Points of interest

Down from the Clouds

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:23:58 -0800

There’s been lots of talk recently about clouds, and not just from the meteo set. Well, not just recently as people have been promising all kinds of wondeworks would wend their wet way from the wafting woolpack working worldward. These things have only recently come to seriously pass and with them comes easy access to internet based tools, from anywhere in the world! As long as there’s a network connection. Oh, and some form of internet browsing thing. Ahhh, and power of some kind. Hm, maybe not so easily at that. No matter. That it’s happening is the thing. Imagine you have someone setting up servers, network, storage, and such for you. What makes it a Cloud, is when they do it in such a way that you don’t need to know all the intimate details about the bits and pieces (how many cpu’s in the server, how fast the network, what kind of storage) in order to make effective use of it. What you end up with is a way to take advantage of the benefits of storing your data in a remote location, but without needing to be steeped in lots of technical gobbledygook.

One such cloudlike instrument is the whole MobileMe service. What’s a MobileMe you ask? It’s Apple’s cloudtastic service. If you purchased an iPhone, you received a free subscription for a bit. This is so you can get a feel for (and hopefully pay Apple for) using the cloud to store your data and having it pushed to all your connected devices. Change a contact using the online MobileMe mail, it shows up on your phone. Change an appointment in iCal, have it show up on your other computer. It has other features, too, like website hosting (you’re soaking surfing on it).

Another cloud-type thing is iWork.com. That’s a service that allows you to upload your iWork documents to the cloud and have access to them from anywhere in the world, again, with the aforementioned limitations. It goes further than just file sharing, though. When you go there to see what someone has shared, you get to see, depending on the document, a page by page, slide by slide, or sheet by sheet representation of the Pages, Keynote, or Numbers file.

Well, since I’ve shown you MobileMe by way of this page, howzabout I give you a shot of iWork.com betaness as well? I’ve posted a file of shapes from the game Meteos. They’re vector images so they can be scaled, you can change colors, etc. Follow this link (or use the arrow above), and use the icon at the top of that iWork beta screen to download a Keynote ’08, Keynote ’09 or PowerPoint document. Create your own meteoons like these folks did! Oh, and if you need some backgrounds, click here!

A SuperShroomed iPhone

Sat, 6 Feb 2010 11:45:44 -0800

To many, that’s what it is, that’s all it is, that’s all it’s a-gunna-be. I see it as a testament to Steve Jobs’ showmanship that he can show something so obvious, an obvious detection device would be off the charts, it’s needle madly flitting back and forth with the speed and ferocity of one very irritated, ink laden, jet propelled, yet indecisive, ant, and the closest anyone can come to understanding it is, “Well, it’s just like before, just bigger iddnit?”

He’s a crafty one, that Jobs. But he learns from his mistakes and as he’s said before, if you’re playing hockey, make sure your stick hits the puck and the best way to do that is to think about where the puck is probably going to be, skate there, wait for it to come slipping by and smack the living berjeebus out of it... that’ll show that puck.. sliding ‘cross the ice like it OWNS it.

SO, what, you may ask in your head voice, is potentially, you may think, the, for lack of a better word, deal? Well, you can see this clearly in the iPod line, like the nano. You know how the nano was the number one selling iPod of all time and, by recent definition, the number one selling digital music player of all time. Out of nowhere, Apple updates it. They stopped making the number one product in a segment... STOPPED I say, and released something almost entirely different. Which, of course, also went on to sell a Jobillion. The lesson learned from that is not “come out with something every year and they’ll buy it” it’s more “when you’re the best, your only competition is yourself. If you’re keeping yourself on your toes, then everyone else is going to have to be jumping to keep up with you, and you stay the best longer. Until someone lucks up and finds, say, a pogo stick”.

Where does the iPad fit in? When Steve Jobs first entered the computer industry, the rules were that you created your own box with the materials available, create your software and start your own computer company. Interoperability was not a big word on a lot of home user’s minds. As technology got better, you had to leave old hardware behind and embrace new things. Maybe throw a bone at backwards compatibility, but, hey technology marches on!

As computers sold more and more and more, those same core OS’s that were built for older, crustier, and curmudgeonlier chips were being dumped onto new chips with all their legacy parts intact. The time eventually came when companies realized that their foundation, built for their little villa by the sea was no longer able to hold up the 12 story mansion they were building on it. Two of the big players of that day were Microsoft and Apple. How they handled that defines pretty much where we are now.

Microsoft, not wanting to lose an iota of marketshare, started shoring up the edges, dropping down more concrete pads, leaving in the old plumbing and just running newer bigger pipes around and through it, then covered the whole thing in a block of steel, and started building on the steel. They wanted to make their OS better, but not in a way that would break much of the old stuff. Oh, and there were parts of that steel enclosure they told tenants (developers) not to build on as they planned to just demolish those sections at some point. They were even able to get the architect (Intel) to redo large sections of the infrastructure for them so that the creaky bits would still work reasonably well.

