Sometimes people ask, so to save tweets here’s a quick summary:
:)
Something occurred to me last night. The Apple TV is the perfect candidate for web based apps with home screen shortcuts…
— Nathan Pitman (@nathanpitman) May 4, 2013
… Apple TV apps don’t need to be downloaded and installed, they just exist in the cloud. The Apple TV is always connected.
— Nathan Pitman (@nathanpitman) May 4, 2013
Essentially Apple TV apps are a web view. The magic would be enabling interactions between these and a handheld iOS device. #2ndscreen
— Nathan Pitman (@nathanpitman) May 4, 2013
Apples ‘web apps only’ approach didn’t wash with the 1st iPhone because there wasn’t sufficient connectivity. Not an issue for Apple TV.
— Nathan Pitman (@nathanpitman) May 4, 2013
I’ve never previously been convinced by the Apple TV, for me it always fell short of what I could do with a Mac Mini hooked up to the TV in the lounge. I tried numerous different packages for media playback but always found myself back with good old Front Row – it’s simplicity and wife/child compatability being the stamp of approval required to make it a long term solution for audio/video playback in our lounge. Eventually as with all good things it came to an end… stuttering and spluttering I put the Mac Mini out to pasture and decided to have a shot at replacing it with a 3rd gen Apple TV.
The Apple TV has no ‘accessible’ local storage so I was in part only convinced by the recent introduction of iTunes Match (£21.99 per annum) which would mean that we would be able to access and play any/all of our music collection without the need for another machine running iTunes somewhere else in the vicinity. I surmised that for £99 even if it didn’t do everything I wanted then I wouldn’t begrudge it.
The first thing you’ll notice about the Apple TV is it’s size (or lack of). This box of tricks is epic in it’s minimal proportions and silent running, a welcome change from the humming Mac Mini it replaced in our Lounge. Set up is super quick and easy, only slightly delayed by having to input text with a directional keypad.
Despite much ridicule on Twitter the revised ‘dashboard’ is quick and easy to use – however as you navigate down through the menus it very quickly becomes apparent this is the OS equivalent of a nose job. Elsewhere the menu system feels (and looks) exactly like Front Row did when it made it’s debut back in 2005. Hopefully future iterations of the operating system will see a more complete overhaul which makes better use of screen space to display more content at once.
The beauty of the Apple TV is it’s simplicity, it’s ‘Wife approved’ and that means a great deal if you don’t want to spend your life providing IT support when the other half wants to catch up on some Prison Break – or other dramas featuring men that might be marginally more attractive than yourself. Streaming of iTunes purchased (or otherwise acquired) movies from a nearby iTunes library works a treat (smooth as butter with HD content) and the built in video apps work as expected.
For me the biggest surprise of all is Netflix, a service that I’d never even considered previously had suddenly become the most used feature on our Apple TV. Yes the selection is mostly ‘older stuff’ but when you consider the cost (currently £6 per month / £72 per annum) it’s an absolute bargain. We’ve already watching 4 series of a particular ‘prison related tv drama’ which on iTunes at least would have set us back £80! Netflix has proved ‘very’ popular with the kids too, completely replacing what TV they did watch on cable with a great selection of classics (anyone remember Inspector Gadget?).
So, is it worth the £99 price tag? If you subscribe to iTunes Match and Netflix then it’s an absolute no brainer, if not then at this price it’s almost worth a punt anyway. Hopefully future iterations of the Apple TV will continue to make it more relevant to wider user base with the introduction of other streaming services (fingers crossed!).
I was foolish enough to buy a Blu-ray player a few years back, how many times have I used it? Probably 3 or 4 times in the space of more than a year. It’s not that I don’t like watching movies, but the user experience with Blu-ray is nothing short of terrible. Khoi Vinh sums my thoughts up perfectly in his post Blu-ray Blues, the comments are well worth a read also – especially if you were ever an advocate of HD-DVD.
