Steve (Jobs) strikes back – twice!
The charismatic CEO does it again and presents the much-awaited iPad 2.
As expected, front and rear camera, thinner, lighter, same battery!
Unexpected: A5 dual-core processor – brand new, 9-times more powerful graphics capabilities; available in black and white (!).
Available by the end of March in the USA and worldwide at the same price of the first iPad lineup.
The only thing I love more than WordPress is WordPress tweaking.
Believe or not, there’s no way to get PHP code running within a Text Widget.
I mean, you can have almost all kind of widgets plus HTML-code within them, such as Google Adsense code or whatever banner code.
I needed, though, to include some PHP code in order to render some banner code within a Widget with some sort of logic or randomly but with some notable exception.
Just inserting some simple code into a text widget gets no result at all, so what?
Fire your browser to WordPress extend plugin directory and look for PHP Code Widget.
If you do search for it from within your WordPress itself you might be able (as I did and I recommend it) to be up and running in minutes, otherwise you’ll have to install it into the plugin directory as explained by the author.
Once installed, you can include fully featured PHP code into widgets; I went somehow further by integrating a simple check from the index.php page right where the template itself checks its type: main page, post page, archive or tag page, I included a simple variable (let’s call it $pagetype) and, there we are!
I check for that pagetype variable within the PHP Widget and show banners accordingly: great!
Check image below for an easy explanation:
Check more posts about WordPress.
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Some brands simply don’t need that much social marketing momentum – maybe.
Porsche (both cars and brand) doesn’t need much advertising and is quite used to run fast – even by Facebook standards.
So it was no surprise to me when I read that its official Facebook fan page reached blazingly fast the one million fan mark and Porsche decided to thank this fandom by putting as much names as possible on a brand new 911, a hybrid one – that’s right now you can run fast and be eco-savy!
Actually only 27,000 Porsche-holic were lucky enough to get their names on this beauty: after all it’s a 911, not a truck!
As for design concerns, even the white and blue colors used resemble the Facebook-esque look&feel.
Look at the timelapse video below (I love timelapse videos).
It shows a crew of Porsche folks painstakingly detailing a brand new 911 GT3 R Hybrid with names — one million names, to be exact, of Porsche’s Facebook fans.
The Facebook GT3 will be on display as a special exhibit at the Porsche Museum through February 20.
Want to see if your name is one of the lucky ones to make onto this beauty?
Click Porsche’s “Thank you” microsite and the Facebook Porsche fan page: right now it reached a staggering 1,3 million fans!
Costantin Brancusi was born 135 years ago and Google celebrates the romanian-born sculptor with a pretty doodle.
Each letter of the doodle is an actual Brancusi masterpiece!
Prometheus makes the G letter, double Os are made by The Newborn and Sleeping Muse, the second G is make of Mademoiselle Pogany, while Bird in Space takes place of the L and, last, The Kiss, gives the shape to the last E.
I was a kid back in 1982 when the first (and still the original) Tron movie
2010 brought us Tron: Legacy
A real motorcycle that not only looks and feels like a Light Cycle: it runs fast too!
Electroluminescent strips built into the tire cowlings, wheel rims, and body illuminate the cycle. It is powered by a fuel-injected Suzuki 996cc, 4-stroke engine. Riders lay at a near-horizontal position astride the padded leather seat, with feet on foot pegs that control its 6-speed constant mesh manual transmission and hands on the handlebars for throttle and braking. The hubless wheels are former truck tires built up then custom-shaped to fit onto one of two counter-rotating rims spinning within each other, providing the broad-tired authenticity of the computer cycles from the movie. A chain-driven friction drum manages acceleration and braking from the handlebars. It has spring-loaded front and rigid rear suspension.
Light Cycles come from another dimension and its price tag is accordingly high: US $ 55,000.
More details on Hammacher.com
Derezzed? Ride on!
I ordered from Amazon and received The Developer’s Guide to Social Programming: Building Social Context Using Facebook, Google Friend Connect, and the Twitter API
The books covers the Facebook API (I’m now in the middle of moving from good ol’ FBML to Graph API), the Google Friend Connect JavaScript API, and integrating with the OpenSocial API.
I’ve been dealing with the Twitter API and the new OAuth process since September 2010 – back then Twitter switched off basic authentication forcing the switch towards OAuth and a more safer/complex authentication; as a result I’ve built a simple Twitter status updater app.
Each of the three section covers quite thoroughly each topic even though the Twitter and Google APIs are covered with less depth.
I’m still looking for a complete guide to Facebook Graph API to replace all my FBML docs, right now I’m only relying on online documentation.
The quest for the ultimate social APIs book is still going on!
As a complete guide to social networks, APIs and social context, both beginners to intermediate developers will find it truly useful although I guess that pros won’t find the right (advanced) tool.
Recommended.
Interested? Check here on Amazon for The Developer’s Guide to Social Programming: Building Social Context Using Facebook, Google Friend Connect, and the Twitter API
TechKing released a pretty good infographic that spans almost 70 years of computing evolution and helps us understand where we came from (and somehow where we’re heading).
It’s cool to see what brought us from vacuum tubes up to the iPad I’m using right now.
As a subscriber to Computer.org Digital Library, I’ve been reading Annals of Computing and found extremely interesting the british Leo computer history: the very first commercial-grade computer.
It defies everything we all take for granted – today.
Annals of Computing by the way published an article in which described the birth of software market (late 60s, early 70s) which happened by means of an IBM-hardware-based flow-chart software.
Before that, software had no price – or, it was considered part of the hardware offer, so it had no market by itself.
