Thermaltake Level 10 M Mouse

Optimus Popularis keyboard

Optimus Popularis

If PHP were British

If PHP Were British - Added Bytes - Brighton Web Application Development

Two chatbots chatting

WWF file format

Conficker worm

Very long and interesting write-up on the Conficker worm that appeared in 2008 and infected millions of PCs, and the task-force working to disable it. This great article reads more like a high-tech thriller!

The Enemy Within - Magazine - The Atlantic

Content-aware fill

Well, wow. Seems like this new Photoshop CS5 feature isn't even an April Fools's joke: content-aware fill "guesses" at the right background to fill in when you delete areas in your picture. I'm still on Photoshop 7, but this might be a killer feature to update for.

The World's Best Ever: Adobe is aware… content aware

Filing the edges off a macbook

Ugh, we would usually use the word "nerd" in a rather positive sense, but his guy shows what it's like to be a nerd of the obnoxious type: if you have to "whine on Twitter" about the sharp edges of your Macbook then, well, you should consider stop blogging and "get a life".

How to File the Sharp Edge Off a MacBook Pro | One Man's Blog

Desktop

Well, not my desktop actually but it's a cool looking idea in both versions, especially with the Vigo painting from Ghostbusters. Wallpaper downloadable.

Blame It On The Voices: Desktop arrangement of the day

Michaelsoft Binbows

Blame It On The Voices: Michaelsoft Binbows

Usage of the word "Photoshop"

Awww come on Adobe: it is widely known that (like Google) the company that created the software Photoshop is not at all happy with the widespread use of the brand name as a verb. But their full "guidelines for the usage of their trademark" are just ridiculous: You're not supposed to say "Photoshop's new features are impressive" because it's not allowed to use the possessive form, and also you must include the full trademark signs. Of course saying that "something was shopped" is totally out of the question (no slang, no verb use). Have a look at the full guidelines at their web page, and then take a deep breath when you realize that these guidelines are even more strict than those for book authors who want to use the brand name in print! Ridiculous.

Adobe Systems Incorporated Permissions and Trademark Guidelines

Wifi memory card

Wait, what? They are building wireless memory cards now? I'm stupefied. How is this even possible? These little suckers have a built in wireless transmitter, so they can upload images and movies to your PC, or on your favorite picture sharing portal or social network, via Wifi automatically. Of course also geotagging all your pictures automatically via triangulating wireless networks. Wow, it's almost scary what this technology can do.

Inspected Gadget: EyeFi Pro X2 8 GB Wireless SD Memory Card

D&D on Microsoft Surface

This is strange and on the other hand pretty astounding: these role-players are using the flatboard Microsoft Surface to play an interactive game of Dungeons & Dragons. Surface is a multi-touch touchscreen which also features object recognition and costs around 15,000 US$. Despite this, I guess this kind of technology will really have some potential in the future, if you think of interactive, intuitive board games like this.

Digital doomsday

New Scientist asks an important question: "Books last for centuries. Computer memories last only decades. If disaster struck, how much of our knowledge would future humans be able to retrieve?" It's a very interesting article pointing out how our world of today relies very much on short-lasting methods of saving data, when even hard disks and tape recordings are not probable to last more than 50 years.

Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge - tech - 02 February 2010 - New Scientist

Splash screens

I'm kind of fond of splash screens for software programs. If you work a lot with computers, these are the logos you see dozens of times every day, and when you come along a great collection of old screens as the one below, there's certainly room for nostalgia.

GUIdebook > Splashes

Philco PC

Nice, can I get this with Brazil-like magnifying screen in front? Schultzeworks is building the Philco PC, inspired by the 1954 design classic Philco Predicta. Interested in buying one? Well too bad these are just 3D design renderings:

Thank you to everyone who has called or written to inquire where they could buy the Philco PC. However, these images are 3D renderings of a design concept which does not yet exist in the real world. We are currently meeting with PC manufacturers and hope that will change in the near future. In the meantime, thanks for the interest, and it’s very cool that you thought the images were real.

