Thu, October 21, 2010 Got a minute?
Why not watch Tory apologist — and occasional BBC Political Editor — Nick Robinson, go all postal on an ant-war placard?
He’s well ‘ard, isn’t he?
via. Mehdi Hasan, c/o Anton.
Tue, October 12, 2010 Based on Robert Kirkman’s scary as shit, and insanely cool, comic book, amc brings you The Walking Dead:
And yes UK readers, that is Egg from This Life. :)
Mon, October 11, 2010 "We felt that the iPad mail app was almost perfect and that we would like to have the same one on the Mac."
Sun, October 10, 2010 
I’ve said many times that the reason I use a Mac isn’t the hardware, it’s the software. Almost all the best software solutions are on the Mac - thanks mainly to the platform’s unparalleled independent developer base.
For writing I have WriteRoom and Scrivener. For blogging, nothing compares to MarsEdit 3. And for images there is a wealth of brilliant programmes, such as LittleSnapper which nails screengrabs, and Pixelmator — a hugely powerful Photoshop alternative. Twitter, Chat, note taking, GTD, RSS etc. All my favourites are on the Mac.
The glaring gap in the Mac’s dominance over Linux and Windows, is the absence of a great Macish email client.
Apple’s bundled Mail application is bloated and not suited to the poweruser. Also, in my experience at least, it’s shocking with IMAP. I’ve been using Thunderbird 3 for a while. It’s okay, but it tends to be a bit buggy and slow, and it doesn’t blow me away like all the other programmes mentioned above.
The best current solution is probably Mailplane, but it’s Gmail only, and while I’ve trialled it twice, I’ve not be impressed enough to buy a license (that said, it does have some very cool functionality, like the way it handles attachments).
I had great hope for Letters.app, but that project imploded, leaving me without my killer email client.
But wait… there is a new player in town: Sparrow — a new email client native to the Mac. If you’re a Tweetie for Mac user, you’ll feel right at home. Sparrow takes a great deal of inspiration from Loren Brichter’s benchmark Twitter client, and boy does it look sweet (Loren is impressed, too).
Sparrow is IMAP only. The BETA is even more limiting, allowing only Gmail accounts (Yahoo! and MobleMe IMAP support is coming). But it looks and works brilliantly.
Shortkeys are intuitive, although I wish they’d gone with ⌘↵ (Command + Carriage Return) — à la Tweetie — for sending email, rather than the Apple Mail ⌘⇧D (Command, Shift + D) combo. Also, Sparrow’s implementation of Gmail’s threaded conversations is very impressive.
Like the awesome Alfred, Sparrow is showing that innovation is alive and well on the Mac, even if Apple’s focus is elsewhere.
It’s worth noting that Sparrow is only a BETA, so don’t be angry, if like Techcrunch’s MG Siegler, you find Sparrow sucking your CPU cycles or leaking memory. I’m sure these guys will address these issues before long.
So yeah, VERY impressed. The reason there are so many Twitter apps and so few email apps, is that Twitter’s API is a lot easier than dealing with the peculiarities of email. So a programme as polished and functional as Sparrow, is super impressive.
The BETA is a very promising start, and with a bit of polish and a few tweaks, I’m confident it will join the pantheon of apps that I yearn for, whenever I crack the lid on my Windows work laptop.
UPDATE: It seems the guys were on the case. BETA v3 has just been released, with “Improved performance CPU/Memory”. Sweet.
Fri, October 8, 2010 If there is one thing that really bothers me, it's idle political pandering. Check out this bullshit, courtesy of certifiable Tory moron, Eric Pickles -- reported in IT Pro:
"Today I'm implementing the best austerity ideas from CLG staff: from cutting catering, to only using second-class stamps, to more double-sided printing. These show there are thriftier and smarter ways to use taxpayers' money in the future," Pickles said.
Other IT cuts will include a reduction in the number of BlackBerry smartphones issued and a limit of one printer or photocopier to each floor of the CLG offices.
[bold RatGeek]
The bold is mine, because that's the nonsense that I really have a problem with.
If a public servant's role requires him or her to have an exchange phone, then he or she should have one.
If you've ever had a work phone with email, you'll know that it's hardly a 'perk'. It's a nuisance. You will answer emails out of hours, and you'll think about work when you should be relaxing and taking time out. BlackBerrys are hardly a constructive weapon in the work-life balance war. No, they're a tool for the enterprise to absorbe your every waking thought.
