Well that was not what I wanted to happen. Three posts made their way into the RSS feed that were not meant to be posts since they were emails….

Thankfully they are not that bad and hopefully we won’t be seeing that sort of thing again.

Back to our regularly scheduled programme….

Macworld iPhone 4 cover - I love this sort of thing. It’s no DLSR, but you definitely don’t need your point and shoot at the bbq any more. Now if only I could get my hands on an iphone 4 I would be happy.

Biolab Disaster - Damn that boy is talented. From the creator of Asaph (which runs my the Elsewhere part of this website) comes this excellent platform game, done in HTML5, CSS, Javascript and Canvas. Look mum, no Flash required.

Slide Screen - If I owned an Android phone, this is possible the first App that would be top on my list…if I had a smart phone (only a few months before that becomes a reality).

iDon’t - Very funny campaign. Mainly because they just did it in a pokey-funny-jab-way. However my amusement (and that of many others can turn) as there’s NOTHING more annoying than building up hype on the back of shit. That’s the real issue here, is the phone going to be any good?

Microsoft courier tablet - I’m actually completely and totally shocked that this is coming from Microsoft. This digital notebook is the kind of thing I’ve been clamoring for, even though I thought it would come in the form of a netbook. If it turns out to become a reality (and keep the slick design) then I might be all over this (even though it’s MS, I’m still shocked that this is supposed to be coming out from them).

Palm Pixi - I think I just found my next phone. I am all over this when it gets released.

Tour the Bugatti factory, Molsheim - It’s but a glimpse, but a glimpse I’ve never seen before, for the single most expensive supercar manufacturer in the world.

Elonex eBook reader - Interesting looking ebook reader to rival the Sony version (which IMHO is way to expensive and has an annoying page turning interface).

@font-face: The Potential of Web Typography - Great showcase of what’s to come by using the @font-face rule in CSS. Open this in Firefox 3.5 only. Tried a couple of times in Safari 4, only to have the browser crash on me twice in a row. (via Daring Fireball).

“Outside the Box” Navigation with jQuery - Although I absolutely LOVE how stacks looks on OS X, I can never get around to using it because I hate the dock at the bottom of my screen. However the implementation onto a website looks so appealing.

Moblin v2.0 Beta - Short for Mobile Linux, this is the OS that has been massaged by Intel to better integrate (and utilise) with their atom processors. Definitely one of the best operating systems I’ve seen for netbooks (apart form OS X). Definitely check out the video to see it in action. Also with a rumored 2 second startup time, this does seem like the way to go for these smaller computers.

Native Google Chrome for Mac OS X - Still version 0.1, but you can definitely see that it’s still the fastest browser on the market; that and the Omnibar works so much better than anything Apple of Mozilla have created.

MacHeist 3 Charity Breakdown - For all the flack that MacHeist gets for being something that rapes the indie developers that contribute their software for such a low price, there is this little element of the whole deal, which somehow doesn’t get a lot of press. Nearly a million dollars donated to charities. When’s the last time that a Windows bundle made money for charity? Seriously. I was a windows boy for years. Not once did i buy a software bundle (does that even exist), and therefore no money ever made it to any charities from that effort.

Linux Turns 15 - 15 years ago today, version 1.0 of Linux came out. I used Ubuntu for a year, but the lack of the kind of software that I wanted just wasn’t forthcoming. This isn’t to say that there isn’t great software, just not completely for me. I am happy to see how Linux does see poised to take over the mobile world (who would have thought it) - in the forms of WebOS and Android.

Switch Display Options - Added to my collection of options I might use for my eventual illustrations category on the site.

Apple’s Red-Headed Stepchild - Why do I have a Mac Mini? It’s my entry into the world of the Mac. It took a year before I got a unibody macbook, but that first step was through the mini. It’s a work horse; I am only now thinking of reinstalling the operating system (nearly 1.5 years) after I actually bought the machine (which can be attributed to my meddling with things that I don’t understand). It is weird how long it’s taking Apple to actually update it; maybe there are more people like myself that start on the mini and move to other hardware in the future? Apple does know about all my purchases after all.

Safari 4 Beta - Nice to see some good little additions making it into Safari. Now if only they could get the plugin architecture sorted out, it might stand a proper chance at making inroads on Firefox.

Snow Leopard screenshots show interface tweaks - Although pretty minor, what’s great is this small incremental design philosophy that I think I’ve really come to like about OSX. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken. Address things that users are looking for/complaining about (as much as is possible). I guess it’s all down to coming up with a solid foundation and not letting your ideas get the better of you.

Saulius review Pixelmator Sprinkle’s new feature - I’ve been using Pixelmator for nearly a year now and month in an month out the guys have been doing a bang up job of moving the software forward. What’s incredibly pleasing to see is just how far this little application has grown in a year between version 1.0 and the current version 1.4. A great deal of the gripes that I had have been rectified and here’s hoping that the few I have left will be addressed soon (grouping layers and better text control).

Palm Pre Software Product Manager interviewed - Great little interview with the Palm Pre software product manager. What’s interesting are the potential future products that use WebOS as the software of choice.

First Screenshot of Chrome for the Mac - Easily my favourite app on Windows (after Excel). Although I’ve been using Webkit proper for a week now (much faster), the speed and the general feel of Chrome is exactly what I want in a browser (along with plugins like Firefox). It’s just a matter of time before Chrome becomes a real player.

feedly: a magazine-like start page - Easily my favourite Firefox plugin; so much so I’m considering using Firefox as my main browser because of this plugin.

TweetBacks - Great little plugin for WordPress (that will hopefully be making it’s way over to Habari) that bring Tweetbacks. Think of them as trackbacks only made of tweets.

Google Search Box - From the creator of Quicksilver, comes Google Search Box. Kinda explains why he was ok about leaving the Quicksilver development; he was working on something better.

Palm Pre - Never used anything from Palm so I wouldn’t know what to expect based this their latest attempt at. However early buzz from everyone has put this squarely up against the iphone and actually comes on top in certain areas. Although the form factor is smaller than the iphone in general, it’s also much much thicker as well (which is always an issue for me). Lets see how this effects the smartphone market (hopefully proper competition will force Apple to address simple things like cut and paste).

Scathing review of the Apple keynote speech today at MacWorld - Unfortunately I kind of agree. Although I do like the battery idea, it’s still a battery and I don’t believe a word they’re saying about 8 hours. My macbook is meant to give me 5 hours, but the truth is I can only hope to get 4.5 hours that if I turn the screen brightness right down and do some word processing (something with a white background so I can actually see what I’m doing), so really it’s closer to something between 3.5 - 4 hours of actual productivity.

Netbooks compatibility chart - If you’re in the market for a Hackintosh.

Google Chrome is out of Beta - Gmail takes 5 years to come out of Beta and Chrome takes 100 days? Am I the only one that thinks that’s weird? Surely Chrome would come out of beta once it’s available on the other platforms and has progressed to a solid 1.0 release. Either way, I’m still waiting for this on my mac dammit.

Dell Mini 9 and 12 now released in cherry red, pretty pink and designs by Tristan Eaton Designs - It’s taken a while but the red one is finally here.

Together - Interesting little note and file compiling application. Particularly like the web as pdf feature.

Macbook Nano - I’d definitely buy one for £200. I am however starting to sway gradually into getting a Macbook though.

Eventbox from The Cosmic Machine - A Mac only app, which helps integrate a number of social media networks in one single place.

Photoshop interface with real world object - Awesome flickr set that also shows how it was done (via Boing Boing)

Fedora 10 (Linux distribution) Solar Theme - Although I’m a mac man now, I still do admire the effort that is always going into desktop linux distributions. For a while Ubuntu was the king, however Fedora is definitely pushing the boundaries of good taste with this, their latest offering.

New in Pixelmator Tempo - Awesome set of new additions to the image editor that could. I’m especially excited about the text tools because that’s one of the main things that’s keeping me from making the full switch.

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex out - Exciting times for those on Ubuntu. I sadly moved over to OS X last year after battling for a year to try and make Ubuntu my primary machine. Sadly the ‘nix is just not ready for my needs, however I still like to support the project and Canonical because the thoughts and story behind this effort are to be commended.

They’re all wrong. Everyone that’s perplexed as to whether or not the new Dell Mini Inspiron 12 is a netbook or not have fundamentally misunderstood what defines a Netbook, while for once Dell seems to have a complete understanding of the concept. What impresses me about Dell is the fact that they’ve done this better than any of the other manufacturers that have jumped onto this bandwagon; and seeing as only Apple and Sony not having joined in on the fun, that’s basically every manufacturer of a computers out there.

A Netbook encompasses a range of concepts for a computer to be classified in this manner:

Size and Weight

This is the "acid test". Is the netbook light? Can you imagine carrying it around all day? Is it around 1kg? if it's much heavier than 1kg, is it slightly larger and therefore distributes the weight more? Remember the Macbook Air is heavier than all the netbooks but due to the weight distribution it feels lighter. 12inch is the absolute maximum you can go up to, 9inch is the minimum that you can use without it being bloody annoying. 7inch models are basically too small for anything apart from checking some emails.

Speed and Power

The ultimate specifications of the netbooks is pretty irrelevant. It seems that Intel had brought netbook.com but now it just redirects you to the Intel website. i guess it's because they realised hopefully that a netbook isn't a netbook because it's got an Atom processor. The fact that most of them do again is irrelevant. It's a nacesent category. The other players haven't jumped into the ring. They're still waiting to see if this is all going to fade away. The power associated with a netbook is meant to provide you with the power that is needed to perform the tasks that one would expect from a netbook. I wouldn't be wanting to render any images, nor do any serious graphic work, nor watch a movie. I'm using this for web surfing, for emailing, for having a look at a couple of pdfs and doing web related stuff. Anything else is noise.

The processor should hopefully reduce the power consumption to a minimum and allows the software to load quickly. I am still waiting for the software to be integrated so much that the waiting is non existant, however that will probably come in time.

Bloat and Affordability

The major concept behind a netbook that is common however to all is the fact that a netbook gets rid of bloat and unwanted items. It strips the computer down to it's bare. No optical drive is a critical one, because that goes against the concept. If a computer has an optical drive, it's not a netbook. Storage is really down to preference i guess. In reality you won't need to have major storage. 20Gigs should be more than enough. The only reason you'd have more maybe is for all your music if you want to listen while doing your other things - but most of us have ipods right?

Which finally brings me to affordability. This isn't a primary machine. This is a pretty fundamental concept here. You won't be using this as your work horse, but rather as your secondary throwaway machine. Therefore you don't want to be spending too much on this because you can't really justify the extremely steep expense. There is a cut off on general price, which is why the Air can't really classify as a netbook, because that machine was built to tackle more than just web based activities.

KISS

So why do I think that Dell have understood the market better than Asus, the category generators? The answer is down to simplicity. If you try and get a netbook from Asus, they've absolutely swamped the market with no less than 12 different models (and that doesn't take the XP and Linux variations).

In stark contrast Dell have released their Mini 9 (with an Ubuntu or XP variant) and now the Mini 12. Don't even get me started on the Swarovski 'enhanced' S101 netbook. The industrial design of netbooks should have one and only mantra, KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid.

Only What You Need

It's the form factor relating to what you are ultimately going to use this secondary machine for. Because based on the above, you're not going to be using it for anything but sitting in the lounge (or the garden) or about town to do simple stuff with a machine that meets your basic needs, rather than all of your needs, and crucially not more.

