Posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago at 5:44 pm. 0 comments
Yesterday saw the announcement of the new dedicated channel for BBC iPlayer on the wii. Designed to make the most of the services available on the wii, with an easy to use interface and feedback via the innovative wii remotes the service is sure to continue to grow in popularity. The wii is the easiest and quickest way to get iPlayer onto your TV today, and with the brand new Black wii available for only £164.99 in the UK it has never been a better time to put one of these versatile little boxes under your TV. I am looking to pick one up in the next few weeks to do a long term test on the new wii fit plus and will post my findings of the new iPlayer service as well.
For more info please see the BBC Blog.
Posted 4 months ago at 11:54 am. 0 comments
MacHeist … The virtual software bargain hunt for your Mac.
MacHeist is a series of challenges that when successfully completed reward you with free or seriously reduced software for your Mac. As more people complete each challenge more rewards are unlocked from the vaults. This will I participated in the challenge and wanted to draw attention to two of the free apps that I received and thought were great.
The first of these apps is DaisyDisk, a great tool for visualising your HDD usage on the Mac. DaisyDisk produces simple to understand and attractive representations of the storage space attached to your Mac, shows any big files or folders that are hogging all the space – and above all it looks great. Good little free piece of software and well worth checking out.
See my DaisyDisk for my MacBook Pro:
In addition to DaisyDisk I also received the excellent WriteRoom. WriteRoom is a great yet simple piece of software ideal for anyone who finds their Mac a distraction while trying to work. In simple terms WriteRoom is a text editor but the real genius comes in the way that it totally covers the rest of your Mac screen in black and hides all your other active applications. This ensures that you focus on the task in hand and not on twitter, adium or email applications that might be running in the background and alerting you to their every move!
Although DaisyDisk is nice, it is a bit of a novelty. I can see myself using WriteRoom every single day from here on in. It is rapidly fast to open, simple to use and a pleasure to work with. Thanks MacHeist for the free software!
To get involved with MacHeist visit the website
Posted via web from Jon Hume’s posterous
Posted 4 months ago at 8:38 pm. 0 comments
Congratulations to Apple, who recently reached the landmark total of 100,000 apps in the iPhone App Store. Even though there are many critics of the iPhone app approval process and the situation regarding the submission of apps – something must be going right and there are certainly quite a few apps getting through! The app store is a great resource to back up an already excellent handset design. This hardware and software combination has proved to be a winner for Apple, and as they continue to expand into new markets around the world and to diversify onto new networks things can only get better for them. So well done Apple, here’s to the next 100,000.
Posted via web from Jon Hume’s posterous
Posted 4 months ago at 8:32 pm. 0 comments
Today saw the launch of the beautiful new handset from HTC, the HD2. Following on from the moderate success of the massive-screened Touch HD, the HD2 really is a beautiful handset. It is thin, well built and has a monster screen running at an excellent resolution – surely then, this will be the best smartphone in the world? Unfortunately for HTC this is not the case – this fantastic hardware is crippled by the lackluster Windows Mobile 6.5, a slightly updated version of a phone OS that was out of date before it was even released. Windows Mobile is truly awful and the new version isn’t a lot better than before. Please HTC, release the HD2 with Android … you know it makes sense!
Posted via web from Jon Hume’s posterous
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 10:34 pm. 1 comment
Today I was asked to help out a client with their email marketing and something very odd happened. When trying to access their email marketing service from my Mac I was presented with the following error message:
This is unusual, I know I was using a Mac, but come on! Safari 4 is a great browser with best in class support for virtually every single web application technology. The application in question is called Marketing Addiction. I would love to know if this is standard across their products or if this is a one-off, very old install that needs upgrading? Either way, I ended up helping the client out with their technical issue, but I had to get an old PC out of storage to find one with a browser that would play the game!
I end with an open note to all of those developing web applications for enterprise use; just because many businesses are still using IE6 and Windows XP, doesn’t mean that they should be! Design for open use across all platforms please – I don’t want to have to get a PC out of the store room again!
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 10:03 pm. 0 comments
If there is one thing that is stopping the iPhone from being the perfect gadget in the world, it is probably the slightly shocking battery drain. But, if there were two things then the other one would most likely be the lack of Flash support for the device. A lot of inexperienced users who visited sites that rely on the Flash technology platform may have just assumed that the web designer had broken something, or that the page didn’t work. Well, this certainly won’t be the case anymore as now when you try and visit a Flash page on the iPhone or iPod Touch you see this:
Not the best advert for a mobile phone platform with the reputation of being on the bleeding edge of app development. This little message, leaves the user in no doubt at all who is blocking the process of getting Flash developed for the iPhone – and here is a clue – it is Apple!
