Posts filed under "technobable"
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:
- Connect with the key online design/style/fashion ‘thinkers’
- Send them a pre-release version of the phone
- Let them use it
- 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.
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.
http://www.brokenkode.com/welcome-to-badfruit-home-of-badapple-software
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.