Dell Mini Inspiron 12 Review - The older brother of the Mini 9 is out in Japan. There are some factual inaccuracies in the review. The size of the actual netbook isn’t 24mm to 21mm but rather 23(.3)mm to 27(.6)mm. Also I’m not sure where they got the $999 pricetag, because it seems that this will actually be more in the $600 region? Better pictures on the Dell Japan website.

Nike Hindsight - Glasses that give you extra peripheral vision.

Polaroid software - If you’re on a Mac (and I can understand why you wouldn’t be) then Polaroid is an interesting idea for making your old photos interesting again. I do like the shake to develop the pictures feature.

Many Tricks - I’ve only been on a mac for a year so you’ll have to excuse me while i compile my indie software developers list of useful apps.

Cruz browser - the big difference here is the fact that it’s got an API ready for plugins to be developed and installed. Interview also up on Cult of Mac with the developer.

Anand Tech reviews the new Macbooks - as always love the size of these reviews. Surprising recommendation, wait till next year’s model.

Google’s Android mobile software platform goes open source - what I hadn’t realised is that it’s actually based on the linux kernel, amongst other things.

Dell Mini Inspiron 9 from Vodaphone - You get the computer for free (saving £299) but then pay £25 a month, for minimum of 24 months. That’s £600 in total. The alternative of course is to buy the laptop and get a Three dongle for £10 and save £60 but of course you’ve got the option to opt out since you’re paying it monthly.

These services providers are seriously raping the customer with these prices. £5 for the 1GB allowance would be the sweet spot as this is a frill item at best. This is in addition to your phone, which in most cases you are paying £20-£35 depending on your tariff.

Also I was worried that Vodaphone would have an exclusive on the fire brick red version of the Dell Mini, so maybe that is something we can look forward to.

In case you missed it, Apple released their new line of notebooks earlier this week and as you will imagine it looks like an amazing bit of artwork. As I’m currently in the market for a nice portable computer, of some description I’ve been following the online rumours surrounding this event with a lot of interest, holding my breathe, waiting for the news to come through. Sadly after I play around with one today I can’t bring myself to buy one.

Form Factor There is no denying that the new Macbooks sport some seriously sexy looking shells and have an awesome glass trackpad (which you need to play with to fully appreciate it’s greatness), however this line of Macbooks are missing something for me and the real reason I’d buy a laptop computer at this time. It’s down to what I ultimately will use the notebook for and that comes down to the form factor.

In this context I’m not looking for a first machine, I bought my mac mini last year and I’ve got say that I’m extremely happy with this machine. I’m not a believer of getting equipment that I will never use it’s fully capacity for which i have paid for. So why would i want a notebook? To actually take it around with me. Isn’t that what laptop computers were originally created for? Apart from price entry, I think the reason why netbooks have taken off as a consumer product is down to the actual weight associated with them, they’re typically a little over or under a kilogram and they deliver minimal power for work on the move, with a decent sized screen and a keyboard.

I like well engineered stuff that is beautiful to look at and beautiful to use. Arguably the new Macbooks fit into that ethos. However the thing that these notebooks don’t address is portability. at a little over 2kg for the lightest Macbook (the plastic version is actually heavier than the aluminium version), the weight factor is out the window. They’ve provided the computer at 13.3 inches which is a good size, but again, I would have preferred to have an even smaller thing that I could lug around with me and not really feel it.

The new notebooks feel more like a primary machine that you have in your house, that give you the option to move about the house, but don’t seem to have the makings of a true road warrior. Maybe if you’ve got a car and using that to move you and your notebook around, but in my city slicker mode, I don’t own a car and it’s me who will be lugging this thing around. As such weight is paramount.

Is it Apple’s fault that their latest notebook offerings don’t actually fit in to what I want? To be fair to Apple they have something that more or less fits in with my ethos, get the Macbook Air, at 1.3kg that more or less addresses my weight issue. The only problem with this is that the Air is £1300. That’s £350 more expensive than an already expensive machine (and I doubt the new Macbook Air actually has the glass trackpad which is many shades of awesome).

Sadly like Gruber says, Apple won’t release a netbook for another few years and when they do it’ll be awesome, but it will have a stripped down OS X and will fit my needs now, in 2 years. So what’s a guy to do? What are the available options?

I could either get a Macbook Air, get a Lenovo S10 when it gets here and Hackintosh it or I could get a Dell Inspiron 9 and Hackintosh that. Arguably the second option is much cheaper (by around £1000).

Wired Youtube Channel - It’s not new but as I’m using the site instead of a delicious alternative (I’ve tried using bookmarking services in the past and I never actually reuse them after I’ve downloaded a link). Like the gadget labs episodes.

I’m making a collection of links for how you can install OS X on a Lenovo S10 netbook ; you know, in case I decide not to get the uber expensive Macbooks.

The Guardian’s take on what yesterday’s Apple notebook event - I will say that i think Jony Ike definitely looks like he could be a worthy successor to Jobs. Calm, collected, articulate and not annoying.

Fortune’s round up of apple notebooks from 1989 to 2008 - interesting for those of us who have come late to the Apple game.

I want myself one of these Dell Mini Inspiron 9’s with OS X on them. The thing is, I don’t want to do any of the hacking, I just want to go to a store tomorrow, walk in and buy the bloody thing. I’d even settle if Apple actually released a friggin netbook, but somehow I seriously doubt that is going to happen. Their ultra portable machine is the Air pure and simple. Anything else is wishful and naive thinking.

Today I was reminded that you cannot force design. You cannot force creativity. While thinking of something else the inspiration will strike. From my point of view, whenever I create anything I can actually see the final product in my mind. Sometimes depending on whatever it is that I am doing I will see this picture clearly and I have the necessary tools and skills to achieve that vision, othertimes I can see only my shortcomings…this is probably the norm to be honest.

The site’s design has been building slowly, organically as I got used to the Habari codebase and also what I wanted to do. I pretty much guarantee that the actual colours wil change, however I’ve got an idea in my head that if executed properly could be pretty good fun for me to see and also could be a good note to stop the redesigning of the site for a good long while.

Dell Inspiron 910 has finally been officially released. I’ve been waiting for a netbook for a while, but the truth is at 300 quid, I’m tempted to just wait until the new Macbooks are released, spend an extra 250 quid and get a mac. The killer though is the weight. 2.2kg as opposed to 1.1kg. Then would I go for the Ubuntu flavour or for the Windows XP flavour. While I want to support Ubuntu, it’s not for me, at least not now.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Reviewed - Comprehensive review of the Dell Inspiron Mini by Anand Lal Shimpi. Actually makes me think that getting the Dell machine would be better than the Lenovo S9 or S10.

So Google is going to be releasing a browser later on today, called Google Chrome. You can also have a look at the comic book that Scott Mcloud did for them, that introduces the browser. And finally you can have a quick look at the first screenshot of the browser. The proof I guess will be in the pudding. Will it load quickly, will it look good on a mac, will it be extensible, will developers actually support it, will it be worth the effort of moving over? Will it, won’t it, guess we’ll find out part of that question in a couple of hours when it’s officially released.

I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I was even remotely excited about a new application. Chrome definitely fit that bill. For some reason or another I really wanted to test this little application out. I wanted to see if Google had done anything worthy of their name.

I use Google for searching, I use Google as my RSS reader, to store my story online within Google Docs, and obviously I use Gmail and have done for many years now. These things I use on a nearly daily basis (except for Docs). So playing around with a browser from them obviously was somthing I had to try out. If you look around the blogosphere and the net, everyone’s got a friggin opinion about it. Some have decided to take extreme views on the subject, while others are all playing the waiting game to see what the deal actually was with the browser once they had it in their hands. Others still are pretty optimistic about the whole affair.

I’m not new to this new browser game. When Flock was announced a few years ago I was pretty excited about that…until they dropped the ball, added more cruft and shite to the actual browser and well to be honest made it ugly rather than this extremely slick entity that it could have been. With the exception of Safari usage every once in a while, Firefox has been my default browser for years. I used it originally because it was soo ahead of the game when compared to the available products on the market at the time, probably IE6.

So does Chrome give me that same leap? No, of course it doesn’t. It couldn’t because the idea behind Firefox revolutionised the net in many ways. The truth about Chrome is that it does what it says on the tin and it does it well.

1. The tabs - I thought these would be the biggest annoyance, having them at the top. Truth be told, after 5 minutes, I love them there. They sit perfectly and work great, because there is nothing above them. Effectively the browser uses all the screen real estate wisely. That is something that I really have to applaud Google on. They seem to have achieved this by actually making the rest of the browser minimal as well.

2. OS integration - Yeah, ok it's not OS integrated properly, but seriously for once I don't care. The additional stuff associated with the browser as soo small and unobtrusive that you don't really care that it doesn't have the Vista shite (I'm on holiday in Athens, thus using whatever is available, and this case it's shitty Vista). I can imagine that when the Mac version comes out, it'll be very nicely integrated with Leopard. Hell the icons are practically from Leaopard, but decidedly different at the same time so that it keeps it's own identity, that is if they keep these icons and give me the proper grey.

3. Front Page Tab - Love this. I didn't realise that this was a good idea, until it came as a default. In the same way for FF3 I didn't know what a great idea the star and you've bookmarked a site is (in the navigation bar) in the same way I didn't realise that this actually saves me a lot of time, by displaying the latest sites I've visited and the latest sites I've bookmarked.

4. Speed - Yes it's fast. Scrap that, it's FUCKING fast. I mean, seriously that's the fastest browser I've ever opened. Hell IE7 on Vista isn't this fast. There's got to be something going on here. Is everyone else seeing the same lightning speed at opening up that I've noticed?

5. Task Manager - Now that's a good idea. Much in the same vein as OSX, which allows you to kill any application that is giving you grief, so too does Chrome allow you to shut off any tab from the task manager. The task manager also allows you to have a look and see what amount of memory is being consumed by which application. Case in point Facebook is a power hungry bitch.

Looking forward, what do I want? Of course not everything is rosy and I want some things to be sorted out in future revisions of the software.

1. I want this on OSX. So it's really a matter of time I guess. Make sure it's got the same speed as the Windows version and make sure it's got the proper OS colours as opposed to this light blue. It's ok for Windows, it's not OK for OSX.

2. I want this to be open to plugins and extensions. This is the power of Firefox, that no other browser has ever had the chance of coming close to. You can find nice things you like about other browsers, but ultimately Firefox has got it all and then some. So unlike Safari which is a real pain in the ass to develop stuff for, and even then it's not a proper system, Google really should learn from that and have people develop extensions because that is what will make people take the leap.

3. Sort out that loading bar which is at the bottom of the page. Rubbish idea. Safari does it correctly by loading in the navigation bar. Use that idea instead, it's much more intuative; in the same way the tabs at the top of the page is a great idea.

Edit 1 - Seems they are serious about bringing in more developers to help out and extend Chrome, there is also the Chromium project which has been set up for this purpose. It's going to be pretty interesting to see where this browser will be in a year's time, damn interesting.

Dell may be officially announcing their netbook next Tuesday. This week we also got to see the really sexy looking Lenovo S9 and S10 netbooks (the only other netbook I would actually consider. Something about the Dell E firebrick red netbook just appeals to me soo much.

Earlier this week I attended a talk with a manufacturer who was giving us a brief rundown of the differences between British/European standards (BS, IEC) and American standards (NEC and NEMA). I came into that talk with a host of mostly founded preconceptions however I left with a changed view for the emerging design philosophies and how certain constraints around you will motivate and influence design.

