Posts filed under 'web'
One of the major players in the type industry, FontShop, has released licenses for real commercial fonts able to be used with CSS font embedding. For those unaware of CSS font embedding, the font is gathered using the @font-face construct rather than a regular selector. To embed the font files requires no use of Flash and no JavaScript. All you have to do is specify the font-family (typeface) name and its source file.
For Example:
@font-face {
font-family: "Helvetica";
src: url(/fonts/Helvetica.eot);
}
Read the Newsletter…
See the fonts…
Unfortunately FontShop says its formats don’t yet support Chrome, Safari or Opera and licensing fees aren’t dirt cheap, but it’s a step in the right direction.
25th February 2010
Simon
With the recent release of the iPad, YouTube’s migration to h.264 for the iPhone and Google’s decision to drop support for older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 in favour of developing an HTML 5-based Google Apps, it doesn’t look like great news for the Adobe Flash plugin. The question on many people’s lips is — well, people in web and IT communities — ‘Is Flash dead?’. JavaScript libraries such as JQuery allow for rich internet applications and interfaces, HTML 5 video tags make video embedding a cinch and CSS 3 animation can be performed with a single line of code. Each one seems to be a nail in Flash’s coffin. Well, that’s on the surface.
HBO's new website, redesigned entirely using Flash
So, is Flash dead? The simple answer is no… even though Steve Jobs considers Flash obsolete and Apple refuses to support it on the iPhone or iPad. Obviously it’s within Apple’s best interest to keep developers away from allowing people to access applications outside of Apple’s App Store approval process. [Not that that stopped Google. Their Google Voice app, which was rejected by Apple in July last year, has since been redeveloped in HTML 5 so it can be accessed via a web browser, namely Apple's mobile version of Safari.] Even Microsoft claim that their Silverlight plugin beats Flash in terms of video performance and compatibility. And then there is the web standards community — web designers and developers who claim that there is not need for plugins like Flash, which breaks web standards, forces people to run download and install a proprietary plugin and often all for lesser performance than it’s HTML counterpart.
So, why isn’t Flash dead? Well, don’t get me wrong, as a web designer I am very much in favour of web standards, HTML 5 and the many benefits of open source software. I’ve also put up with the fair share of interface and programming language changes that Macromedia, and now Adobe, has made to the Flash application (not to mention their other software). However, I am also in favour of diversity. Let’s face it, there is nothing quite like Flash. Without it, there’d be no YouTube right now, no Vimeo, iView or if you’re in the States, Hulu. And even though we have fabulous browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari — and according to TechCrunch, Internet Explorer 6 is down to 20 percent of the market — HTML 5 is still a baby (and SVG is a very, very old foetus). There is no easier way to display vector graphics and animation, no better way to embed and share online video in terms of compatibility. In an article on the topic that is well worth reading, Adobe’s John Nack puts it best:
• Flash is flawed, but it has moved the world forward.
• Open standards are great, but they can be achingly slow to arrive.
• Talk of “what’s good for standards is bad for Adobe” is misinformed nonsense.
• Flash will innovate or die. I’m betting on innovation
What else? Despite the iPhone/iPad’s lack of Flash plugin, Adobe has already taken the plunge, giving another use for their upcoming Flash CS5 software — allowing you to output applications made in the Flash environment as iPhone Apps.
But the best proof that Flash isn’t dead is the developers creating great new content online. One of the most recent and best examples is HBO’s redesign, which is now entirely in Flash. Although there are some UI quirks in the design of the interface, it is a great example of how a large amount of content can be managed and easily accessed, not to mention the site’s beautiful design aesthetic. Oh yeah, and can’t wait for Treme (by the makers of The Wire), the animated Ricky Gervais show and a second season of Tim! And no, I am not paid by or have any affliation with Adobe or HBO 
4th February 2010
Simon
Robert Scoble has written an interesting article, ‘The Push and Pull of China’, in response to a TechCrunch article that claims that Google’s decision to no longer run a censored search engine in China was largely business motivated.
16th January 2010
Simon
According to Ricky Gervais’ blog, they’ve also finished recording two of the podcasts from the new “Guide To…” season, “Society” and “Law and Order”.