That said, if the employee doesn't need a BlackBerry, take it off them -- simple as that. I'm all for reducing IT costs, but blanket reductions don't make any sense whatsoever.
Also, the "one printer or photocopier to each floor", is just crap. How many minutes will be wasted with civil servants traipsing across offices to their designated printer? And what if said printer dies? Do they have to tackle the stairs, or worse (at least in the efficiency stakes) the lift? I presume they've conducted extensive efficiency-based time-and-motion studies?
Have you considered this Mr. Pickles?
Mon, September 27, 2010 I saw the new iPod Nano for the first time at the airport last week. Looked really nice, but it’s not for me – that tiny screen seems pointless and unintuitive.
I was really looking forward the Apple’s iPod announcement. I’m a huge fan of the iPod. Podcasts are a fundamental part of my day, so my Shuffle is always part of my attire – and yes, I love the Shuffle. I don’t care what you think.
Around the house I use an iPod Touch as my primary internet device. I usually sit on the couch while the wife watches property development TV shows, checking RSS feeds in Reeder, tweeting nonsense or tackling my Instapaper queue. My iTouch is second gen, and often hijacked by the kids, so I’m in the market for a new one.
So yeah, the Apple iPod Keynote was a big deal to me.
I have to admit to being disappointed. I’m pleased that buttons return to the Shuffle – as much as love my last gen model’s design, I hate having to use headphone cables with buttons. I don’t mind the clicker itself, it’s just that I have a couple of pairs of good in-ear headphones that don’t have controls and they’re useless with the Shuffle.
So the Shuffle is fine. I’m glad it’s still in the range, and those people who say it should be killed off can get bent. It’s the Podcast/Audiobook workhorse without any of the bling of its larger siblings.
But it’s the iPod Touch rev that’s disappointed me. I use an Android phone, but I have a load of great camera apps for the iPhone. The iPhone 4.0 camera in a new iPod Touch would have meant I never had to carry a point and shoot (the HTC Desire cam is fine in great conditions, but more often than not, conditions are not great). The new Touch camera is sub-megapixel, so is hardly useful for anything beyond snapping ugly people in supermarkets.
720p video? Meh. I have that on the HTC and hardly ever use it.
I know you’ll say I should have got an iPhone. Fair enough. Good point well made. But this is not a criticism of Apple – they know far more about their customers and industry than I do. But from a personal point of view, a Touch with a tripped out camera would have been the perfect device for my circumstances. I ADORE my Android phone, but for idle Wi-Fi surfing at home and – potentially in a future model at least – taking photos using the iPhone’s brilliant catalogue of software, the Touch is aces.
So I’ll wait another year before replacing my 2nd gen Touch. Shame, that A4 processor looks great.
Tue, September 14, 2010 Just seen this, reported a few days ago over at neowin.net. Microsoft employees are either genius, or a bit mental ::
Microsoft workers celebrated the release to manufacturing of Windows Phone 7 by parading through their Redmond campus on Friday with iPhone and BlackBerry hearses.Employees dressed up in fancy dress and also modified cars to include Windows Phone branding. Aside from the crazy outfits the workers made fake hearses for giant BlackBerry and iPhone devices. Employees cheekily claimed they had buried the competition with Windows Phone 7.
Via. Gruber
Sat, September 11, 2010 
Sorry but no DSLR on my trip to Helsinki, but the Panasonic TZ6 point and shoot isn't a bad snapper. As promised, I've put up a few shots on my Flickr stream.
Also, I need to spend half-hour tagging and entering better descriptions, but you'll get the feel of the place :)
Mon, September 6, 2010 
Today I visited Helsinki for the first time.
It’s a beautiful city. Very relaxed and the people are just great. I love Estonia, but the whole Russian-Estonian tension gives the place a toxicity that was noticeably lifted when I made the 2-hour ferry trip over to Finland. I know and love Tallinn, having lived there, but Helsinki has everything I adore about Tallinn, without the edginess and occasional hostility.
Helsinki is a techy kinda town. Free Wi-Fi isn’t as ubiquitous as it is in Tallinn (where it’s pretty much *everywhere*), but you don’t have to go far for a connection. There are lots of nice gadget stores - and I saw three very well-equipped Apple resellers.