Preconceptions

I will rightly admit that before this talk my I considered American design over-designed, bloated, over-sized, unrefined (with the exception of somethings of course, this is after all a gross generalisation). The impression I had of American design could be summed up into, BIGGER is better. In fact there was an element of contempt when designing buildings to American standards, because I felt that I was cheating my clients of a superior design due to being constrained by bloated design.

As it turns out I was right, after a fashion. I had considered the reasons but what I hadn’t considered was the added value that could be brought to the table in an attempt to justify the reduction of good design and engineering practices.

External Influences

I don’t want to get into specifics here, but ultimately a lot of gear that I specify for a building is 40-60% larger for a building that is designed to American standards than one that is designed to European standards. The reasoning behind this is partly due to constraints by the standards as set by a bunch of lawyers that have FUCK all understanding of what it is they are lawyering about and thus the end product is already on the back foot in terms of design because the constraint asks for an enclosure (no matter what the inside contains) of a specific size; a one size fits all mentality. The inards are then rated upwards or downwards as required.

The end result is bloated, unrefined engineering/design because of these external constraints. Which does nothing but fuel the fire to preconceptions because they are partly true.

Added Value

You’d think such products would then be pretty hard to sell if their counter parts where that much more supperior right? Well that’s what i thought was well. I thought that the only real reason for going down that route was because it was with stuff that the client or whomever felt comfortable with because that’s all they knew. Maybe as their trusted consultant we should present variations and ideas on this. We are after all engineers that try and push the boundaries and present the best solutions to try and make things run better, provide a more efficient, cost-effective and ultimately greatly design final solution. By their own admission they’re more expensive and bulkier in size.

The guys in America know they can’t compete on physical size and overall design elegance. However one thing that they’ve enhanced (which is where the difference in philosophy comes to play) is the product’s expandability and it’s endurance. The American products will last much longer and take a longer beating because they’ve been designed to do that. They also allow individual components to be augmented within the field. This enables changes and enhancements to a particular component to be done out in the field, sometimes when spares are not readily available or expensive to get.

Therefore these products have their own marketplace outside their origin but it’s really on a case by case basis. For me it was interesting because although I knew the constraints and the reasons what I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that the products were not stagnant in their design and just hid behind the standards. They pushed their design boundaries within the set constraints.

I guess the crux of the matter is that no design is better, except when taken into context. People have to be open to bringing in other elements that they may not be familiar with or uncomfortable with in the hopes of creating a better design.

In a word, RUBBISH. The newest MacHeist is up and running and basically it’s a really poor showing this time around. See the last time was an AMAZING collection of applications that included Pixelmator and VectorDesigner. This time around you have some of the same applications and a few random new ones as well, but NO killer application.

Don’t get me wrong I REALLY rate Awaken, use it every day, I really like Coversutra, use that every day (tried using Cha-Ching but couldn’t really get to grips with it at all); crucially all three of these applications were in the previous MacHeist that was held not 3 months ago. What is the application in that bundle that would make you excited? Seriously? It’s not there. Unless they start adding some good stuff, there is no way that this Heist will be as good as the previous one and for good reason. Who exactly are they trying to get on board on this?

On a personal note, there is really no application out there that I want, apart from maybe a better FTP application (there are a couple of good ones knocking about but I’ve not decided which one i should go for) and a better torrent client (transmission is doing exactly what I want and the development is constant so hopefully there’ll get some basic UI issues sorted out and add being able to search and add torrents from within the application itself and I won’t need a new torrent client either).

So last month I (as it turned out) foolishly decided to lend Gordon my camera on his little ‘save the world’ (or at least try and save a small portion of Bangladesh) trip. However unfortunately the camera got stolen right at the end of his trip, so he lost all the photos, which is a real shame, and I lost my camera, which is damn right criminal. However no point in crying over spilt milk, so the hunt is on for a replacement for my point and shoot camera.

I want to take this opportunity to wax lyrically about the fact that my stolen camera was actually an exceptionally good camera. My only complaint with it all was the fact that they’ve got a really shitty proprietary system for moving pictures from the camera rather than a simple USB cable connection into the computer and be done with it, honestly I don’t need more photo applications on my computer, I’ve got like 20 of those, enough already.

It was also pretty unique in many respects as it was one of the few (only?) cameras to actually have two lenses. So you can imagine my disappoint,..nay, disgust at the fact that Kodak no longer make that type of camera..what is this world coming to when you can’t rely on a company to continue developing the thing that makes them stand out from the rest, I ask you?

So the search for something different begins. I think I’ve decided on the camera to go for, specifically the Samsung NV20.

However before I go ahead and buy it I wanted to ask everyone about their thoughts on which camera is the best point and shoot on the market. I looked at the flickr camera list and I’m not so sure about the Canon, seems awefully generic to me. So what do you have as a point and shoot and what do you think about it, or if you’re in the know, what camera should I be looking to buy?

FontStruct is a website that lets you create fonts using an EXCELLENT flash interface right from within the website. You don’t have to start from scratch as it’s even possible to clone another font that has already been created and modify it to your needs. What I love about all of this is the option to actually control EVERYTHING about an particular project straight away, down to the font. Having created a font years ago, I know how difficult it is to keep your house in order. The interface on FontStruct keeps things organised for you to actually put more effort into the creative process. Now the issue of course is that it might not seem as flexible of being able to come up with any font design you can, but honestly I think for the average hobbyist that might not be an issue really. If you really get into it, then I guess you can start learning how to do it from scratch…although having said that, I have NO IDEA what the standard tool for font creation is nowadays? Font Constructor looks pretty cool. Also there is a pretty extensive list about the different programmes available (even talks about FontStruct).

So the guys over at Pixelmator have just released yet another update on their excellent little image editor. Now the thing that has impressed me more with this little editor isn’t soo much the actual editor, because the truth of the matter is I don’t think it has got what I need (which is surprisingly a small list) what’s impressed me most is their diligence in releasing new updates for the software each and every month on around the 20th or so. While some people on the forums expect them to be releasing things on a daily basis, I really like how they’ve decided to release once a month and see how much stuff they can cram into that month before releasing it to the world at large.

It just means that I’ve got something to look forward to from them and makes me happy to see that they are developing constantly to improve on the editor. What you can also notice from their updates log is the fact that as time has gone by, they’ve definitely been getting better at closing out issues as the lists have become larger and larger.

Does Pixelmator get my thumbs up as a Photoshop killer? Honestly not yet but as three minor requests that would make this editor my choice one, which I can’t imagine as being too difficult for the sole coder (I think it’s only one guy doing the coding right?) to deal with, however it might not be a major priority at the moment. Here’s the list:

1. Rulers and Guides - Listen if I'm going to be doing any digital work of any description I need these things. So I need to be able to add guides, move them about and snap to these guides. The ruler set to pixels as a minimum before you move onto something else is fine as an initial release if you're thinking doing everything else will take too much time. Maybe limit the functions to their most basis before expanding might be a good idea?

<li><p>Text Function - Yeah this is pretty poor. Now while I might be ok with the limited font functionality how I would really like to have a full text box that I can resize as a minimum rather than being able to just put some text in a straight line. I know it's a really minor thing, but in my eyes it's what separates a good image editor from a great one. If you can add this into the next iteration that would be AWESOME.</p></li>


<li><p>Folders for Layers - Not sure how difficult this is but again this is one of those things that makes organising my layers something manageable as opposed to a complete and utter free for all.</p></li></ol>

I’m not going into any more detail as I’m sure the other things will come in time, however if I can get the above items by March I will love you guys forever.

I’ve got a question which I was hoping somebody would help me with. I love Google Reader, I really do, loads of great things about this little application to like, in the same way that I like Gmail as well. My only problem with it right now is one function that is not present and I was wondering if others are having the same problem as well, and if there is any easy way to rectify this (like a greasemonkey script or something similar. Basically the way I read my feeds doesn’t allow me to read EVERYTHING in one go. Which is fine, no problem. Those items i’ve not read remain unread. The problem is that when i get back to reading things the newer feeds get placed at the top (which is fine and dandy) but all of the read items are mixed in with the unread ones. So what happens then is that I have to spend a long time scrolling down to the previous items.

Obviously sometimes (read: most times) i can’t be fucked and so i just ‘mark all as read’, which really defeats the object doesn’t it. Anyone have any ideas how to get around this, or is knows whether or not google might be looking to sort this out, or where I can send my email towards?

Firefox 2 is slow as donkeys on a Mac. It’s true. Even with my 2Gs of RAM I can still notice the strain, that and it’s constantly crashing for some reason (usually whenever I use Gmail. Alas I’m eagerly waiting for Firefox3 to be released which is looking a lot better for everyone. In the meantime here are a couple of plugins I’ve found for Safari that I think are really useful: (I’ve updated it with a slew more cool little plugins, based on the comments)

1. Safari-stretch

2. DeliviousSafari

3. Piclens

4. Inquisitor

5. SafariStand

6. SafariTidy

7. And of course we shouldn't forget Pimpmysafari

Anyone got any other ones I should look at?

Fake Steve Jobs accepts one of those crunchie awards. Absoultely awesome video. The guy’s just as funny (probably more funny) in person than as a blogger to be honest, although I do read his stuff occasionally. And while he’s doing that thing he does so well, he also raises some really valid points as well.

Oooohhhh right, now I get it.

So my mac mini arrived last week. Three seperate boxes, one for the mini, one for the wireless mighty mouse and another for the wireless keyboard. What made me laugh was the fact that Joyce, arguably the smallest person in the world was carrying them to give to me. This stuff is actually completely tiny, it’s really incredible. So much so, that I’m not actually sure what I’m going to be doing with the rest of the real estate of my desk, the bottom of my desk is also looking pretty barren, so I’m thinking there’s going to be a trip to Ikea to get a table to put my stereo, thus freeing up enough space to get myself an A1 drawing board, as I see that coming in handy a lot in the coming year.

It took a total of 12 minutes from the second I connected all the wires to the second i was surfing the net and talking to Bonsai online. The machine picked up the mouse, keyboard and wireless router in seconds and I was actually up and running in no time at all.

So what is my initial reactions to OSX now that I’ve played around on it for more than 30 minutes? There is genuinely a hell of a lot to like. Things that as a windows user I came to accept because that was the norm. That all changed last year when I got into Ubuntu and realised that there was actually a different way. The problem I faced with Ubuntu however was the lack of sophisticated software aimed directly at the operating system and the lack of hardware drivers for a lot of my peripherals. Obviously this isn’t the case here.

One of the greatest things for me however is the lack of having to shut down my computer every day. I put it to sleep and that’s pretty much it. Loading it up again takes a total of 3 seconds and I’m up and running again. The quiet nature of the machine is an incredible selling point to me, since my previous machine, although a work horse in it’s own right was fucking load as you like. So this was a breath of fresh air.

Then there’s how it all clicks together. All downloads go into the downloads folder which I can access. Hardly anything is actually on my desktop anymore (save for my blue shuffle icon, which I love btw). Installing a programme requires me to move the downloaded programme into the applications folder. I’ve got several funky ways to see my documents and applications in that is slightly less archaic than the traditional drop down menu and the list goes on.

Reading through that last paragraph you’d think that I had absolutely no negative comments about the system. Unfortunately you’d be wrong about that. However as that’s another post in and of itself I’ve had to split it up a bit.

