Bart De Waele » Bram.us » December 2011

Bram.us (53 unread)

Hitler reacts to SOPA

Posted: December 23rd, 2011, 6:10pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

One of the finer Hitler reacts to … edits, and the text is spot in.
The Messy Art Of UX Sketching

Posted: December 23rd, 2011, 5:31pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Although starting a prototype on a computer is sometimes easier, it’s not the best way to visually problem-solve. When you need to ideate website layouts or mobile applications or to storyboard workflows and context scenarios, sketching is much more efficient. It keeps you from getting caught up in the technology, and instead focuses you on the best possible solution, freeing you to take risks that you might not otherwise take.

The Messy Art Of UX Sketching →
Google Street View + WebGL powered Christmas Card

Posted: December 23rd, 2011, 12:14pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Now this is effin’ awesome: enter you address and get an interative WebGL powered Christmas card showing your house using Google Street View data. Here’s my house for example:

A Holiday Message →
My house on “A Holiday Message” →
SOPA already made its first victim …

Posted: December 22nd, 2011, 11:55am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

The SOPA vote, which was supposed to be yesterday, has been postponed until after the winter recess. Nonetheless, it has already made its first victim: a firefox addon named DeSopa to bypass SOPA DNS Blocking has already been removed from the Firefox Addons Website.

When installed, users can click a single button to resolve a blocked domain via foreign DNS servers, bypassing all domestic DNS blockades and allowing the user to browse the site though the bare IP-address (if supported).

Most likely the plugin was removed because if SOPA comes through, the entire Firefox website (hosting the plugin) can be categorized as illegal … a fine and very sad example of what SOPA can do if approved.

✟ DeSopa Firefox Addon →
DeSopa source (GitHub) →
Editing WordPress’s Visual Editor (TinyMCE)

Posted: December 22nd, 2011, 11:44am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Handy when you need it; If you ever need it.
The Hobbit

Posted: December 21st, 2011, 12:20pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

December 14, 2012.
Inspiring Facebook Timline Covers

Posted: December 20th, 2011, 5:34pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Looks like the Timeline Cover is the new creative outlet

Get Started : Most Innovative Facebook Timeline Covers →
The Mozilla Story

Posted: December 20th, 2011, 3:47pm CET by Bramus!

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PROTECT IP / SOPA

Posted: December 20th, 2011, 3:46pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

The SOPA vote is tomorrow …

Why SOPA will cripple the Internet →
The PROTECT IP ACT And The STOP ONLINE PIRACY ACT (SOPA): New Solutions To Stop Online Infringement And Piracy→
Stop American Censorship →
Mufasa’s Alive!?

Posted: December 19th, 2011, 4:41pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Mufasa’s Alive!? — Nope! Chuck Testa!
Dubstep

Posted: December 18th, 2011, 4:24pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

That wobwobwobwob brostep didn’t exist back when dubstep originated. The stuff today is nearly a different genre.

— A user named Apclear on Burial’s Untrue
Sample Application using jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap

Posted: December 15th, 2011, 7:44pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Here is a simple application I built using jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap. Even though the application is simple, it covers some common requirements of mobile applications: database access through JSON services, multi-level master-detail views, parameter passing between views, etc.

Sample Application using jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap →
Speed Tracer

Posted: December 15th, 2011, 12:17pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Speed Tracer is a tool to help you identify and fix performance problems in your web applications. It visualizes metrics that are taken from low level instrumentation points inside of the browser and analyzes them as your application runs. Speed Tracer is available as a Chrome extension and works on all platforms where extensions are currently supported (Windows and Linux).

Google Web Toolkit: Speed Tracer →
Men In Black 3 Trailer

Posted: December 15th, 2011, 11:07am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Grew up with MiB 1 and 2, thus expecting a lot from this (and the trailer looks quite promising I must say).
Lovely Charts for iPad

Posted: December 15th, 2011, 11:00am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Not only looks great, but also looks usable.