Yes, that’s right. I’ve got Joost invites. Want me to hook you up? Leave a suitably amusing comment and your wish will be granted. :)
Update: I’ve been inundated with requests for invites so bear with me. It may take a day or two for me to process your request.
Update: I’ve turned off comments for now as I’m a bit snowed under and unable to deal with all the requests that keep pouring in. I think a few people suggested alternative sources for invites in the comments below, so best of luck with your search!
Having just read through a really rather good interview over at Ars Technica I was astounded by following statement made by Ben Kuchera:
There is no real difference in quality based on what I’ve seen between HD DVD (Xbox 360) and Blu-ray (PS3). Keep in mind that unless your display can handle a 1080p or 1080i resolution the PS3 will downgrade the image into 480p.
What? That is some crazy shit. To quote one of the commenter’s on the article:
It blows my mind that Sony put the Blu-ray drive into the PS3 as a trojan horse that I’m forced to pay for, but it can’t even support my 720P (Sony!) HD television…
I’d be interested to hear from anyone out there with a PS3 as to what experience they have with playback of Blu-ray movies on a 720p HDTV.
Well, we’ve certainly had a fair share of hoax images of recent in the run up to Apple’s 30th Birthday on the 1st of April, but for me this has to be either the most impressive hoax so far, or the real thing.
Somehow I doubt it’s the real thing, since when did leaked photos of upcoming products ever make it out of Apple in the past? One things for sure though, this is certainly what everyone and their dog wants? It will be interesting to see if Apple can deliver on the dream.
If like me you watched the Macworld Keynote Address earlier today or last night you may well have seen the fantastic new TV ad which Apple have devised to promote the switch from IBM PowerPC processors to Intel chips.
Instant classic.
I stumbled across this amazing keyboard design by Art Lebedev Studios a while back. Then just today I saw some linkage back to it via foo reporting on availability as of Feb 1.
No idea how much it’s going to cost, they reckon less than a good mobile phone. They’re even talking of OEM opportunities. Nice.
I’ve spent perhaps 7 or 8 hours trying to configure a Belkin Wireless Access point which I bought from PC World a few months back. I was advised that the ‘Bridging Mode’ which this access point had meant that I would be able to attach wired ethernet devices to my Wireless LAN with little fuss. Hmm… not so.
I finally discovered after much googling that the little Belkin box will never do the job, it’s apparently only compatable with Belkin routers and mine is a Linksys.
At the weekend I stuffed the little belkin box on eBay and ordered a Linksys Wireless Ethernet Bridge from dabs. It arrived 20 minutes ago and it’s already set up and working a treat.
The moral of the story. Never listen to a PC World sales man and always by same brand products when you’re dealing with Wireless networking. Unless of course you’re a complete geek and know what you’re doing.
I stumbled across this great little free online service for converting your RSS feeds into MP3 files for podcasting goodness. Talkr might not have a trendy logo or backing from Yahoo! but they got themselves an r on the end of the name and a pretty neat little service to boot.
All you have to do is set up a free account then register as a ‘partner’ and add your RSS feed URL. They trot off and grab the feed and you can slap a nifty little link into your page template which links to your ‘Talkr-ed’ mp3.
The tricky part wasn’t getting it to work so much as temporarily defaulting Textpatterns RSS feed to 999 articles so that Talkr could provide audio for even my oldest posts (Sorry if you did an update with your RSS readers during the process!).
So, let me know what you think, click on the Listen to this post link below any artcile title to give it a whirl.
Maybe I’ve been doing something wrong, maybe I’m just thick but this morning I’ve had a total nightmare completing what should have been a simple task. Activating Studio 8.
I already own a fully licensed copy of Fireworks 8, but after my beta copies of Dreamweaver and Flash decided to time out I bit the bullet and purchased a Studio 8 upgrade from DABS. I have 2 boxed copies of ‘Studio MX 2004 Pro’, plus the boxed copy of ‘Fireworks 8’ so I assumed that I had more than was required to qualify for the upgrade as opposed to the full product version.
