I got a hold of a copy of “The Project” – new, hyped magazine for the iPad that’s supposed to revolutionize the way we think about digital magazines. I got to play with it for a while and despite the fact it’s pretty pricey (almost 3 euros) it also has some really cool ideas too. It probably won’t revolutionize the market but it brought a couple of things to it and we might see them in other publications.
Since the Washington Post made an iPad app too, I think it’s both the time to elaborate on interfaces and the time to admit, that the change is surely coming. The dying press industry can actually revive with this new medium, which is good because we need well written content. There’s nothing wrong with amateur bloggers, but the most valuable content is and will always be made by professional writers and journalists. So now we have the chance to try those out because the new york times, washington post and newsweek all made really nice applications that bring the press to the new medium. And of course they will also be available on other tablets when they finally come out. And that leads to a conclusion that there’s another change in interfaces coming.
Apparently a click to view interface doesn’t really work with press on a tablet. No, every one of the magazines has swiping motion to change pages / browse through articles. People don’t like to point and click, they like to browse. And what’s more natural than a swiping motion? Right!
And since the tablets are slowly taking over, we might want to consider websites that are also navigated that way (or can be navigated with both regular and modern touch controls). That might lead to a regression of thought, because we’re actually coming back to the system that was dominant before the PC revolution. And this system is already catching on. So it might either be a case of nostalgia, or simply a way to do it right. And if it’s the latter we should consider that with all of our feature layouts.
Below you can see the AD for washington post, pretty funny, especially the last sentence ;)
All of those comparisons between html5 and flash could give anybody but batman a headache. Good to know that someone with a sense of humor decided to make their clash a bit more “fun” than numbers, predictions and angry “thoughts on flash”. As with every technology, things have their advantages and disadvantages. And true, HTML5 is better battery-to-performance-wise, but Flash has some pretty cool tricks up it’s sleeve too. And even if the web moves away from flash video completely (which it has started to do) there will still be plenty of use for flash – gaming, “creative” showcase type websites and cartoons for which it is perfect.
The cool people at Code Computerlove decided to make a pong game (for two players) that uses FLASH to render one side of the table, and HTML5 to render the other. And they work together in harmony. Maybe it’s a hint towards the future? Huh, Steve?
You can check out the game and play it here. Enjoy!
Moore had already predicted the rate of growth of the technology industry, but as it’s a theory we simply nod and say “yeah, that’s probably right”. So above you can see a spec chart of an iMac from 10 years ago with the new iPhone from this year. Since these tools (being computers and other things like the smartphones and tablets) are our main productivity machines nowadays it’s nice to see that we can do more and more with the power that they provide.
Source: gizmodo
This was one of the big drawbacks. Paying another 99c for making a ringtone from already purchased music? This is a very mean practice by apple, and they should stop doing that because people don’t like to be charged for EVERYTHING, and for some things twice.
Ok, let’s say we want to make a ringtone. What we need here is iTunes (but I guess you already have it) and your iPhone doesn’t have to be jailbroken. It can be fresh out of the box. The idea is to make a little cheat so the iPhone / iTunes will THINK a file you provide is a ringtone. And since most technology is at it’s root stupid here’s how we do it :
1. Find a song you like in iTunes. Right click on it and go to “Get Info”.
2. Go to options tab and find a place where it says “start time” and “stop time”. Remember that your ringtone has to be 30 seconds or less. Play the song a couple of times looking at the seconds to find a perfect spot, here let’s say 0:08 to 0:28 which will make a 20 second ringtone out of it. Click ok.
3. Now make sure you’ve got your encoder set to AAC. If you don’t know what I’m talking about just follow these simple steps to do so:
– Go to iTunes preferences. Then to “Import Settings” and choose AAC as the encoder. Click Ok everywhere.
After you’re done with that select your song and either right click and select convert to MP3, or in new iTunes click the advanced tab on top of the screen and click “create AAC version” there.
Now take that newly created 20 second long song and drag it onto your desktop. Then delete the 20 second file from iTunes completely (important!). You might also want to go to the original file and reset those start and stop times. After the 20 second AAC file is delted from iTunes and exists only on your desktop you see it has a m4a extension. In MAC OS simply select it, press Command + I and change the extension from M4A to M4R. It will ask you if you’re sure to change to m4r. Say you are. In windows you can probably change the extension by either selecting Rename from the right click menu or some preferences of the file.
After this step you have a M4R file on your desktop and it should be associated with iTunes. Click on it twice to open it and it should simply open in iTunes and start playing. But you’ll notice that in the ringtones tab you now have that file. So sync your iPhone and you’re done.