Browsing the archives for the technology category

Ahh Geek Morning…

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iPhone, technology

So in a full on geek moment, I’ve just spent the morning taking full advantage of the new folder option in iOS4. My first stab at it was a mish-mosh of cramming everything into vague categories. But with all this real estate freed up I figured there’s no reason to have every folder crammed full of loosely related apps. Why not give games their own page?
Ok, I know there are bigger things to dwell on, so let’s shift to the new OS overall. Since I’m a year away from any iPhone 4 eligibility, at least I had hopes the new OS would breathe some new life into the phone (which I’ve only had since January so I’m not implying it felt in any way old or sluggish…).
Biggest thing so far? Probably Apple’s strange but functional form of multitasking. Still very few apps so far seem to really be taking advantage, but the way it works is pretty smooth so far. Streaming Pandora and wanting to snap a pic or send a text is no longer a dilemma.
Speaking of snapping a pic, the camera is snappy now, really quick to initialize and go… New digital zoom is sorta useless (not a fan of digital zooms in general), but camera is super responsive now.
My biggest complaint? Not a biggie at all, but the double tap to bring up the “most recent apps” thing is still tough to get used to. Especially when wanting to close a running app. Example: running Pandora and I want to close it.. Used to just hit the home button to close somethin, but since it’s running, you have to single click home button, then double click, then slide to Pandora, press and hold and finally click the red minus symbol to close. Quite a few extra steps just to close an app.
But nitpicking aside, the new OS is pretty stellar and once the apps catch up, I think my wait till I can take advantage of the hardware changes in the new phone won’t be to bad…

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WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” – Snappy!

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observations, technology


WordPress › Blog » WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious”.
So I made the leap and upgraded this and my iPhoneography blog to WordPress 3.0. and WOW… First off – easiest and smoothest upgrade yet (although I never really had issues before except having to upgrade the mySQL stuff one time). Within seconds there was a very noticible jump in page load speed, not only in the dashboard and admin of wordpress, but on my blog itself… I felt it was getting a little sluggish and thought it was because of all the plugins. Now my blog is kicking along faster (guess that should be another motivation to update it more often…). I’d say for anyone using it but waiting to go ahead and make the leap to 3.0!

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Snowtape for iPhone == Fantastic App!!

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iPhone, music, observations, technology

Vemedio – Media Software for Mac and iPhone.

Between the music and photo apps, I keep my iPhone pretty busy.. Picked up a nice app over the weekend to beef up things on the music-side.. Snowtap for the iPhone is priced perfectly at $1.99. I’d been using FStream for a while to listen to saved streams and custom add internet radio streams.. But FStream had a few buggy bits that were a little irritating. The files saved were needlessly huge, and if I got a call or some inturruption while listening to a recorded stream, I’d have to start over with no ability to pause or jump anywhere in the recording.. A pain when you’re driving needless to say…

Enter Snowtape… First off, just a much smoother/slicker app experience… Very smooth and flowing. The ability to trim audio, save and organize for later is fantastic… Adding favorites is a piece of cake and the list of included stations in its search is huge… But I really loved the ease of which I could add the custom streams not found in their list but from sites I had found along the way…

So far after a few days, virtually NO hiccups whatsoever… The auto tagging and art tweaking features are nice but for me it’s the smooth interface and ease of recording that had me sold… My only gripe (and minor at that) would be having the ability to make sub-folders or categories with the favorites (I’ve got 42 in there so far so I’ve always got to scroll that list instead of jumping to a specific bunch…), and baing able to rename a favorited station (WCSB – 89.3 Cleveland for example shows up as N/A because they must not be streaming the call letters in their stream…Would be nice to adjust that…).. Overall tho, great app… I guess it’s also a Mac streaming radio app so those of you on macs may want to check that out…

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BEST thing written so far about whole Flash/html5/Apple stuff!!!

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observations, technology

“The World is Moving to HTML 5″ and Other Flights of Fancy.

A bit of a techie article but really hits the major points of this debate in the most clear and concise way I’ve read yet! It comes from someone who has no real stake in seeing Flash stick around. Found this in a response to a Mashable article titled “Apple Didn’t Kill Flash, HTML 5 did.” Horrible title. Flash is NOT dead… But that’s neither here nor there..

To me the weirdest thing I see everyone talking and raving about is HTML 5. Sure, it most likely will be a great thing…but it’s far from being a standard and lest everyone forget there are all the browser & OS discrepancies, and the fact that there are hundreds of tools for hundreds of different uses and applications…

Best bit from this article:

The world will move to HTML X when Flash X is not needed, it is a non-argument, no amount of insane zealous preaching from within the idealist world of either side will make this happen in the real world. The market will use whatever tools provide the best solutions for the best return on investment.