Studio 8 turned up on Saturday and this morning I got busy with uninstalling all previous versions of Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks etc.
With this done I ran the Studio 8 installer and then launched Flash first, studio serial number in hand, ready to get activation completed.
First I’m asked to enter my Flash 8 Serial Number, so obviously I just enter the Studio 8 serial, that’s all good. Then I get another dialog which asks me to provide my previous Flash version serial number from which I’m upgrading. 10 minutes later I re-emerge from the loft with my Studio MX 2004 Pro box, I enter the serial number as instructed… nothing. No green ‘tick’, nothing, nada, zip. So I try again but without the hyphens, again nothing.
Another 10 minutes later I’m back at the computer with my other Studio MX 2004 Pro box, I try this serial… again nothing.
Right, ok… time to give Macromedia Activation Support a call I think, so off I pop to Macromedia.com in search of a number… …there isn’t one. All support seems to be email based these days. Great, Fantastic. Just what I needed. That means that no doubt I’ll have to wait at least a day before I get a response to my query.
Right, I really need to get on and do some work now. I’ve paid for my software, whay can’t this be simple, I’ve checked, double and triple checked the numbers. They’re right.
Last resort, I do a quick search on google for ‘“PFD700”:http://www.google.com/search?q=PFD700’. It’s asking me for a Flash MX 2004 serial number, so I’ll give it one.
Success.
Not exactly the correct route, but in absence of any proper telephone support, it seemed the only logical option.
Update: Drew is indeed right, seems I was using serials from a NFR (Not for Resale) copy of Studio MX. However there are a bunch of other products you can upgrade from.
Looks like Flickr are trialing a print ordering service, it’s US only though right now.
Google Analytics, this could be the serious free competition which products like Mint and Delineate really didn’t need.
Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.
Basically it’s like a hosted version of Urchin (Which is nice if you ever used it), you simply create a Analytics account, pop a snippet of JavaScript into your page headers and off you go.
Google Analytics delivers everything you’d expect from a high end stats solution, and it integrates with AdWords. I’m going to give it a bit of a trial run right here on nathanpitman.com to see how it shapes up.
Update: A nice write up on Google Analytics by Eric Peterson.
Phone Companies May Soon Block Skype (and other VOIP services).
Grrr, argh… hmph.
One step forward, two steps back.
Slim devices have just announced the third gen Squeezebox, designed by Fred Bould the new form is just stunning. Where the 1st and 2nd gen Squeezbox’s were plastic and clunky this regains some of the poise and character which the 1st generation SliMP3 player had.
The design combines brushed aluminium, solid steel and a highly polished surface through which you can view the 320×32 pixel greyscale display. Excellent, I want one!
On Friday I finished up at Mirashade and today was my first day at my new place, Bite CP.
The most significant change for me is that at Bite right now I’m using a Mac, I think it’s a dual G5 with about 1.5Gb of RAM, so not bad by any stretch of the imagination. However… as a Mac ‘OSX’ newbie I could really do with some tips. I’ve already sussed the whole ‘Exposé’ thing but I really need some more tricks up my sleeve if I’m going to make passers by go ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ as I work my magic (hmm).
Please help me. Tell me about the great shortcuts you use everyday, the software you just cannot live without for web development, which IM and Mail clients you use and finally… is it tricky to set up an IMAP server? Hmm… maybe that’s one for another day.
According to Macromedia.com and Adobe.com as of the 18th of April Adobe is to acquire Macromedia!
Wow! Something I thought I’d never see happen. God only knows what this means for the Macromedia product line (Fireworks in particular) but it’ll sure be interesting to see what these two giants can deliver together.
Update: Kevin Lynch (Chief Software Architect at Macromedia) has a positive spin on the Macromedia acquisition on his blog.