So I got a load of help from the previous post about where I should look for more information about what kind of Mac I should go for. Unfortunately for me, I mentioned this to Graham at work, who’s a big computer hardware nerd…the man has got more computers in his house than spoons (and he’s been collecting for many years). So I mentioned my recent desire to make the jump. I said that I was probably going to hold out for the new Macbook Pro (if it comes out this January as rumored), with it’s ultra thin and slim stylings and trimmings (he already knows how much of a nut I am about computer portability, when I need it portable that is). Soo what does he do? He sends me the link for the Eee PC from Asus. Why did you go and do that for Graham?

For those in the dark (and believe me in a couple of months you won’t be in the dark at all about this), the Eee PC is one of the smallest fully functional laptops on the market for £220 (that’s about $400 dollars or so). 22.5cm across by 3.5cm thick and coming in at a measly 920grams!!!!! Preloaded with Xandros (a Debian based Linux distribution), it’s an ideal toy for the guy and gal on the move. I’ve put that image there because it definitely gives you a feel for the actual size of this thing. We’re talking slightly larger that a typical moleskin, which is just absolutely STONKINGLY small. How fast is it you ask? Well it starts up in about 20 something seconds, which is pretty damn impressive when you’re on the move.

No, I’ve not gone back on my thought about getting a mac, but I have had to rethink what equipment I want and need. The thought process is simple, get what you actually need. I’ve been working on my machine now for about 3 years roughly. It’s got a 64bit AMD processor coming in at 1.8GHz (or something like that). It’s got 512mgs of RAM and a 160Gb hardrive. I don’t ever do any video editing or any rendering (even though I bought this machine 3 years ago under the pretence that I would start getting into 3D modelling). So what do I use my computer for? I edit photos in photoshop, surf the net, code and programme some stuff, use vector illustration programmes (that do sometimes need some juice) and watch downloaded TV series, listen to music and well that’s about it. So is it really necessary to get the beast that is the MacPro? Do I really need the absolute latest processing power? Barring the occasional photoshop work, nothing I throw at my computer will really flex it’s muscles.

So I decided to get equipment that would eat anything I personally threw at it. So I’ve got myself a mac mini (since I already own a 20inch screen, I originally though it was 19inch, bonus!). I increased the RAM to 2Gigs and opted for the version with a DVD writer (since I do still do need this even though I’ve got two external hardrives). It’s arriving in a couple of weeks, and I’ve already started making a list of applications I might need. Expect a lot more silly questions being posted as I try to get to grips with the system. You guys having been doing this for a lot longer so I’m most definitely going to be leaning on you guys for advise and help.

There is definitely a market for the ultra portable computer, however it’s also important that the manufacturers realise that they should be catering to what the consumer needs as opposed to creating products that can do 1000 time more things than the user will ever likely need. Asus seems to have realised this ahead of anyone else, but it’s going to be very interesting to see how the other manufacturers react to this. Is this move going to change how we see computers? Is this going to be the tipping point for Linux? Or is it just a bit of a fad? Am I getting over excited over nothing really? Or is this going to be the ipod of ultra portable computers? I haven’t been able to see an Eee Pc up close since it sold out in like 2 days from release in the UK, but I’m sure sometime next year I’ll have a look at it and make my mind about whether or not it’s actually worthy of the hype.

I think I might be ready to make the plunge. I’ve been fighting this urge for a little while now but I think I would like to invest in a Mac. So the main question is what do I do? Which model to I buy? When do Apple generally release their new stuff? I know it’s usually around Christmas time and I think sometime in April? Should I wait till January just in case they release an upgrade to their latest products? The thing is I’ve currently got my PC with my 19 inch monitor, so I’ve got to find something to do with them as having both might seem a bit superflous.. or I could get a laptop so that I can have everything in a compact package that’s portable when I need it to be but can also be hooked into a larger monitor if I want it to be. Surely it’s pretty easy to get a screen switcher right?

Is it worth getting a Macbook Pro, or should I opt for the less expensive option? What are the good websites out there that show all these options laid out (there has to be right?) Which are the good sites for this sort of thing? Daring Fireball is commentary about stuff going on in the land of the mac but not really a dissection of the options and pitfalls for a newbie into the world.

The Phiculator is a great little application, that you can download as a flash file as well (don’t know but I love applications that come as flash files). It calculates ? (phi), the golden ratio. To put things into a design perspective, if you’re trying to make a website that is 850px wide, it gives you the size of the column that splits this 850px line in an aesthetically pleasing way. So your main column would be 525px in that case. Also I really love James Mellers’s site as well.

So I’ve started looking at my blog feed reader and it hit me that I don’t really read all of my feeds as much as I skim them to see what new stuff might be happening in the world. The issue is though that I’m finding it harder and harder to find something that I must stop and read. I find that seriously strange. It’s not like I’ve got that much more blogs that I’m reading. I tend to add new blogs to my feed every so selectively.

Sure you have Khoi’s little commentary left and right, you have Paul’s exhaustive hardware reviews of consumer electronics I will never buy nor really care about. Michael’s blog is always an interesting collection of links (mainly movie related ones) from all over the place, Chris’s blog usually throws up some cool videos or interesting youtube snippets that I would never have the energy to look for, Journalista always gives me just about everything I could want in terms of comic book bytes and other assorted goodies (oftentimes more than I can possibly grasp). However one trend I’ve noticed is that the raw bloggers out there have reduced in number.

Oh but Khaled aren’t you part of the 9rules network? I’ve said this before (on another site) but I’ll say it again, 9rules is no longer the place it used to be. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, it’s just decidedly different. When I joined a couple of years ago it had something like 50 blogs in total. That’s 50 people I more or less knew from the forums. Knew and appreciated and liked and worked with and helped out etc. There are hunderds of memebers on there now, and honestly I don’t have the time to go through each one and vet each one.. I guess it was just more manageable in the past, for me at least, as I would add the ENTIRE feed for 9rules. Hell I wouldn’t know where to get it now if I tried. Anyone know where the feed for all the blogs from 9rules can be found? Shouldn’t that be a pretty prominent thing on this site? Shouldn’t you be able to taylor make your own RSS feed of all the various sites that are available to you? Kinda makes sense to me. Don’t know how easy it is to implement but I’m sure the guys are more than capable of doing something like that.

A couple of years ago it was this massive buzzing time, where we as bloggers (all of us, including you) ruled the net. Movies lived and died by our buzz (Snakes on a Plane), TV series got second leases on life (Serenity), well partly because of us.

Somedays I honestly feel like we’re not all that important anymore. Is it because all new fads become old quickly? Have we passed the ‘golden era’ of blogging? Is it that there is far too much noise on the net, and it’s becoming harder and harder to actually seperate the wheat from the chaff? Is blogging relevant nowadays or is it simply part of the general zeitgeist that is accepted and taken for granted?

Olav’s just released his Blueprint CSS framework. What I like about it is the overall idea and clever little things like how to implement the grid structure.

Christian presents a great little list of things you didn’t know (or may not have known) about the Firefox web development toolbar. Anyone have something similiar for the Firebug plugin?

You know when you’re in the dark about something and then someone wakes you up and you get that realisation that things could have been better, you just didn’t know any better, because nobody bothered to tell you about it?

What am I talking about? I’m making less sense than normal? I’ll tell you what I’m blathering about. I’m talking about how fonts are displayed on the four major web browsers, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, Safari 3 and Opera 9.

If you’ve visited the ‘kode in the last week, you’ll have seen some more changes in my every evolving design process. Currently I’ve given up altogether with putting a design mockups and opting for the completely different approach of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Subsequently I’ve decided to do things in glorious black and white and start thinking about colours and design elements once I’ve got the basic structure and functionality working as I actually want it. However what I have done is use fonts as big bold elements in the design, going above 16px font-size to bring things to the forefront.

Fortunately for me (as this is what actually opened my eyes) was that this effectively brings out the font rendering inadequacies in my favourite (and de facto) browser, Firefox.

Firefox

Opera

Internet Explorer

Safari

The fonts are all smoothed (the only part that I felt was a bit off, but that’s only because I’ve been staring at this for a while trying to find faults) is the bottom of rounded characters which become slightly more blurred. I haven’t checked to see what other things this browser has to offer because I’m still a bit gobsmacked by the way it rendered a simple page. I understand that Safari is based on the same framework as Konquerer, is that correct?

Final Thoughts

I’m looking at javascript libraries and it’s honestly proving a bit of an arduous task. We’ve got Moo.fx and Moo.fx2. The first has been superceeded by the second (obviously). Both it would seem can be used with prototype.js (or the lite version), however Moo.fx2 can be used as part of Mootools, and this is where things become more complicated.

Ok so you go over to Mootools and when you go to download the library, you get like 40 options (most of which I honestly don’t understand in the first place so you end up with something that is 42k rather than 3k).

It also seems less friendly than moo.fx on it’s own, but it does definitely look a hell of a lot more slick and polished and you can see a lot of time and effort has been placed into the overall setup of the information and the site itself.

However for a complete noob like me, it’s a bit overwhelming. So I decide, maybe it would be better to use JQuery. From first glance it doesn’t look as ‘polished’ in it’s overall slickness as the moo.fx but I know that WordPress, Habari and Drupal are going down this particular route in terms of their preferred library of choice.

Finally we’ve also got script.aculo.us as well, just so that we’ve got all our options in front of us.

Honestly I’m a bit perplexed as to what to go for. It seems that for a site, Mootools will provide all the kinds of animated effects that I could possibly want and the community behind this one is pretty strong with loads of documents and tutorials all over the place. However something tells me that jquery is the way to go, even though it’s not as flash. What’s a guy to do?

Dimension, the latest iteration in Opera’s incredibly cool mobile browser will be released on the 19th of June. For all those who are somewhat in the dark about this browser it’s one of the essential downloads for anyone’s mobile phone. The thing is the Opera guys and gals have been incredibly tight lipped about what the new features of the latest version is actually going to be. Personally I would like to have the option to see the ENTIRE webpage and then zoom into specific areas. Would DEFINITELY make my browsing experience that much better.

Also as I’m browsing on a phone, what I would also like is the option to SAVE things so that I can read them once I’m in a tunnel or something. It just kinda seems that much more logical. Cache has never been as important I don’t think.

Well it’s been a bit too long coming, but I think I’ve found a theme that I can get to grips with relatively easily. I’m going to be hacking Depo Clean, adding parts of Fauna and some K2 in for good measure. I had a look at Sandbox and I’ve got to say that I was pretty turned off by the function.php file that they’ve added in there. It just makes the markup so much more difficult to understand at first glance which is what made me keep looking for alternatives that just did the job cleanly. In any case Depo Clean probably best resembles what I’m aiming for in the end anyway so it helps that I like the markup as well. The next time I do this I’ll be converting this markup into something that can be used with Habari.

I really don’t understand why it is that all Google applications are soo bloody fugly. I mean seriously. Joen recently blogged about being a Google boy and I was thinking the same thing, that I do actually use a lot of Google products. I’m using Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, Sketchup (at work), Google Docs (not the spreadsheets part, although I’m not using it all that much recently) and I don’t know how many times I go to the Google home page on a daily basis. The thing that I’m definitely starting to get annoyed with however is the bloody ugly interface that they insist on presenting for all their applications.

Making these things nicer to look at will most definitely make them more enjoyable to use. What’s mind boggling to me is that not enough people are talking about this. Some people have even taken matters into their own hands and actually tweaked the design interface using greasemonkey and Firefox. It does the job for sure, but you’ve got to wonder what is actually holding these guys back from actually employing 15 Jon Hickes for like 6 months and making them work full time on revamping the interfaces so they’re actually properly designed.