Lovely Charts for iPad →
La Mer de Pianos

Posted: December 15th, 2011, 10:54am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Set in the oldest Piano shop in France, it shows the story of a repairman who breathes life back into pianos, by harvesting parts from older pianos, or making them himself.

(via FormFiftyFive)
I Know What You Downloaded on BitTorrent …

Posted: December 15th, 2011, 10:09am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Imagine you’d write a crawler that connects to many torrent trackers for many torrents and then log all IP addresses that are also connected. Now, that’s exactly what You Have Downloaded does: it aggregates all public data and then exposes it.

We came up with the idea of building a crawler like this and keeping the maintenance price under $300 a month. There was only one way to prove our theory worked — to implement it in practice. So we did. Now, we find ourselves with a big crawler.

Although the site doesn’t track all traffic (and thus doesn’t have a list of all IP addresses — I for one have downloaded nothing according to the site … could swear I just pulled in a new Linux distro) it works rather well. The results aren’t surprising either. Typing in a IP address from one of the trolling commenters here on bram.us gives me …

Ouch!

You Have Downloaded →
Google Maps: from: The shire to: Mordor

Posted: December 14th, 2011, 9:38pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Use caution – One does not simply walk into Mordor.

from: The shire to: Mordor →
On the Tab Labels in the New Twitter App for iPhone

Posted: December 14th, 2011, 1:53pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Nobody wants to connect or discover. People want to talk, send email, chat, share, post to Facebook, tweet, and so on. They want to find old friends; they want to find new friends; they want to see if their brother went skiing on the weekend so they can remember to ask about it on Christmas.

Also cleverly remarked:

Why Find instead of Search? Because Find implies success, while Search is an action that may fail.

On the Tab Labels in the New Twitter App for iPhone →

(via ★)
NewNewDelicious

Posted: December 14th, 2011, 11:03am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Looks like Delicious has been overhauled, again.

Looks better at first sight, yet one issue I can’t wrap my head around is that, when adding a link, tags — the essence of Delicious — have been banished to the sidebar, where they used to be the second field in the form before. Also, autocompletion on tags has been zapped, again.

New Look on Delicious →
Polyfilling the HTML5 gaps

Posted: December 14th, 2011, 10:50am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Polyfills help us use today’s modern features in yesterday’s browsers.

Great slidedeck by Addy Osmani on using and creating polyfills.

Leave no Future Behind: Polyfilling the HTML5 Gaps with Javascript →
Spotify Controls for Alfred

Posted: December 13th, 2011, 3:37pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

An AppleScript so you can control Spotify from Alfred App. You will need Alfred and the Powerpack to use this.

Control Spotify using Alfred App →
HTML 5 Canvas Deep Dive

Posted: December 13th, 2011, 1:10pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Very solid and in depth presentation on getting you started with canvas.

This session is a three hour workshop that will deep dive into Canvas, starting with the basics and progressing into real world applications. Finally we will take a look at some experimental edges of Canvas, such as webcam and audio visualization.

This is a technical talk. Basic knowledge of JavaScript programming is required.

HTML 5 Canvas Deep Dive →
Sherlock Season 2

Posted: December 12th, 2011, 10:36pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

The applauded BBC Series Sherlock will return with a second season starting January 1st. Something to look forward too, as the first season was more than excellent (plot, acting skills, execution, etc.)!
Spongebob Sqqqqqqqqqshhhhhhpants

Posted: December 12th, 2011, 10:29pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

(via lamazone)
Game of Thrones Season 2 Trailer

Posted: December 12th, 2011, 6:50pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

The cold winds are rising
MAMP Pro slow name resolving with .local vhosts in Lion (fix)

Posted: December 12th, 2011, 3:39pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]
An issue I’ve encountered with MAMP Pro since having upgraded to OS X Lion was that requests to vhosts served via MAMP took their time to load: after about 3 to 5 seconds of loading, the site would finally load.