So, recently I’ve been thinking about the concept of ‘e-receipts’. It must be said, I’ve done no research into whether something like this is already in the works, if it is, great. In the meantime here’s my take on the idea.
In the UK most people now have ‘Chip & Pin’ Credit and Debit cards. This means that you no longer sign for purchases but instead enter your pin via a keypad.
While this has helped to ‘streamline’ the whole paying for goods process you still end up waiting ages for the cashier to print out your ‘paper based’ receipt (Chug chug chug, rip). What if your receipt was simply transmitted back to your bank or credit card company and made available for you to retreive if required via your usual online banking interface?
If you really needed a paper receipt you could still request one, but I bet most people shove that little bit of paper in their jacket pocket only to bin it a few days later.
Guess what, I just googled ‘e-receipts’ and found this. Looks like someone got there about a zillion years before me.
Must remember to google journal entries prior to spouting them upon my readers in the future.
I have another 50 47 Gmail invites if anyone is interested… leave a comment with your current email address and I’ll invite you. :)
Apple announced two ‘amazing’ new products at Macworld today! They never cease to amaze, although I still reserve judgement on the nasty iMac.
First up is the Mac mini. It’s a Mac, but it’s mini. Basically it’s a miniture Mac base unit. So… if you already have a PC with USB keyboard, mouse and DVI or VGA monitor, then you’ve got everything you need to get started. It starts at just �339! Flog a few more bits on eBay and I could be on my way to my first Mac.
Next up is the iPod shuffle, although I reckon a Capcom Streetfighter inspired tag of ‘Super iPod mini’ woulda worked just as well, then the 1Gb model coulda been called the ‘Super iPod mini turbo edition’.
The iPod shuffle does away with all the cleverness and keeps things simple. You load your tracks, it shuffles them. Not entirely sure how that might work out but it could be kinda cool I think, and for only �69 I could well bring myself to snap one up as soon as just for the hell of it. :)
Firefox 1.0 has a snazzy new start page courtesy of google (There’s that google link again).
Pretty neat although they could do with shortening the search field any tidying the location of the ‘search’ button.
The ‘tip’ area works quite nicely, providing newbie users with a Firefox co-branded start page is a neat but simple way of making the application more friendly.
The Mozilla Foundation today released Firefox 1.0, the first major new product release since June 2002. Firefox 1.0 is the completion of roughly 2 years of work on the revolutionary new browser. The release follows up the hugely successful Preview Release which had over eight million downloads.
It doesn’t appear to be on the public pages of mozilla.org yet but the folders and files are there. Go get it!
A couple of years back Drew wrote an article for A List Apart detailing a method that could be used to embed Macromedia Flash movies in a valid XHTML document. Fresh discussion on the topic has sparked some interesting comment from John Dowdell of Macromedia. Well worth a read.
I’m selling my ‘Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen’ (Snappy product name!) on eBay. Ok so it’s no iPod beater but if you’re after a less expensive mp3 player then this might do the job.
Includes the following items; 20GB Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen, Creative Earphones, Carrying case, USB Cable, Firewire Cable, Installation CD-ROM, Quick Start Guide, Swordfish Car Cassette Adaptor.
Features & benefits; Stores up to 8,000 songs (WMA/80kbps) or 5,000 songs (MP3/128kbps) or use the Zen as a portable hard drive, Sleek stylish anodized aluminum body fits in your pocket or can be clipped to your belt in the included travel pouch, Charge the NOMAD Jukebox Zen via your USB, Powerful simple icon-driven interface with Quick Scroller Navigation.
Happy bidding. :)
Update: Sorry, this item has now been sold.
I have a load of Gmail invites if anyone is interested… leave a comment with your current email address and I’ll invite you. :)
Sony have announced a new, redesigned version of its Playstation 2 console.
Making its debut in stores from November 1st, the newly designed PlayStation 2 is half the weight of the original design, and the internal volume of the console has been reduced by an incredible 75%. The new design is only 2.8cm thick, compared to the 7.8cm of the original console.