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Steve Jobs publishes some ‘thoughts on Flash’… — Engadget

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observations, technology

Steve Jobs publishes some ‘thoughts on Flash’… many, many thoughts on Flash — Engadget.

Here we go again…. So at first glance after reading Steve Jobs’ latest perspective on all things flash & web, I have to say I started to feel he was making some valid points. I’ve always agreed with the mouse verses touch issue, but disagreed on the video issue and haven’t seen enough true tests to truly understand the battery life issue. As far as the developing in flash for native iPhone, I disagree, but can see his point a little… REMINDER: I absolutely LOVE my iPhone!! and I absolutely HATE working on a mac on a day to day basis… Just sayin…

Then I let it all sink in… and PLEASE if you read this, read the comments following the press release… Here you’ll get a true cross sample of the overall opinions on this press release and suprisingly (or not) it’s largely negative… The problem is the backbone of his arguments are based on this idea of Apple as ‘open’ and non-proprietary and being so “new” and removed from what he calls the PC era… Crazy-talk…Apple was invented in the ‘PC era. The internet, computers, mobile devices, etc were all spawned in the past and the grow and change to suit the user needs and keep up with technological advances. To think Apple is any different is weird. But to then come off like the creator behind every technological advance in the modern era is preposterous…

It’s also funny his thoughts between what is open, closed, and what is the future (as if peering up from his crystal ball). HTML 5 looks like a great advancement but it is in no way close to being a “standard” yet. h.264 is great for video, but will also be great for some serious licensing $$$ in the next few years.. HTML wants to support ‘ogg’ video anyway, which is buggy and has no strict standards in how its created.

Then there’s the whole idea of choice. Sure Apple has made some great judgment calls on which way to go with products and technology that have revolutionized the industry… But it also has made some serious judgment issues and has its share of bombed project ideas… Jobs doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s effectively trying to take the ability to decide away… He can’t help but use language in the press release to re-enforce the “best ever” mentality at Apple.

Ultimately people will decide what technologies and devices stay or go. We didn’t want Bill Gates deciding everything for us 10 years ago… Do we really want Steve Jobs to do that now???

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Aleatoare – An Experiment In Random Video

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technology, VIDEO


Aleatoare
A little “work-In-Progress” flash/video experiment I’ve been plugging away at for a bit. Needs some fine tuning, but the plan is for something with tons of randomized video snippets displaying with some randomly chosen audio bed for what I hope is at least a slightly intriguing little waste of time viewing moment… Geeky ingredients include: Randomized video array from xml file, random application of the marvelous gsTween color and blur filters, and lots of 2 – 5 second bits exported from Sony Vegas… Moving forward I hope to add/swap in more video and audio, possible interactivity might be ability to change the music bed or toggle page background pic… Any thoughts??

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WFMU iPhone app v2.0 released

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iPhone, observations, technology, Very Cool!


WFMU iPhone app v2.0 released – WFMU’s Beware of the Blog
. Very cool app from a very cool radio station. This one has some great features that many Radio apps could learn from. Most notably, the archives and podcast section is huge and gives you a ton of on-demand content. The variable bitrates on streams is another smart move. Lastly, there’s the buffer…This means you can rewind a little bit on the live stream in case ya missed something. Very classy!

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Boxee Blog – The Boxee Beta

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observations, technology, TV, Very Cool!

Boxee Blog- The Boxee Beta.

A great overview of what was presented tonight on the Boxee Beta release. I watched most of the webcast and it seems like some huge improvements are coming. I’ve been using the windows alpha for a few months now and its been great. A little buggy at times, but there’s some fantastic stuff in there…

Big changes highlighted are the switch from OpenGL to DirectX and the upgrade to DXVA & Flash Player 10… I really dug the 2 apps presented by some grad students in New York that really show the social media/internet integration into media viewing. One grabs actor/music information from any scene you’re veiwing and cross references it with wikipedia, you tube, etc for more info… Another pulls playlists dynamically from twitter trends, news feeds and most popular on google to give you as current a playlist of video you could ask for…

They’ve also revamped a lot of the menus and made bookmarking and sharing 1000 times easier. Looks like videos will remember their position and moving forward Boxee will take full advantage of HD video that can be gotten from the web. Lots of integration Netflix and the big social players (facebook, Twitter, etc…). Just an all around sweet Media Center looking to be that much sweeter…

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