(I also had a play with the Samsung 3D TVs. I’ve always viewed 3D as a gimmick — especially in the home — but Sammy’s setup is rock-solid and very impressive. Of course the ridiculous glasses are straight out of Back to the Future Part II, but a lot of people are going to be blown away when they see it).
I admit I felt like a heretic using a HTC Android in the Nokia heartlands, but to be honest, most of the techy-types were rocking iPhones so I needn’t have worried. Although I did see my second third N900 in the wild today, so maybe not all is lost for the Finnish giant. I can’t understand why Nokia doesn’t adopt Android - its hardware is class, but S60 isn’t much good and Nokia’s not going to worry Google or Apple with its flirtations with Maemo and/or MeeGo. I understand Nokia wants to do things its own way, but Android would be a great platform for its hardware. Anyway, that’s for another post.
We arrived at Helsinki at the south west sea terminal and walked towards town. We had a few hours walking around the shops — including the flagship Stockmann department store — and then went to see a few of the notable sites, before arcing round the harbour and wandering up the Pohjoisesplandi Etelaesplanadi, which just blew me away. It starts at the sea’s edge, with stunning Hanseatic architecture and market stalls selling delicious pan-fried seafood. Then the road bifurcates, with a lovely park down its centre. Think fountains, flowers and a fairytale cottage/coffee shop. The architecture is a cocktail of Hanseatic (obviously), Parisian and German influences. It’s beautiful, genuinely beautiful.
As the day ended, we took a long stroll to circle around back to the terminal, taking in more of the city’s many charming corners. If I could afford the sky-high cost-of-living, I would have bought an apartment there and then.
I’m on a cruise ship back to Tallinn and the Wi-Fi is ropey — not to mention I’m completely knackered, but I’ll try and put up some photos tomorrow. Laters.
UPDATE: The above pic is the harbour at the start of the Pohjoisesplandi Etelaesplanadi.
Mon, August 23, 2010 From The Guardian:
Sky Sports News currently attracts 0.6% of the total monthly viewing share, which is healthy for a niche non-terrestrial channel.
I don't actually remember watching SSN when I had SKY TV (about 5 years ago). I occasionally switch on SSN on FreeView these days when I have 5 mins to kill - especially when the transfer window is open. So I can't help but think that its share will more than halve following its retreat behind Murdoch's paywall.
Still, Murdoch doesn't seem to give a monkeys about eyeballs.
I don't have a problem with a paywall per se, as I believe that creatives deserve to be remunerated, but it goes against the modern media reality. When the internet is flooded with free content, why would you pay for it on the big screen? I can understand people paying for Live HD games, but paying for 'news' is a nonsense - as it's such a freely available commodity. SNN adds little value beyond its fabulous sexy female hosts. So, while I love a sexy presenter as much as the next guy, it's pretty much pointless.
Sun, August 22, 2010 For anyone who suffered shitty performance on Steam following a recent OSX update, Apple has fixed it.
Sat, August 21, 2010 I've been using the Alfred BETA on my Macs for months now, and it's almost completely replaced Finder as a tool for finding things on my machines.
Finder is one of the key features that sets OSX apart from Windows and other operating systems. Intelligent and blistering fast search is fundamental to the speed of OSX. Alfred takes Finder, supercharges the UI, and adds in Google search, system spelling, a calculator, and a huge selection of other online search resources -- such as twitter, IMDb and Wikipedia.
Along with a few other natty features, Alfred also allows simple system commands such as emptying your Mac's trash. All from the keyboard, never having to use your mouse/trackpad.
Hey RSI. Get Bent!
This week Alfred -- which is a small Cambridge UK based startup -- is about to launch Powerpack, which will sit atop Alfred. Powerpack enables supercharged options to its file search. For example you can export to email or copy a file straight from the Alfred window, all with simple intuitive taps of the keyboard.
There is also greater iTunes enhancements within Powerpack, which will make oddities like Tracks.app redundant. Great news for who like to keep their Macs as minimal as possible.
Already Alfred is starting to look like a genuine competitor to Quicksilver and LaunchBar. And with crack developer Andrew Pepperrell working tirelessly to improve Alfred, it will be pushing for a spot in that particular pantheon soon. Brilliant.
Follow Alfred on twitter.