You actually want to take on the big boys like all these people are hinting that you are left right and centre, you’ve got to be dressed for the part. What’s even more interesting to me is the fact that Google has got the money, they’ve got the bloody resource, they’ve got the knowledge. I’m not talking complicated code restructuring here (after all they’ve got the functionality down to a bloody art form); I’m talking about the CSS and the little jpgs, you know simple, basic, shit.

So what is it they’re afraid of I wonder? Every once in a while they’ll change something (like the recent Google images) and then change it back again, so it’s not like they’re afraid of rocking the boat. The thing is though I’m talking about rocking the boat significantly.

The more I write the more I start thinking about this, they’re not changing things because they feel they’re doing well with the ugly interface as it is. That can be seen (although I might be jumping the gun here) as a sign of complacency. Something that an IT company should NEVER, EVER do, is sit on their laurels and pat themselves on the back for a job well done, because guess what, someone else is trying to be one step ahead of them.

Case in point, Facebook. Now here’s a website that is designed VERY well. It’s simple and it’s friendly and is updated and new features are constantly added and the interface is tweaked and icons are designed. The site has a distinct look about it, that’s not in your face, much like Google. All of these ideas all definitely contribute to it’s increasing success.

So my request from Google is to listen to their designers, I know you have them, but at the same time I’m sure the ones that are employed have got their nuts neutered and have to design things to a stupid house style, with no clear reason why, which is a real shame for all of us.

Google Reader Theme by Jon Hicks. Awesome doesn’t even begin to describe this. I wish someone would do something similar for Gmail, because there is just soo much cruft and rubbish in gmail. The code is great and the functionality is great but google couldn’t design themselves out of a paper bag in most cases. Their forte is making applications usable and fun but not pretty look at.

Better Gmail. Ok so it’s not as cool looking as the Google Reader theme, but it’s a definite step in the right direction. My favourite part and something I really wonder why google hasn’t sorted out instead of just giving us more and more space is icons for the attachments. Such a simple thing and yet so essential to searching for things in a human fashion.

Let me start off by saying that Inksmith is what I view as my biggest online failure, after a fashion and this is what this particular post is about. Whenever I announce a project or something I usually deliver, notice I said whenever I announce a project. I may be a blabber mouth an I do get excited about things and have the urge to talk about them, however I never announce until I’m 100% certain I’m going to follow through (seriously if I didn’t do that I’d be writing this sort of shit all the time).

I might take some time to bring it forward (usually I take a lot longer that I could possibly want) however the fact of the matter remains that I will see things through. It seems that ever since the ‘announcement’ of Habari a few moons ago, some have brought up Inksmith as a way to bring discredit to Habari (at least the negative connotations that Inksmith is presented in infers this). It’s as though the fact that nothing moving forward on Inksmith is telling of stuff that might not happen on Habari, which honestly is the single most preposterous idea I’ve ever heard. These are two very very different things and I find those that mention them as though they’re linked in the same way done so as an act of ignorance/stupidity/lack of understanding etc. Here’s why.

The first fact brought forward is to understand what the two things actually were. Inksmith simply was an idea to create a community for bloggers. No this wasn’t a rip off on 9rules. I wasn’t creating a blog network but rather an area for bloggers to get around and be themselves. Oh sure there wasn’t really a central theme for us to bandy around, but what I wanted was a nice buzzing community that helped each other out and was open for people to get to know each other re our love for blogging. It wasn’t ground breaking and it wasn’t anything crazy, but it would have been fun and loads of the guys where well up for it. The best part of it all was the pictures on the coming soon site. I really liked the fact that we were all pissed off in those photos. It delivered what Inksmith was all about, angry people on the internet venting :).

So where does the similarities lie you ask? As far as I can tell it’s the fact that some of the names attached to one project are now attached to another. So does this mean I’ve tarnished the credibility of the others on that list (since it was my idea)? Maybe and I guess they are the only ones I owe an apology to, because I didn’t deliver on my part of the bargain, so to everyone that was attached to the Inksmith project I apologise profusely. Let’s get something clear here, if I ask someone to be part of something I take their commitment seriously. I generally don’t like to waste ANYONE’S time as time for me is the most important commodity. So I genuinely feel bad about wasting those people’s time. We had some great discussions and it did prompt a lot of people on the internet to discuss the deal with being anonymous on the internet and using handles.

Why didn’t Inksmith take off? Because I didn’t have the energy to kick it off. 2006 was one of the toughest years on me from many many respects. In fact from May onwards I can definitely consider 2006 as one of the darkest times in my life from many angles. Which is actually reflected in my blog. What, you think that the dark motif was because I was joining in with the trend for darker sites at the time? No, Broken Kode is an extension of me and it reflects my mood in many cases. When my mood changes so to does the colours on my site, and the design itself in many respects.

So why didn’t I get Inksmith started? Honestly it came down to the amount of energy and enthusiasm I had to provide for the project, which after completing FOFR and Shuttle and 2 websites for clients and my on website and a bunch of illustrations I just didn’t have any more to give, until I was in Greece in October/November. At that point I had charged my batteries and I had decided that it was time for me to pull my finger out and build Inksmith all over again. For all the negative assholes that don’t believe me here’s the logo I created on the plane back to the UK:

So why did I stop that momentum? Simply put because the day I got back from the UK Chris had emailed me about Habari. In Habari I basically found another way to solve the problem that I wanted Inksmith to solve in the first place; the difference of course is that we’d have a central idea to gather around and that would be the software.

The community coming together around Habari is one I’m very proud to be a part of in the first instance. Final word to those that decide to put Inksmith in my face one more time, seriously try and do something constructive with your time, I know I am.

It’s been a truly exciting time for Habari on the design front (not that it’s not been exciting on the code front, but I can only really properly comment on all things design to be honest). Since the last time we talked, Michael has been a busy boy with absolutely everything under the sun. All these ideas have been filtering through the designs as we build towards a unified look for the administration panel.

Remember these mockups are just that mockups, we’re still meandering trying to sort things out, this is an open design process so things are going to change. Don’t think that what you see here is gospel and how it’s going to be, don’t be quoting me fekking Jakob in my face about usability and whatnot. These are the formation months, trust me we’re going through MANY MANY loops and discussions. So with that in mind let’s begin shall we.

The Installer

Stage One:

Final Stage:

We’re still playing around with loads of things here. The header and footer are still up for discussion but the main ideas are there. We’re definitely going for the easiest installer award with this release.

Create Page

Michael’s been pretty busy and he’s got his ideas regarding the media browser on ‘paper’. Once we’ve ironed out all the kinks and how it’s going to work I think it’ll be the most special media browser on any blogging platform.

We did have a great deal of interation of ideas between us on the logo. Work is still ongoing in this area and probably will be for a little while longer as we try and find ourselves the best fit for what the logo means to the community and how people will view us effectively.

Remember nothing is set, everything’s up for discussion. As always Spread the news!

It’s unreal just how much faster doing this tweak actually makes Firefox load websites. Seriously best Firefox tweak I’ve done in a good long while.

Easily one of the coolest gadgets I got this year was the Blackberry Pearl (or 8100 model). I’ve been playing with it for like a day now and I know it’s going to be something really special to use for a good long while. Although it’s a nice site, the images really don’t do it much justice. It’s honestly a thing of beauty in design if you have it infront of you. It’s only slightly larger than my previous Ericsson and packs a serious punch with respect to the number of features it’s got in it.

The only annoying thing I found was the flap you put the SIM card in doesn’t stay set, but opens until you put the battery in there. Minor annoyance but it’s a real shame as this could have scored some more points of rock solid construction. Another thing that is really starting to PISS me off, is the fact that none of these phone manufacturers have clocked onto the fact that it would be nice to have a normal earphone jack as opposed to some piece of shit they’ve concocted for you to plug in your earphones.

The Future was Orange

What’s interesting is that I was able to get the phone and a whole new package that suits me down to a T while paying less. The issue with a lot of these packages that many operators provide is that they’re honestly not tailored very well for the average user. They either give you an immense amount of time in “off-peak” hours that are not always useful, so you end up not using all of them, or they give you too little minutes during normal times. The good thing however is that after a year and a bit of using my phone regularly I’ve got enough bills to know exactly how much a use and of what. No need to guess these things (as I’ve had to in the past).

Enter the T

hmm got to check how much that costs on the internet to see if it's cheaper.

Well now it’s just a few clicks to check the net there and then.

Opera Mini

Seems that Opera is definitely the little browser that could. Seems that this little browser is a hit on the Nintendo market. I’ve got to say that Opera Mini (opera for mobile devices) is MILES better than the standard BlackBerry browser. For a start they’ve cut away a lot of the clutter that the BB browser has when the menu is pressed. People on that size of screen don’t want to scroll FOREVER. We want something quick and to the point. Sure the browser is being updated pretty regularly as far as I can tell. It’s got RSS integration which is essential for all mobile devices as far as I’m concerned.

The Home page is EXACTLY what you want to see when you first log into the browser. Oh sure I’m as self obsessed as the next guy, but having BK as my home page on my BB seems a bit of a waste of space, although it’s definitely interesting to see how the site renders on a mobile phone (I’ll be sorting out a seperate mobile spreadsheet in the not too distant future).

The Application Opera Mini has attempted to access the network. Would you like to allow this?

If anyone’s got a way of stopping this fekking annoying message coming up everytime Opera is used please, pretty please with a cherry on top drop something in the comments and I’ll update this post accordingly.

For those in the T-mobile camp wondering how to sort this out onto your Pearl, here’s the steps I took:

1. From your Pearl go to http://mini.opera.com and follow the instructions.

<li><p>Chance are after you've tried to connect it'll fail on your ass (it did on mine). Thankfully Opera have already forseen this problem and posted <a href="http://www.operamini.com/help/connect/?provider=T-Mobile&region=UK">this page</a>. Note that this is for the UK market, although as you can see they've sorted everyone out for the rest of the world as well.</p></li>

<li><p>Go to Options > Advanced Options > TCP and then put the information you got from that page.

Turn off, remove battery, turn on and it should all work.

I started writing a best of 2006 about a week ago, however I’ve had to break that down into several posts because it got far too large and I didn’t feel that I would be doing each topic justice, if I bulked all of them into one post. So for the first topic of conversation I’ll talk about the best of the Net for 2006. This is mainly about design on the net, internet applications, websites that caught my attention on the net for one reason or another. So without further adieu here’s the Squeaky Kode Trophies for the year of 2006.

Addictive Site of the Year

Best Advert of 2006

Best Designed Site of the Year

Best Internet Application

It’s taken me a long while but I finally bit the Flickr bug as well and got myself an pro account as well. I’ve got to say that I don’t use it as much as I should do but that will be changing in the not to distant future.

For my feed reading I’ve jumped on the Newsgator bandwagon. I’ve got a lot to write about with respect to FOFRedux and will hopefully go to using that application in the not too distant future sometime next year, but in the meanwhile I’ve found the Newsgator service to be exactly what I was looking for.

So I guess it’s not so much that I had a specific internet application, but rather the fact that I actually decided to use several of the plethora of applications out there for use in the first place.

Best Internet Related Software

Best Firefox Plugin

Blogging Networks Politics

If you think I’ve missed something pretty fundamental just drop a comment and I’ll be sure to add it into the list or create a whole new category for it.

