The off-topic ramblings of a programmer.
My technical blog can be found at Perspx.com
Link reblogged from Pilotmoon Blog with 474 notes
Pilotmoon Blog: Scroll Reverser — get in practice for Lion →
You might have learned that a certain upcoming version of Mac OS X may have scrolling that is “bass-ackwards”.
That is, when you push up on your trackpad or mouse scroller, the page content moves up too, just like on iOS devices.
I made a very minimal little app that lets you reverse…
Source: pilotmoon
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What we haven’t learned from web 1.0
I came across this brilliant post today, which renders iOS icons using pure CSS3 and webkit properties:
However one thing that struck me about this and these kind of new-era effects is the note underneath:
NOTE: This demo will only work correctly on a webkit browser and has only been tested in Safari 5 and Google Chrome 5.
Something about all of these browser or engine-specific properties feels very nostalgic of the days of the <MARQUEE> tag (which of course is something that is revered by all), which for a while was something that was only supported by Internet Explorer.
It seems that over the past few years, browsers have been playing catch up with each other in an attempt to make websites render as closely as possible in all.
But by projects such as WebKit stepping forward and introducing these kinds of transformations which are not cross-browser compatible, it is simply creating all of these problems once again, and making the ever-joyous role of the web developer even harder.
Pirate customer vs. Paying customer
I came across this gem on Twitter:
They make their point in a semi-lighthearted manner but they have a pretty good point. If you pay for this stuff, often your overall experience of the actual content — which is the main point, right? — is worse than if you don’t.
It reminds me of a post I wrote on the subject, where I talked about the divide between your paying customers, and pirate customers:
Do you put more effort into stopping pirates and pissing off your legitimate, paying customers, or serve the needs of your actual customers, who are at the very least paying your bills?
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Killers are innovators
There were reports of an iPad-competing device in China earlier this week, with a device called the iPed:
Of course it was only a matter of time for such a similar device to be brought to the market and I’m sure we’ll be seeing many more in the coming months.
However the article made an interesting comment at the end:
The Japanese television reporters note that in China popular electronics are copied quickly.
And China is getting better and better at it. Apple, you better watch out. These guys are gonna eat your lunch. And one day, eat it better than you.
Although perhaps a fleeting thought, the problem with their statement — which they even acknowledge — is that these cloned devices have been happening for years; we’ve seen many an iPod clone and phones which are modelled on or resemble the iPhone were hitting the market shortly after the device was announced back in 2007.
But by simply cloning, they won’t be eating Apple’s lunch better than them. And here’s why:
Why do people buy Apple products?
It’s an interesting question; Apple historically don’t invent new products, but rather take an existing idea and bring it to the mass market by innovating and making the products something that a wider audience can use; they did it with the mouse in the 1980s, they did it with the iPod in 2001 (it was by no means the first MP3 player); they did it with the iPhone in 2007 and they did it with the iPad this year.
But it’s not the physical device that people buy Apple products for; it’s a range of factors including the software: iPhone OS back in 2007 was running on hardware with pretty low specs but the optimizations the software brought made the experience pretty phenomenal; it’s the community: the App Store for the iPhone/iPad which is such a vibrant community; it’s the idea of “having one”, which comes back to the Apple branding.
Clones aren’t killers
Simply creating an iPhone or an iPad knockoff won’t be an iPhone or iPad killer; if anything people want the actual device. The critical error that these companies who make clones is the clone element itself; the cloned features are so close to the actual iPhone/iPad feature, but they’re not the real thing, and never will be.
Apple beat competing products by introducing something new, taking interesting and innovative slants on the existing markets out there.
If you’re going to make an iPhone or iPad killer you’re going to have to innovate and bring something new to the table, not just copy the existing features.
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Domain hacking
Domain hacking is a common practice today, especially with the rise of sites like Twitter, where you have a fixed character limit for each tweet.
As we all know, this has led to URL shorteners such as bit.ly, nyti.ms, goo.gl, and so forth. This has even become more popular with bitly.pro, which allows you to use the bit.ly service with your own custom short domain.
Probably the first time I came across the term “domain hacking” was with script.aculo.us, the Javascript library which preceded other libraries such as jQuery and MooTools. At this time there was also del.icio.us (although this now redirects to delicious.com).
The way that short URLs work is that you’re exploiting the various TLDs available; for example, script.aculo.us uses the .us top-level domain, as does del.icio.us. goo.gl makes use of the .gl TLD, which is the TLD for Greenland.
