Sk-etchbook

I received an email today saying our portfolio is no longer working on our website?

The portfolio in question was powered by Flickr and displayed using a Javascript lightbox. This was a pretty nifty way of giving clients a low cost and user friendly way of uploading image files.

Upon checking I found this message on Flickr:

As of today, flickr pages displayed in an iframe break out and replace the entire page. This breaks my flickr app Discussr. Is there any particular reason for this change? It seems pointless and rude to me.

It seems like they've upset a few people by doing this. Not giving any advance notice certainly didn't help matters.

The main reason given is that they don't like having their content framed in other sites. They've never liked it. It doesn't drive direct.

I don't see what the problem was, Flickr branding was plastered all over the slideshows anyway so viewers still knew who was powering things.

Looks like I've got some fixing to do. A few options of app are given in the thread, I'll look into them.

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I received this from Google Apps. Great move is all I can say, I like many developers have dropped support for IE6. It can add a ridiculous amount of time to projects just because a few people don't know how to or are scared of updating. It's not complicated to click on a button and make people move with the times.

Evolve or be fossilized...

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

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Cookies. You hear about them quite a bit, but what are they?

Cookies are itsy bitsy little text files stored on your computer and put there by a website you visited. They are generally useless to anyone except the pubisher (the visited website) and can only be read by them.

Cookies save details specific to you so the data does not need to be stored by the website.

They are, in short, a prefernce file with a silly name. Netscape invented the tecnology in the mid 90's and named them afer a comic "The Magic Cookie".

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This popped up at the top of a search listings the other day.

http://www.google.com/explanation.html

This got me thinking. In a society of free speech and via a medium which is difficult, nigh impossible to moderate what kind of filtering is actually going on in search results? I image specific words are filtered out for the purpose of safe searches but filtering of obnoxious and offensive opinions can not be simple.

Furthermore should it be done? In a developed society surely all are entitled to their opinions. It would be the responsibility of the offender to justify his stance point yet to refrain from persisting to the point of forcing their unwelcome views on others. The offended then should equally respect the offenders view and not take offence. Rather it is the offendeds responsibility to offer their contrasting opinions and justify them. Disagreement is likely but should be respected.

Total comprehension and through understanding of any situation or element requires complete information. Positive, negative, objective and subjective.

There is a limit of course when these views are acted upon where it does become immoral, turns to bullying and can degrade the quality lives however this is not the topic here.

To me, offensive opinions are not offensive. They are mealy the results of the individuals life experiences and the influence of their exterior. A mind ravaged with hate and anger is the worse prison of all. There are no bars, no doors and no windows. You remain trapped for as long as they exist.

Would it not then be the right thing to help these people escape their prisons. Censorship and condemnation has no positive returns.

The manifestation of conciousness at a sentient level is a truly miraculous thing. We all possess the ability to manage, construct and reconstruct our own realities, our personalities and perceptions can be moulded. The only way to overcome the negative aspects of our own psyches to to question our beliefs. Questions which sometimes need to be offered others.

Negative, spiteful opinions towards generalised groups or stereotypes, even ones based on our own experiences or "what we have been told" are nothing more than childhood monsters.

What may initially appear to be a hideous, evil and scary monster lurking in the darkened corner of your room turns out to be nothing more than teddy bear once viewed in the light.

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Freaky little article here on Wired. Looks like in the future technology really will be getting under your skin.

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Adobe recently announced that Flash CS5 will support the creation of iPhone applications.

Read more on this fromAdobe News or Labs.

Is this a good thing or will it create a flood of badly designed badly thought out, generally bad apps?

The iPhone experienced phenomenal success however, now the other communications companies are coming out with their own versions (copycats!) they do need to be evolve in some manner.

Is opening up the platform the best approach, will this lead to a greater amount of good quality, useful or entertaining apps. Are Apple hoping to generate a new interest in the iPhone and cling to their market share or are they ahead of the game, do they have something better up their sleeves.

It seems a logical move anyway whatever their motives. Be it to maintain market position or just that there's no longer any benefit to restricting the development environment.

The one thing I am sure of is that the overnight iPhone app millionaires are a thing of the past, well, at least to the same degree. I'm sure as with anything there is always the potential to make money however with a growing number of handhold platforms and easier ways to develop for them the competition has never been so tough.

I imagine Apple will need to take a look at the way apps are sold in iTunes if the number does grow exponentially. Just look at Youtube, a vast amount of media which is made useful because of the effective and intuitive search functionality. To date iPhone app search functionality is not the greatest.

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URL revolution:

Nod for non-Latin web addresses

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I just stumbled accross this product. Ring and bracelet watches using e-paper. It still seems pretty cutting edge yet they have been out since 2007. Maybe t-shirts with downloadable designs are closer than we think.

Original article on Popgadget

More Info at www.seikowatches.com

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I recently got asked to produce an email marketing campaign. I've been looking into some of the available software out there for client relations and mailing list management.

Opensource Newsletter & CRM Software
www.sugarcrm.com
www.vtiger.org
www.phplist.com
www.openemm.org

Paid Hosted CRM Service Comparison
Business Buy Guide

Free & Subscription Based Software
www.mailchimp.com
www.infusionsoft.com
www.sendblaster.com
www.sage.co.uk/software_and_services/customers/sage_crm.aspx

Reviews and Discussions
http://www.siteground.com/sugarcrm_vtiger.htm
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Search/email_marketing.html
http://email.about.com/od/windowsmarketingsoftware/Windows_Email_Marketing_Software.htm

Surveys
http://www.limesurvey.org/

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I was in London a few weeks back and a friend was talking about this restaurant with interactive menus projecting the dishes onto the tables. He said you could also interact further by placing orders via the interface and viewing webcams which were set up in different areas of the kitchen.

It stuck in my mind as Dally did a presentation last year about a similar concept. Check out the videos on the website, might just have to try it out for myself next time I'm in town.

Inamo
C4 Technology & Restaurants

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The European Future Technologies Conference and Exhibition is a new European forum dedicated to frontier research in future and emerging information technologies. More than 700 scientists, policy-makers, industry representatives and science journalists convened over 3 days to discuss today's frontier science, tomorrow's technologies and the impact of both on tomorrow's society.

Science Beyond Fiction

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A while ago I started studying Philosophy of Mind, one of the sub categories being artificial intelligence.

Brains and computers function in very different ways yet there are now many parellels drawn between the size/power of the intenet and the human brain. I'm not going to go into too much detail about this now, or throw in my own oppinions however for those who are interested here is some material to get you walmed up for the debate.




Guardian - Does the internet's processing power rival the brain's?


Journal of Evolution & Technology

Present Computing Technology
Times Article about ASCI Purple

IBM Road Runner Super Computer #1
Top 500 Supercomputers

Analogue Computing

Developing Technologies
Quantum Computing
DNA Computing

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