Week 284 - Interesting links

Broccoli: First Beta Release

This is an interesting new alternative to the Rails asset pipeline which runs on node.js. A nice example of one of its plugins is the es6-concatenator which is a “shim” for ECMAScript 6 imports. Via Tom Stuart. — JM

The CRAPL: An academic-strength open source license

I applaud anything that encourages academics to release the source code connected to their research - it’s crazy that this is still the exception and not the rule. However, I can’t help wondering that if the majority of software is “stapled together on a tight deadline; and it’s not pretty code”, then perhaps the majority of academic software is full of bugs which invalidate the research conclusions. — JM

Bountysource

This allows people to offer a bounty for work on specific open-source features and bugs. I like the fact that you can post a bounty by just referencing a GitHub issue URL. — JM

I fought the law and the users won: delivering online voter registration

This is a great (and unfortunately rare) example of inter-disciplinary collaboration and it’s particularly brilliant that they got some laws changed while developing the service. — JM

Introducing the new Gmail API

We keep thinking of trying to automate more of our administrivia and much of it happens via email. I’m hoping that this newly released Gmail API might allow us to write scripts to handle some of the more mundane tasks. — JM

Gas Mask - Hosts file manager for OS X

This is a handy little Mac utility that makes it slightly easier to manage your /etc/hosts file. I came across it recently while I was migrating some of our apps from one server to another. — CR

GitHub: A better branches page

GitHub announce their improved Branches page:

New sections on the page also make it more obvious how you need to take action on the branches in your repository—whether that’s cleaning up stale branches

I think this is a great improvement, particularly highlighting the stale branches that can be deleted. — CR

Code Spaces have been forced to close

I hadn’t heard of Code Spaces until James mentioned them to me. It’s pretty scary that an entire business can be brought down by a malicious individual. I wonder what would happen if they find the person responsible - would they be punishable in a similar fashion to someone that destroyed a traditional bricks and mortar business? — CR

Makies FabLab: Design, Create & Style Doll Fashion Maker

Congratulations to Makie for their recently launched iOS FabLab game.

Actually, it’s double congratulations because they’ve just announced that Makies are in the Hamleys Magnificent seven must-have toys for Christmas 2014! Great stuff. — CR