Despite the smaller size, the new PlayStation 2 features an integrated Ethernet port for online gaming.
Ben Goodger has posted to the MozillaZine Forums with an updated Firefox 1.0 roadmap. The new roadmap cites a release date of the 11th of October (2004). Can’t wait. If you ‘still’ don’t know what Firefox ‘is’ or don’t understand why you should be using it then take a wander over to ‘“Browse Happy”:http://browsehappy.com/’.
Apple have remixed the iPod (again!). This time improving battery life, introducing a new ‘click wheel’ and a starting price for the 20gb model of just $299.
Macromedia have announced Flash Paper 2 and Contribute 3. Together boths products form a part of the new Macromedia Web Publishing System which is geared towards empowering businesses to build, manage, and publish to enterprise websites within a centrally controlled, standards-based environment.
“Contribute 3”:http://www.macromedia.com/software/contribute/ lets everyone in an organization publish to websites and bring them alive with up-to-date content and information. There is no easier way to keep web content current and relevant.
“FlashPaper 2”:http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashpaper/ allows anyone to convert printable files into Macromedia Flash documents or PDF files with one click.
After 7 years I’ve decided it’s time to delete all my bookmarks and start again.
You reach a point where you have so many bookmarks that you need a search engine to navigate them. You try and organise them into neat folders and make sure that you remove dead links. It’s probably easier to search out the resource you’re after with google, than to find it in that huge bloated bookmark collection.
Time for a fresh start.
Following on from my post earlier in the year regarding the unacceptable situation which is large record companies producing Audio CDs ‘with’ intentional errors to prevent ripping, I stumbled across a number of related posts at the Register.
I think The Register have the right angle on this, essentially record companies are to blame since they have deviated (As pointed out by Phillips) from the red book standard which was established way back in 1980.
The record companies use the excuse that the climate has changed… blah blah blah, and they need a way to protect against copying and provide users with an enhanced experience.
Well, my feeling is that if they are ‘that’ serious about copy protection they should consult Phillips and establish a new standard which everyone can work to.
In conclusion The Register makes this very valid point:
With copy-crippled CDs, people buy less music and manufacturers sell less equipment. And eventually the industry will realize it can make more money by ceasing to pursue doomed attempts to prevent copying music.
Well put.
Bookmark synchronisation is one of those annoying little issues. I have a PC at work, and a PC at home.., but the bookmarks are never synchronised, simply because there has been no easy way to do so.
Sure there are a few options out there that I have tried. MyBookmarks.com is one of them, but it requires that you register with them, download an exe and have this running in your toolbar 24/7. And even then, it still seems complicated…
Well… a guy by the name of ‘Torisugari’ has developed a great Firefox extension which deals with Bookmark synchronisation brilliantly!
You simply provide a FTP host, username and password and Firefox can auto upload/download the bookmarks file on startup and exit. The process is fast and efficient. Result!
I stumbled across this post just now at SecurityFocus, I’m dissapointed and hope the Beastie Boys themselves take issue with this and give their record company some stick.
Well I truly regret actually purchasing a copy of the new Beastie Boys album to support them.
It seems that Capitol Records has some sort of new copy protection system, that automatically, silently, installs “helpful” copy protection software on MacOS and Windows as soon as you insert the CD into default systems.
I’m not sure exactly what it does yet, but I am sure regreting actually purchasing said media now… they don’t deserve my money if they choose to pull stupid stunts like this. Installing software without your permission sounds like viral malware behaviour to me. I certainly hope the AV companies put signatures into their products for this crap.
I reminds me of my experience with another audio CD some months back.
Every thing’s going Pete Tong! Yesterday:
Hopefully today will be a better day.
Mozilla have gone live with the penultimate preview release of Firefox.