The most tricky part in this issue is that it only happens if you have a domain ending in .local, such as mysite.local. If you’d rename the site to mysite.dev, it’d be — … beware, buzzword coming up … — snappy again.

Turns out, after a few Google Search Coupons, that the culprit is Bonjour (emphasis mine):

The Multicast DNS feature of Bonjour technology allows devices on a local network to connect to each other by name without a separate DNS server. By default, any hostname ending in .local is treated as a Bonjour host rather than by querying the DNS server entries in Network preferences.

Though the .local domain is not defined as a valid top-level domain on the Internet, some private networks have DNS servers that assign hostnames in the .local domain. By default Mac OS X does not use the DNS server to resolve these names. This may result in unexpected failures to connect to .local hostnames defined by your server.

To fix this problem (without having to rename each vhost) you need to add IPv6 entries for each of your vhosts in your /etc/hosts file:
```
::1 mysite.local
fe80::1%lo0 mysite.local
127.0.0.1 mysite.local
```
After that, .local vhosts load fast again. I’ve created an issue on the MAMP bug tracker for this, requesting the author to automatically add IPv6 entries to the hosts file when creating/editing a vhost. Hope to see this fixed in a future version. For now, the fix above will have to do.

Note that after restarting MAMP, the IPv6 entries will be gone … yeah, so that bug needs to fixed soon (either by Apple, or by MAMP). If you don’t want all the hassle after a restart, you might consider renaming your vhosts to .dev (anything but .local will do)
Major Lazer – Original Don ft. The Partysquad

Posted: December 9th, 2011, 10:44am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Official videoclip sporting those Jian sword dancing kids for the aforementioned Original Don by Major Lazor:

Warning: girl almost cuts the dog in half at 2:16

(via geekologie)
NewNewTwitter Promo Video: Fly Twitter

Posted: December 9th, 2011, 10:32am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]
A few notes on the new design after a quick look and some read tweets:
- The textarea to compose a new tweet has gone from “What are you doing?” to “What’s happening?” to “Compose a new tweet” … #hmmz.
- NewNewTwitter still has these dreadful hashbang urls.
- DMs apparently are not prominent anymore. One reason for this could be fairly low usage? (#3), although I’d like to see some stats confirming this.
- The new Discover tab is all about storytelling, a trend which I’ve applauded before. Still some work to do (it’s nowhere when compared to Storify for example, but the basic idea is there)
- …
The iOS has also been updated to reflect these new changes. Guessing that Twitter for Mac will follow soon.

More about the new new Twitter →
Google Maps: Mapping the indoors.

Posted: December 7th, 2011, 6:17pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

A new feature in Google Maps for Android 6.0, is the support for floor plans in buildings:

When you’re inside an airport, shopping mall or retail store, a common way to figure out where you are is to look for a freestanding map directory or ask an employee for help. Starting today, with the release of Google Maps 6.0 for Android, that directory is brought to the palm of your hands, helping you determine where you are, what floor you’re on, and where to go indoors.

The result looks like this:

You can also add your own floor plans, via a web interface:

A new frontier for Google Maps: mapping the indoors →
Decisions That Shaped 2011

Posted: December 6th, 2011, 11:21pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Nice!

(via teusje)
Ben Dodson: Goodbye Gowalla

Posted: December 6th, 2011, 10:45pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Ben Dodson, once a loyal Gowalla user and 3rd party Gowalla App Developer — he created Wallabee (formerly GowallaTools), and Highlights — says goodbye to Gowalla.

In his goodbye he talks about his developer love-hate relationship with Gowalla, highlights some of the points where Gowalla has failed over the years, and points out some points that have gone wrong with the release Gowalla 4

Above that he also notes some extras that could’ve been done with the whole stories aspect (about which I’ve jotted down my own ideas), to make the feature even more genius than it already was.