Blue Dragon from the fine folk at Mistwalker. Dammit, they’ve actually got me considering getting an Xbox 360 as it’s what I expected Final Fantasy 8 to look like (7 was and is the only Final Fantasy game I’ve played, but when I mean played I mean bought a Playstation just to play…(thanks to Aurum3 for the heads up, I might have to kill you guys).

For my latest redesign (and on the other sites and programmes I’m working on) I’ve structured the CSS file somewhat differently. Rather than having what has become CSS convention of having every element of each class, id or whatever on a separate line:

[css]h1{ padding: 0 0 35px 0; margin: 0 0 25px 0; font-size: 2.0em}[/css]

I’ve instead decided to put everything onto one line: [css]h1{ padding: 0; margin: 0 0 25px 0; font-size: 2.0em}[/css]

What does this do you ask? The single most important thing in a CSS file, it makes it manageable. It makes it easy for me to actually edit the damn thing a few months down the line, in a quick and easy way. Rather than scrolling down 500 lines of code, I’m scrolling down 150 lines. The main structure for me is done in programmes like Bluefish or CSSed, however a lot of the editing and tweaking is done within Firefox, so I need to have the easy for scrolling down quickly.

The added bonus of this method is that it reduces the size of my file at the same time. I honestly started thinking why the hell I didn’t do this earlier as it just makes oh so much more sense to condense the file.

Standards Reboot. In a way it was inevitable, following these pretty shocking results. Seems we do actually have a way to go before the majority of sites are standards compliant.

Timely “Ipod killers” article, flags up several players that I definitely want to have a look at, specifically the MPIO FY800 looks like a real contender

Democrcy Internet TV Platform - in all it’s open sourcy goodness. Just in time for the new Battlestar Galactica series (how the hell did so many months go by since season 2 ended, it really does seem like an eternity), the new My Name is Earl series and the new Lost series (still need to finish watching the rest of Season 2).

Following on from Part 1 of this series of posts on Ubuntu, I’m going to talk about Ubuntu and Linux’s most POWERFUL concept. Installing software through repositories. The way I understand it is that these are databases of all the latest stable software that has been tried and tested to work with Ubuntu. The software goes through several checks and something called REVU, comments are passed back and forth regarding how to make the package better before it’s committed to the repository. This means several things to the end user, however I’m going to concentrate on two:

<li>You get notified of any updates to any software that is running on your machine that is part of these repositories, so you're always up to date with the latest software (that's all software, from graphical applications to files you don't really care about or know what they actually do). It's a cute little orange and white star icon that pops out at you informing you to update your system.</li>

<li>You have a massive database to search for applications that will allow you to get the tasks you want to get done at your finger tips, with the click of a button.</li></ol>

Synaptic Package Manager

In the past when I would want to do something with my computer, I'd search the Internet for some software that would allow me to do something. Traditionally there were the proprietary applications and then there was the less capable but free applications available. Every once in a while you'd stumble on some open source software that would really excel itself. Needless to say I used to spend a lot of time searching the net for applications that might fit the bill of what it was I was looking for. Ubuntu takes care of the searching for me, through the Synaptic Package Manager (pictured below). (For those newbies looking for this, just go to System > administration > Synaptic Package Manager)

You can search for applications either by category, or if you know what it’s called by name. So if you want some software that burns DVDs, or a bit torrent client then search through key words. You’d be surprised just how many applications are out there that can do all sorts of things you’d be finding if not difficult, at the very least expensive and worse frustrating on a windows machine. This little application and thought process IMHO should be the impetus of all Linux discussions. We’re dealing with THOUSANDS of developers all over the world contributing to thousands of programmes to help make YOUR (and my) computing experience easier and more enjoyable to undertake.

The issue of course is that you might need to add more repositories in order to get the very latest software which might not be verified from the Ubuntu team. This is the beauty of open source. It’s not like traditional proprietary software. There really is no need for open source to make massive leaps and bounds in one go (the traditional method employed by software houses to make you buy the upgrade), things are enhanced and augmented with time, step by step. You can even build your own repository list.

Easyubuntu

Easyubuntu should be a link on the Ubuntu desktop once you've installed the full thing. Why? Because it's got all the software that isn't covered by the GPL license that Ubuntu can't ship with or whatever the legalities of the whole thing actually is (they could go down the Novell route and offer it as an option in the install stage, which would save a lot of people a lot of time, agro and hassle). Here's a list of all the software that can be installed from running this little collection of applications. So all your drivers, Flash 7 (Adobe hasn't released 8 for Linux, however they're committed to 9 apparently), Java and the list goes on.

Automatix

I've only used Automatix for a couple of things, however the list of software that it will install is very impressive. It's not as polished an interface as Synaptic to be honest as it does all sorts of ugly things (to someone who's used to the standard Ubuntu dialogue boxes) but that shouldn't stop you from using the application itself. I've heard rumblings within the Ubuntu Community where some people have expressed not liking using this system. I'm not sure why not to be honest (as in I genuinely don't have a clue so any thoughts would be appreciated).

Resources for starting out on Ubuntu and Installing Ubuntu

Generally speaking, due in part to the architecture, and the other being that it is the most used Distro, most software runs on Ubuntu, it's just sometimes a hassle, if in case it's not found in the above methods. In that case then you've got a couple of options. .deb files (since Ubuntu is a Debian fork) has got these packages which act effectively like .exe files. Double click and install away. There are also others who have done autopackagers as well. Again these act like .exe files, so you double click and install. I'm going to admit I've tried to actually install software from the source code, however EVERY time I've tried, I've failed, and I've gone back and tried to find an alternative solution from the above. However if you are thinking about doing this here's a couple of good links to refer to:
1. Install Anything on Ubuntu
2. Ubuntu Wiki
3. Ubuntu Forums

So there you have it, methods of how to install applications on Ubuntu, there’s more one way to skin a cat and in many ways a lot simpler and more open than windows in that there is generally an open source application for everything. Some are more mature than others and that’s what I’ll be talking about in the next posts on the subject. The next topic I tackle will be about applications that provide Sound.

Ubuntu 6.06 'Drapper Drake' is a vastly superior operating system to Windows XP.

Usually people give their conclusions once they’ve established the question first and then gone through the process of explaining and proving why. I’m going to make my conclusions and therefore raise your expectations (or utter disbelief or even contempt and arrogance) and try and win you back.

To discard some initial thoughts, first off, do I think Ubuntu is perfect? Hardly. In fact a lot of it is out of my comfort zone to be honest, however I am COMPLETELY willing to jump in with both feet to try and swim. The real reason is because it’s seriously opened up the sheer amount of possibilities to me and I honestly do feel completely free with my operating system. Free as in freedom. I’m no longer constrained in so many ways that I was before and I have no doubt many other users will feel the exact same way as well.

Part of that reason is the library of open source software and ideas that are constantly being moved forward by people around the world. It’s an incredibly powerful concept that won’t become completely normal practice and accepted around the world for a few more years to come. The mainstream still fears open source. Still has doubts as to it’s power, it’s reasoning, after all we all live in a Capitalist world, where nothing is done for free, right? Wrong. Hopefully in the list of programmes that I will cover throughout this series of posts it’ll become clear that there is more ways to skin a cat. There is not one but several programmes that will enable you to do your job. The greatest part of it all, is that they are constantly being updated. I honestly can’t count how many times I’ve updated my system since I installed Ubuntu. I’ve set my timer for once a week for it to check on new updates to keep all my system fresh and up to date.

So before I made the jump to Ubuntu, I speculated as to which programmes I would be using the most to get on with the business of design and development. Some of those options have actually panned out while others haven’t really been as predicted. Within this series of posts I am intending on dispelling a lot of these thoughts that are predominant in the world at large today. In addition to that I will be reviewing and talking about software applications that I am using at the moment. Hopefully it’ll be useful to others around there to learn about software applications that are readily available for download and use. I’ll start with the nice and simple applications, that being the Internet and email client.

Firefox

Evolution

Come back next time as I review some graphical applications, music, video and cataloguing applications.

I’ve been trying to find ways to increase my productivity and effectively take my life back by the horns, which for the past couple of months has spiralled out of control.

Gmail is a staple in my life. I use it and don’t think about it. I’ve not gotten to the stage where I really use the folders as I can, however that might be about to change. So I’ve been looking into other online solutions that might be able to reach that status. Traditionally I’ve tried my very best to shy away from online services except those that are backed by one of the major players, mainly because they’re not going to be charging me cash to provide a task that while isn’t necessary to have online is nice to have. You could say it’s a bit of an antithesis to Web 2.0, and in a way it actually is. You’d also expect someone like me to jump for this sort of thing, however I don’t move into this arena without a little bit of caution, simply because I don’t like to be dependant on others that can pull the plug on me at any time or worse, decide to change the terms and conditions.

NewsGator

Ma.gnolia

Google Calander

I think I’m becoming a life hacker, hopefully the next couple of weeks will see a bit of this hectic lifestyle that I’ve been living cool down a little bit and I can actually get back to finishing off some of these projects that have been on my plate for months, some even a year.

Finally my wishes for a mobile that actually provides me with what I want have been answer with the latest Sony Ericsson M600i.

I honestly don’t care that it doesn’t have a camera, as I find that feature a bit superfluous for my liking in a mobile phone anyway. It’s also fantastic news that mobile phone manufacturers are starting to utilise touch screens a little bit more, thus reducing the overall number of buttons on the phones, simplifying the design completely. Even better than a Crackberry.

In my mind this is exactly what I was trying to get last year. A phone that lets me:

1. surf the internet
2. check my emails
3. all within a nice, small tidy little package, not the size of a PDA.

On a similar but unrelated note, by the very nature of contracts in the UK, I end up getting new handsets every year; while this is a great thing, it’s also a terrible waste, as I’m massing a collection of handsets. All of them work, but they’re different generations. Randing from a battered Ericsson (when Sony hadn’t merged) to an oldie Nokia, the LG chocolate phone and my Sony Ericsson K750i. Definitely make a nice collection of how quickly technology for mobile devices has ramped up in a small space of time, but what the hell am I supposed to do with all these handsets? It’s not like they’re vintage yet so I can sell them on ebay as a collector’s item, and it seems like an awful waste chucking them in the bin. I mean where do ipod mini’s go when they retire? I ask because I’m eying up either a Zune or one of the new ipods.

Gnome Files. Part of the problem with open source is the fact that there are so many applications out there that can help you do all sorts of things, so much so you probably don’t even know that they exist. To help you along the way we’ve got the excellent Gnome Files website, which is basically a software information repository. Anyone have any other similar sites?

So I met up with Chris and co on Friday. What’s cool about Chris is that he’s one of the few remaining friends of mine that is a TOTAL and UBER geek. He’s not only a geek, but he’s pretty damn proud of it. Damn right as well. The way you should be. Wear your geekiness on your sleeve. Anyway he turns around to me and tells me:

So erm what did you think of the Nintendo E3 conference?

Completely BLANK face from me.

This kinda disappointed him for like 2 seconds as he LAUNCHED into this massive rant about how SHIT the Sony PS3 presentation looked and how on the ball Nintendo seemed to be with the Wii. So here’s a few movies I was able to grab off Youtube for those interested in what all the fuss was about (it’s apparently the future of gaming, which to be honest I can actually see). The closest approximation I can come up with is a movie with an exceptional story. The audience will seriously forgive a lot of things (like slightly dodgy acting or whatever). Substitute story with GAMEPLAY. It’s an interesting concept no :).

