From The Front End - ZDNet Edition
My ZDNet version of my blog. Will feature news my mad opinions and relevant posts or partial quotes from my blog - http://www.fromthefrontend.co.uk
Topics: Wed Standards, Tools and Services for Designers, Photography and graphics, Accessibility and other Front-End Webdesign related info.
Monday 28 July 2008, 8:55 AM
iPhone: The Phone of Choice for Super Heros (and Villans)
This weekend I spoted the iPhone being used by various celebrity heroes and villains. Seems to be all the rage:
Lord Vader still can't get used to working without a stylus
Supergirl calls up Superman and complains about him swapping costumes again:
Batgirl checks where she parked the Batmobile on google maps:
Captain America watches videos of Wonder Woman on YouTube:
Batman likes that it comes in black (matches his outfit) but still keeps his in his pocket:
Friday 25 July 2008, 5:01 PM
IE8 puts dim wits ahead of tech savvy
You may have heard that IE8 will suppress subdomains on sites. This means if you have a website with a subdomain for different channels/sections - e.g. videos.cnet.co.uk it will display as cnet.co.uk in the address bar - i.e. no subdomain.
Why would they do this? I suspect they are doing this to assist dim wits that get caught out by phishing scams. They get sent a mail saying they have to update their account details or some other random reason for them to login to their bank or paypal online account. They are then given a link to the attackers website and although it looks similar to the site they expect to see it is all fake and a way of getting hold of their login details. To help trick people many register domains like "uklogin.com" and then use subdomain "natwest" or "paypal" so the url looks like http://paypal.uklogin.com and the naive user assumes they are on the official site. By hiding the subdomain Microsoft it seems are making it more obvious to users what the true domain for the site they are using is.
Why are they ruining the subdomain to help the dim wits? They already have phishing filters and this fix will affect legitimate sites not just scammers.
I hope this is one of the features that doesn't make it past beta.
Thursday 17 July 2008, 3:11 PM
The App store spells death to Jailbreaking the iPhone
I'd love to say that the quality of Apps on the Apple App store is so superior to those made for jailbroken iPhones that no one would bother jailbreaking anymore. However, this is definitely not the case. While a few of the apps are quite polished a lot are on par with their jailbreak equivalents and many jailbreak apps will never make it to the Apps store as they will upset network providers or apple - e.g. the app that allows you to create multiple iTunes library's on the phone so you can sync with more than one computer, or VoIP apps that allow you to make calls without getting charged a penny by your mobile provider.
Add to this the fact that most of the apps on via AppTapp on a jailbroken phone are free and it makes jailbreaking your new iPhone 3G very tempting. Some have already managed it as seen in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldbyi_FXitE
So what are we waiting for - lets unlock our phones and get lots of free App goodness. BUT WAIT Jailbreaking was tollerated before and some of the jailbreak app developers have been welcomed on to the App store... however, before Apple had no competing service to rival the jailbreak apps and now they do. They will not want users to be able to choose between a free jailbreak app when they are trying to sell a similar App for $9.99 in the App Store.
So what will Apple do. Expect a lot tighter policing of iPhones. Regular updates closing loopholes that hackers have used to jailbreak, and even bricking of phones that it detects have been tampered with. While not illegal it will be a lot riskier jailbreaking your phone this time round.
Thursday 26 June 2008, 4:08 PM
Mobile Device convergence - is gaming on phone devices a step to far?
I am being terribly lazy and rather than write an article about Nokia, Apple and Sony's push for a mobile device that can effectively be used for communication and gaming, I have simply copied pasted the conversation that inspired it here:
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Karen Friar: hey--meant to ask you...what do you make of the rumours of a PlayStation Phone?
Dave: PlayStation phone - I imagine it will be similar to the PSP or simply an ad-on for the PSP
Karen Friar: I wonder if it's worth them doing it
Dave: the PSP already has viop features
Dave: so it's not such a big leap
Dave: With Nokia and Apple really pushing the level/quality of games on their mobile phones their clearly is a market for convergence of mobile gaming and mobile communication devices
Karen Friar: hmmm interesting
Dave: Nokia are spending a fortune on promoting their new N-Gage platform and compatible handsets
Dave: and Apple showed as many Games in their App store demos as they did other apps
Karen Friar: hmm
Karen Friar: good to know
Dave: I think they view it as the next "music convergance".
Karen Friar: thanks--that's an interesting point
Karen Friar: one box to do it all--in your hand
Dave: Apple got so worried about the iPod monoply when sony ericsoon and the like started adding music capabilities to their phones that they created the iPhone
Karen Friar: I didn't realise that was the case
Dave: imagine if your phone had all the iPod capabilities - who is going to spend an extra £100-200 for an iPod.
Dave: so now they see handhelds like the PSP adding VoIP and the Nintendo DS outselling iPod, iPhone combined (which according to Andrew Lim could become a mobile phone device too)
Dave: Nokia tried with the N-Gage about 5 years ago and it was a flop - the device was too big for a phone and the games were of too poor quality to be considered as good as the gameboy
Karen Friar: it all depends on the chip as much as anything
Dave: Now games like Spore are coming to Mobile handsets we can take it more seriously
Dave: well Apples iPhone 1 only has a 412mhz processor and 112mb or Ram and no 3D chip and yet it showed it could run a fairly decent game on it
Dave: Google Andriod will support 3D hardware acceleration so we should see some serious gaming potential on their platform
Karen Friar: depends whether they want to go for business or gaming markets...
Dave: but it all depends on whether the manufactures build the hardware to support it - the prototype Android devices have been very poor so far
Dave: Well Apple were hurt the first time round by their lack of business app support. this time round they've addressed a lot of those issues
Dave: They haven't really done anything for gaming like adding 3D acceleration but they have a solid SDK which will make producing game content for developers much easier
Karen Friar: yeah--the demo looked good
Dave: I think convergence is good and I love to be able to multiple things on a single device - but I think Gaming has such different requirements to a Mobile communication device that you are likely to end with something that does one thing well and the other poorly or some hybrid that does both things shoddily
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Thanks to Community manager Karen for letting me post this.
If anyone else wants to chat with me about any random IT subject send me a Private Message and I'll add you to my Messenger (I use Skype, Yahoo and GoogleMail I won't install any more than that).
Wednesday 23 April 2008, 10:23 AM
New Ubuntu out tomorrow
With the new Ubuntu coming out tomorrow and looking like it will be the best and most user-friendly free Linux release to date is it time to make the switch over?
I have dabbled only briefly with various Linux distros and can hardly say I've given it a fair chance. With my Desktop system on it's knees due to a corrupt partition table (my fault for trying to repartition a drive while it was running vista at the time) I am planning to format and give Ubuntu a try.
I have been a staunch Windows user due to bad experiences whenever I've tried other OS (the worst was using Mac OSX) and so I hope that this time I will not be disappointed.
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