Adobe just released a new tool called Shadow, allowing you to have multiple mobile devices in-sync and ‘shadowing’ whatever you’re viewing in your desktop/laptop browser to ensure the integrity of your design across platforms.
If it’s as good as it looks in their video it could be a huge time saver for anyone involved in the quality assurance (QA) phase of projects.
FishbowlNY: Magazines Look Terrible on The New iPad
Over the past several days, complaints about how bad magazines look on the iPad have been rolling in. The reason, according to Mashable, is that the older magazine apps simply weren’t built to handle the new iPad’s high resolution “retina display,” so everything looks blurry.
How about publishers stop making their magazines a big, fucking stack of PNGs and start to use actual text. The kind of text you can select and copy and paste. And look up in in-app dictionaries.
People are complaining about how much bandwidth their new Retina display iPads are using. While it’s true the new iPad requires higher resolution graphics, developers also have to find ways to make their applications as efficient as possible.
Update: Steve Wright from Future Publishing emailed me to let me know his company does not make iPad magazines from stacks of big-ass images. Seems their magazine Tap! does things the right way.
This is awesome and nuts.
Jason Bognacki hacked a 1920’s folding camera onto his Canon 5D:
The resulting photos from his mutant camera are incredible.
via Laughing Squid
From GigaOM:
If 80 percent of new data created is going to be unstructured, where is all that data coming from? It’s coming from consumers’ activities online and it requires real-time processing, said Continuuity’s Todd Papaionnou at Structure:Data on Wednesday.
Papaionnou calls this unstructured data “digital exhaust,” everything consumers do on a daily basis — clicks, tweets, searches, Facebook posts. Companies can use it to offer more customized experiences for consumers online – content and deal targeting, advertising and sentiment analysis — but they have to process it first.
Let’s get something clear.
The words and images you find on this site are daily exhaust.
And they’re fucking structured.
How bout this.
At a recent demo of Windows 8, Microsoft’s tablet froze.
Ah, Microsoft. You never let me down. I can always count on you to let me down.
Now if you recall, Microsoft did not create a separate mobile OS like Apple did with iOS. Windows 8 was made for both desktops and tablets, so it’s only fitting they share all the bugs of the desktop world with their new tablets.
It’s only fair.
Seems airlines might suck a little less soon.
Nick Bilton, writing for the NYTimes, says the F.A.A. is going to review their policies on gadgets:
When I called the F.A.A. last week to pester them about this regulation — citing experts and research that says these devices could not harm a plane — the F.A.A. responded differently than it usually does. Laura J. Brown, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs for the F.A.A., said that the agency has decided to take a “fresh look” at the use of personal electronics on planes.
About fucking time.
And for the record, I rarely put my iPhone into Airplane Mode when flying. So far I haven’t caused any flight disruptions.
If gadgets were truly interfering with flight equipment, airplanes would be outfitted with preventative measures to ensure objectors like me didn’t cause problems. Otherwise, how could they confidently take off without knowing the status of every single passenger’s gadgets?
I imagine if cellphones and other gadgets were truly interfering with airline equipment they would have developed something comparable to how speaker docks for iPhones are magnetically shielded to prevent mobile radio wave interference from being heard through the speakers.
via paleofuture
Farhad Manjoo on the unbeatable iPad:
Imagine you run a large technology company not named Apple. Let’s say you’re Steve Ballmer, Michael Dell, Meg Whitman, Larry Page, or Intel’s Paul Otellini. How are you feeling today, a day after Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the new iPad? Are you discounting the device as just an incremental improvement, the same shiny tablet with a better screen and faster cellular access? Or is it possible you had trouble sleeping last night? Did you toss and turn, worrying that Apple’s new device represents a potential knockout punch, a move that will cement its place as the undisputed leader of the biggest, most disruptive new tech market since the advent of the Web browser? Maybe your last few hours have been even worse than that. Perhaps you’re now paralyzed with confusion, fearful that you might be completely boxed in by the iPad–that there seems no good way to beat it.
I love Apple, but it seems likely my weariness from writing only about Apple might continue for a while.
Beth Jinks reporting for Bloomberg on Watson’s new Wall Street job:
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)’s Watson computer, which beat champions of the quiz show “Jeopardy!” a year ago, will soon be advising Wall Street on risks, portfolios and clients.
Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-largest U.S. lender, is Watson’s first financial services client, IBM said yesterday. It will help analyze customer needs and process financial, economic and client data to advance and personalize digital banking.
via Cult of Mac via Co.Design
Abdel Ibrahim and Jon Dick’s post about the Samsung Galaxy Note inspired me to put their words into an advertisement:
via The Brooks Review
Last month marked 5 years since the iPhone was first introduced.
Research In Motion has had their research in motion for the last 5 years and they’ve finally responded to the smartphone challenge and the current leaders in this space, Google and Apple:
You’ve had 5 fucking years and this is your response?
Looks lovely, but I hope they don’t count on this saving their company.
Image via The Verge
Apple announced yesterday that a nonprofit group it partly finances, the Fair Labor Association, would begin inspections at supplier factories in China, most notably Foxconn. This follows a string of horrific stories coming out about Foxconn in recent months, some detailing suicides by workers protesting draconian working conditions. Apple’s moves are an important first step, one that other technology companies that use Chinese labor are sure to follow. What is confounding is how any tale of woe involving China’s labor force is a surprise at this point.
China has little more than token labor laws, and unions are outlawed. There is, and has been, little recourse for the worker to demand better working conditions, shorter hours, better pay, or benefits. The decades-long fight for workers’ rights that took place here in the United States and other western nations beginning in the late 1800s has never taken place in China. Little things that American workers expect as a condition of employment, like the 40-hour work week, weekends, living wages, health and retirement plans, a ban on child labor, and workplace safety, are of little concern to the powers that be in China.
And this extends beyond electronics manufacturing. As another example, conditions are so horrendous in Chinese coal mines that thousands of miners die yearly in mining accidents, far and above the worst death rate for coal miners in the world.
Chinese laborers face some of the harshest working conditions on the planet, but it’s not because they’re Chinese.
Once upon a time, it was a risk to life and limb for American workers to simply get out of bed and go to work. Mills and mines exploited labor in ways just as terrible as in China today, but American workers began to fight back against their employers. Changes did not take place overnight. It took decades, and thousands of deaths (both work-related and protest-related) for American workers to get the protections that we have. This led to the costs of American labor rising for American companies. Their solution, in turn, was to shift that labor to countries where the long fight for fair labor practices had yet to be fought, and labor was cheap.
The out of sight, out of mind attitude of American companies, including Apple, followed by their shock once overseas working conditions come to light, is wholly disingenuous. It costs money to be fair to your workers. Sending work to a place where labor is not costly is more than mere indication that workers are being exploited. Rather, it is a virtual guarantee.