Next from Apple: A large-screen iPod Touch?
January 5, 2009
The latest iPod Touch is a nifty little gizmo that does a lot more than play tunes, but I've always found its 3.5-inch screen too tiny for watching movies or serious Web browsing. After a few minutes of screen-tapping or finger-dragging to view Web pages designed for larger displays, well, things get tedious in a hurry. And movies? Better bring a magnifying glass.
No doubt there's a market for a bigger-screen iPod Touch, and if the latest rumours are true, that's exactly what Apple has in mind. A report from Michael Arrington of TechCrunch says that Apple is developed a Touch device with a 7- or 9-inch display, which is plenty big for video-watching, Web-surfing, gaming, and possibly even conventional desktop apps.
Digital Arts | Jeff Bertolucci | Read more...
XP's death: Slightly exaggerated -- again
December 23, 2008
Windows XP has risen from the dead more times than Bela Lugosi. And it just happened again.
Microsoft has quietly informed system makers that, if they place their orders before January 31, 2009, they can get XP delivered through the end of May. It's what they call a "flexible inventory program," according to ChannelWeb. I call it Microsoft desperately trying to cover its assets with both hands.
Digital Arts | Robert X Cringely | Read more...
Will 2009 (finally) be Blu-ray’s year?
December 23, 2008
Sales of Blu-ray players in 2008 aren't exactly stellar, despite lower prices and the lack of competition from the recently departed HD-DVD format. But are things looking up for Blu-ray? Recent reports indicate that 2009 may bring better times for Sony's high-def video format.
According to a report from Futuresource, sales of Blu-ray discs and players in Europe are up significantly this holiday season, and the upswing is expected to continue into the new year. The report optimistically predicts that European sales of Blu-ray players will more than triple in 2009, reaching 2.5 million units-and that excludes sales of Playstation 3 consoles, which double as Blu-ray players.
Digital Arts | Jeff Bertolucci | Read more...
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4: A user's perspective
December 22, 2008
Adobe Systems released the last version of its premier Web design software, Dreamweaver CS3 , in April 2007. Now, only a year and a half later, the company has already introduced a brand new version, Dreamweaver CS4 . Savvy Web page designers are probably asking themselves "Is this update worth it?"
In two words: You betcha.
Digital Arts | Ross M Greenberg | Read more...
In business, it's better to be mediocre than great
December 18, 2008
Don't try so hard. Because when it comes to luring clients, "consistently mediocre" tops "inconsistently amazing" most of the time.
That's according to PJ Lamberson, a visiting professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, who found that firms that deliver mediocre products do better in the long run than those that are less consistent, even if their products occasionally rise to the level of insanely great.
Digital Arts | Jeff Bertolucci | Read more...
Google falsely accused of abandoning Net neutrality
December 16, 2008
New York-based newspaper The Wall Street Journal has posted an article claiming that Google, as well as other Net neutrality advocates, were abandoning or softening their views on Net neutrality.
The Wall Street Journal specifically attacks Google's OpenEdge project as a means by which Google can have its own content given bandwidth priority over other web sites. Before we go into a terrified panic that Google is abandoning Net neutrality for its own nefarious purposes, how about we look at what OpenEdge actually does.
Digital Arts | Scott Nichols | Read more...
Monitoring your MacBook's battery
December 11, 2008
Reader Karl Schwartz believes his laptop's battery is troubled enough that it needs analysis. He writes:
I have a 15" MacBook Pro and was wondering if there was a built-in diagnostic to analyze my battery.
Digital Arts | Christopher Breen | Read more...
HOW TO: Open Docx files - even without Office 2007
December 10, 2008
Another version of Microsoft Office, another set of file-compatibility hassles. (No, really, thanks a ton, Microsoft.) Office 2007 brought with it the Docx format, which can't easily be opened by anyone who doesn't also have Office 2007.
Option #1: Install the succinctly named Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for 2007 Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Format. It enables older versions of Office to open Office 2007 documents, and it does all the necessary conversion behind the scenes: no input required from you. (Just make sure you've installed the latest service pack for your version of Office, otherwise the Compatibility Pack won't work.)
Digital Arts | Rick Broida | Read more...
The best mice (which aren't always mice)
December 10, 2008
It's difficult to believe the mouse has been around for 40 years. (Even more difficult to believe, for me personally, is that I've been using one mouse or another for nearly a quarter of a century!) Forty years is an eternity in technology, and today's input devices barely resemble those of the 1960s.
As a longstanding input-device geek, I've had the pleasure of testing many mice and mouse alternatives over the years. Here are my favorite current devices for moving a cursor around a screen (which means the iPhone's touchscreen interface doesn't count). They show just how far input devices have come since that first electronic rodent.
Digital Arts | Dan Frakes | Read more...
Imagining an Apple netbook
December 10, 2008
But the eMate 300 was--and still is--a cool piece of tech. It featured a 480-by-320 pixel display, set in landscape orientation, inside a "clamshell"-style case, complete with stylus and keyboard. The eMate 300 was envisioned as a Newton for the classroom--a way to get computers into the hands of kids before Apple engineered the iBook. The device had no moving parts, and I remember Apple booth monkeys at Macworld Expo Boston, set up in a tent across the street from Boston's World Trade Center, dropping the eMate 300 onto concrete to show how tough it was.
The eMate 300 suffered the same fate as other Newton devices in early 1998. A lot of explanations have been put forth as to why--the Newton business wasn't making the money that Apple needed it to; the Newton itself reminded Steve Jobs too much of John Sculley, and so on. But the bottom line is that the eMate 300 really never had much of a chance for success.
Digital Arts | Peter Cohen | Read more...
How safe is your Gmail?
