When Software Attacks!

Hats off, lads

Just seen the sad news of the passing of Arthur C. Clarke. The world was better for his having been in it, and will not be the same without him.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Taking time to enjoy the scenery

You know, the thing about RSS is that it’s a bit like the advent of the motor car - you miss things. Just as driving around means you don’t get to pass the time of day with folk, or discover that tiny little deli you’d never notice from the road, RSS dehumanises the web. For example, I subscribe to the blog of my good friend Nick Smith. Since he hasn’t posted about his new redesign, I didn’t know about it.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, March 17, 2008

IE8 Rapid Fire Site Test

I can’t spend much longer playing with IE8 or my wife will skin me. However, from my cursory browsing experience I’m worried. Either the devs have a good deal of work to do or I’m going to be very busy with CSS rules for a while. Here’s the University of Bradford site in IE8: And to try to compare apples with oranges, here it is in Firefox 3 beta 3:

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Internet Explorer 8...

Well, as expected, the public beta of IE8 appeared on the web pretty much straight after the Mix08 keynote mentioned it. I managed to grab it within mere moments and I now have it installed on my trusty laptop. As announced only a day or two ago, it defaults to the new rendering mode, with a big toolbar button to toggle back to IE7 mode. I haven’t had time to test the browser with any sites yet, but I’ll try to do that in the next few days and maybe post again.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, March 5, 2008

The XPERIA X1 - A Windows Mobile device that I could really get excited over

Before I joined Black Marble I had a succession of Sony Ericsson smartphones - the P800, P900 and finally a P910i. They were great - the size was good, the UI was good, the handwriting recognition was excellent (with a grafitti-style interface that meant I could really get a good turn of speed) and I could work most functions one handed with the fabulous Jog Dial. Please note that the jog dial was sadly emasculated with phones after the P910i when Sony Ericsson foolishly reduced it’s degrees of freedom to simply rolling back and forth and clicking.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, February 11, 2008