This is pretty much genius. Like Albert, I have a bunch of "membership cards" in my wallet -- they're those cards with a barcode or number on them that you get from places like the local grocery store, or some other retailer. They're useful to have around, but they tend to pile up after a while, and pretty soon, your wallet gets to be a brick of barcodes rather than anything you'd actually want to carry around in your pocket. Albert's solution was to scan all of his barcodes into the iPhone, front and back, as an iPhoto album. And lo and behold, just like the paperless boarding passes we posted about a while back, it worked. All of the barcodes were scannable, which means no more countless membership cards -- just a gallery in your iPhone.

We've already heard of barcodes reading both on and off of the iPhone, of course, and we'll hopefully see more of this when the SDK drops in just about a month here (maybe, in the future, someone will write an app to generate barcodes from numbers, so you don't even need to get a clear scan). But even without an external app, this is pretty handy solution to clearing up some of the clutter in your wallet. Obviously, for anything important (driver's license, credit cards), an iPhone scan won't do. But just to get the membership prices down at the Jewel-Osco, scanning wallet cards into an iPhone seems to work just fine. Very nice.

[via Waxy]

John Gruber's Daring Fireball is probably my favorite Mac blog out there (save for the ol' TUAW, of course)-- it was one of the first I started reading, and he consistently provides not only great insight on Apple products and policies (and journalists' treatment of them), but a strong, often funny voice in the community. We're big fans here at TUAW, and that's why we were so happy to hear that even more people will have a chance to read Gruber's work. Because as of today, he's releasing his full RSS feed, free to anyone.

Previously, he had a plan where you paid a membership fee (included when you bought a T-shirt from him) and then got access to the full RSS feed. A feed was available for free, but it was partial content only. Now, he says, confusion about which feed is which, and RSS readers without HTML authentication (most notably Google Reader, and the .Mac reader for iPhone that David loves so much-- what's up with these popular readers not providing a feature that supports the content producers that supply them?) have convinced him to try out a free full feed for a month. Additionally, the free feed will be supported from week to week by sponsors.

If you haven't signed on to DF's feed yet, now's your chance. And if, like us, you find it interesting and informative, might as well put a couple bucks in the bucket and pay for it anyway-- Gruber's definitely earning it.

MacHeist, the next software marketing brainchild of Phill Ryu (you might know him from such events as My Dream App), has begun. As you'll remember, it's an invite-only event (though you can try signing up to snag your own), and I have just received the first mission. Due to its top secret nature, my life - or at least my membership - would be in danger if I disclosed any details, but I can tell you that it looks to be an interesting ride so far, filled with unique adventure and great deals on software.

What I can offer you instead of details, however, is an invite to join in on the fun. TUAW has managed to snag 50 250 invites so far, and we'll give them to the first commenters on this post who clearly state that they want one. All we need is a name and a legitimate email address, but DO NOT post your address in the comment itself; simply use your intended address in the comment's email field, and we'll get you the invite accordingly (this way you still snag an invite, while the email spam bots don't buddy up with your inbox). Only one invite per commenter, please, and we should be able to send all your invites out by tomorrow morning. Let the MacHeist begin!

[Update: Comments are pouring in, and while I haven't had time to go through them all just yet, I noticed others who have invites to give away had a good idea that I wanted to highlight: if you'd like to give away your own invites, or if you're interested in someone else's invites, please state that clearly in your comments. In other words: to those posting their own invite giveaways - please give readers some alternate form of contact for you, so we don't end up double bouncing invites to the same person. Also, to readers - if you're going after someone else's invites (after all, we only have 50 for now), please contact them outside of our comment thread so we can keep everything nice and clean. Thanks everyone!]

[Update 2: We now have a total of 250 invites to give away! Keep those invite requests coming, and please be patient for them as it's going to take us a little longer to get everything sent out to everyone. We originally said all invites will be sent out by tomorrow morning, but give us until tomorrow afternoon or so to handle the extra leg work.]

John Gruber has answered the call for more Daring Fireball t-shirts and released two new designs (pictured) in addition to his original (not pictured). As before, purchasing one shirt for $29 (shipping included) will also score you a one year membership to full RSS and Linked List feeds, but now you can purchase additional shirts for $19 each, again with free shipping (bonus points to anyone who can point out the Mac nerdery significance in the POS shirt without cheating and checking John's post). Already established members can purchase any of these shirts at the already lowered price of $19.

Now before you pull that 'if only he wrote more often' complaint out of your back pocket, John has answered that call as well by launching an Initiative - he quit his day job last week to write Daring Fireball full time.

Those membership perks of full RSS and Linked List feeds just got a whole lot more valuable. Yes, I've had a membership for almost a year now (and I'll definitely be renewing), but no - John didn't pay us for product placement.