1. Video Conference Part 1
2. Video Conference Part 2
3. Miyamoto Orchestra Introduction
4. Doubles in Tennis (annoying presenter though)

After he was done going on about the Wii he then looked at me again and said:

You do have a Nintendo DS right?

Once again I disappointed him to inform him that in fact I didn’t. He claims it’s the best thing since sliced cheese and that it’s easily the most playable console he’s ever had. I’ve always been a Sega boy to be honest. Nintendo always seemed too Vanilla for my liking to be honest. When Sega died, Sony seemed like a good extention of that market ethic. Then Sony showed it’s PSP, to Nintendo’s DS, which looks like crap right? Nothing on the PSP right?

Apparently I’m completely off base here; It’s not about the looks, the gameplay is the real focus for this system. Nintendo seem to have seen the errors of their way with that as well which is why they’ve released the DS lite, which is smaller, lighter and slightly more stylish, thus addressing my FUGLY comment about the original DS.

See what’s interesting is that I’m not a gamer at all and yet this push Nintendo are doing is actually pushing the right buttons for me, so they must be doing something correctly right?

Guy Howard emailed me on Tuesday asking me whether or not I wanted a free LG Chocolate phone to test out. So off I went to see what this promotion was all about.

From the site itself:

They realise that consumer-to-consumer recommendations carry a higher trust factor than virtually all other forms of advertising, and that word of mouth is a frequent factor for purchase. They also recognise that bloggers are the most important initiators of online conversation right now.

Hence this programme. The premise is simple:

1. Connect with the key online design/style/fashion 'thinkers'
2. Send them a pre-release version of the phone
3. Let them use it
4. Find out what they think

I can sum it up very simply. I’m a complete whore. Free shit? Hell I’ll take 2.

Now bare in mind that I recently went through a pretty painful experience to try and find the phone and package of choice for me. I will say that I’ve pretty much got it wrong on the package that I chose and I’ll be changing that very very shortly. The phone I have though in my mind was the best on the market. Sony seemed to have got it right this time. So how has does the LG Chocolate compare to what I considered a pretty damn solid phone, in fact the most solid phone IMHO to date?

The packaging The first thing I noticed of course was the AMAZING packaging. LG have seriously given this some thought and it really shows. Traditionally mobile phone boxes come in these ugly square things plastered with stickers. The box is more like a showcase rather than anything else. It’s a slender black rectangle that closes with a magnetic flap. Opening it up reveals a red back with just the LG logo on it and then the phone sits nicely in the middle with two compartments on either side where all the accessories are housed. If you’re reading this going why the hell is he telling us about the box; I’m telling you about the box because it’s bloody important (and yes I was the kid that used to throw away the toy and go mental with the actual box…I still do that). I opened this at work and was ranting and raving at how cool this box looked, Tim on the other side of the partition asked me if it’s a better box than the ipod, which it really is.

The Innovation It’s one of those phones that does provide a glimse of the future and provides some innovative steps in mobile phone design. I’m specifically talking about the touch sensetive pad at the bottom of the phone. When it’s closed you don’t see anything but a smooth shiney surface. Once you’ve opened it however you get the buttons glowing red from behind and they’re not actually buttons. So the problems seen on the Sony any many other phones is gone. Give if a few years and most phones will have this technology employed as standard.

The good Apart from the elements above I’ll say that I was very impressed with the earphone system they’ve decided to employ. While Sony have decided to have a special sony input for the earphones, with a completely seperate accessory to enable you to use a normal earphone jack, LG have enabled this feature from the start which is just good forethought in my eyes. And the remote controller is also very cool as well.

The bad It’s about the details for me. For some strange reason in an attempt to make everything slick and seamless many electronics manufacturers seem to skimp on a very basic element of product design. I’m specifically talking about flaps. Flaps are notoriously badly designed it makes me wonder how all these different manufacturers get it wrong across the board. The most specific example that comes to my mind is my recent purchase of my Kodak digi camera (yeah I haven’t really talked about this because I’ve not really used it extensively but my trip to America should remedy that situation). The flap that opens up for the memory card is this flimsy piece of metal that gets pulled back and is held onto the phone by two very thin bits of plastic. It’s basically asking to be broken in the future.

The second thing that’s not all that hot is the phone. It’s only 1.3 megapixels, so it’s back to the grainy photos of old. See I was getting used to my 2 megapixel camera on the Sony and so I don’t expect to go back in this department. But as Tracey rightly pointed out, you never do anything with the photos on your phone, this is very true of the average user…I’m a bit weird and different like that. I tend to take loads of snappy snaps of things that inspire me that I can draw or more importantly I can use in my drawings, so the reduction in definition of the camera is a bit annoying. Guess I’m going to have to start carrying my normal camera some more from now on.

It’s pretty obvious based on this promotion and other things that LG are pretty proud of the phone they’ve come up with here. They’ve definitely taken a page from Apple and tried to simplify things as much as possible and get clever product designers on board.

I’ve been keeping up with a lot of my feeds lately, mainly because I’m still waiting for version 0.4 of FOF Redux (which should hopefully have the new interface as part of the new features) but anyway. Paul’s done a nice little writeup of the new linux XGL OS from Novell. This news comes at an interesting time since we’re all waiting on Vista to come out. I’ve got to say that XGL looks oh so much more impressive than Vista…by a good long way.

If only Adobe would release it’s products for use on Linux, I might actually consider moving over to the Linux environment. Hell I’ve even started using it a work right now (for daylighting simulations).

Wikipedia on your ipod!!!? Haven’t tried this yet, but damn that does look pretty cool. Thing is though my phone has got a better screen than my ipod mini and the battery lasts longer, so does anyone know of something similiar for a mobile phone?

I’ve been completely obssessed with Red Out Racer from Kiloo. This is a game for my k750i and I’ve got to say it’s one of the most amazing and addictive games found on a mobile phone EVER. It’s effectively a mini version of WipeOut, complete with all the options you’ve come to expect from that game:

• 4 different pods (although I've not gotten to that stage yet)
• 16 different stages
• 7 different powerups
• 4 different game modes
• And a complete electronic sound track which effectively goes hand in hand with a WipeOut style game.

The graphic menus are all animated and this game seriously raises the bar in games on a friggin phone! The gameplay is just as addictive as on WipeOut and while I do wish the joystick was better, once you get used it you don’t really think about it much.

Now that I know that this level of game exists I’m seriously going to start looking around. The thing is while this works for me, as it’s my gaming console because of it’s size and the fact that’s it’s my phone so I’m going to carry it around with me anyway.

This whole experience got me thinking about the PSP. I originally thought that I would buy the PSP, but I can’t see myself taking it out and playing with it on the tube or anything like that; which doesn’t seem to be a strange way to think as I’ve never seen anyone on the tube or elsewhere using it out and about. Where does everyone use their PSP and isn’t it obtrusive for carrying around?

Knowing full well how the Apple fans out there are going to latch onto this, let me just say that I am not an Apple basher, nor am I a Microsoft fan. I don’t like corporations, but that’s another story for another time. Right now I’m going to talk about hand held gadgets. I seriously doubt it can be disputed that the single most successful single kind of gadget of the last few years has been the Ipod. It’s come in so many flavours I can’t even be bothered to try and hunt them down. Apple seems intent on releasing a new version every 6 months or something, which is nice for them, and sometimes for the consumer, as it’s generally a good product. It’s got it’s flaws but I’m not going to get into that here.

What I’m going to talk about is the DEATH of the Ipod. See the thing is Apple has foreseen this little fact. The first hint was in the advent of the Itunes phone monstrosity with Motorola. You see Apple can see what Sony Ericsson are up to. They’re trying to make the ultimate gadget. When I was growing up, everyone had to have a swiss army knife. I still have mine, and it’s one of the best constructed things in the world. When growing up, I couldn’t think of a single day without using it in some capacity or other.

The mobile phone will eventually become the swiss army knife of a the digital era.

I say will become, because I don’t feel they’re quite there yet, although they are trying their hardest. For some strange reason the mobile phone hasn’t really taken off in the States, even though their Canadian neighbors and the pioneers in the communications department. The mobile phone has evolved into a great deal more than just a phone. I only appreciated this little fact with my latest purchase, not because I hadn’t really thought about it, but rather because I hadn’t experienced it first hand.

Within this little bundle, I’ve got myself an email server (an gmails coming my way I can check upon them), phone (d’uh), 2 megapixel camera (with all sorts of bells and whistles, b&w, colour filters etc), mp3 player, radio, flashlight (complete with SOS sequence in case I need that), organiser, address book, and the list goes on. Every year that passes by the phones get more capabilities in them, and more features added to them. Flash memory card are always increasing while staying the same size (thus keeping the camera size down). All this in 1 SINGLE GADGET.

There are a few short comings however with the K750i, and Digital Swiss Army Knives right now. They’re trying hard to be the ultimate gadget, but I think they’re a few years from achieving that status. For example I’d like the ability to jack any headphones directly into the phone (I think the W800 has that capability), but that’s a minor quibble.

The beauty of all of this is Apple know the end is nigh (sue me I’m trying to be poetic), which is why they’re starting to creep into the market. They’ve actually taken a page from Sony however and decided not to jump into things on their own (like Sony originally did before they did the smart thing and joined forces with an established player). They’re partnering up with someone that’s got a bit of experience in the market, shame they went with the worst of the available phones manufacturers on the market. Motorola are known for providing shit phones. Lovely designs (usually), however crap capabilities and useless reliability. I’ve got to say that it seems someone was asleep at the wheel doing the design of the ROKR (can that phone be any uglier?). Maybe Apple should have joined forces with Nokia, who are known as the rock solid ones. Stability and simplicity is what Nokia pride themselves on.

So will the Ipod die any time soon? Doubt it, but think back to what mobile phones were two years ago, now think what they’ll be capable of in 2 years time from now. Will you really be content with carrying an mp3 player, a digital camera, a phone or would you rather just have everything in one complete package? I know what I’ll be up for.

Oh yeah and could the twat who's trying to spam me, please quit it, you're not getting through, and you haven't been all day, give up asshole.

I’ve been having a weird phone day today. As mentioned before, I’m really not a mobile phone user per say. However due to circumstances I’ve decided to yield and as such I bit the bullet and ordered something. That’s when the drama started.

So I’m supposed to get the phone the next day. I had to go through a few hoops to get the damn thing sent to my work address, but I thought it was worth it, having it delivered to a place I might actually be there to receive it rather than 11 o’clock on a god damn weekday.

I waited, and waited and nothing. So I gave the good people a ring to see what the delay was all about. This is when I was informed that my phone was out of stock and had been this way for a good long while, something like 2 months!!! So I said listen I’ll wait a week or even 2 but 2 months and still no word is a bit on the stupid side. So I canceled the order. I knew I wanted a new phone, and needed one in many respects, however I had my heart set on the Sony k750i and I wanted a specific tariff with that.

So I just let it lull for a while. I didn’t receive any confirmation of my cancellation, so I sent them an email asking to confirm the cancellation. I got that yesterday.

Walked into work today and the nice receptionist provided me with a package, with my new mobile phone. I mean seriously WTF? Go to lunch, and I decide to forget my old phone in the restaurant, luckily my buddy picked up, shame I won’t see him till to tomorrow, so none of my contacts will be transfered till tomorrow. Still though could be worse.