Apple almost went down that “build on top of the old” path, too, but then thought better of it. Why drag all of that into the future? Just cut your losses, make an altogether better foundation that will last for years and years! Something that Microsoft could have clearly done. Smallish Apple didn’t have the clout to force this through the developers, though. So, they ended up creating a system with an eye towards backwards compatibility, but were really building the next big thing. It worked for them. Build a wall around the old stuff, build a new foundation that all their new stuff would be built on and, when the time came, they were able to shut down that old section altogether, leaving only the new foundation and structures!

And that brings us to today. The iPad is extended from the iPhoneOS which is a stripped down version of... OSX. From the same foundation, they’ve pulled out all the parts that made it Mac-like, geared it towards a touch device, honed that over three versions and are now extending it again. This isn’t some deskop-OS-behind-a-touchscreen, this is an OS that expects the potential of 10 fingers on it at once and is ready to quickly react. This is possible because they made the decision awhile back to irritate a LOT of people with breaking OS9 stuff in order to clean house and start fresh.

The way I see it, Apple have never taken their skates off and are constantly moving to beat themselves. The iPad is not just a big iPhone, it’s what future Mac systems will be built on. There are those that will decry it for as long as they can (there are still some OS9 people out there still thinking OSX was a big mistake), but, when it’s all over, Apple will be on their third generation, fully touch enabled OS (with a failback to mouse based operations) and Microsoft will be still fighting with themselves to continue to force Windows to shine.

Of course, now the truth is out. They shall be coming for me soon. Wait, actually, if I’m right, they won’t be coming for me, because they don’t want people to know that I was right. So, if you see more posts from me, well, that’s as good as handwriting on the walls... or at least touchtyped on an iPad!

Clip a little Web for you

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:11:36 -0700

Some wise folks once said, “Change ain’t nuthin’ without the changin’!” And they were so right because things are changing big time all the time and all over the place. Why, just the other day right here in my own neighborhood, it was sunny out. Today, it’s not! Change doesn’t just change only for those fellows controlling the government’s weather machine, either, oh no! Change happens even when you most expect it.

Take, for example, this whole iPhone foofaraw. Yeah, that whole 2.0 shindiggle. Anywho, Everyone who was anyone was ready for that change. Pretty much expecting it from all the blogging, press releasing and but-I-just-bought-mine-ing going on. In the blink of an eye... well, it was a fairly slow blink, so let’s call it a nap. In the nap of an eye, all kinds of neat new features became available for every iPhone and iPod touch user that had the audacity to install it. BUT even with all this expectation of changeration, there were changes that were foreshadowed, foreseen by some and left others forlorn. While there were surely more changes than could capably be covered by waggling small lengths of tree pieces at, I’m only covering this one that’s probably gone completely under the radar... like wood... covered with ferrofluidic paint.

Take, again, if you will, as an example, the Apple touch icon. It’s used so that sites (like this one) get a spiffy icon when added to an iPhone or iPod touch user’s home instead of an image of the page. Apple’s instructions on the creation of said icons were quite clear.

Yea, the default location shall lie fertile at the very root in the directories of thine site (of web). In thy creation of thine file, thy words that doth maketh up it’s name shalt be worded verily as apple-touch-icon. It’s formation shalt follow and be constrained by a format such that it is standard. And the standard thusly contained wherewithin shalt be portable not only of network, but yea, of graphics. The greatness of breadth and the magnificence of width of the created portal indicator shalt equal to the sum of naught more than twice twenty and five and seven elementary bit pieces.

Translation: The file belongs (by default) at the home directory of your website, it has to be a png file named apple-touch-icon.png and it has to measure 57x57 pixels.

However, some out there in the timeless void of the web had exactly the right amount of time on their hands and dug into the scripture to find that if you used a larger icon, it’d be OK! The touch device will automatically resize it to be the required size while at the same time looking better than the native 57x57. Still others found that the 57x57 didn’t really seem to be accurate either. There appeared to be some degree of clipping off the sides of the icon and the icon appeared to be closer to 59x59 or 60x60, certainly NOT the 57x57 prescribed! Based on this incongruous data, yet another intrepid pixelventurer designed an iPhone Webclip icon psd template. This file allowed the user to not only create an icon that was pretty close to being pixel accurate, but also create an icon that could have a curved border that followed the curve that the touch interface device adds automatically. This means you can do cool things like adding a border to the icon (like on the icon I created for this site).

Of course all of this inconsistency had to be dealt with eventually, right? Well 2.0 dealt with it in fine fashion! Finally 57x57 actually meant 57x57. In fact, if you download the image to the left, place it in the right location for it to be a Web Clip then add it to your home page, you’ll see each and every pixel (except the corners for obvious reasons) rendered perfectly.