Goodbye Gowalla →
Facebook flaw allows access to private photos

Posted: December 6th, 2011, 9:41pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Looks like the newly appointed Facebook Chief Privacy Officers have some explaining to do:

Users are able to report “inappropriate profile photos” on a user’s profile.

By checking the box “nudity or pornography”, the user is granted an opportunity to help Facebook “take action by selecting additional photos to include with your report”.

Facebook will then display a number of additional photos that are not otherwise publicly available to the user.

The trick has also been used to get some of Zuck’s private photos.

Facebook flaw allows access to private photos →.

(via ★)
iPhone games recreated in a music video

Posted: December 6th, 2011, 8:21pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Flight Control, Fruit Ninja, Plants Vs. Zombies, Angry Birds, and Cut the Rope recreated in a music video:

Best comment on YouTube:

I used to find stuff randomly on youtube… But then i took a 9gag in the knee.

(via geekologie)
jQuery Hovercard

Posted: December 6th, 2011, 2:42pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

A free light weight jQuery plugin that enables you to display related information with the hovered label, link, or any html element of your choice.

Also comes with integrated support to show the Facebook page or Twitter handle info in the card.

Hovercard – a jQuery plugin with built in Twitter and Facebook cards →
Constructive Solid Geometry 3D Modeling in JavaScript

Posted: December 6th, 2011, 2:34pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) is a modeling technique that uses Boolean operations like union and intersection to combine 3D solids. This library implements CSG operations on meshes elegantly and concisely using BSP trees, and is meant to serve as an easily understandable implementation of the algorithm.

This library provides three CSG operations: union, subtract, and intersect

csg.js →

(via badassjs)
Hero

Posted: December 6th, 2011, 1:28pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

The making of “Hero,” a drawing of my dad composed entirely out of 3.2 million ink dots.

Audio by Bonobo

(via zofie on Facebook)
Ordered List Acquired by GitHub

Posted: December 6th, 2011, 12:16pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

I’m excited to announce that as of today, the team at Ordered List officially joins GitHub. We’re bringing along our talent, our passion, and our products (Speaker Deck, Gaug.es, and Harmony)

Ordered List Acquired by GitHub →
Path 2.0 flyout menu rebuilt in CSS

Posted: December 5th, 2011, 11:35pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

The menu from Path 2.0, rebuilt in CSS.

Path 2.0 Flyout Menu using CSS by Tunghsiao Liu →
Gowalla ⇒ Facebook

Posted: December 5th, 2011, 11:26pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Scott Raymond, co-founder and CTO of Gowalla confirms the rumors:

It wasn’t an easy decision, but Facebook has always been a friend of the company, so joining their team is a natural move. I’m incredibly excited to work alongside folks that have already changed the world pretty profoundly, and who have an even bigger vision for the future.

The end of the year … that’s less than 30 days away from us.

Wall Street Journal also had this to say about the deal:

While Facebook is not buying Gowalla’s technology or services, it said in a statement that, “Gowalla co-founders Josh Williams and Scott Raymond, along with other members of the Gowalla team, are moving to Facebook in January to join our design and engineering teams.”

Facebook added, “We’re sure that the inspiration behind Gowalla will make its way into Facebook over time.”

In parallel, .be fellow Maxvoltar, who ~~works~~ worked at Gowalla, announced that he’ll be joining … Instagram.

Gowalla ⇒ Facebook →
Facebook Buys More Talent With Gowalla Deal →

UPDATE 2011.12.06: Josh Williams (the other co-founder of Gowalla) added this:

Gowalla, as a service, will be winding down at the end of January. We plan to provide an easy way to export your Passport data, your Stamp and Pin data (along with your legacy Item data), and your photos as well. Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla’s user data.
jQuery Organisation Chart

Posted: December 5th, 2011, 10:14pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

jQuery OrgChart is a plugin that allows you to render structures with nested elements in a easy-to-read tree structure.

jQuery Org Chart – a plugin for visualising data in a tree-like structure →
BozoCrack MD5 Password Hash Cracker

Posted: December 5th, 2011, 4:13pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

BozoCrack is a depressingly effective MD5 password hash cracker with almost zero CPU/GPU load. Instead of rainbow tables, dictionaries, or brute force, BozoCrack simply finds the plaintext password … via Google.

