A Vista ad i saw at Microcenter, I just thought it was kind of funny that they decided to use a mac in the ad.
Its obviously a stock image but you would think Microsoft with a marketing budget that could dwarf Dells would spend a little money in getting images of laptops that actually Run Vista, and Bill Gates has once again shot himself in the foot with this along with the fact Vista is now cracked the suposably most secure operating system windows has ever made…
As you may know, I am seriously looking at going to University in the USA (quite why I aren’t sure)
When I have been looking around the net for information and how things in the US differ from here in the UK, I got fustrated. There loads of information lots of it very useful to the international student but its buried, hidden or just in obscure places of the internets and theres no filter and central resource for all this infromation.
Whats a Geek to do?
Well its quite simple really by a domain and make a new website combining all this information into something useful and incredibly help to international students just like me. Who ever said I was selfish?
The basic idea is for a wiki like site were people can come and submit things and also a huge list of links and information, to help you and me make the right choices. The sites not about taking all the credit for all the information thats out there it providing a place were all the information comes together so its easy to access what you want.
I should have the site ready by the end of the week and ready for content, which looks like it may just be me in the beginning but I hope to make a community out of the project if it all works.
In the beginning, the iPod let you listen to every CD you owned, even when you were stuck on the Red Line. Then Steve Jobs said, “Let there be video,” and lo and behold, you could watch “Lost” die a slow, overwritten death on a two-inch screen. But while people seem content to load their little devices with as many songs and TV shows as possible, podcasts (think of them as radio programs that you download) tend to be neglected.
Listen and Learn With Podcasts – washingtonpost.com
The Answer = Not anytime soon
Why? it all falls down to the mentality of the person learning and the fact that listening to a podcast is a passive occupation, were as good learning will always be active.
Increasing technology use within schools, colleges and university’s can do nothing but help the way we learn and consume that learning materials. Being able to access course materials 24/7 is a great resource to have but you don’t remember the stuff you do aswell as you would from a classroom.
I think there will inevitably be some invention that takes podcasting and vidcasting out of the passive domain into the interactive and maybe then we can consider replacing the classroom. Until then I think classrooms are safe.
As you can see from the new design, the blob is taking more of a centre stage. So how did I come up with the idea? and how did I make it.
Designing in general can seem complicated and daunting but with just a few photoshop techniques in your toolbox. You can create a logo for you in a couple of hours or less.
You start with a blank sheet
Like all good things its best to start with no computer, a soft pencil, rubber and blank sheet of paper will do. Start by just randomly sketching something and then start working that into a logo (say you initials for example) You can spend as long as you like making this drawing look something like how you want it, but it doesn’t have to be very neat.
Say Cheese
Next step take a photo of your design (or scan it) I tried drawing my logo free hand straight on the my fantastic Wacom Intuos3 tablet, but it never looked right. This way works best for those of us who aren’t 100% confident with the graphics tablet. 
Follow the Yellow Brick Road
Now for the slightly more complicated bit, open up your photo in photoshop and start using the pen tool, to trace over your logo. You can find a fantastic tutorial on the pen tool over on PixelPerfect
You can then continue and play with the path till its perfect (this is why you pencil drawing didn’t need to be perfect)Then fill the path with a gradient by creating a gradient layer and using the path to mask it. Repeat this process until all elements of your logo.
Add a bit of text and you have yourself a logo. Its not that difficult, really. The harder part is making your website match your logo.
Engadget Story
If you’ve read my earlier posts on quantum computers and artilects, you may have thought “Thats all very interesting but its not gonna happen in my lifetime” well you’d be wrong. You can now pick up from D-Wave a 16-Qubit computer.
While its not quite upto the standard of Andromeda‘ we’re getting closer.
