digital in London

Blu Ray soon to be obsolete?

mcadwallader — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:18:10 +0000

Holographic technology at its finest

For those of you who just started replacing your DVD collection with high definition Blu-Ray discs having not all that long ago finished the transfer from VHS, you might want to consider banging your head against a nearby wall about now. A clever chap at the University of California has just ironed out the last few problems with HVD (Holographic Versatile Disc) technology which can store 20 times the ammount of data. Personally I’m hanging on to my vast cinefilm collection for another six months at which point it’s more than likely I’ll be able to have the films transfered directly to a microchip in my brain using nanomachines.

High Definition Scrutiny

mcadwallader — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:56:34 +0000

Sarah Jessica Parker in the Blu Ray version of Sex & the City

The Museo del Prado in Madrid, home to Hieronymous Bosch’s opaque masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights among other things has produced super high resolution scans of some of their major artworks and made them available to us all using the google maps API.

Meanwhile, the cracks are starting to show in less desirable places with the onset of Blu Ray technology and high definition televisions. Not only can we now see the celluloid grain on our favourite films, we can also see the blemishes and make-up lines
of our favourite actors and actresses. As we speak, HD ready make-up is being created and marketed to a horrified Hollywood. For example, Airbase are suggesting that you airbrush your face before stepping in front of those unforgiving HD cameras.

Digital agoraphobia

mcadwallader — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:13:58 +0000

Hoefler & Frere Jones always have something interesting to say. Their recent article On the Death and 441-Year Life of the Pixel waves goodbye to the pixel as monitors using utterly unpronounceable acronyms for their technologies achieve higher and higher resolutions. One of the obvious benefits is we should expect to see a vast improvement in on-screen typography as we’re no longer having to hint at the subtleties of type as if seen through the compound eyes of an insect. We can also look forward to laughing at outdated websites designed for 640×480 monitors sitting in the corner of our screens like letters to Lilliput. The downside is of course no longer being able to take a preview image from ghetty, crop off the watermark and still have a sizable hero image for the homepage, ahem.
In general design is always about overcoming challenges and in web design the challenge has always been how to convey all the information you’d find in a magazine, brochure or catalogue but on something the size of a postage stamp or business card at best. Soon that problem will go away for good and web designers will be faced with the rather more frightening challenge of learning how properly to use all that extra space. Web designers now have a lot to learn from print designers.
I do wish H&FJ had wheeled out those old embroidery patterns a bit sooner.

Google Chrome, a google browser

mcadwallader — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:49:33 +0000

I’m a little bit freaked out by this but the upshot is that Google are releasing their own javascript based browser. According to their blog the browser is being released in beta in over 100 countries today.

Thanks to Daniel for this.
m

del.icio.us on iPhone

mcadwallader — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:51:20 +0000

If you have a Windows PC, here’s how to get delicious working on the iphone so that you can tag pages, presumably the process is similar on a MAC. There is a quick tip video on how to do this somewhere but it is out of date and, as I found out, overly simplified. It also involves overuse of the word ‘booya’.

Install safari

Go to http://delicious.com/

Go to http://delicious.com/help/bookmarklets

Drag the links as instructed under the heading ‘Safari’

To make the bookmarks quickly available and not hidden away in a folder in you iphone bookmarks:
In Safari go to Bookmarks>Show all bookmarks
Drag the delicious links from the bookmarks bar across and under BOOKMARKS on the left
Delete all the default stuff if you don’t want it

Close Safari

Open ITunes

Click on your iPhone and go to the info page

Scroll down to Web Browser and check sync bookmarks with Safari

Sync

Go to bed as it’s way past your bedtime now

Webclip icon update

mcadwallader — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:46:08 +0000

Thanks to Kai for the tip on making screengrabs on the iPhone, we can now reveal The Brand Union webclip icon for those wielding a normalPhone.

For those interested in how to make a screengrab – hold down the home button then quickly press the power button, the screen will flash and store the image in your photos.

Google attemp a 3d Second Life style Flex application

mcadwallader — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:08:42 +0000

…and fail, it would seem. At least, I can’t get it work in Firefox or IE on Windows XP.
The idea is that you create 3d chat rooms where you can share pictures, video and music. These rooms can then be embedded on your webpage.

www.lively.com

BBC ditch Real player / Windows Media Player for Flash video

mcadwallader — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:16:11 +0000

I’m not sure exactly when this happened but you can finally watch the news online without having to wade through outdated technology plugin hell.

For example, Bush getting heckled yesterday:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7491278.stm

They also have a live streaming news channel:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7459669.stm