Category Technology

Το Τριπλό Παράδοξο

Στις αρχές του 2007 έγραφα για τις αστείες, τότε, διαφημίσεις της Forthnet που μιλούσαν για Triple Play όταν ούτε καν Double Play δεν ήταν διαθέσιμο, για τη τραγική κατάσταση της ευρυζωνικότητος στην Ελλάδα σε σχέση με προηγμένες — στον τομέα — χώρες και, εν ολίγοις, το γεγονός πως εταιρίες και κυβερνήσεις των οποίων η ρητορική […]

The AthensBook.

The AthensBook — Commemorative 1.0.0 Poster
Μετά από μερικούς μήνες part-time δουλειάς, αρκετό ψάξιμο, πολύ coding, ακόμη περισσότερο design, άπειρο data acquisition, data mining, quality assurance και δοκιμών αλλά προ πάντων με πολύ μεράκι, το AthensBook σήμερα βγήκε από το καβούκι του και περνά από τα χέρια δυο ανθρώπων στα χέρια όλων σας. Τα πολλά λόγια είναι φτώχεια --- αν έχετε iPhone μπορείτε να το εγκαταστήσετε άμεσα από το AppStore. Εαν όχι, και μένετε στην Αθήνα, μάλλον θα θέλετε να αποκτήσετε ένα iPhone (ακόμη περισσότερο απ'ότι θέλατε πριν). Ή όχι. Όπως και να έχει: Enjoy! Αυτό είναι μόνον η αρχή! =)

Change layer content in PS CS4.

Or rather, someone please change Adobe’s mind. Today I spent some time looking online for what’s changed in the latest version of Photoshop (CS4). Along with numerous improvements across the board, I stumbled on a number of posts in forums and a few blogs on the ‘Change layer content’ menu removal. This is unbelievably bad […]

TED2009 — Part II

The second day of TED2009 was somewhat more interesting. Oliver Sacks, probably most known (if at all) by the masses for his book Awakenings, upon which the synonymous movie was based. His presentation kickstarted the day focusing on syndromes that affect people with limited vision. One symptom is the creation or fusion of vision with […]

TED2009 — Part I

This year I watched, along with a few friends and acquaintances of mine, TED 2009 over the ‘net. The experience was — overall — positive, although there were quite a few surprises (more on that later). In this post I’ll summarise some of the talks that made an impression (negative or positive) to me. I’m […]

Objectified (2009)

Having seen Helvetica, I can't wait for Objectified to come out in a few months time. If you're one of those enjoying (industrial) design, appreciating usability, but demanding æsthetics, this movie is probably for you too. Sadly, I doubt it's going to be in any cinemas in Hellas, given that there aren't any arthouse movie theatres around here, really.

An ISP is not a court.

The saga continues, with the music industry attempting to subvert the law in Europe and turn ISPs into policy enforcers and courts of law all at once. With ever higher profits in 2008, and a pretty grim record of accusing and prosecuting the elderly, single mothers with no computers etc. in the States, it seems like the music industry would rather hand the dirty job over to ISPs. This is, besides illegal, pretty prone to error --- as history has shown. I'm really looking forward to the next settlement Eircom will reach, this time with wrongly-accused (and disconnected) individuals. Hopefully it'll be more than enough to compensate for their stupidity.

A Dotted-Zero Droid Sans Mono

For the programmers out there. Now that the controversy regarding the licence of the Droid font family included in Android is over --- and it's clear that the fonts are licensed under the Apache licence --- I am releasing a dotted version of the Droid Sans Mono, monospaced font that I am using for development (usually its either that or Liberation Mono nowadays). I prefer the dotted zero to a slashed zero in most monospaced fonts. More information can be found in the software page. I used FontForge to edit the font, so --- since some of the hinting instructions are not supported by this application --- I've scraped them and used the built-in autohinter. If you wish to use the modified font, they are --- of course --- also provided under the Apache licence, like the original. As always, your comments are very welcome.

Happy 25th!

Macintosh 128kToday is the birthday of the Mac. And while Steve Jobs may not care about the past, a quarter of a century after its introduction, the paradigms made popular by the original Macintosh (and, arguably, the Lisa before it) are still very much relevant in the present and there's very little proof that they won't be in the near future. The original Mac suffered from the same deficiencies so many Macintosh computers suffered over these 25 years since its introduction: low specification hardware (viz. 128KB of RAM), few upgradeability options, a closed ecosystem. Yet it also kickstarted an era of intense innovation and competition, perhaps the golden era of personal computing and marked the beginnings of the Mac's role in personal computing. While Apple's focus has drifted away from the Mac as its sole strategic product in recent years, the platform is today as important as healthy as ever. Happy Birthday Macintosh! Image used under the GFDL licence. Originally by Wikipedia user Grm_Wnr.

Τέλος Εποχής

Η ερμήνευση της — προσωρινής, έστω — αποχώρησης του Στήβ Τζόμπς από την θέση του διευθύνοντα συμβούλου της Apple ως ένα από τα σημαντικότερα γεγονότα της τελευταίας δεκαετίας στον χώρο της βιομηχανίας προσωπικών υπολογιστών σε καμία περίπτωση δε θα μπορούσε να χαρακτηρισθεί ως υπερβολική. Η Apple, μια εταιρία θρύλος που εδώ και κάποιες δεκαετίες ορίζει […]