I have been a bit low on the postings lately, hopefully I am about to change this. New theme new ideas (thats the idea) I now intend to keep content fresh and also make it easy to get to the content on the site. As you may know/see this new theme is based on hemingway and is a big contrast to the old website. The idea is to get all the content on the site is places were its easy to get to and easy to share and bookmark. Only time will tell if the theory will work out OK. I plan to post every other day or maybe more depending on what I feel Like.
RIAA misreads Jobs open letter on DRM, thinks hes offering to license FairPlay – Engadget
Yet again the RIAA is on the train to nowhere, seen as Steve Jobs said in his “Thoughts on Music” Apple would not be licensing fairplay, its either no DRM or Apple owns there system, the RIAA says “Apple your thinking like us, lets start licensing FairPlay DRM” (they didn’t say it like that, but you get the idea)
Gotta love em, they just can’t help making a fool of themselves whilst spending millions suing people.
Well its late to the party, but Vista has now entered or lives and is getting significantly more coverage on the UK news than I imagined, with little mention to office 2007, which I have to say is the best thing since sliced bread in the office software field.
I may not like Vista but I can’t wait to get my hands on Office 2007:mac and for that matter a Vista box to run Office 2007. The ribbon UI isn’t like anything Microsoft has or I think will ever produce again, the logic and look and performance are much improved with my experience (office 2007 BETA over Office 2003) and its so much easier to get to all the things you want, as I remember that was the point for the Ribbon UI, I could quite see similar systems popping up all over and hopefully improve usability in a lot of god damn awful programs, that maybe high on the functionality.
I must have been under a rock, I forgot wordpress 2.1 I will be installing 2.1 in my sandbox and making sure everything works before I do the upgrade which, I hope won’ take too long.
Update: Turns out there are a few things that don’t like each other in 2.1, So I am going to take this opurtunity to update and rebuild parts of the my theme, mainly completely update the homepage and improve commenting. It should be completed by sometime next week.
From Digg :Inspired by Kevin Rose’s $200 investment, and its success, I ask this: Can the collaborative social news phenomenon Digg.com inspire the rapid development of a MySpace-like social network created, collaboratively, by Digg users (designers, programmers, beta testers), using open source web infrastructure?
My answer : Why the hell not?
But to create something that will challenge Myspace will be something abit special. MySpace is trying do what Microsoft does; be everything to everybody, but in MySpace’s case it seems to be a working formula.
What exactly is wrong with MySpace?
As much as MySpace is trying to be everything to everybody its still not being the be all and end all in web 2.0 to me and many others, I still don’t have a MySpace and will probably never get one.
I aren’t denying that MySpace can be a powerful tool but it is a melting pot for extremes, People with 3000+ friends (its physically impossible without the web to have a group of friends that big the maximum is about 100 for an average person) and then theres all the bad press it gets because of children being exploited through the network. If they’d have thought of that when they started out they could have put some policies even some code to help prevent it.
Then there is the fact the whole site is just messy, theres ads all the place and theres little in the way of easily accesible content. Why do all these so called “web2.0” sites, use very “web 1” ads, subtle ads win the day. Apart from the ads mucking up the design they just are irrelevant and people are so used to them they are ignored so why even bother putting them in? find another way to make money.
Keep It Simple Stupid ~ KISS
Why is it so complicated to find what you want on myspace apart from the ads, and why do they feel the need to replicate links and content images all over, A simple Menu system, maybe with a bit of AJAX magic would make it so much more bearable. Also the music player on peoples profile gets on my nerves why does it insist on playing on load, let the user on the end to decide.
Whilst I think that personalizing web-pages is good, personalizing MySpace pages is all wrong, MySpace should give the ability to this within there system that way they can keep everything cohesive and understandable no matter what page your on.
So That’s What I Think
I tried to be objective and it looks as if a manage it a bit but not enough. It may seem like I am just taking MySpace simply because I don’t like it, but it’s not that at all I think MySpace is successful at what it does and should inspire people to see what they can do with an idea and some coding knowledge, but as with all thing I seriously think that it can be done a lot better, and the real question is why can’t we do it better and be creative with it too.