Specifically, it Googles the MD5 hash and hopes the plaintext appears somewhere on the first page of results.

It works way better than it ever should.

Clever.

BozoCrack →

(via inventis)
82″ Multi-Touch Display with Stylus Input

Posted: December 5th, 2011, 4:05pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

By Jeff Han and his team who once — a year before the iPhone arrived — blew us all away with his multitouch demos:

(via jnack)
I Believe I can Fly (Flight of the Frenchies)

Posted: December 3rd, 2011, 6:19pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Highlining meets basejumping. Balls of steel required for this I guess.
On Gowalla, Facebook, Instagram, Path, and Storytelling

Posted: December 3rd, 2011, 5:12pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]
I was meaning to write a blogpost on Gowalla 4. About how I used it less than before. But also about that when I use it (which I still do from time to time), I use it in a more engaged way.

In the blogpost on Path 2, I was going to state that “Path 2 is what Gowalla 4 and the new Facebook app should have been”, yet left that out because I wanted to save that for the Gowalla 4 post.

Now that Gowalla has apparently has been bought by Facebook, and after Inferis coined a likewise phrase on Twitter, I think it’s time to dig up that statement again and go a tad more in depth.
Gowalla 4
A much disputed move that Gowalla made in their fourth version was the removal of the items, even though a few months before that changes to the items were made to actually promote them.

One of my Gowalla items I was most proud of: received in Madeira at the top of the island after a five hour hike.

To me, the item hunting was the feature that made Gowalla unique (you’d get no standard points or badges, but nice items) and — above all — fun: Gowalla was a game.

Next to letting people know where you were, the items in Gowalla were the real incentive to checking in:
- Will I get an item at all?
- If I get one, will it complete my collection?
- If I get an item will I be able to trade it for an actual prize?
- Is there an item dropped at the spot that I can trade a duplicate I have with? (although that question could easily be answered though )
- …
As some have written before, the possibilities with items were endless, and could’ve have helped further shaping Gowalla.

Now, Gowalla 4 wasn’t all bad. One core feature defining Gowalla 4, next to the city guides for example, was the introduction of stories. With the stories one, instead of saying “I am here”, is now saying “I am here with my friends X, Y and Z” making it all more social (one could even tag friends from other platforms, such as Facebook).

A typical Gowalla Story: Me and some friends out eating.

Each story one made can be compared to a journal entry, and that’s how I ended up using Gowalla 4: only if there was a worthy event I’d check in, add my (Facebook) friends, post some photos and add some comments. After an event was done, the story would serve as a memory one can share, whereas a check-in before would only serve as an entry in a check-in log.

Some memories/stories I now look back at are the surprise party we had when my brother turned 30, a beerfilled party I attended, taking my son to a meet and greet with a childrens’ character, etc.

Technically related: A technical point worth noting regarding the Gowalla 4 release was the API breakage. Some stuff just stopped working, without prior notice. And it wasn’t the first time this happened. My advice to anyone upgrading their API: please notify your developers before making the changes (*), or — even better — version your API to prevent stuff from breaking at all. Will spare you some sad/furious developers.

(*) When the new check-in API was released, Gowalla did notify developers. With version 4 that unfortunately was not the case.

~
Facebook’s Timeline
Facebook is currently rolling out a new feature called timeline. People who have a developer account most likely have already enabled it.

The Timeline not only represents your profile/wall in a timeline, it also allows you to back-log some important events you’ve encountered in your life.

Next to status updates and photos one can now also add a new “Life Event”

Just as Gowalla has shifted towards storytelling with their Stories, Facebook will be also be shifting towards this, and a rather big story too: the story of your life. When were you born? When did you get your driver’s license? When did you buy a house? It soon will all be on Facebook (if you choose to do so).