18th October 2009
Simon
Great video. Nice animation too. It’s a hard argument to dispute really.
[Via NewWork. View the stats on Socialnomics.net]
15th August 2009
Simon
An interesting talk from TED.com about the future of the web, by the father of the web, Tim Berners-Lee.
25th May 2009
Simon
The traditional medium that is the newspaper — well, let’s face it — hasn’t translated well to the internet. The front page of TheAge.com.au reads like it was thrown together last-minute by Andrew Bolt, at the best of times. And the paper itself is becoming littered with articles about how Twitter is the “next big thing” to affect you and your teenage children, smarmy comments in the opinion pages about the latest flu epidemic, footballers who sexually assault and narcotically abuse, and how this week’s magazine is “the fashion issue” (every week is the fashion issue!)
A typical newspaper website
And it’s not just the paper, it’s seems as though with the influx of blogs and social networking sites, that writers on the web — and writers in general (see The Wire: Season 5) — are feeling intimidated. I’m not saying that a blog like mine is more valuable than others, rather that some of my favourite blogs, well-written blogs such as the recently discontinued Speak Up, are slowly dying out. With the abundance of online video, access to torrents and DVDs, the majority of free-to-air television is becoming increasingly more focused on an older demographic. And professionals in areas such as illustration and photography are being replaced too often by economically-efficient templates and stock libraries.
Times Reader 2.0
I know that Marshall McLuhan said that ‘the medium is the message’, but as we know, content is the key. So it will be interesting to see that as the internet matures, how the traditional media will evolve. Recently, Google have been getting into all sorts of strife with their online Books site. Last week, Amazon announced the 3rd generation of their Kindle digital reading device, following the release of a Kindle app for the iPhone. And this week, The New York Times released Times Reader 2.0, a standalone piece of software, using Adobe Air, that has been designed to look like a traditional newspaper and is updated via the internet.
The Amazon Kindle DX
So how will traditional media adapt to the growing online world? Well, the technology is here. We have devices like the Kindle, iPhones and Blackberries, technologies like XML, RSS, Flash/Adobe AIR and a multitude of online formats. The issue lies in what is considered newsworthy in a world where the immediacy of information is so apparent, whether writers, artists and designers will be duly compensated for their work and whether people in general will embrace the internet as their preferred method for information and entertainment. Maybe time will tell.
16th May 2009
Simon
You may have noticed recently that Google has put a colour sorting function in their images search. There are some great colour resources out there on the web. Here are a few…
Kuler
Launched in 2006 at Adobe Labs — not long after the death of Macromedia and the dawn of ActionScript 3 — Kuler is brilliant online resource that allows users to create, sort, save and share colour schemes. The Kuler-style interface was later translated into the Color Guide in Adobe Illustrator.
Color Blender (Eric Meyer)
This is a really quick and handy resource for creating your own colour palette for web and screen-based applications. Aimed at web designers and built by the ever-amazing Eric Meyer, Color Blender allows you to quickly choose two colours and then display a number of ‘midpoints’ or hues between the two values.
ColorBlender.com
Similar to Kuler, this site has a much more basic interface but still allows you to do some powerful things. You can export your scheme to Photoshop or Illustrator EPS, upload an existing scheme or even email it off to a friend. While it lacks the community of Kuler, ColorBlender.com is built using JavaScript and is a bit lighter on your web browser than the Flash-based Kuler.
Color Scheme Designer
Yet another online colour picker, Color Scheme Designer looks like Kuler’s doppleganger at first glance. Again, it’s much simpler, but has two nice features — the ability to change brightness and contrast as well as previews for how your colour scheme would look on a web site.
Multicolr Search Lab
Alright! I just heard you thinking, ‘What the hell do all these colour picking sites have to do with Google Image Search?’ Well, this one does. Choose up to ten colours, and this search engine will come back with at you with 50 images from Flickr, based on the colours you chose. It still blows my mind how clever this is.
retrievr
This one takes it one step further. Unlinke conventional search or the colour selection in Multicolr and Google Images, Retrievr allows you to upload or even sketch the image you want! It then takes the colour data and retrieves you a set of images from Flickr. Understandably, it’s still in development, so there are a few glitches.