Still learning the ropes, trying to get to grips with the thing. I’ll be sure to give an indepth review of the thing after I’ve played around with it a bit more.

Apart from the completely unfortunate name, the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a great little application. It’s generally accepted that it’s got the power of Photoshop, with the exception of a few features (probably more, but I’m not going to get into that right now). The obvious advantage of this all being the fact that it’s under a GPL licesense and completely free to do with as you wish; which many people have and created GIMPShop, which basically does a pretty good job of emulating Photoshop in many respects.

So why is it that I can’t bring myself to use the damn program?

I think it’s a mixture of things; maybe it’s the clunky pointer, maybe it’s the overall feel of the program that doesn’t have that polished Photoshop look. Maybe it’s the huge icons that distract you. Honestly it’s a combination of all of these things, plus it doesn’t feel like my black pencil. I’ll explain.

When I started drawing properly (as opposed to for fun and without purpose since I was like 5 years old) I bought a range of equipment. A ruler, some erasers, paper, ink, and a mechanical pencil. The last item is very important as I’ve kept that pencil since I was 13 years old. It used to have writing on the side of it, now it’s just a cheap and old black plastic mechanical pencil with a 0.5 nib. Honestly nothing to write home about, and yet without it I couldn’t draw anything. For me it’s got the perfect shape and weight that I can’t be creative without it anymore. A while back I went out and bought an exceptionally expensive Rotring alternative, only to use it once, realise that it just wasn’t even close and went back to my old and tested pencil.

I guess the point is that Photoshop to me is like my pencil, it’s got the right shape and weight and I understand it, I enjoy using it. The GIMP still needs some serious work to get to that level of usability for me, which is unfortunate as I’d like to use and support good Open Source projects, it’s the future.

Update: Probably going to be offline throughout the weekend, while I sort my PC out. I'm going to load up a linux distro from CD to see if it's actually a windows fuck up. Hopefully that's all it is, and I can retrieve most of my data, and then simply format the box and start a fresh.

Nope. I’ve already posted about my little problems with my computer last week. Unfortunately my salvation job of the hardrive hasn’t worked, and this morning, my computer wasn’t working.

This morning I go to boot it up check mails etc, and bam, nothing. It loads up the windows xp image goes to load windows, and then blue screen for a second and then restarts.

Recovery mode doesn’t want to play ball either.

Does this sound like a software or hardware problem? It does check the hardware apparently, and I do get to the actual xp screen, just doesn’t seem to want to load anything else. (I’ve got my stuff backed up, except for the project I was working on this week) which is why I’m not freaking out, but still, I’d rather not try and format the harddisc…or maybe I don’t have a choice.

See I REALLY don’t give a monkey’s what’s in my box. I could care less, really. All I care about is reliability, stability and performance. I never want to contact the manufacturer for support because it’s a bad scenario. You don’t want to be dealing with this, therefore you’re a bit tetchy. They don’t want to be dealing with irate customers on the other line, so they’re less than helpful most times.

What annoys me even more is the fact that I know getting through to Mesh Computers Technical support (computer is still under warranty) is going to be like getting an interview with god.

Luckily I’ve saved all my files, except for BKV4. Really annoying as I was completely in the zone there. I was around 70% there, and was planning on going live this weekend. The code was the cleanest I’ve ever done, I actually understood what I was doing with it all, and all for nothing. Fucks sake.

So I’m waiting for Stathis to get his lazy ass to the station, and seeing as I was a little bit early I went into the nearest store to check the latest magazines. While I’m in there I noticed the latest Wired issue. Now bear in mind I’ve never bought Wired in my life. It had a little title about blogging in the army which caught my eye, which was the reason I picked it up in the first place.

For some strange reason I didn’t actually notice the god damn cover itself. I wasn’t really interested in the rest of it. Except I really should have been. The cover story is about the Internet turning 10 years old. Yup Netscape IPO went live on the 9th of August 1995.

I didn’t realise this until I wrote this post that it seems you can read all the Wired articles online! So if you want to read what I’m talking about, the article is found here.

The article is written by Kevin Kelly, and in my mind is the article of the year; or at least the article I’ve enjoyed the most this year. It’s pretty lengthy, with the start telling you about the birth of the Internet and where everyone was predicting it would go. What makes the article shine is where Kevin starts to extrapolate as to where the Internet could potentially be in 10 years time from now.

Think about it, would you have been able to predict 10 years ago, Gmail, Google Maps, Ebay, Paypal, Amazon, Blogging, Open Source, Online Communities, P2P File sharing, Wikipedia? Kevin tries to do that, even though he claims he’s got absolutely no chance, I think he makes a gallant effort, and written a great article that made me smile for a long while after I read it.

Obviously it got me thinking when I actually started using the internet, and I’d probably say it was around September 1997. 2 years after the fact. Not sure when net access hit Greece, but I’m pretty certain it was during my ‘I’m not going to touch computers phase’. In 1997 my frequent areas were the Wildstorm forums, and yahoo. Times change.

GoogleGrab. Not tried this yet but looks pretty interesting.

Just got my Alpha invite to Feedlounge, which as you can expect from the name is an online RSS feed aggregator. Why the hell would you want one of those you ask? Well if you’re like me, I like to keep on top of things both from home and from work. I’ll check my RSS feeds every few hours when I need a break and life goes on. For the posts that take a little longer than a mere glance at I kinda try and keep a mental note to check them out when I get home and have some better time to thing about them.

Problem is I keep adding feeds on a daily basis. This makes my home list massive compared to my work one. Add to the fact that NOTHING is sacred to the IT staff at work, and I’m stuck to thinking that there has to be a better way.

Enter Feedlounge. I’ve only played around with it for like 5 minutes and already I really like what I’m seeing. Bearing in mind that this is still in Alpha, it’s a very tidy little online application. The design is very minimal, but has all the information that is required.

There is a serious dollop of AJAX in there, and that does make things seem more like a desktop application, which is a very good thing. Hopefully with all the new alpha members little niggling things like horizontal scrolls with the scroll wheel will actually start working.

It’s going to take a really good online application to make me stop using Sage for Firefox, and this might be just the right thing.

BadApple software from BadFruit presents an ipod plugin that provides itunes with podcasting support. I’ll try this tonight and see if I can get into this pod casting malarky.

Now see this is interesting. Basically it’s a javascript you install on your server and link up your header to it. Dumbs everything down so that the way it was coded for a web compliant browser shows up on IE.

The website is courtesy of one Dean Edwards. I would have loved this for version 1.0 of Broken Kode.

Thankfully Manji doesn’t have too many cross-browser glitches. I know full well of 3 of them and I’m trying to resolve them right now. I’ve already sorted out a couple of glitches thanks to the guys on the forum and just general tinkering. If you’ve seen any others just give me a shout on the forums, or e-mail me.

I’ve built the index page for the 1.2 version as well, and now it’s a matter of getting all the other pages sorted. Hopefully an alpha version of 1.2 will come out this sunday as well.

Also I’m going to start spotlighting Manji themes that I come across that make me smile. I’ve already talked about Paul’s This is not a love story, thought I’d include:

What I love about it are the colours actually. They’re so muted and yet vibrant at the same time. And while he says he doesn’t like the header I think it gives the entire site a certain painted feeling, tying everything in. Subtle, but he uses all that space given in the default to his advantage. Using his space like an open canvas.

Oh yeah like I could resist not posting something about this. The new version of Blender is out, and I swear all the arguements I’ve been having with Franchesco regarding the undo system is completely moot now.

Previously in the moving of objects there was NO UNDO. This I felt was a pretty weak aspect of Blender. As you can imagine I was a bit miffed by this, took me a day and I accecpted it. Version 2.35 has addressed this and a whole bunch of other issues as well. I’m pretty damn excited in case you hadn’t noticed.

Damn, I’ve been spending a lot more time learning blender (that animation isn’t mine by the way, off google), and the more I get into it the more impressed I generally am by this application. It’s pretty damn powerful stuff. Once you get past the whole setup really it’s a lovely little program, that’s got all the capabilities of the big boys. Fair enough the way you go about things is pretty strange at first but it does make working faster a possibility once you know all the shortcuts.

Don’t be put off by it’s small size, it’s like 2.43Mb, which is tiny. That’s less than an mp3 song. The development team rewrote the code from the ground up and generally did an awesome job compressing the hell out of it. I’ll be posting some stuff in the not too distant future I’m sure. In the meantime if you want to see what is actually achievable using this program check out the following two sites, blender.org and blender3d.org. The first site is for developers and community and news, while the second is where the gallery is, where you can download the program and the overall front page of the package. Very professional stuff going on there.

Don’t forget to download FireFox Version 1.0 tomorrow. Dude it’s going to be great. Would like to know what the difference between this and the preview version there is because there was a pretty significant change between that and version 0.9.

I’ve been technologically completely in the dark this past year and a half. Usually I make an effort to try and keep up to date with the goings on in technology, and specifically personnal technology. One step ahead. I’ve been stuck in a rut for a while now. I mean I only got a digital camera like 1 week ago, and to be honest while it’s good for snappy snaps, that’s really all it does. I’ll have it in my bag all the time for those times that I say damn I wish I had a camera now.

So where am I at technologically right now? Well my computer is dead, so I’ve hunted down and found a brilliant solution in mesh computers, so that’s phase one.

About 2 months ago my earphones died on me. These things have lasted with me for over 4 years so really it was about time. The newest addition to my haven are these pretty funky ones, Sennheiser. They’re german and have a case like those for sunglasses.

Which leaves me thinking about two things really. Peronnal Music player and Mobile Phone. I’m still stuck on a 2 year old Ericsson that’s had better days, and a sony mini-disc player. Both running fine, but to be honest that technology has been superceded several times.

So I’ve been looking around for replacements for both. In this first installment I’ll tackle my mp3 player needs first. There are several contenders from 3 seperate companies iriver, the ipod, and finally sony. So I decided to do a bit of net research and see what the internet buzz on this topic is.

Well the best quote I got online, at an amazon review was a guy who said very aptly, people with style get an ipod, people with sense get an iriver

Iriver has got like 2 different models that are going strong right now. The H100 series and the H300 series. Depending on the storage capacity you add the suffix on the end. 10GB, 20GB and 40GB, yeah very very Ipod I hear you say, this is true, however it seems that the iriver is one step ahead of the ipod. The 300 series which isn’t exactly cheap or anything comes with a colour TFT screen, so you know that will be the next evolution of the ipod. The amount of stuff it can do is pretty impressive, from play mpgs to the in-built radio to the actual lcd screen on the remote control. I guess the only thing going against the 300 series is predominantly the damn cost and more importantly is that it’s as ugly as sin.

I will say this though, the H100 series does look pretty sweet, but I think I’ll wait for the next version of the H320 series, the next generation hopefully they’ll go back to how their H100 series is looing.

I haven’t been a gamer in over 8 years, with the exception of Final Fantasy VII, and yet I can’t help but get excited about the PSP. The design of this thing is out of this world. It just looks like something I must have, even though I doubt I’ll be actually be using it all that much, since games are waaaay to expensive in my eyes. And since there is no way you can get those particular things cheaper, legally or illegally I doubt I’ll buy one. But damn does it look good. Go have a look here . Oh screw it have a look right here :).

Get FireFox Now! Tell them I sent you there. Man I’m well excited about this. Firefox has transformed my web-browsing experience, and there’s a reason for that. I’m currently using the Noria Extreme skin which is pretty funky. I was using the Mozilla Netscape for a while now, but I need something different.