As someone who spends pretty much the majority of their life online, and a massive amount of time using a Mac, I don’t find it that surprising that Apple aren’t keen on letting Flash player loose on their flagship mobile device and all around crowd pleasing cash cow. Put quite simply, Flash performance on the Mac is and pretty much always has been, rubbish. Flash on the Mac is a totally different and vastly less well behaved beast than that which is used on millions of Windows machines every day. The Mac version hogs memory, regularly crashes and has problems dealing with HD video on even the newest hardware. So with this in mind, it is hardly a shock that Apple won’t let it near their precious mobile platform – so Adobe, I ask the question of you: What did you do so wrong with the software that Apple wouldn’t let it through their labs and out onto the streets?
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 8:57 pm. 0 comments
One of the many things I have learned whilst managing various web design projects is that I still have a lot to learn! In such a rapidly developing industry it is hugely important to stay on top of all the latest technologies and techniques, not only for managing projects, but also to ensure that the right ideas make it out of client meetings and on to the design brief.
As someone who will happily admit that they are still developing their style as a project manager I am always on the lookout for useful books and articles to read to continue my progression. 97 Things Every Project Manager should know is a collection of tips and tricks from some of the world’s top project managers and software developers. These tips are aimed at both IT and non-IT professionals and I can see how many of them could relate to almost any project.
The book is essentially a collection of short articles and extracts that show real life and theoretical examples based on project manager experience with the aim of imparting some of this “real” knowledge onto the reader. If you are looking for advice on a particular aspect of project management there is an index to point you towards information on the following topics; Agile Methods, Software Development, Managing People and Teams, International Issues or Distributed Teams, Managing Projects, Communications, Managing Stakeholders, Project Processes, Project Requirements, End-Users, Purchasing Issues, Self-Management and Web Development.
I found the book to be exactly how it described itself, full of “collective wisdom from the experts”. It is a fairly short book (about 200 pages) but is easy to dip in and out of when looking for information on a particular subject. It would serve as an excellent companion to someone who was coming into IT project management from a traditional project management background, particularly when the experts talk about some of the planning required before beginning a project, which can be very different to that of more traditional activities. I also enjoyed reading how the experts dealt with distributed teams, or situations where there were multiple and disparate stakeholders with conflicting views and opinions and found these sections particularly useful.
On the whole, 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know is a great little book to add to any collection and one that I will continue to use during my day to day work, it has earned a place on my desk for the foreseeable future.
97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know, Edited by Barbee Davis. Published by O’Reilly 2009 (www.oreilly.com)
ISBN: 978-0-596-80416-9
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 11:49 am. 0 comments
Just picked up one of the brand new Apple Magic Mice. First impressions with it are really good – nice design and easy to use. The momentum scrolling is really nice and the whole experience seems pretty good so far.
All the unboxing photos can be seen on my Flickr! feed.
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 11:06 pm. 0 comments
Just found this brilliant web service and thought I should share it. Ninite is a great website where you can choose all the apps you want to install (on Windows XP / Vista or 7) and Ninite downloads them all into one installer for you and installs them all with the default settings, and none of the junk toolbars.
To use the service all you need to do is visit http://ninite.com and tick the apps that you want to install. There is a great selection of browsers, messaging clients, media players, imaging apps, office type apps, anti-virus, plugins, file sharing clients, utilities and developer tools.
The website is really easy to use and is a great time saver for people who need to restore all their apps after a clean install and get all the latest versions. Make sure you check it out next time you get a new PC or do a clean install! Visit Ninite now.
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 10:21 pm. 0 comments
Rumours began earlier today that the Apple TV would be getting some of the Apple refresh love and it turns out that they were right. I have just downloaded Apple TV version 3.0 and iTunes version 9.0.2 and everything seems to have gone as planned. Software runs fine and it looks great, much better than the previous version from what I can tell. Thanks for keeping your hobby project alive Apple!
Updates detailed by Apple as follows:
“The new software for Apple TV features a simpler and faster interface that gives you instant access to your favorite content,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “HD movies and HD TV shows from iTunes have been a huge hit with Apple TV customers, and with Apple TV 3.0 they get great new features including iTunes Extras, Genius Mixes and Internet radio.”
“The redesigned main menu on Apple TV gives you instant access to your favorite content. Recently rented or purchased movies, as well as other content including TV shows, music, podcasts, photos and YouTube, are accessible directly from the new main menu. The new software also allows Apple TV users to enjoy stunning fullscreen iTunes Extras and iTunes LP, including great new movie titles such as “Star Trek” or classics like “The Wizard of Oz” and albums such as Taylor Swift’s “Fearless (Platinum Edition)” and Jack Johnson’s “En Concert.” iTunes Extras gives movie fans great additional content such as deleted scenes, interviews and interactive galleries. iTunes LP is the next evolution of the music album, delivering a rich, immersive experience for select albums on the iTunes Store by combining beautiful design with expanded visual features like live performance videos, lyrics, artwork, liner notes, interviews, photos, album credits and more.”
Apologies for the crappy photographs, but I was in a hurry and only had my iPhone handy! What are you still reading this for anyway – get updating!