The latest release features a number of improvements. The most noticeable being the new default windows and linux theme. The improvements in full:
A word of warning (via Digital Media Minute), do not install this version over any previous versions of Firefox. Either uninstall previous versions or install Firefox 0.9 to a different folder.
All via flex-mx.com
“Microsoft Expression”:http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/ is a free vector-based illustration and graphics tool for the Mac or PC, and according to sources, is Microsoft’s first product that exports to Flash SWF.
This might be a “dead end” product (it was aquired when Microsoft acquired Creature House)… Forest Key (project manager at Microsoft) mentions in the Expression Forum: “For the time being we do not have any announcements regarding future plans for Expression.”
Deadend product or not, it’s been getting lots of attention… Haven’t had the chance to play around with this yet, but I’ve heard it’s on par with “CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand”.
Well, it certainly sounds interesting, I’m downloading a copy right now, so I’ll have a play when I get a chance and post some more on how it stacks up…
The mozillaZine Forums are citing a 12th or 14th of June release for Firefox 0.9…
Kevin Gerich has also recently revealed that this new build will include a new default theme. He also promises to post some insights into the making of this new theme in the coming days. Should be a good read.
Every good web project specification document includes a list of target browsers and platforms. It’s something that I’ve been reviewing here at Mirashade, and I’m interested to know what browsers and platforms like minded developers are ‘developing’ for.
Where possible we’re refraining from developing ‘for’ Internet Explorer versions previous to 6, although we do ensure that our sites don’t become totally unusable in these.
For our most recent project we have devised the following list:
PC:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
Netscape Navigator 7.1
Mozilla 1.6
Mozilla Firefox 0.8
Mac:
Netscape Navigator 7.1
Mozilla 1.6
Mozilla Firefox 0.8
Safari 1.2
How does this compare to your browser devlopment list? Let me know…
Tuesday last week I took delivery of a new PC. A Dell Dimension 4600… blah blah blah.
Anyhow… what I discovered when I started the PC up was quite a huge amount of pre-installed junk that I really did not want. So my first hour of ownership was spent uninstalling various applications; AOL, MSN Explorer, BT Yahoo Anytime, Tiscali 10.0, McAfee Security Centre trial, Paint Shop Pro trial, Photo Album 5 trial, Dell Experience… etc. Groan!
I just wish Dell had the option online to specify ‘please do not pre-install any junk’ on my PC.
Are Dell the only culprits? Or are other manufacturers taking the same route…?
Following the acquisition of Blogger in 2003 by Google, Blogger has relaunched with a rich new feature set and a very chic new CSS driven look.
If you’re looking to set up a blog then I’d say you couldn’t go far wrong with Blogger, although of course if you have access to MySQL on a Unix box I’d have to suggest Textpattern. ;)
Well, I’ve been a little out of the loop for the past week or so. I’m ‘on holiday’ at home until the end of this week with my ‘family’. :)
However; this morning after feeding the milk monster I found some time to browse some blogs and do a little catching up. I happened across a couple of nice items which I present here for you to peruse.
Processing is a programming language designed for the electronic arts and visual design communities. It seems that you can pretty much use it for whatever you want and there are some great examples on the Processing site of just what can be done with it. I’m sure this would interest many Flash developers as the programming fundamentals sound pretty similar.
Mike Chambers has put together a nice standalone Flash Application for displaying the most recent posts to the Macromedia XML News Aggregator. It’s called MXNA Feed Scroller (catchy!) and uses the MXNA web service API to populate itself. You can download the source code and tinker with it to your hearts content. Nice work!
Right, better go. I think I can hear the milk monster waking.
Today I was clearing out old apps, tidying up my machine when I came across something interesting.
It makes me wonder how often anyone else ‘really’ uses Central, and when if ever there will ever be any killer applications for it. So far only the ‘Blog Reader’ has interested me, and to be fair, there are many better alternatives out there. What will become of Central I wonder, is it destined to become a one hit wonder, installed once, used once, never again… :?
