David Emery OnlineA this for a that
There are three things I really want to see.
1. Stories written for the the kindle - that use 'kindleyness' the way novels use 'bookiness'.
2. Music made for the shuffle - pieces designed to appear randomly but still hang together. More than a bunch of songs. And long too, filling up a shuffle, hours worth of it.
3. Comics made for an iPad. Something that's not just a port of a comic, that combines words and pictures in a way that exploits the iPad's capabilities.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing how literature adapts to the new possibilities that eBooks open up, and on the music front I think you could make a pretty good argument that a lot of pop music is “designed for shuffle” – or at least, not designed to be consumed in a linear album format.
Visit ➔Badge of shame
The W3C have unveiled a logo for HTML5. I’m not sure the world needs such a logo, but I think it looks pretty good. It reminds me of some of the promotional materials used by the Web Standards Project back in the day—simple bold lines that work well at small sizes, with a whiff of Russian constructivism.
[…] “But,” cry the cheerleaders of ambiguity, “we need some kind of term to refer to HTML5 plus CSS3!”
Citation needed.
I think the citation is pretty clear considering the amount the media use HTML5 as a catch-all term for modern browser capabilities. Is it technically accurate to call these features HTML5? Of course not. But is it worth ignoring the popular usage at the expense of pushing standards forward? I don’t think so.
Sure, it would have been great to have a term that was more technically correct but being able to say “oh, we’re not using Flash for this we’re using HTML5” and have someone understand roughly what you mean is incredibly valuable.
Visit ➔Yahoo!locaust
I am, frankly, a mixture of disappointed and sad that after Yahoo! shut down Geocities, Briefcase, Content Match, Mash, RSS Advertising, Yahoo! Live, Yahoo! 360, Yahoo! Pets, Yahoo Publisher, Yahoo! Podcasts, Yahoo! Music Store, Yahoo Photos, Yahoo! Design, Yahoo Auctions, Farechase, Yahoo Kickstart, MyWeb, WebJay, Yahoo! Directory France, Yahoo! Directory Spain, Yahoo! Directory Germany, Yahoo! Directory Italy, the enterprise business division, Inktomi, SpotM, Maven Networks, Direct Media Exchange, The All Seeing Eye, Yahoo! Tech, Paid Inclusion, Brickhouse, PayDirect, SearchMonkey, and Yahoo! Go!… there are still people out there going “Well, Yahoo certainly will never shut down Flickr, because _______________” where ______ is the sound of donkeys.
Does anyone have any good recommendations for a Flickr alternative?
Getting seriously tempted to attempt making one myself (although that would obviously be a ridiculous folly) as there seems to be no service actually aimed at photographers (rather then just people that take photos) that competes with it.
Visit ➔Non-Titular
Titles appear to have quietly died again.
They used to be alive: In email subject and body form, in newspaper articles, books and academic papers. The first popular forms of independent, online writing imitated these, basing themselves on the opinion columns of print.
[...] Perhaps it’s just a trait of apps simplifying and requiring less of users to create content, especially desirable on portable devices where if not restricted by cramped input, people are restricted by time. Alternatively, it’s a necessary pattern for streaming content, since the frequency of regular updates need to be skimmed and a formal title interrupts that flow. Either way, I don’t think mandatory titles will come back this time.
Generally speaking I disagree; I don’t see titles disappearing on the most part as for long form content (i.e. longer then a tweet) they’re very useful in determining whether to read the article or not. I’d also argue that on something like Instagram the description is a title, and that on a more general level titles = short descriptions.
Just because Twitter doesn’t have them doesn’t mean everything else shouldn’t.
Visit ➔Sony's Qriocity music service leaves Spotify, Pandora, Last.fm and we7 unruffled
Someone should have told Sony that trying to get people to pay a monthly subscription for a service just like people can get for free is probably not a winning business model
Come on guys, surely you can do better then that?
Also, “Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity” really rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?
Visit ➔Radi
Heard about HTML5 yet? It's the new standard for the web. Apple loves it. Microsoft fully supports it. Google says it rocks. And Radi lets you enjoy it without learning to code. Radi is designed from the ground up to help you create content that will take full advantage of HTML5 features.
It’s an early beta from a one man shop, but it shows promise that hopefully sooner rather then later we’ll have a decent HTML5-based animation tool (which desperately needed if we really want to get rid of flash).
Visit ➔Apple releases iAd Producer: Mac app to create iAds
iAd Producer makes it easy for you to design and assemble high-impact, interactive content for iAd. iAd Producer automatically manages the HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript behind your iAd to make creating beautiful, motion-rich iAd content as easy as point and click. For advanced developers, iAd Producer offers sophisticated JavaScript editing and debugging, along with a powerful extension mechanism that enables them to create and re-use their own page templates and components.
Go on Apple, just cut to the chase and release a killer HTML5/CSS3 IDE. Between this, Dashcode, the Webkit inspector and Xcode they’ve basically got all the bits already, they just need to glue it together.
Visit ➔Isle Of Tune Lets You Compose Music By Um, City Planning
Isle of Tune lets you create whole songs by building a little town using objects like streetlamps, houses and trees to make sounds. There is even a collection of pre-built loops for those of us less musically inclined.
Loving this, especially considering that the iPad version of SimCity has kickstarted that particular addition again… (p.s. if you haven’t got it yet, get it – it’s a steal for 59p).
Visit ➔