Random Flux

Samsung Galaxy SII Experience

TimG — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 08:21:22 +0000

I had the Samsung Galaxy S2 for three days but had to send it back because of unacceptable battery life, which only seems to affect some users. Below is a summary of my experience with the phone with its upsides and downsides. Battery Life Even with everything that makes the phone attractive turned off, the [...]

Galaxy Tab & Android – First Impressions

TimG — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:21:38 +0000

I’ve been using a Samsung Galaxy Tab for a few days, having received one as a Christmas bonus/incentive to develop website versions for tablets. This is my first experience with an Android device and my first tablet computer, although I’ve played with iPads quite a lot and I’ve had an iPhone 3GS for nearly two [...]

You have no privacy online and there is nothing you can do about it

TimG — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:30:38 +0000

Privacy online no longer exists and there is nothing at all you can do about it. In fact, everything you can try to do about it will just make it worse. While everyone and the media and their dog have all been screaming and shouting about privacy on Facebook, privacy and Google Street View and [...]

Web designers’ responsibility in the web standards mess

TimG — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 10:49:31 +0000

In a recent Twitter exchange Helen Emerson, a web designer I admire a lot, celebrated the fact that Internet Explorer 9 is finally going to support rounded corners. My feeling on this to this is that’s nice, but it would have happened a lot sooner if we web designers hadn’t hidden IE’s deficits by finding [...]

Apple: “Do be evil.”

TimG — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 08:40:18 +0000

Apple are behaving like snake oil salesmen and that�s sad because it�s so unnecessary. Quacks have to dupe you because their products are junk. Apple�s products are the best in the industry, they have no need to hide their mistakes, because all of the mistakes they have ever made are trifles compared to the overall quality of what they do.

Game makers: Allow saves at any point and double your sales

TimG — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:14:43 +0000

Video game makers could probably at least double their sales if they would allow you to save you current progress at any point in the game, instead of only allowing specific “waypoints”. It would be fine to do this in Easy Mode only. This would make games more accessible to a huge number of potential [...]

Internet Explorer: Just say No.

TimG — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:11:05 +0000

I think the time has come for web developers everywhere to rebel against the tyranny of Internet Explorer, particularly the older versions (6 and before). We’re all donating hours of valuable working time making modern websites backward-compatible with IE6 for freeloaders who are feeding off of our work. The time has come to just say [...]

Convert TextExpander snippets for Windows

TimG — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:19:54 +0000

If you use both Mac and Windows you may have wished you could use your Mac TextExpander snippet files on your Windows computers or virtual machines. TextExpander radically speeds up your work if you often need to use the same text blocks, and having the same texts with the same hotstrings available on Windows makes [...]

“Equitable Artists” media business model

TimG — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:14:53 +0000

What is the value of mass-distributed media when its distribution effectively costs little or nothing (if distributed virally via BitTorrent)? And how does this value correspond to the value of the work that went into producing it? In fact, does it correspond at all any more? If ten million people want to buy a song [...]

MediaLink: Make the PS3 a Mac media center

TimG — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:01:47 +0000

For a long time I was frustrated that I couldn’t access the media files on my Mac with my PlayStation 3, which has everything needed to be a great multimedia center, in addition to being one of the best BluRay players around (and incidentally allowing you to play some pretty good video games as well). [...]