SchultzeWORKS | PhilcoPC

Bravo and Gypsy

Interested in the history of DTP (desktop publishing) and text editors? Bravo was the first WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) text editor, created in 1974 for the Alto computer. Quoting here from the excellent Dealers of Lightning:

Bravo's interface was heavily moded, meaning that the result of typing a key would differ depending on whether the program was in "command" or "text" mode. [...] Modes were such notorious pitfalls in interface design that they had spawned a standard cautionary joke. This involved a user who inattentively typed the word "edit" while in command rather than text mode: Typing "e" selected the entire document, "d" deleted the selection, and "i" instructed the machine to insert in its stead the next character to be typed...at which point the user discovered that his entire document had been inalterably replaced by the letter "t." [...]

Moreover, like all CSL programs, Bravo was exceedingly ugly in appearance. For all CSL's delight at its WYSIWYG capabilities, the program made scant use of the bitmapped screen's graphical power. [...] This reflected a deliberate choice by the CSL designers, who avoided elaborate graphics because they slowed down the system. But because the Systems Science Lab engineers were mostly interested in making the computer intelligible to the average use, they loaded up their programs with graphical gewgaws of all kinds, figuring that within a generation or two the machine's speed would eventually catch up.

Tesler and Mott therefore set out to create a modeless graphical interface to make Bravo simple to use. Inspired by the costume Mott's stepdaughter was wearing for Halloween that year, 1974, they called their new program "Gypsy."

[Hiltzik, Michael A.: Dealers Of Lightning - Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age. HarperCollins, 1999, p208-9]

While there's also the full manual available, the course outline of the functions and commands of Bravo is quite a lot more interesting, incorporating caveats such as this:

The length of a Bravo session should not exceed one hour or so, and it is wise to put [save] the file several times over the space of an hour. Bravo keeps a transcript of all commands, and the transcript uses some of the space on the disk which Bravo needs to function. Periodically, quit from Bravo, reenter and begin the editing or text input again. Be sure to put the file before leaving, though.

Overstaying your welcome in Bravo, may result in the message "Suggest you P and Q" (Put and Quit). When you get this message immediately put the file, quit from Bravo and reenter again. This action starts a new transcript and frees space on the disk used by the previous transcript.

Sound familiar? Apparently the creators of the software were used to crashes and system freezes so they even built in an Auto-Quit feature.. neat thinking!

Bravo Course Outline

First look at Chrome OS

Google offered a first look at the Google Chrome operating system, forthcoming in about a year. This OS is intended for special hardware netbooks, which means the OS can leave out a lot of the usual boot-up checks and processes, resulting in very short boot times. As the Chrome browser is totally integrated in the OS, it benefits from being able to use more computing power for web browsing and watching videos, for instance.

According to Google, "every application is a web application. There are no conventional applications. (Whatever you use), it's a webapp, it's a link, it's a URL." So that means without an internet connection, your PC is dead. But with a connection, all user settings for all applications and for the whole OS are loaded from the remotely stored server (so different users can use the same netbook with all their customizations intact and always synchronized).

I'm kind of warming to this concept of "cloud computing", at least for all the instances where you are on the road and presumably still able to access all your settings, files, accounts, and everything. Let's see if it will really be possible to work with a "crippled" (i. e. online-only) operating system.

First Glimpse at Google Chrome OS - Google Chrome OS - Lifehacker

Star Wars computer animations

Designer Larry Cuba explains how he made the simulation of the Death Star and the trench fly-through in the mission briefing scene in the original Star Wars movie. This being 1976, the approach to create the computer-animated images is quite impressive. I'm especially fond of his workdesk with the 10 dials used to rotate and position the elements, looks like a really straightforward method to manipulate those items on a screen (as compared to a mouse).

VOTD: Making of the Computer Graphics for Star Wars | /Film

3D Mandelbrot

Well, these are pretty amazing. By taking the mathematical approach used to create the classic Mandelbrot images and applying them to a three-dimensional sphere, Daniel White made some astounding 3D images. (They can explain the procedure much better than me, on their page.)

Mandelbulb: The Unravelling of the Real 3D Mandelbrot Fractal