I’ve always wanted an iPod, but have never been able to bring myself to spend that much on a luxury item. Here at Mirashade, my boss man Baz McCarthy has one, as does Drew. They’re very nice things, all white and shiny like. I think the appeal for me is linked to listening to music in my car, to have all my music at my fingertips without the associated multitude of CD cases rattling around would be great.
Well yesterday Apple announced the iPod mini, just like the iPod, only mini like! Now, the confusion for me is this. The base level iPod can store 10,000 songs are costs $299, yet the iPod mini stores only 1,000 songs, and costs $249. Can anyone here do math?
A few months back I bought a ‘network MP3 player’, my first purchase of this kind, the idea being that it would replace my old Yamaha multidisc CD player (Which regularly refuses to eject the CD tray completely, making nasty grinding noises as it does so).
The device that I opted for was the ‘Slim Devices‘ SLIMP3 Player. I placed my order through a UK distributor and within less than 2 days the unit arrived complete with appropriate cabling. Before running the 20 metre network cable from upstairs office to downstairs lounge I plugged the unit in for a quick test. Everything worked, the player connected to the network and detected the SlimServer (The PC on which I had installed the Server software).
Now, regardless of the fact that the unit, server software and customer service was stunning, there was one thing which was holding me back from being blown away by my little SLIMP3, I had to drill through one internal wall, out through an external wall down, and then back through the external wall again to get the network cable to the lounge. Now, I ‘could’ have set up a wireless LAN connection, but I didn’t. Now that the hard work is done I couldn’t live without my SLIMP3, and now I hear that they have released the ‘Squeezebox’, a SLIMP3 player with an integrated wireless LAN and standard Ethernet connection… bliss.
Now if I could just convince my wife that we need another network music player… :)
What this means for developers is that any site which you have built using ‘plug-in’ technology such as Flash, Windows Media Player, QuickTime or Real Player will act differently.
Every instance of plug-in content will prompt the user to click an ‘OK’ button in order that the plug-in can execute content. On some sites this will have a huge impact, other will not be affected.
Macromedia has identified some early workarounds, but these require significant changes to existing site code.
You can find out more about these solutions here: http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/activecontent/
On Thursday last week I finally ordered a SLIMP3 player from Slim Devices after months of dribbling. It arrived on Friday morning, on Saturday I enrolled the help of my Father in law to drill the required holes for the LAN cable, and now it’s all up and running.
Well, for a long time I’ve used IE on a day to day basis, it’s done the job, yes it’s full of bugs and annoying ‘Microsoft Features’ but it works and after all it’s a part of Windows, so it’s just there.
Thing is, recently IE is grating more and more, and there’s a new kid on the block for us Windows users. It goes by the name of Mozilla Firebird, and first impressions are that this is everything that Netscape 6 and 7 should have been.
If you know what’s good for you I strongly suggest that you get your backside over to Mozilla and download it right now. You have been told. :)
Last night I took a visit to ‘PC World’, full of sales guys who know nothing about the product and just want to sell you a service plan.
Anyhow, I/We (My wife and I) ended up buying a cheapy Logitech webcam amonst other things, I have to say this has to be the most fun you can have for such a small amount of cash. Well worth the spend.
‘All in the head‘ is Drews new outlet for strange thoughts and ponderings.
You have been warned…
Rubberduck�s new version of its rich client desktop application production software enables Macromedia Flash developers to leverage their skills from the browser to the client desktop.
�Screenweaver MX extends the traditional Flash capabilities by acting as a bridge between Flash and the operating system� says Martijn de Visser co-founder of Rubberduck. �It provides Flash developers with a toolset to create rich client desktop applications without having to acquire new skills�.
Screenweaver MX is available immediately on the Windows platform. A fully functional trial version is available for download at www.screenweavermx.com.
Some interesting thoughts on the release of Flash Communication Server MX over at Actionscript.com, worth a quick read.