Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) is a web technology that since about 2003 I have felt was erratically supported, inconsistent, and difficult to use. It seemed that although many web developers went on and on about how great CSS was, and how the use of tables for layouts should be abandoned, whenever I tried to use CSS to do more than simple text styles it never seemed to work as I expected.

Continue reading ‘Book Review: “The art and science of CSS”’

Concerned that Big Brother will watch your every movement? Well rest easy, because your movements have been tracked now for years via a handy tracking device you willingly pay for and carry everywhere- your cell phone.

Whats that? Sounds paranoid you say? Have you ever wondered how google maps can show real-time traffic data? They get that data from cell phone tracking.

Continue reading ‘cell slaves’

Apple’s latest release of iTunes 8 left me feeling a bit underwhelmed, except for one new feature that I was not at all interested in- the ‘Genius list’.

As soon as I heard this label I was sadly reminded of the workers of the ‘Genius bar’ (a.k.a. tech support geeks) in Apple stores.

To Apple’s credit I have needed to speak to an Apple ‘Genius’ only twice, but on one of those occasions my keyboard was doing something irritating, but not crippling. It was a well known issue that had many comments in Apple.com’s own support forum so I presumed the Geniuses would have a solution for me.

Their solution? Use an external USB keyboard. On my MacBook Pro that was only four months old, this was their ‘Genius’ advice. I made quite a scene in the Apple store that day until they had a better solution than that for me. Continue reading ‘I’m a GENIUS!’

The inner workings of browers is pretty complex stuff, and something that few users know anything about. However, when Google launched the beta of its Chrome browser they also released an excellent sort of comic that explains how traditional browsers work (and how they fail to work) and how Chrome is different.

the comic

As an artist I found this comic to be both entertaining and informative in a way that text alone couldn’t match.

When new technologies emerge they are at first klunky and difficult to use- but users tolerate this because they are able to do something new. This was the case with the first mass produced cars: the Model-T was cheap, reliable, came only in black, and sold very well. Eventually people wanted other colors and Henry Ford famously said that “The Customer Can Have Any Color He Wants So Long As It’s Black”. This gave competitors the opening they needed to take away the Ford domination, and the market has been divided ever since.

Continue reading ‘Apple == teh win!’