December 9, 2008
I answer my own question: is the information in your Gmail messages and other Google apps safe from data disasters?
Personally, I'm a fanatic about backing up. My first rule of computing: Never have only one copy of anything.
Digital Arts | Lincoln Spector | Read more...
Apple touts MacBooks' greenness
November 26, 2008
Apple isn't what you would call a Greenpeace darling, though few multinational corporations are. That being said, Apple has been trying to clean up its environmental act in recent years, and now the company is aggressively advertising the green merits of the MacBook lineup with a new television ad.
A new Apple Web site proudly proclaims that the new MacBooks are "the world's greenest family of notebooks." Citing the reduced packaging (I recently got a new MacBook Pro and the box was barely bigger than the machine it was protecting), LED screen, ENERGY STAR certification, and enhanced power management (who know the processor throttles back between keystrokes?) as the centerpieces of the new, eco-friendly MacBook Apple is cashing on the green movement.
Digital Arts | Scott McNulty | Read more...
Keeping up with the Phonses
November 25, 2008
So most of us when down the pub take our phone out and put it on the table. This behaviour tends to be part security blanket, part conceit (you are so important that you couldn’t possibly miss a call), and part ‘phoneupmanship’ to show off your most recent acquisition.
Recently I haven’t been taking out my phone. I’ve been ashamed – especially given what I do for a living – because I don’t have an iPhone. Worse still I don’t even have an Android phone. In fact I have a perfectly functional but not terribly sexy Nokia N82.
Lateral thinking | Jon Bains | Read more...
YouTube experiments with high-quality video
November 24, 2008
Searching for YouTube videos is fun, but the videos are usually of such a low, compressed quality that sometimes it's hard to actually see what is going on. But YouTube is trying to fix that problem. It already supplies one option: You can set your YouTube account settings to play HD video when available, or you can attach "&fmt=18" to the end of the URL to display videos in a higher 480x260 quality. But now YouTube is supporting an even higher quality 1280x720 video format (identified by "&fmt=22" at the end of a link). The results are a pretty dramatic difference.
The downside is that very few videos support the higher resolution. Most people who upload YouTube videos do so with the video already compressed. If the video wasn't uploaded in a higher resolution video format, then using the new suffix doesn't change anything, and that lower quality remains a vast majority of the YouTube library. Unless YouTube actually starts making an effort to attract HD content, or better advertise the HD content it already has, I'm not sure that this will make much of an impact.
Digital Arts | Scott Nichols | Read more...
Elven Legacy: Colorful, Nonlinear and Turn-Based
November 21, 2008
Check out the new trailer for Paradox and 1C Publishing's Elven Legacy, a fantasy strategy game that looks real-time but isn't. I know, an honest-to-goodness turn-based strategy game without Stukas or Spitfires or Tigers or U-boats! It's like spotting a Bald Eagle in Kamchatka or something.
Paradox is one of these smaller publishers that flies under the radar but has a devoted base that usually turns out for its uncommonly complex history-minded games you've probably never heard of: Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, Victoria, altogether forming a sort of historical spine linking ancient Rome to the closing beats of World War II. Occasionally Paradox picks up third-party stuff like Elven Legacy, a sequel to last year's Fantasy Wars.
Digital Arts | Matt Peckham | Read more...
PES will keep your desktop warm this winter
November 20, 2008
Stop-motion wunderkind PES has released a screensaver that every designer's going to want on their desktop this winter.
Based on the stocking-filler DVD, The Fireplace is a stop-motion rendering of a roaring fire -- perfect for providing your studio with a warm glow when it's cold outside. While the open fire idea smacks of Innovations catalogue cheese, there's something charmingly good about PES's stop-motion version that makes it appealing.
Design Language | Neil Bennett | Read more...
President 2.0
November 19, 2008
This month’s election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America will be remembered in part, for its many firsts; as the first African-American candidate to take the White House, the first northern Democrat (since JFK) to win … and the first time a major political campaign harnessed the full power of Web 2.0.
The digital landscape has changed considerably since the last US election in 2004. Since then, MySpace and Facebook have emerged as powerful social networking tools, YouTube has enabled video distribution and sharing at a speed and level previously unheard of, and a range of other online tools and services are part of our everyday that were simply not around just a few years ago.
The Engine Room | Huey Nhan | Read more...
How 10 famous technology products got their names
November 13, 2008
Coming up with a great technology product or service is only half the battle these days. Creating a name for said product that is at once cool but not too cool or exclusionary, marketable to both early adopters and a broader audience, and, of course, isn't already in use and protected by various trademarks and copyright laws is difficult--to say the least.
The makers of these 10 tech products -- the iPod, BlackBerry, Firefox, Twitter, Windows 7, ThinkPad, Android, Wikipedia, Mac OS X and the "Big Cats," and Red Hat Linux -- all have displayed certain amounts marketing savvy, common sense and fun-loving spirit in settling on their products' names. Here are the intriguing, surprising and sometimes predictable accounts of their creation.
Digital Arts | Thomas Wailgum | Read more...
The LittleBig Revolution
November 5, 2008
"There are no blog entries for the chosen month."
Sorry. No excuses. Humbled.
Lateral thinking | Jon Bains | Read more...
Top 10: Best viral videos from the 2008 US election
November 3, 2008
After what seems like an eternity, the process of selecting the next American president is almost over. As in all good elections, it had cheap shots and low blows coming from all sides, tears shed, harsh words said and regretted later, brother turning against brother, and so on and on.
But, thankfully, the campaign season generated, as well, some very funny satire and witty commentary, and much of it came in the form of viral video -- which is great news for us in the UK who don't get the shows they're taken from, or are only shown months after we've forgotten who these people actually are.
Digital Arts | Mark Sullivan | Read more...
