I had originally felt that the iPhone was overhyped and prohibitively expensive but I’ve changed my mind. I’ve often said to people that I want a phone to make calls and text people, thats all. I’ll take a built in camera, it’s not essential but comes in handy. Anything more than that I thought was a waste of pocket space, nothing else ever managed to sell me on the idea of having a computer in my pocket. That is until I used the iPhone for a couple of minutes this morning.

iPhone you make my heart sing!

They are still not available in Europe as yet so it was a real treat. It’s not attached to any network yet so I couldn’t use it as a phone. But hey, give me the i part any day.

It is smaller than I thought. Which is good because it always seemed a little big to me in any promotional media I had seen.

The inclusion of the full Safari browser will change the way we view mobile applications forever. I hope the rest of the mobile manufacturers are taking notes.

You’ve all seen the touchscreen demos. It’s even better when you’re doing it yourself. The keyboard is so simple a child could use it and after a few moments you’ll be thinking ‘buttons? what buttons? who needs buttons’

I didn’t have long enough with the phone to go into a detailed review. I can honestly say though, having used the iPhone for a few minutes, I want one. I can already see how I would be lost without it.

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As I’ve said before, I’m very excited about Leopard. I can’t wait to get it. Having seen a handful of the 300+ new features I can already see how it is certainly going to improve my user experience.
How many could say that for Windows Vista?
Vista looks pretty. That’s about it. It brings nothing else of any real worth to the table. It’s full of bugs as is expected of Microsoft software. Performance is worse when compared to XP. A simple Copy and Paste on Vista takes ages, it’s a joke. I’ve seen Vista running on brand new machines with very good spec and yet it still sucked performance-wise.
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I’ve been checking in with Apple’s OSX Leopard preview page for the last couple of months and noticed it was different today.
This update coincides with Apple’s WWDC which opened with a keynote by Steve Jobs in which he demoed 10 of Leopards 300 new features.

Some things that I hadn’t seen before were the new Dock with it’s lovely shiny floor, Stacks and the Transparent toolbar.
Also it seems the iTunes interface has been adopted by the Finder and it looks really great. I’m very happy to see image thumbnails available in the Finder, that’s one thing I missed when I switched from my Windows pc.

Head on over and check it out at http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/

Or catch Steve Jobs’ keynote speech here : http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/d7625zs/event/

I couldn’t ignore that title. I love science. As if I haven’t enough to keep me going in my own work, I like to frequently dip my toe into topics that lie just a wee bit beyond my qualification. Usually its some kind of theoretical physics or engineering or something like that. I might not absorb much or only understand parts but I love to learn new things. I’m a Discovery whore.

Anyway, back to the topic of this post. I figured I was in for a bit of an information overload when I clicked onto Jeff Hawkins 20min talk at TED titled ‘Brain science is about to fundamentally change computing’. I was very much mistaken. First I have to appluad his enthusiasm, it pours out of him and you can feel it pulling you into his world, getting you excited about the things he gets excited about. He explained his theory on how the brain operates in a very simple and accessible way. I think he is a fantastic speaker and he has aroused my interest in a really exciting field of study.

Catch the talk here : http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/125

The concept of surface computing wasn’t particularly new to me. I had seen some really cool experimental projects over at proce55ing.org (Processing is an extremely useful prototyping tool / language for rich media developers).

I hadn’t seen anything new in a while so it all drifted to the back of my mind until the unveiling of Microsoft Surface. I have to say it has really got me excited. I know Apple have multitouch control built into the iPhone and that is really cool, I just hadn’t seen anything anything on a larger scale. The demo videos show a very impressive smooth performing system handling anything from organising your pictures to playing games to playing waiter at a restaurant. It all looked a little too smooth, I think the spec of the demo machines may be slightly higher than the spec listed for the production models of the first Surfaces Computers that will ship later in 2007.

Now the initial uses displayed for the system are very interesting but I would really love to see how this technology could be used in my graphic design work. Imagine how quickly you could work in the likes of Photoshop and Illustrator with the freedom to use both your hands to activate tools and manipulate graphics.

Bring on the new age of computing. I’ll be watching this space very eagerly.

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Thanks Godaddy for costing me my whole afternoon.

I was simply setting up a wordpress contact form plugin this afternoon for one of our projects. When I tested it no email arrived. I checked and checked again that everything was configured properly, still nothing. I gave it a reasonable amount of time to allow the emails to arrive. I figure 30mins to an hour is extremely reasonable.

So after that I spend the last 4 hours examining everything I’ve done, and checkingt FAQ’s to make sure everything’s right when suddenly, an email arrives, then another a few minutes later. 3 and 4 hours after they had been sent. Not all of the test mails I had sent have arrived yet but I’m sure they will. At least I know theres nothing wrong with the code but for feck sake Godaddy, 4 hours of a delay is ridiculous and it cost me an afternoon’s work.

Having recently switched to from a Windows web development environment to OSX I had to get around to setting up my usual Apache, MySQL and PHP configuration. Now normally I just download the latest versions of each and install them all separately, and it’s a quick and painless process. I know there are one stop shops that fire up the whole lot in one install but to be honest, I like to know how things work. I like to know that I can do this stuff myself without having to get someone to do it for me.

Anyway, a colleague recommended I should try MAMP when I was looking at getting my web development environment up and running. And as much as I like to know how things work, I didn’t really have the time to fart about with separate installs of Apache, MySQL and PHP so I gave it a go and I have to say it just works. It saved me plenty time and it does what it says on the tin.

You can easily start up / shut down / restart your servers. Apache comes pre configured with all the commonly used modules enabled, PHP the same.

So, until another day when I can spare the time to set up the individual servers and tackle any minor obstacles that lie therein, I’ll be using MAMP.

I recommend this one. For a quick and easy Apache, MySQL and PHP setup on Apple OSX, try MAMP.

I picked up the 320gb version of the Western Digital myBook Essential range of external hard disks there recently. I have to say it does what it says on the tin. It cost a very reasonable € 127 incl. shipping from komplett.ie.

Transfer speeds are fine over the USB2 connection. It’s nice and small, and stylish see:

It would have been nice in white as it sits next to my iMac but sure you can’t please everybody right?

I will say it’s not the quietest of external hard disks but it does standby after a period of inactivity and spins up pretty quickly afterwards so all round it’s money well spent I think.

If you need a bit of extra storage at a very reasonable price. I recommend it. Go get one.

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the launch of the Adobe CS3 package for sometime now. Particularly because Dreamweaver CS3 has been a long time coming and we need it now!

The full details of the Adobe CS3 (Creative Suite 3) have just been released and the package is available for pre-order.

Have a look at the feature list for Dreamweaver CS3.

Bring it on!

Having recieved my first iMac last week I can honestly say I’ll never look back. This my unbiased review of my iMac and OSX.

I wish I made the decision to switch to using a Mac years ago. I’ve been using Windows for the last 10 years and OSX has managed to undo any ties I’ve had to that OS in less than a week.
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