Category Software

The MetaSocial

Yahoo! seems to have yet another social networking site in the works, after the failed 360° and the still in beta mash. Its name is Kickstart. This new network seems to position itself somewhere between LinkedIn and the original Facebook, trying to map student relationships and match them to employer requirements. I really fail to […]

Android and the Open Handset Alliance.

Apple may have produced a great, polished and closed device in the iPhone. Revolutionary? Nope, but very impressive nevertheless. As a device, as a user interface and — soon — as a platform. Yet in some years from now, what will probably be the iPhone’s single most significant contribution to the world was the belief […]

Leopard UI flaws

Apple likes showing off. In Leopard lots of things are improved, the UI is more consistent and polished. Yet there are a number of completely ridiculous aspects of it that go quite a long way towards demolishing Apple's reputation as a leader in UI design. Take for example the new Dock, which besides completely pointless is also an ergonomic nightmare, heavy on resources and ugly. Did I mention pointless? (Thanks to the_unknown_Apple_dev for the no-glass option!). The linked blog entry more or less sums up most of the things I found completely, utterly stupid while looking at Leopard images and videos online. I've got some more, such as the relatively dark gray 'platinum' look (I prefer the lighter gray of the 'inactive' windows), CoverFlow (mostly useless in the Finder if you ask me), the proliferation of etched text among others. [via daring fireball] Update: As usual, a really good and thorough review of Leopard by John Siracusa, can be found at ArsTechnica.

Guitar Rig 3

Also read the Guitar Rig 4 Mini-Review A bit more than a year ago I wrote about Guitar Rig 2, Native Instruments’ flagship product for Guitarists. Guitar Rig 2 was an excellent product in most ways, with exceptional sound quality, a solid foot controller and several improvements over the original. About two years since Guitar […]

iPhone iNsecurities…

When Steve Jobs claimed that there would not be an iPhone SDK in early 2007, citing security as the main reason behind Apple's decision, a considerable part of the IT press, bloggers, and engineers dismissed his claims as ludicrous. After all, this was 2007, and Apple had Mac OS X, a relatively secure OS and had demonstrated a policy of aggressively fixing bugs in its operating system and application software in recent years. Then it became known that the iPhone software was running with superuser privileges on the device, the iPhone was very quickly hacked into and Jobs announced an upcoming SDK for February 2008. With 1.2 million iPhones sold in three months, and about 250,000 of them already 'unlocked', this is starting to look like a security nightmare. One would think that Apple knew better...

LinuxMCE and Usability

Some months ago I discovered LinuxMCE, a software suite that sits on top of Kubuntu and provides a complete media centre/smarthome/voip/home security solution with truly world class features. I got to rediscover it in mid September this year after I watched this demonstration video. The project is impressive with its rich feature list, its expandability […]

Open Sesam…err iPhone.

A few completely unfounded (arguably bordering on stupid) excuses by salesman Steve. GBs of criticism on the web. A botched attempt at Reality Distortion. Numerous hacks. Dozens of semi-illegal third-party applications. Many bricked iPhones. And, now? Apple's spectacular realisation that the iPhone won't glitter forever. It was about time Apple did things right. The industry is not kidding. This is only the beginning...

Gizmo5, and Gizmo Project's Paypal issues.

Just recently Gizmo Project announced its Gizmo5 beta, a service that allows users of mobile phones to place calls for very low rates through a MIDP Gizmo client. A data connection is required just for setting up the call. In other words, the idea is that you pick a contact (or dial the number you […]

The UI Ghosts

A common joke amongst Mac developers is talking about the Apple HIG, or more specifically the subject of how Apple manages to flout every single principle in user interface design and especially its own in successive revisions of OS X. I've written about this, in one way or another, several times ever since Jaguar came out in August 2002 and the first signs of this disturbing trend became obvious. New UI widgets, new styles and disregard to the HIG continued over the years with Panther, Tiger and now Leopard --- each revision bringing its own flavour of user interface widgets, colour themes and designs, each proving that Apple has no idea what 'consistency' means and that contrary to what they may tell you you should write your own custom widgets or you're probably screwed if you don't (Apple probably writes and uses more undocumented and custom widgets and controls than anyone). With Aqua so close to becoming part of UI history and Leopard just around the corner, bringing with it yet another completely different UI theme to OS X, it should probably not be surprising when Apple's own Developer Connection web site sports such an inconsistent look. The UI ghosts of yesteryear are still around!

Shuttleworth's Interview at Open Season

There is a very interesting interview with Mark Shuttleworth, the guy that started and funds Ubuntu development through his company, Canonical. The interview is interesting for several reasons: First it exposes what many linux users don't get: compiz fusion and the eyecandy is nothing but the icing on the (missing) cake. There needs to be additional effort to turn all this amazing technology into coherent, useful software. Second, it demonstrates some of the issues behind Open Source development and some ways that they can be resolved. Finally, it covers the major problems facing OpenOffice.org, tries to explain why they're there and takes a look at the rest of the industry and its relations to Ubuntu and linux. Worth listening.