All this perfection doesn’t come without a cost, though. So what, you may ask yourself, happens when a website designed for a pre-2.0 imperfection gets rendered on a post-2.0 device? What you see to the right is the horror that results. You can even see where the original adjustments were made... a few off the bottom, some off the left, more off the right... so that it’d look right. Of course, this would never do, so, assuming the best (ie, that 57 square means 57 square) I redesigned my icon using a 114 square as a starting point and the result is what you see to the right or if you’ve got a touch device, add this page to your homepage to see it.

Should you take your 2.0 touch device back to all your old pages and re-add those Web Clips? In most cases, you’re not likely to notice the difference. I’ve supplied four samples to the left from the least noticeable to the most noticeable (old icon to the left, new icon to the right). As you see, the change really isn’t all that dramatic and many sites might not even go to the trouble of changing their touch icon at all. But, for those of you who must have things perfect... yeah, you’ll be re-clipping those sites!

I’ve also included a Keynote template that you can use to create your own bordered Web Clips. Because copying these out of Keynote adds a few pixels on each side, you’ll need to trim the icon in Preview (using Preview Passthru of course) or maybe Skitch before exporting it to .png and using it on your site.

(Hey, I just found the page that was moved from the iPhone dev center. Now it’s here, Web Apps Dev Center. Click the link for Create a Web Clip Bookmark Icon.)

Wallpaper 4 3G

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:49:05 -0700

Listen up! There’s something very important that you should know. Apple just released the iPhone 3G (not iPone) last Friday (July the 11th, 2008). What’s significant about this? Well, aside from being the closest thing to an iPhone Killer that has come along, there may have been some murmuring in the crowd by a lot of those linestanders wondering, “Will that iPhone wallpaper template I picked up from makentosh.com be compatible with the iPhone 3G!? What will I do for iPhone wallpaper creation if it isn’t!? Should I put off buying the iPhone 3G until I know an updated version is ready??!?!?!”

Lucky for you, I’d already been thinking about this and have created a new file that’s both iWork ’08 AND iPhone 3G compatible! And, just to add another bullet in my list it’s compatible with OS X 10.5 (which of course makes it Leoptastic)! It may just be time to kick it up another notch or two by applying to use the official logo! Hey, if images you create with this Keynote template aren’t compatible, then what is, am I right?? Hrmm, but the templates themselves aren’t compatible you say? Ohh, take your particulars and go, ahh... particulate.

This new file is similar to the last one in that it contains the marked off 320x480 area, plus some padding so that you can place objects outside the bounds of the left and top sides and still be able to move them easily (Keynote doesn’t currently offer a way to move the slide away from it’s pinned location at the upper left of your window). What makes this file different is that it includes three masters now.

One is from before, with the guides set to center the artwork in the middle of the 320x480 area. The second has an adjusted center so that any artwork you use can be centered in the area viewed when the phone is in it’s Slide to unlock mode. This is useful for when you have a plain-ish background and just want a simple logo centered in the field. The third has a “911 area” that came from playing with the passcode lock and the idea that someone might want to have viewable info on their iPhone in the event of an emergency. If your passcode is on, and you swipe to unlock, the text entered into the hashed area at the top doesn’t get obscured by the passcode entry interface. Sure, it’s only a minor thing, but if someone does want to enter text like that (or even “This iPhone belongs to”) they’ll know where to put it.

These have been fully tested with both the iPhone and iPhone 3G, no FireWire charging incompatibility here! If you’re handy with Preview Passthru and/or Skitch, you won’t have a problem getting images out of these. If not, you can go to my other iPhone wallpaper page for the instructions on how to turn a Keynote template into a iPhone compatible wallpaper.

Just Passin’ Thru

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:11:36 -0700

This is what Preview Passthru is.

1) Copy
2) Open Preview
3) Do Command-N
4) Do File -> Save As... one of Preview’s file types

This is useful for several things, but the one I use it for most often is when I want to convert a Keynote shape to an image, whether it’s PDF, PNG or others. This is handy for any other app that doesn’t understand Keynote’s shape format (which includes everything outside of iWork/iWeb) and for when you need to apply a reflection effect to text. It also allows you to get the shape saved as a file quickly without having to export your presentation to images.

I’ve been trying to spread the idea that Keynote can be for more than just presentations and, whether it’s me or not, word is getting around. Just doing a few searches will show you example after example after example of others who’ve realized what I have. If your drawing needs aren’t too demanding, Keynote can fill the role of your graphics program. As long as you’re willing to work within it’s limitations (which are similar to the same limitations we had with the first Adobe Illustrator), you can produce edited images, logos, vector artwork, and more. Combine Preview Passthru with plasq’s Skitch and you have even more control over your image’s exported size as well.

For more examples of what you can do, just check some of my past articles for tips, tutorials, and shape downloads.