8th May 2009
Simon
Some more propaganda… the guys I work with are amazing! They’ve just completed the feat of a new video section on the Madman site, called The Screening Room +. This is like the old one, but now feautres full episodes of anime including Fullmetal Alchemist, Darker Than Black and School Rumble. You may remember that I mentioned when they first launched the widescreen high-quality trailers. The new format includes episodes too. So what are you waiting for?…
The Screening Room +
Press Release
Have a nice Easter break
9th April 2009
Simon
Remember that paradigm shift I talked about a little over a year ago? Well folks, it is now upon us. I’m a bit late because I was overseas, and not really keeping in touch with the latest tech news (which I tend to do less these days anyway). But anyway, I’m onto it now, and thought I would post a quick update of where Google’s Android open-source platform for mobile devices is at.
Basically, late last year, the first ‘Android phone’ was released. To see how it looks, check out the youtube video below (WARNING: Not the most exciting video demonstration, they are engineers after all!):
Android demo and introduction (Official Google)
I don’t think the phone in that video actually features the Android phone released last year, that phone is in a demo for which I’ll post the link below. However, as I said in my previous post, the whole point with Android is that the hardware itself won’t matter. So again, further commodification of cellphone hardware, here we come. The iPhone has definitely kick-started this trend, and Android will only add to it.
So, where is Google going with all this? Well, I notice that Google now have “Offline” mode for both the Google Calendar and Gmail. Still in Beta of course. So, now, whether you’re connected to the net or not, you can access your google mail and calendar. Any offline updates will be synchronised once you connect again to the internet. Likewise, any new emails will be downloaded to Gmail offline once you connect.
Stay with me, we’re getting to the best part. Ok, so Google now has online and offline access to mail and calendars, from your desktop. From a mobile device, Google currently offer exchange like synchronisation through active sync on PocketPCs and I’m sure something similar on the iPhone.
Add Android to this and I think Google plans to basically have your mobile, your online computer world, and your offline computer world thoroughly covered. It will mean that, I can send an email to someone with a date, and straight from my mobile or computer (offline or connected to the net), add a calendar event which will then be syncronished across all platforms. Calendars can also be shared online through Google’s existing sharing capabilities, so we can have mobile-shared syncronised calendars. It’s basically what Blackberry does, but it will be much more thoroughly integrated into the internet world. For example, Facebook/’insert social networking site here’ events could be exported to calenders – even automatically exported once you register your attendance – and then being instantly synronised across all devices. All your emails, calendars, contacts, tasks, documents would then be accessible (but more importantly, syncronised) from your computer or phone, or from some random internet cafe computer in Inner Mongolia!
But we’re not done yet folks (and no I don’t work for Google, but they are welcome to make me an offer!). Add another layer to the information above, Google maps/earth, and you know add a physical, geographic layer to the information. So contacts could be viewed in Google maps/earth based on their location in this world of ours. The same is true of events and tasks, which could be visualised on maps based on location information from the event. If you were say, meeting a friend at Lounge in Swanston St Melbourne, Australia. That location could be viewed in Google maps, along with the time and date you’re supposed to be there, and perhaps information on the venue. You would just have to make sure that you don’t walk straight by the entrance while looking at you phone and being thoroughly anti-social!
And the best part of all this is that a lot of it will run on open or reasonable open platforms so communication between devices and platforms will be a breeze. Oh, and it will be free. As long as we keep clicking on Google ads that is! Although I imagine Google will also do a multi-tiered pricing system whereby corporate or sophisticated users can pay to get more storage/better features.
Whatever comes this way, I’m excited. It’s going to be an interesting year for cellphones and information.
Some links that may be of interest:
http://developer.android.com/ (Official Android developer site)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO7Yxyux1_k (Demo of the T-Mobile G1 Android phone, the aforementioned ‘Android phone’)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Android
http://personal.optus.com.au/web/ocaportal.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=Template_wRHS&FP=/personal/mobile/mobilephones/htcdream&site=personal (It seems Optus already has this phone available!)
24th March 2009
Tristan
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