I was lucky enough this weekend, to take an iPad home for the weekend (thanks goes to Justin from WantItAll.co.za and ChristopherM). Having read many mixed responses I was kinda skeptical at first, but with an open mind I gave it a whirl.

First Impressions

Despite reading that the iPad was way too heavy, I never had any issues with it’s weight. It’s not unexpectedly heavy or unwieldy. People complained about the thick edge being a waste of screen space, but once you start playing with it, you realize that it’s necessary to avoid unnecessary clicks and screen interaction. It fit’s nicely in the hands and it meets the “easy-to-use-whilst-laying-in-bed” test IMO.

The speed is instantly noticeable. I have the iPhone 3G and in comparison the speed is lightning fast. Transitions between applications are instant and the screen is very responsive. The keyboard is nicely sized and whilst touch-typists might be annoyed with the the “return” button being where the apostrophes normally are, you can still reach a nice speed of typing.

The native Gmail application is nice and resembles Outlook’s panel system. Browsing is awesome in the iPad. With a screen size not far from the smaller Netbooks, you don’t notice any issues or have the feeling that you’re using a “small” device (like you do when browsing with an iPhone).

It should also be mentioned that my mom (60-something years old) got hold of it and I installed a MahJjong game for her and she was amazed at the iPad in general, but also it’s ease of use. So Apple have done a good job of making a device that caters for a wide demographic.

My Opinions

In my opinion, it fills a gap – the gap between a laptop and a smartphone. Some might say that it’s a gap already filled by Netbooks, but there’s definitely something about having a device with full touchscreen, no keyboards taking up space on your lap and a device that’s as sexy as the iPad. With the quality of the games and applications being developed for the iPad I’d even say that it’s encroaching on the territory currently owned by the likes of the PSP. I played the Need for Speed Shift game and an awesome 2-finger based skateboarding application that left me very satisfied and positive about the potential for kick-ass applications yet to come on the iPad.

Say what you want about Apple, but they know how to create a badass device and the iPad is no exception.

Definitely added to my list of “wants” for this year.

So thanks to @Afrihost, I’m soon to be migrating to Mac with the new MacBook Pro – one of the new ones with the Intel i5 processors. This’ll be my first time working fully on a Mac and I’m looking for some suggestions for applications that are recommended for web designers etc.

I’ll have Adobe CS4, but i’ve heard Coda is fun to use? What about FTP? Other productivity apps? Wasn’t there a bundle on offer a while ago that offered a few top apps at a good rate?

Give me some suggestions please?

We’ve had this idea at The Yellow Llama for the longest time and finally last week we got our ass in gear and partnered up with @Norri from Maxiware to build a site that we’re hoping is going to have great appeal.

There are a couple good free icon websites that many designers use when putting together designs for various applications, IconFinder.net and IconArchive.com being a couple.

However the problem with these sites in our opinion, is that they’re owner run. This means that any new icons only come when the owner decides to upload new ones. The latter of the 2 above mentioned sites at least allows you to ‘submit icons’, but even then it’s still owner approved and there’s no real recognition system in place to give the designers their well deserved kudos.

So basically, between last Thursday and today, Norio and I have slaved to get our new site up & running. The site features, among other things:

• Designers upload all the icons
• Designers manage a profile that includes their licensing information and links to their websites and social sites (Facebook, Twitter etc)
• Designers, if they have an Adsense account, can enter their publisher ID, and will earn 50% of clicks made on Adsense units that are shown on their icons’ pages.
• Icons are tagged for easy searching and categorization
• The designer uploads a 128×128 PNG icon, that is automatically resized to 64, 48, 32, 22 and 16×16 icons

  

• Each icon displays the designers information and the designers profile page includes a list of all the icons he’s ever uploaded.

We have many awesome ideas for future developments and additions to the site, some of which include:

• user can “favorite” icons and then have a page that displays his favorite icons
• advanced search: filter by user, filter by size etc
• subcribe to a newsletter that will mail out a weekly digest of newly added icons

Currently the site is still being ironed out, but we’re eagerly looking for some icon designers to come on board and get some icons uploaded to test out the system & give us some feedback on how we can make it better for designers & users alike.

Icon designers who’re keen to get on board and start uploading icons can contact me at markbloomfield at gmail dot com for more information.

Please help spread the word for this post!

Dear Kulula web designers

Good job on the new site and all, but you might want to make sure all your tees are crossed and your eyes are dotted. The calendar on your website is anything but userfriendly. Your nifty little slideshow isn’t correctly z-indexed and it means that the only people that can use the popup calendar are level 55 COD4 Experts… We can see all of 3 or 4 pixels of the “Select” button…

Not the easiest of booking forms.

Let your CSS guru’s know, that they can solve this problem with 1 simple command:

#calendar {z-index:10;}

Thanks much. You’ll receive my consultancy invoice shortly.

Regards
Mark Bloomfield
CSS Guru :)

… from way back when…

Can you believe how far we’ve come with computers & technology? Almost reminds me of that “640k should be more than enough for anybody” quote that whats-his-face said :)

Have you also been struggling with the apparently insessant problem with Youtube saying “Sorry this video is no longer available”?

Yup, most of south africa has been.

We’ve been playing with a fix and so far, it appears to be working perfectly. And as an added bonus, this fix seems to drastically improve the load time of Youtube & Break’s video loading – No more waiting for a decent buffer.. You can play the video from start to finish.. no problems :)

Here’s how:

Firefox: Click on Tools -> Options. Choose the Network tab and click on Settings. Then change your proxy settings as indicated.

For other browsers, find your connection settings and adjust them as above.

Not only does this stop the “Sorry this video is no longer available” issue, but it also appears to drastically speed up the load time of video’s etc.

Sweet! Hope it works the same for you too.

This morning I found (I cant remember where) a note to try out the new Skype 4 BETA for Windows and I’m glad I did.

The new interface is somewhat chunkier than before – The single pane is now a full screen application that offers a bunch of new features and options:

I think I’m preferring this new interface. It’s definitely inspired me to organize a decent webcam. The video chat is much more prominent, which makes sense based on the trends leaning here-towards.

Coming soon to Skype, will be a shop from which you can buy skype & VoIP accessories, phones etc etc.

Lookingn forward to future releases of Skype 4 Beta.

Anyone who’s spend more than a day surfing the net and checking for software/webware applications, is bound to have stumbled upon SourceForge. To say that they’re an online storage place for source code revisions, would be a great understatement.

Anyways, they’re having their 2008 Community Choice Awards. The good news about their award program this year is that they’ve opened doors to any open source projects hosted anywhere, not just on SourceForge. So if your favorite codes are kept on Codeplex or Google Code, you’re welcome to nominate it to SourceForge’s Community Choice Awards this year.

Some awards are presented to individuals, but that’s not what this program is about. Everyone knows what a few geeks in a garage can accomplish, but support from a community of scale is what really makes open source a force to be reckoned with.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Personally, I’m amazed by the acheivements of the Flex SDK. I don’t yet fully understand the entire scope and ability of this system, but from what I’ve seen online, its a system that’s proving incredibly useful to many developers. It has been nominated for ’Best Tool or Utility for Developers’ (i.e.: The Best Tool or Utility for Developers is a project that makes the most of your precious coding time or allows you to do things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do).

Go ahead and nominate your favorites.

Its a hard disk in 1956….

HDD with 5MB storage in 1956.

In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a hard disk drive (HDD). The HDD weighed over a ton and stored 5MB of data.

Start appreciating your 1 GB memory stick!