- Came across a great time waster today, FkConflict. Its a simple, java based strategy game between the user and 2 computer players. You start out by divinding the world amongst the three players and take turns attacking each others territory and moving armies around till one person has control over the whole world!
click here to try it out for your self.
- Came across this link via lifehacker. The NSW government has created the Baby Names Explorer. It uses the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages to chart the top baby names over the past 100 years. Its pretty cool, unfortunately, ‘Kunaal’ has never seemed to be a popular name in NSW, I wonder why? ;)
Google Chrome
September 02, 2008 | No Comments »
Google announced it’s own entry into the browser wars with the release (tomorrow) of Chrome.
I realise that they(Google) will be making sure that google and google related sites render very well, and their talk of getting it to multithread make things sound interesting, but how well will it perform when it comes to the more important (to me atleast) topics of web standards, also, how will this affect Google’s relationship with Firefox?
WTF?
September 01, 2008 | No Comments »
Am I reading this right?? Microsoft have just patented ‘page up’ and ‘page down’.
I cannot believe that they even considered applying for a patent for this!
Mozilla Labs: Ubiquity
August 31, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The Mozilla Labs blog is quickly becoming one of my favourite blogs to read. After their earlier Aurora Concept series, they have just announced an “alpha 0.1 prototype” release of Ubiquity. Its described as “An experiment into connecting the Web with language.”
It basically is a way to control the browser using language based instructions to create on demand mash-ups.
For example, if I am writing an email and want to embed maps, reviews etc, instead of going to various sites and getting the relevant links, I can use ubiquity to get and embed the information it into my email. The video below explains things a lot better, and you can also go to Mozilla Labs to install the prototype (which works with Firefox naturally). It looks very promising for something still in its infancy.
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
- iPhone Toolbox had an interesting write up on the Top 25 free iPhone web apps.
There are some amazing apps in there, however my favourites would have to be
1. Remember the milk
2. Google docs mobile
3. Zinio Mobile News Stand
Unfortunately, using the iTouch does not quite give you the same experience (no connectivity without a wireless connection remember)
I am surprised however, that Google Reader did not make the list. Its iPhone interface is one of the best I have seen, and it would have to be one of my most visited sites (both on and off the iTouch)
- Google Operating System had an interesting writeup on automating file uploads into google docs. Also shows you how to write a batch script to back up your documents in bulk.
Css Variables: An opposing view
August 08, 2008 | No Comments »
A little while back I wrote about a proposal put forward to have variables in CSS (here). Today I came across an essay by Bert Bos titled ‘Why variables in css are considered harmful‘. I can sort of understand his point of view, but I don’t agree with him in this instance.
I do not think that adding basic variable support to CSS is harmful, infact I still strongly believe that this would actually make css easier to write and maintain in the long run. Also the learning curve would be as good as non existant.
Aurora: Future of Web Concept
August 07, 2008 | 1 Comment »
While visiting the Mozilla Labs blog today, I came across an article about Mozilla proposing a concept series. They are asking people to write ideas and create videos/images/prototypes xiof what they think the future of the web will be. They started by linking a few videos, and the one that really caught my attention was the Aurora concept video created by Adaptive path.
Have a look at the videos if you get a chance, 2 have been released with another 3 to come.
The first video deals with how a browser might work in the future. It does look pretty cool if you ask me, and extremely exiting!
also something to note, the device that is being used in the first video as a ‘mouse’, actually exists!
Its called a novint falcon. It’s mainly used for games at the moment, but how cool would it be if they could get it working as in the video.
Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.
The second video deals with the web experience in a mobile device (which might be a 4th or 5th gen itouch 
)
Aurora (Part 2) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.
Updated:
The third video deals with interaction with the physical world
Aurora (Part 3) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.
The fourth video has a minority report feel, showing a gestural-interface
Aurora (Part 4) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.
When Life Gets in the way
July 30, 2008 | No Comments »
Finally back online! the past month has been crazy hectic, what with me moving into my own apartment, getting my basic furniture, appliances set up and finally getting my new laptop and internet connected, I have barely had time to breathe. (phew!)
Now, however, since most of the hard work is out of the way, I can get down to relaxing in my own place and setting up my things exactly how I want .
The thing that I have been spending most of my time over the past couple of days has been the comp (naturally). I have been setting up a dual boot system that uses the pre installed Windows Vista and Linux flavour of the month, ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. (This post incidentally, has been made using Firefox 3 running on Ubuntu).
Installing Ubuntu was a breeze and this is the first time that I have installed a version of Linux and not had any (major) issues with drivers. It recognised and correctly configured most of them right out of the box (the open source ones), and its easy installer found non open source ones like for my Nvidia graphics card. I am still getting the comp set up the way I like, tweaking things here and there, but I must say that so far Ubuntu has not disappointed.
There are a LOT of sites out there with easy to follow information on how to do almost anything in Ubuntu, starting off with the Ubuntu Team Wiki. Oh well, enough of a break, back to setting up
