“As many of you may know, my team at Infinimedia built one of the most popular twitter clients out there, Twitbin, which has over 35,000 users now. We were one of the first to build something along these lines (definitely not the first by any stretch), but we were clearly not the last or most popular. Something interesting occured shortly after we built it: we stopped building.”
Archive for the 'Tools' CategoryPage 2 of 2
Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop. [From Mozilla Labs Blog » Blog Archive » Prism]
OK so this isn’t a review… just an observation. For a few years now I’ve used iView Media Pro to manage my digital photos. Finder tells me I have 15,586 of them. This obviously grows at a rate of a few thousand a year. The file size of these images also grows every time I buy a new camera. I just bought Nat a point and shoot Lumix DMC LX-2. The 10mp files it produces are about 5mb. If I use my Nikon film scanner as I still shoot 35mm I get 60mb TIFF files. Anyway the point is I need shit loads of storage which means I have to buy more and bigger hard drives to the point where I’m now considering buying a NAS box with 2 Terra Bytes of disk space, or rather 1terrabyte in RAID format. Storage however is a bit of a minor point, well because now it’s cheap… even NAS RAID arrays. The main issue is managing photos… cataloguing them, sorting them, tagging them etc….
I’ve been really happy with iView MP but as of recent developments with their company that I can not discuss because of the company I work for (dontcha just love working in an agencey) I have decided to seek and alternative. As I have a shiny new Mac Book Pro at home and am about to get an even newer one from work (w00t!) then the obvious choice is Aperture….
So I’ve been playing with Aperture for a few days now, and Photoshop CS3 for a few weeks, Photoshop for manipulating images… not filing them, though it can kinda do that these days. Anway my intital impression of aperture is to be honest thoroughly dissapointing:
1. It tries to do too much. Why would I do any photo adjustment in it when I have Photoshop. Come on, Aperture is aimed at the pro market. You’re telling me ‘Pro’s’ dont have Photoshop? SO why put some really half baked photo manipulation functionality into something that is for managing photos… or id it for both?
2. It is a M-E-M-O-R-Y H-O-G. IT needs loads and I cant work out why. iView Media Pro isn’t a memory hog.
3. It does a similar thing to what IPhoto does in terms of semi duplicating your photos….. I noticed the Aperture library was growing in file size…. why??? It should only contain a database and thumbnails? Further investigation show’s it’s generation preview images too (which perhaps explains why importing photos is slow)
4. The UI clunky… ok switching from one app to another always causes issues, but sorry Aperture is clunky as hell.
5. You need a pretty huge monitor to use it well.
Anyway, those are my observations so far… which means to hedge my bets I’m now running iView & Aperture and manipulating photos as usual in CS3…. Joy. No easier then.
This looks pretty interesting, the video on the home page makes it look like a load of toss, but the people involved somewhat counter that. Looks like the first release is being built by Razorfish.
“Encyclopedia of Life: Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.”
“Pixelmator is based on Core Image technology that uses your Mac’s video card for image processing. Core Image utilizes the graphics card for image processing operations, freeing the CPU for other tasks. And if you have a high-performance card with increased video memory (VRAM), you’ll find real-time responsiveness across a wide variety of Pixelmator operations. Pixelmator is blistering-fast on the latest PowerPC and all Intel-based Mac’s.”
I signed up for the beta of something called Scrybe a while back, months and months back in fact, and have never been given a login, too late I guess guys! Scrybe interested me in that it did offline synching of your data so you could work offline. Anyway, looks like Google are about to 0wn3rzd you…
“Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs:
- Store and serve application resources locally
- Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
- Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness”
I received this comment below to a previos post, it’s pretty useful so I’ve reposted it. Thanks Vic.
//Snip //
If you want to have a list of all the on-line mind mapping tools, I think this list is complete as of today:
Web of Web :: http://www.webofweb.net
Mindomo :: http://www.mindomo.com/
Bubble Mind :: http://www.bubble-mind.com/
Bubbl.us :: http://bubbl.us/
MindMeister :: http://www.mindmeister.com/
Kayuda :: http://www.kayuda.com/
Mapul :: http://www.mapul.com/
Comapping :: http://www.comapping.com/
Mind42 :: http://www.mind42.com/
not mind mapping tools but can do mind maps and they’re web based:
Gliffy :: http://www.gliffy.com/
Touchgraph :: http://www.touchgraph.com/ (an odd one — read-only mind maps of relationships between web sites)
Thinkature :: http://thinkature.com/
Web based but not Web 2.0 - expensive
ForceTen :: http://www.eedo.com/products/forceten.html
Thinkmap :: http://www.thinkmap.com/ (read only)
For people interested in archeology, the very first web-based mind mapping tool, a precursor to Web 2.0 and now long gone:
Mayomi :: http://www.mayomi.net
Take your pick!
Cheers
Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org
Verdict: FRICKIN AWSOME. (though I was involved in a project in 1996-99 that I like to think blazed a trail in some of this stuff, in a well, low budget, academic kind way)
Another nice piece of integration with Google. GooSync is basicaly a synchronisation script for your phone that allows it to sync to Google Calendars.
Only issue I had getting it to work was that the free version only sync’s your first GCal if you have more than one, and my first one was epmty. Fix, open the Gcal feed you want to appear on your phone into iCal, then export form iCal as an ICS file then upload into the first GCal…. convoluted but works a treat.
This was tested this on a Sony Ericsson K800i on Vodafone UK via 3G and GPRS, works with no problems.
So I’m a terrible procrastinator, it can take me ages to get stuff done sometimes, well when I’m using a puter cos the internet keeps distracting me, anyway this little app for OS X is great. It’s a basic text editor / word processor which is nothing new, but the nice thing is that when you maximize the app it goes full screen and hides everything, and with the default colours, lime green on black, it makes me feel like I’m back on a Commodore PET and eleven years old.
WriteRoom | Hog Bay Software “For Mac users who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter, but live in the digital world. WriteRoom is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, WriteRoom is just about you and your text. Requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.”
Download Squad ‘Google has added a new offering for mobile users: a stand-alone app for Java-enabled phones that makes accessing Gmail on the run a little more friendly. Google has a little demo of the app in action over on the Google Mobile site, and it looks pretty slick.’
In fact I can report it’s bloody excellent. Have installed it on a Vodafone SE k800i and it works like a dream, once you get it running that is….
On first install it reports that the app has no internet connection, when in fact the phone was showing all bars and a 3G connection. Anyway a little research showed that it’s actually a Gmail preferences thing. Log into Gmail using Firefox or whatever and change your language settings under preferences to US English. Ok that’s bloody annoying if you write using real English, but it’s worth it I guess to get it working. some screen shots can be seen here.
BBC NEWS | Business | Tesco moves into software market
“Tesco is to launch a range of budget own-brand PC software, in a move that will pitch the grocery giant against the likes of Microsoft and Symantec”
I really hope they come in shitty blue, white and red boxes.
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