What Does This Button Do?

So the New York Times launched their new Web site design recently, and it looks great: I like the way they pack a lot of content into a small space: you can get to a huge number of articles from the front page. I also like the way they are breaking one of the rules of Web design, creating pages with a width of over 800 pixels (they actually go up to 975) over 5 columns.  But it's not perfect, and many of the problems seem to come from advertising. Take, for instance, what I got when reading an article (at right); the advert was misplaced, obscuring the article itself with no way to get rid of it. Granted, the article itself was perhaps not the most earth-shattering thing to miss, but it is pretty irritating and has happened more than once.

Posted by baggers at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So everybody seems to be getting all nostalgic about the 30th anniversary of Apple: I'm just listening to the Mac World Podcast where Jason Snell and Rick LePage are discussing their Mac history. 30 years ago I was a snotty-nosed 10-year old in the UK who though that computers were boring: I was more interested in poking things with sticks. But just a few years later I got a BBC Micro (A model B for you accuracy freaks; I had originally ordered a ZX Spectrum, but they were back-ordered ) and it's been downhill ever since. My first experience with a Mac would have been when I was at university in the late '80s and early '90s; they had a Mac system that was used for design work with PageMaker that I'd sneak in and use occasionally. 

There's a great timeline of the 30 years of Apple from Mac World here: It's amazing how many of the events I can link with things in my life. Hell, I even owned a Newton for a time; I sold it in the end because it couldn't handle my handwriting.

Posted by baggers at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a professional writer, I've been attacked on numerous occasions. In the days before blogs, I'd occasionally get emails or letters from irate readers who had disliked or disagreed about something I had written. And I noticed a general rule to this: the more vitriolic the attack, the less likely they were to respond. People who accused me of being in the pay of Microsoft/Dell/Intel/Whoever I had been writing about wouldn't bother replying to me, while people who just disagreed with my conclusions in a review would usually respond after I replied.  I try and respond to emails or comments about my work when I get them--if someone has taken the time to email me, it only seems polite.

The new world of blogging makes this process more complex, though. These days, people don't email and complain; they post snarky comments about things in their blog or on sites like Digg and Slashdot. So how do you deal with this? Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has some good tips on how to deal with criticism in the new age of interactive mediums like blogs. The bottom line of his article is to do the same thing I've been trying to do all along: respond reasonably. "All it really involves is joining the conversation in the place where you're being critiqued." Good advice, indeed, but it does require some moderation: sites like Slashdot can quickly become a timesink when you leap on every comment about something that you have written.

Posted by baggers at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm doing more writing in the form of blogging these days (and that trend looks likely to increase), so I've been testing out a few blog clients. I started typing right into the Movable Type web interface, but frankly, that's not a good way to do things: I'm not a good typist or speller, so I need a decent spelling cheker. And I have lost several posts when the web browser crashed or I lost the connection, so I decided to look for something a little more stable. Qumana is the best I've found so far: the beta of Version 3 I've been using has both a WYSIWYG and source view, can upload images and has a reasonable spell check. It also has some nice touches: if you create a link, it automatically grabs the URL from the clipboard, But it's not perfect: I wish it could process images (automatically taking an image and shrinking it to a particular size before uploading it). That's no great problem to do automatically in Photoshop, but it would be much easier to do it all in the client. It would also be nice to have some automatic styling presets: I align images to the right in posts, so it would be great if there was a way to do this automatically; right now, I have to do it manually in every post.

The program is free, but there's a reason for that. It's a lead in for an advertising network called AdGenta: you can add adverts from that network with a couple of mouse clicks, so they are hoping that you'll start using that network when you use the client. But you don't have to use it: you can drop HTML snippets in through the source view. Anyway, it's worth checking out: I'll report more here on how the program holds up under further use.

Oh, one other thing: the company is running a competition where you could win a vacation if you download and use the program, allowing it to flag 20 of your posts with a "powered by Qumana" link. I'm not entering this, but the prize is nice: a week of skiing or surfing. 

Posted by baggers at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, given the hype surrounding the new online word processor ajaxWrite, I thought I'd try it out. Here are my thoughts, in no particular order...

• It is pretty snappy: it loads quickly and responds well. Unlike other web-based applications I've used, you don't have to wait for things to happen.
  
• It's very basic. No spelling checker (which is vital for a lousy typist like me), limited formatting controls and fonts.
  
• The help files don't work.
  
• the forum link doesn't work either.
  
• The save option on the file menu doesn't work. The save button does, but it's like downlaoding a file: you have to refer it to the location to save the file to, which is a real pain if you're editing several files.
  
• As Ed Bott observes, it doesn't work with Internet Explorer.
  

Posted by baggers at 03:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a side note, a game where you play a slave in Roman Britain doesn't sound like a huge amount of fun. All of those whippings, beatings and being crushed under the Roman heel are probably even more depressing than farming in World of Warcraft.

Posted by baggers at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[Via BoingBoing]

Posted by baggers at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is really cool. Several students from the MIT media lab put a video camera inside a paintbrush and created software that allows you to “paint” on a screen with the image. It sounds crazy, but the sample video they offer (at the bottom of the page) shows how it works. This is a really cool idea: instead of trying to reproduce a texture with paints, kids can grab the texture itself and paint with it. It also works with moving images: the sample video shows a sequence where the painter grabs a video of someone blinking, then paints this onto the image, giving the snail they are painting blinking eyes.

[Via FreshDV and VideoThing]

Posted by baggers at 09:26 AM | Permalink

Posted by baggers at 05:11 PM | Permalink

This is cool (in a terribly geeky sort of way). This Google Earth add-on allows you to track airline flights, live, using Google Earth. It uses the flight information to map the flights, including the altitude, using the polygon building capabilities of Google Earth. As I type, I’m tracking a United Airlines fligh from San Francisco to Los Angeles. To use it, get your flight number (United allows you to get flight information on their Web site for all carriiers) go to the Aeroseek Web site, enter the flight number, then click on the Track this flight in 3D link. It’ll export the details to Google Earth, automatically updating it every few minutes. You can even track several flights simultaneously…

Posted by baggers at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)