    (tags: console php repl cli )
  • "The same API that powers Forecast.io and Dark Sky for iOS can provide accurate short­term and long­term weather predictions to your business, application, or crazy idea." Crazy idea: yup, that'll do.