However, many second-level domains for these TLDs specific to different countries are not available (and you have to register .com.XX for instance) or they’re just damn expensive:
I was looking into registering rzns.ki for a short URL domain, using the .ki TLD which is the TLD for Kiribati. Purchasing a third-level domain (ending in .com.ki or .net.ki for instance) is rather expensive — $150 AUD (or about £90), and this is not even useful; what’s more is that a second-level domain is $1000 AUD per year (or over £500).
Why so expensive?
It’s questionable as to why these domains are so expensive — right now if I wanted a .co.uk domain or a .com domain it would be under £10 for a year. However the second-level TLDs for some countries are either not available or can be extremely expensive.
It questions the motive for these expensive domains — it could be that the registrars see what companies and individuals are doing with domain hacking, and they are trying to preserve the domains for actual organisations in their country.
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Developer or non-developer?
To non-developers, creating software might seem like something magical or mesmeric; for us who are developers, we know that it’s something do-able, but a pain in the backside sometimes.
For example, as tweeted by @justin:
Enough green robot fun for tonight. I leave you with the fruits of tonight’s labor.
Which was followed with the following screenshot:
The non-developer would see this and pass a casual “meh”, whilst a developer would perhaps put a firm hand on the shoulder of the other developer, and both would enjoy a quiet, esoteric moment.
It reminds me of something Scott Hanselman said on one of his episodes of Hanselminutes; he spent a considerable amount of time on an application for PalmPilot (which didn’t have floating point or a maths library) simply drawing a circle, which involved static resources, trigonometry and XOR-ing into memory. He finished his description with:
And then you go in and show your wife: “Hey, I drew a circle on this tiny device!” and it’s like “Yeah, great, and you’ve been up how many nights..? And this is paying the mortgage how?”
It’s awesome when we have something to share, no matter how trivial the result may seem. But I guess you have to be a developer or to have experienced it to understand it.
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Slipknot bassist found dead
Paul Gray, best known for his role as bassist in metal band, Slipknot, was found dead yesterday in an Iowa hotel room.
Mainstream news sites, such as The Guardian and The BBC all picked up on the news and reported his death, after original reports from sites such as Metal Hammer, and it sparked tributes across social networking sites, even leading to it becoming a trending topic on Twitter.
Google also provided some helpful – although perhaps crass – suggestions on the results page for “Paul Gray”:
This kind of mainstream coverage of Slipknot has always intrigued me, considering the band was originally this underground, unique, raw metal act; on the face of things it would appear that Metal is still pretty nichey compared to most of the music out there — at least in the UK or the US — and so coverage such as this is sometimes surprising.
Future
Although the band members not always getting on, Slipknot’s live acts have always seemed tight-knit, where everyone has a part and the atmosphere is incredible, and they were almost like a large family.
It would perhaps seem that the terrible news doesn’t bode well for the future of Slipknot; they have traditionally been identified as the 9-piece metal band from Des Moines, Iowa, and a lot of their image has been created from this total of 9 members: their fan club is called Outside the Nine and their third video album is titled Voliminal: Inside the Nine, which provides an insight into Slipknot and includes unmasked interviews.
They also recently celebrated the tenth anniversary after which their first, self-titled album was released (Jun. 29th 1999) and their members have remained the same for this 10-year period.
But, after 10 years and a unique and unforgettable band, perhaps this would be a good place to end.
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Save a Guitar
I came across this advert on the tube recently: it’s part of an ad campaign that “price-comparison site” (for car insurance) Confused.com have been running for perhaps 6 months or so.
The idea behind it is that by searching for a deal with Confused, you save money than by going to other insurers or comparison sites, and this money can be used to purchase other goods (they list a toaster, a pair of trainers, or even a kitten).
What I love about this ad campaign, is that it works on several different levels:
- It’s original. There’s a current trend of price-comparison sites to have strange adverts which don’t actually explain how you can save money. Confused take a pretty original approach to this, which could make them stand out from the other comparison sites.
- People want to save money. This is never going to go away, and with the vast number of insurers out there, this will always be a hook, especially when they quote a saving of “over £150” for “15 minutes” of your time.
- People love buying shit. The great thing about this particular ad campaign, is that it makes people think that they can save money… but then encourages them to spend this saved money on something else they want. Perhaps the person would never have spent over a hundred pounds on some overpriced footwear, or a new cat. But this part of the ad hooks into the nature of people to want to buy things, often unnecessarily.
Oh, and there’s the usual asterisk explaining just how people save “over £150” on their car insurance:
17% of car insurance customers, who gave a best alternative price, saved over £154 in 2009.
