So they called it the iPad.

Article
28Jan
7

We’ve waited so long for it but in the end, and as cool as it is, if I find it just a little meh but at the same time I want one does that make me a bad person?

We’ve waited so long for it but in the end, and as cool as it is, if I find it just a little meh but at the same time I want one does that make me a bad person? Sure, I had hoped for something in-between the iPhone and a MacBook, in terms of size that is exactly what it is. But, I’ll be honest my first impression was that “it’s just a giant iPod Touch” (or iPod Touch 3GXL…)

It is running what is basically the iPhone OS, with slightly bigger icons, and plenty of space between them on the home screen. I mean plenty. A small child could thump their paw down on the screen an only hit one app. It has the general iPhone feel (flick/pinch/swipe etc) to the interface, with the exception of the OS X style dock, also with really spaced out icons (I wonder how many you can actually put on it?).

Great Good So-So
Price point
Design
Speed
No Flash
Delicious Library… err, I mean iBooks
It runs iPhone apps (including those you already own)
Tech specs - seem pretty good for the price
Redesigned core apps
Claimed battery life
The Bezel
The way iPhone apps run
No Camera
Additional cost for 3G
The name. iPad? hmm…

» Continue reading “So they called it the iPad.”

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Predictions for this week’s Apple event

Sidenote
25Jan
0

It’s widely believed that we will finally see an Apple tablet of some description revealed later this week, since plenty of other people have already covered in a fair amount of detail the speculation around the technical specs of such a device, I’m going to keep this simple.

What might the event reveal? Some (unlikely) possibilities

  • The ‘tablet’ will be just like all the fan-made mockups we’ve seen in the past couple of years.
  • The ‘tablet’ will be completely different to everything people have dreamed up over the past couple of years - remember how wrong all those iPhone mockups were prior to the reveal of the original iPhone
  • The ‘tablet’ probably won’t be available with a docking LED display or add-on keyboard as Tim Van Damme hopes but it sure would be awesome if it did.
  • The ‘tablet’ will run the iPhoneOS just on a bigger screen (unlikely)
  • The ‘tablet’ will run full OS X, or an optimised version for the ‘lesser’ hardware
  • The ‘tablet’ will run a “new” OS which will still have OS X as the base, but with a new (awesome) UI
  • The next gen iPhone hardware will be previewed (unlikely)
  • The iPhone 4.0 software will be previewed (maybe)
  • The MacBook Pro line will get an update with new Core i5/i7 processors etc
  • An LED cinema display in a size other than 24-inch
  • Or… we’ll all be disappointed when there is no ‘tablet’ announcement, no iPhone 4.0 announcement, no MBP update - instead Apple announce that they’re moving more into the software side of things and that their first product will be a direct competitor for Photoshop.
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The Invention of Lying (2009)

Review
14Jan
0

Starts off as a comedy about a world that only tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, finishes up a comedy poking fun at religion and people’s willingness to believe things with little or no actual proof. Ricky Gervais stars as the inventor of lying and is joined by Jennifer Garner who plays the girl he’s always wanted but hasn’t been able to get because the truth gets in the way. The small nuggets of ‘truth’ provided by Tina Fey, Rob Lowe and Jonah Hill were also good for laugh or two.

7/10

***+

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To retweet or not to retweet

Article
24Dec
3

Yesterday I launched Hahlo 4.1 and one of the changes was the switch from to old-style ‘RT’ retweets over to the new twitter retweet api. Unfortunately this seems to have upset a few people, not necessarily because I’ve added support for the new api but because I chose not to maintain the old-style RTs as well. This is a tale of why.

Yesterday I launched Hahlo 4.1 and one of the changes was the switch from to old-style ‘RT’ retweets over to the new twitter retweet api. Unfortunately this seems to have upset a few people, not necessarily because I’ve added support for the new api but because I chose not to maintain the old-style RTs as well. This is a tale of why.

To retweet or not to retweet - a tale of good vs. evil

Keep in mind this falls into the category of “people can use twitter however the hell they want”, you’re allowed to disagree, just don’t be a knob about it.

The Hahlo side of the things

Hahlo is about moving forward, not backwards, if I were not interested in keeping up with the new feature additions to twitter (and the api) then Hahlo probably wouldn’t still be in active development. Also maintaining two different methods for retweeting means more work on my side making sure they both continue working, having an ‘RT’ button which performs different functions for different people is not only illogical, but would very quickly become a pain to support. Also, please remember I don’t get paid anything to work on or support Hahlo, I do that because I’m a nice guy.

The twitter side of things

Those who’ve used Hahlo will see that I’ve tried to match the same ‘flow’ as on twitter.com. For example, you click ‘retweet’ and you’re asked to confirm that you’d like to retweet this tweet to your followers. Not everyone likes the new-style retweets, but then not everyone like change. But changes happens, deal with it.

Evan Williams wrote a great post on why retweets work the way that they work on twitter.com, if you haven’t read it I strongly suggest you do.

The “retweets annoy me” side of things

There is a reason I never added retweets to Hahlo prior to version 4, I don’t (or didn’t to be more precise) like them. And then when I did add them, I also added an ‘hide all retweets’ option. This is why, and if you disagree (likely) I’d like to hear (constructively) why that is. Lets try a common example to illustrate my point.

» Continue reading “To retweet or not to retweet”

••••
Link
23Dec

Hahlo 4.1 is here, and its *totally awesome* Hit the link to read the full post on the Hahlo blog detailing the new and improved features in 4.1including lists, retweets and geolocation amongst other things.

••••

Fluency Admin 2.2 now available

Sidenote
21Dec
2

WordPress 2.9 compatibility, fixes a few minor style bugs, adds options for custom menu width, menu positioning (fixed or absolute) and show/hide menu icons. More info here or download from the WordPress plugin directory here.

••••
Link
17Dec

Ten things that annoy Jeff Croft about twitter He makes some very good points. I tend to agree with his comment in relation to @mentions, but I would rather that we still had an option as to whether or not we wanted to see them. I personally do want to see other peoples @mentions - its how I used to find interesting people (and how I found @jeffcroft in the first place).

••••
Link
16Dec

PastryKit I spotted the pastrykit.js inside Apple’s mobile help pages ages ago, and at the time I hoped that I might be able to reverse engineer bits of it to work out how the hell it was working…I had no luck at all. It would be nice if Apple would released this to developers but I’m doubtful. I stand by my theory that Apple won’t open up these sort of things (also file/camera access etc) to web developers because they want people to build native apps, not webapps.

••••

American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (2009) (V)

Review
09Dec
0

Worst American Pie movie ever. Admittedly none of the previous three straight-to-dvd releases have been as ‘good’ as the original three either, but this was something else. Thing that annoyed me the most, apart from the myriad of bad actors and worse cameos (Kevin Federline… seriously WTF?), was the douche playing the distant Stifler relative in this movie. He spent all his screen time desperately trying to mimic Seann William Scott from the original movies, and not doing it well. If you’re in the need for some mindless toilet humour, and you’ve got absolutely no other alternative then maybe it’s worth a look. Maybe.

3/10

*+

••••

DC Comics’ Heroes and Villains Drawn as Minifigs

Image
09Dec
3

DC Comics Heroes and Villains Drawn as Minifigs

Is it just me, or is everything even more awesome when drawn as Lego minifigs?

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5422093/dc-comics-heroes-and-villains-drawn-as-minifigs

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deanjrobinson.com
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