Facebook’s updated mobile app, also works on iPad

It should also be noted that Facebook has recently released an update to its mobile app. Although it’s technically a very interesting app, the Timeline feature is nowhere to be found in it.

~
Instagram
In September, the second incarnation of Instagram landed upon us. In a year time this app went from zero to hero. Mainly the fact that it is really easy to post photos quickly, even with some nice filters applied made this app fun to use and thus an instant success (Maslow at work fellas: Functional > Reliable > Usable > Pleasurable).

Instagram (version 1) quick demo

In version 2 no crazy new features were introduced to: next to sporting a higher resolution and some new filters that was about it. And even although some filters in Instagram 2 where kinda FUBAR, Instagram took the hit standing as people already were in love with the app.

~
Path 2
As mentioned before, Path 2 has hit the jackpot with its new version and has become quite the storyteller: from telling where you are (cfr. Gowalla, Foursquare), what you are doing (cfr. Twitter), who you are with (cfr. several others), to what you are listening to (cfr. Last.fm, GetGlue), posting photos with filters (cfr. Instagram), and posting videos. A pity Path doesn’t support movies/tv series though (cfr. GetGlue), or it’d be a true digital polyglot.

~
Piecing the pieces of the puzzle together
Having used Path 2 the past few days it’s become clear that this app is about as close as it can get to being a Swiss Army Knife and might ultimately replace several apps you’re already using. For example when Instagram came around it replaced Camera+TiltShiftGen+CameraBag+Flickr/Twitter/Gowalla (part of ˜) in one go for posting a filtered photo at a given location.

Comparing Path 2 with the other mentioned apps (Gowalla, Facebook, Instagram) it’s also become clear that the other apps have some catching up to do, in order to remain fresh.
- The UI of Path 2 just stands out. The rest has fallen victim of an overused mobile pattern.
- Although Path 2 still has some work to do fine-tuning the home page (with the time of all your friends’ activity), it’s a feature that should’ve been in the Facebook App update.
- Although the filters in Path 2 are not as good as Instagram’s, Path can become a worthy contestant.
- If Path does some tweaking allowing several photos to be grouped in one story, it can easily push Gowalla out of the niche it has located itself into.
~
Storytelling
I’m pretty sure it’s become clear by now that apps/services will always have to push forward (*) in order to remain fresh, around each corner a contender can pop up and hit one hard. An aspect I see returning in most of the apps is storytelling. Without storytelling, I’m quite sure, no app will survive in the long run.

Is Path then such a treat to others? No. But it has potential; The ideas are there. It plays the storytelling card, which is directly linked to emotion, rather well. With some tweaking, I’m pretty sure it can outwin some apps. I hope the other apps find energy in this and re-invent themselves; again, if necessary.

(*) Beware, change isn’t always good though: Don’t kill features people really love, even if it’s only a small portion of your user base who might just be your platform advocates (cfr. Gowalla); and don’t make big changes too swift (cfr. Facebook’s layout changes).
The Instagram Server Stack

Posted: December 3rd, 2011, 11:35am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

This is how our system has evolved in the just-over-1-year that we’ve been live, and while there are parts we’re always re-working, this is a glimpse of how a startup with a small engineering team can scale to our 14 million+ users in a little over a year.

What Powers Instagram: Hundreds of Instances, Dozens of Technologies →
Facebook buys Gowalla

Posted: December 3rd, 2011, 10:39am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Speculation, for now:

Facebook has acquired location sharing service Gowalla for an undisclosed sum, according to a source close to Gowalla. Facebook declined to comment on the deal.

Facebook acquires Gowalla to boost Timeline team →

(via ★)
Sydnex Matrix Locations

Posted: December 1st, 2011, 8:30pm CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

I went to Sydney, followed the trail of filming locations for The Matrix, and attempted to recreate shots from the film.