Sat, August 21, 2010 Unsurprisingly NSFW. But surprisingly good.
It's by Cee Lo Green, and he has an awesome voice.
Via. Mart Kikerpuu.
Sat, August 21, 2010 From the excellent ADFREAK:
The slow motion allows the viewer to appreciate, frame by frame, just how how deeply, deeply stupid these men are—worthless at parlor games, disgusting in their personal habits, emotionally stunted and physically repellent drunks with delusions of grandeur.
Famously, Carton Draught also did this classic ad:
Mon, August 16, 2010 
I was a longtime Safari user when I first got a Mac. But as I've always used more than one machine, the ability to share bookmarks via. Xmarks (then Foxmarks) in Firefox, meant that the switch was inevitable. When Xmarks launched their Safari sync, I switched back to Safari/Webkit and was a very happy surfer again.
That was until Google launched Chrome. I was an early Chrome user. I used it on Windows from day one, and was running very unstable builds of the Chromium BETAs on my Macs daily, well before the Google BETA was launched (I went back to Chromium again when Mac users had to wait for extensions).
As more and more of my time is spent in the browser -- thanks mainly to Google's online services, it has become hugely important to me. For me at least, the browser is more important than the OS. I'd rather use Google Chrome on a Windows machine, than Firefox on a Mac.
The one thing that's pulling at me to go back to WebKit/Safari is the new extension framework. Safari has always had plugins, but these are complicated to produce. The thought of the independent Mac development community pimping Safari with simple extensions, is enough to give any Mac user a boner -- see Macworld's list of 25 "great" Safari extensions here.
I'll no doubt tinker with these new extensions in my nightly WebKit build, but for now at least, I'm completely wedded to Chrome - on Windows, Linux and Mac. Especially since I got an Android phone. :)
Mon, August 16, 2010 
Last Sunday I posted about the brilliant Chrome to Phone. I love it, and the C2P extension is now installed on all my machines (I use Chrome on the Mac, Ubuntu and Windows). However it's not long before you start wishing the sync was two ways - with the ability to push pages to the desktop from your phone.
The excellent Android browser allows installed apps to add extended services to the "share page" function, so you can easily save urls to your bookmarking service (I use delicious) as a way to move pages to your PC based browser. But then you have to go to your delicious page to retrieve the url, which In my opinion, is a step too far.
I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Google harnesses the power of the Android Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM) framework (2.2 "Froyo" only), and offers two-way sharing, however if like me you can't wait, there is a snazzy app in the Android Market that allows for a handy workaround.
Again it's an Android app and Chrome extension combo. Download the android2cloud app from the Market, and then install this extension. Enter your logins and allow both the extension and app access to your Google setup. Now the option to send a page to your browser (via. android2cloud) appears in your Android browser "share page" list. Simples.
When you share a url using android2cloud it will automatically open as a new window in your browser. It's exactly what I wanted. It's just a shame it's not integrated into the official Google app - although I'm confident this will come soon.
Hat-tip recombu.com
Sat, August 14, 2010 Great track. Brilliant video.
Also there are a few animations set to B&S; tracks available. Check out this one to Another Sunny Day:
Sun, August 8, 2010 Earlier this week my good buddy Donald Strachan sent me a message telling me to check out Google's Chrome to Phone feature. I did and it's class.
As you'd expect, C2P* comes it two parts -- a Chrome extension and an Android app.You simply hit the new button on the Chrome browser, and whatever page is open in your browser window, will be pinged down the internets to your Android handset. C2P is simple and brilliant.
Want to carry on reading that post on the can? Just fire it to your phone.
My first test was to check out a local geocache location on Geocaching.com, hit the link to open in Google maps, and then using C2P I sent it to the phone -- the phone beeped and when I unlocked the screen, Google Maps had launched with the pin highlighting the position of the cache. Within 5 seconds I had directions from my current position. It worked brilliantly and was totally James Bond.
This is exactly the sort of innovation from Google that made me choose the HTC Desire over the iPhone 4. I can't wait to see want else Google has planned for geo-location based services in the future.
Oh, and of course C2P is another reason to use the excellent Chrome browser... :)
*To save my fingers and your patience, I shall refer to Chrome to Phone as 'C2P'
All orginal writing by Aaron Murin-Heath ©2005-2010 | Powered by the glory that is Squarespace | Made on a Mac