This infographic, of course, is missing a lot of computers achievements (and misachievements, so to speak) so, since I’m a great retrocomputing fan, here I am writing my very own list of “don’t you forget about me” computers from the past.
Check my Flickr retrocomputers page with (just) a few computers from my personal collection.
Sinclair computers
Starting from 1979, Sir Clive Sinclair built pocket calculators, tiny portable TVs and the Sinclair ZX80, 1 Kbyte of RAM (that’s right, ONE!), 4 Kbytes of ROM (what we would call Operating System today).
That’s my first computer my parents bought me for Xmas 1981! (and still running!).
Later, Sinclair introduced the ZX81, smaller, with fewer components, lower priced and better performing: a best seller worldwide, not only in Europe, it even sparkled cloning (in former-USSR too).
The ZX Spectrum (which I still proudly own) reminds me of time when the world was divided in two: USA and USSR?
Nope, ZX Spectrum versus Commodore 64 fans!
Spectrum again was hugely successful and ignited an economy on its own about software and exotic peripherals.
Sinclair QL was the following step, using a Motorola MC68008 processor – a scaled-down version of the 32-bit MC68000, and trying to bring multitasking to human beings.
It was flawed and had several problems associated to its Microdrive – magnetic strings storage, which eventually led users to turn to 3,5″ floppy drives, but it was significantly different from the previous bunch of (so-called) home computers.
Sinclair Z88 was a diskless (flash memory-based) portable computer that, beside a clunky keyboard and a tiny display, was large as an A4 sheet of paper, powered by AA batteries and… worked fine!
The British Invasion
Too many in the 80s, to name but a few:
Dragon 32 – nice keyboard,
Oric 1 and Atmos – wannabe competitor to Spectrum,
Grundy Newbrain – almost portable with a 2-line display,
Jupiter Ace – the only home computer without Basic: it used Forth language,
Elan Enterprise – high expectations and big project flaws doomed this exceptional Z80-based computer.
Atari ST
It started a brand new wave of home computers with 32-bit processors, was successful in Europe (Germany mostly) and was popular among musician for its built-in MIDI ports and music editing software.
Amiga simply blew it off IMHO (I was an early Amiga 1000 user).
Silicon Graphics
Back then, SGI were the dream workstation (and servers) used in Hollywood (Jurassic Park, namely) for high-end 3D graphics and still now are excellent *nix workstation although with proprietary hardware (MIPS processors) and complex software settings.
Hint: look for an O2 workstation on ebay and grab a chunk of great technology.
BBC Model B aka ‘The Beeb’
Acorn computer designed and built this extremely successful (in UK) home computer that, along with a standard 6502 processor, featured plenty of educational software and primitive (but working) Econet networking features.
Built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Designed with an emphasis on education, it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability and the quality of its operating system. [from Wikipedia]
Epson HX-20
Maybe the very first portable system to allow roadwarriors actually work: built-in cassette recorder (for unlimited storage!), printer and serial port were outstanding features in 1983.
Hewlett Packard HP-41 and Texas Instruments TI-59
Back in the days of programmable calculators (late 70s, early 80s), these were the only competitors in the arena: you were either on the AOS or RPN side of the Force, no other way!
Those calculators exploited very few bytes (or k-bytes) of memory with elegant programming techniques and almost limitless expansion with protocol such as the HP-IL interface loop that allowed the HP-41 to hook up to plenty of scientific HP instruments.
Ok, enough is enough… too many of them!
Let me know your favorite retro-computer!
It’s always a good advice (not only for designers)!
Thanks to Ben Terrett – a nice blog on design and graphics too!
[Via: Ben Terrett]
Social events like Valentine’s Day sparkle imagination about social networks new ideas, social media coverage and new mobile apps bringing a new users’ experience to well-known phenomena.
So what is all about Valentine’s Day?
A one-to-one communication process should occur (although now always the ones you would think…) and tender messages are most likely the tools of trade.
Facebook alone bring several hundreds of Facebook application that will deliver those nice and lovely virtual gifts to bring virtual (and real-world) couples together in this joyful day.
The only variation is a virtual greeting card that, in most cases, is an easy adaptation of a general purpose virtual-card app.
Check the below picture for the starting results of a simple search within Apps category…
What about the mobile world?
I checked for iPhone and iPad apps on iTunes store and found roughly 4,000 apps for iPhone and more than 600 apps for iPad about Valentine’s Day (as of today).
There’s much more fantasy in iOS app world than Facebook-land: app range from virtual flowers digital frames (including your own photo – or someone else…) to a virtual makeup assistant (!).
Of course there’s a FourSquare-based app that gives the best advice (and allows easy booking) in the prettiest restaurant in town for the sweet rendez-vous; a Valentine’s Day planner is essential and will even remind you get hair/nails done (what happens in the rest of the year?).
Twitter-addicted? Check #Valentine hashtag for a sample of what’s goin’ around in the tweetuniverse!
One of my favorite quotations?
It’s #Valentine’sDay. Or, if you prefer, Single Awareness Day. :/
No matter how technology gets far and social: humour and irony always works!
Today’s Google Doodle is both a celebration of Valentine’s Day and Pop Art: the new doodle is shaped after Robert Indiana, an artist that’s almost eponymous to pop art lettering with paintings and sculptures now considered masterpieces.
For art history’s sake, Robert Clark adopted the name of his native state and became known as Robert Indiana.
His art work gave new meaning to familiar everyday words such as eat, hope and, obviously for Valentine’s day, love.