My mind just exploded knowing that I actually was there about two years ago, residing in The Radisson, just around the corner of the Phone Booth Location.

Created with Map Tales
Path 2

Posted: December 1st, 2011, 11:37am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]
When Path was first released a little more than a year ago I installed it, yet didn’t make use of it that much: it allowed you to post a photo, tag it with a location and tag it with some of the contacts you were with. The app was “just another app in the line of apps that do about the same”

About two days ago, a new version of Path was released. And boy must I say, this app has changed in such a way that it now stands out in the line-up of similar apps.

The basic idea still is the same, yet it has been broadened: Path has now become a personal diary (née “Smart Journal”), allowing one to post stuff beyond a photo/location.
- Next to posting photos one can also post videos, something I am missing in lots of apps.
- When posting a photo, one can apply a filter to it (cfr. Instagram). The filters, however, aren’t that “wow” though.
- Above that one can now also tag music one’s listening to, check-in to a place, post a thought, etc.
Above that the implementation is A+ and the UI is slick. Very slick. In Path, all events are represented via a timeline (cfr. Facebook’s Timeline).
- The timeline is elegant, and fun to manipulate.
- The little clock sliding along the timeline for example is a detail that finishes the implementation.
- The way the main menu is implemented is refreshing and smooth: no dull bar at the bottom, but a circular menu that is animated just perfectly.
To me, personally, this app has hit the jackpot because it has shifted towards storytelling (cfr. Gowalla4, Delicious, Facebook). The neat implementation makes this app even more desirable.

Path: The smart journal that helps you share life with the ones you love. →
Path revamps with ‘Path 2′: A diary for the social, mobile world. →
New Path 2.0 automatically chronicles, shares your life →
Getting Started with Sass

Posted: December 1st, 2011, 10:56am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]

Great new article on A List Apart introducing on to Sass.

While browsers aren’t ready for a new CSS, Catlin and Weizenbaum (the authors of SASS, ed.) realized they could go ahead and design a new style sheet syntax with features to help make their increasingly complex CSS easier to write and manage, then use a preprocessor (a program that runs on your computer or server) to translate the new smart syntax into the old, dumb CSS that browsers understand.

Getting Started with Sass →
Javascript Codec/File Format Implementations

Posted: December 1st, 2011, 10:51am CET by Bramus!

Tags: [edit]
Over the past few months, quite a few Javascript implementations to creating/displaying certain files without the need for native plugins have been created.

Although some are still premature, the basic idea is there. Above that they clearly demonstrate the importance of the rendering/scripting speed improvements browser vendors have been/are implementing into their browsers.
Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officers

Posted: December 1st, 2011, 9:24am CET by Bramus!

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After having settled with the FTC over “charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public.”, Zuck’ announced two new roles at Facebook: Chief Privacy Officer, Policy and Chief Privacy Officer, Product

The announcement is your rather typical marketing stuff:
- We are Facebook.
- We care about privacy.
- We’ve always cared about privacy.
- If you don’t believe us: We’ve already done this and that in the past to respect your privacy.
- The actual announcement.
- We will always take care about your privacy.
Mark Zuckerberg Invents Two New Chief Privacy Officer Roles At Facebook →
Facebook under privacy watch for 20 years, Zuckerberg: ‘we’ve made a bunch of mistakes’ →
Our Commitment to the Facebook Community →
IE10 Preview 4

Posted: December 1st, 2011, 9:10am CET by Bramus!

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An updated platform preview of IE10 for the Windows Developer Preview is now available for download. This IE10 preview adds even more support for HTML5 technologies, enabling richer Web applications with significantly improved performance.

Windows 8 (dev preview) is required to test this release. In the comments I’ve read that “We will release an IE10 Beta and Release Candidate on Windows 7 prior to IE10’s general availability.”

HTML5 for Applications: The Fourth IE10 Platform Preview →
Download IE10 Developer Preview →