I am planning a trip to MacWorld Expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. In the past, I’ve always driven into the city, paid the bridge toll, then paid for parking there. This year, I’m planning on taking the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) from the Dublin/Pleansanton station to the Powell Street station in San Francisco. » Read more: iBART helps you get there
Posts Tagged ‘User Interface’
iBART helps you get there
February 10th, 2010
iPhone 3GS review
January 19th, 2010I recently purchased an iPhone 3GS with 16GB of memory. This is my first iPhone and my first experience using Apple’s multi-touch interface. I have never used an iPod touch either. I purchased the iPhone for the purpose of learning Objective-C, Cocoa and doing iPhone Application development. Up until this point my experience with Smart phones has been limited to using and programming Palm OS & Windows Mobile Smart phones. This post covers my personal experience with the iPhone. » Read more: iPhone 3GS review
Insignia NS-WBRDVD (USB feature)
November 24th, 2009Yesterday, I wrote a review about my ”Insignia NS-WBRDVD Connected Blu-Ray Disc Player“ I had mentioned there were a few features, I had yet to check out. Today, I checked out another feature of this Blu-Ray Disc Player. The USB port. » Read more: Insignia NS-WBRDVD (USB feature)
Review: Insignia NS-WBRDVD Connected Blu-Ray Disc Player
November 23rd, 2009I just purchased an Insignia NS-WBRDVD Connected Blu-Ray Disc Player on Nov. 23rd, 2009. Why didn’t I wait until Black Friday? As, I had suggested in yesterday’s post “Christmas Shopping starting early this year” I plan to spend some quality time with my wife on Friday morning. While we were in Best Buy, we decided to look at the Blu-Ray Disc Player offerings. It was a difficult choice, » Read more: Review: Insignia NS-WBRDVD Connected Blu-Ray Disc Player
Avast matey! Thar’s trojans in them emails
November 13th, 2009Several years ago, a very good friend of mine introduced me to a powerful anti-virus software with a funny name. The name of the software is called Avast. Kind of sounds like pirate speak aye? Even though it has a pirate sounding name, it has nothing to do with piracy. In fact, I think it is one of the best anti-virus software packages around. I recommend it to everybody. The best thing is the home version is free.
» Read more: Avast matey! Thar’s trojans in them emails
WordPress in my future
October 10th, 2009During my first 100 posts, I have been getting used to the routine of blogging. I have been mainly focused on the content and not worrying about the presentation. I have been kind of taken for granted the software called WordPress. WordPress provides a consistent and feature rich user experience for bloggers and blog readers.
I just finished reading a book titled ”WordPress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.” The first half of this book was mostly a review for me. It covered many things I had discovered the hard way. It was good to read another point of view on WordPress. It reinforced what I had already learned, plus I picked up some new tidbits along the journey. The second half of WordPress for Dummies covers all the stuff under the hood; the details of WordPress themes and Plug-ins and how to customize the user experience. This was the main reason I bought the book and wasn’t disappointed. I have already learned many new things I plan to utilize in the future.
One of my goals for the next 100 is to focus on the user experience.
With my website I plan to:
- Learn how WordPress themes work
- Learn how WordPress Plug-ins work
- Customize a WordPress them with my own style and photos
- Develop a WordPress plug-in or two that has a great feature everybody wants and needs
Farm Town / FarmVille news
September 19th, 2009Here are some of the latest developments in our favorite Facebook farm applications. I recently wrote a blog on Farm Town or FarmVille. In the blog I mentioned that Farm Town had twice as many required clicks for harvesting. It appears that Harvesting in Farm Town has improved.
Faster harvest option
Improved harvesting User Interface in Farm Town
They have added a Faster harvesting option. In the past you would take 2 clicks for each field you wanted to harvest. You would click to select the field, then you would click to sell or click to store the harvested crop.
Now, after you select a crop to harvest and a method (sell or store) you are presented with this dialog. Asking if you want to use this option for the rest of the session. This is already making the harvesting more fun.
One thing is still missing, you can’t queue up the harvesting. You still have to do it one field at a time. So, when you measure this against FarmVille, they both take approximately the same number of clicks.
FarmVille Hot Air Balloon
Special Weekend Balloon Sale
While we were working one of the FarmVille properties there was a notice that said a Hot Air Balloon was available during the weekend. We jumped right on that opportunity to have a really cool decoration for the farm.
Networking at it’s best
When there are features that have been added or special purchase items in your favorite application, it’s always nice to know that your friends are looking out for you and will let you know that these opportunities exist. I’ve shared these with you, now share this information with your friends.
Happy Farming !!!
Mind Mapping Software, creating a ToDo list
August 14th, 2009
NovaMind 4 Express ToDo
Mind Mapping to organize your thoughts is a very useful thing. I have been using Mind Mapping for a short time and I’m already getting the hang of it. I did the process by hand a few times and now I’m considering purchasing some software that will not get in the way of my thought process. I’m considering two software packages. The first application is iMindMap Elements . The price for the Elements version is $99 US dollars. This software was developed for Tony Buzan, the guy who developed Mind Mapping in the first place. The second application is called NovaMind 4 Express. The price for the Express version is $49 US dollars. NovaMind has a 30 day trial version that lets you play with it, but saves it with a pronounced watermark across the image. At least you get a chance to evaluate it before you buy it.
I installed both versions on my computer, to be fair in my initial test, I’m creating the MindMap ToDo image as seen here. The NovaMind Express wasn’t too bad. I didn’t time it, but the user interface was pretty intuitive. It didn’t take too long to create it. I did have to fiddle a little with the branches to get them to look better.
iMindMap Elements ToDo
I think I’m in love. At first I was thinking there can’t be that much of a difference to justify the extra $50 that iMindMap charges for their elements software. Well, there is. The user interface is so easy, I can’t even believe it. It consistant. Just mouse over the object you want to branch off until a red dot appears, then click and drag. The branch labeling, reshaping and recoloring are all very easy as well. The user interface is so easy, I almost cried from the elegant simplicity. It doesn’t get in the way of the thought process. I didn’t have to think about what I was doing. Hover, click drag, label, done. Then repeat again, unless I needed to change the branch or text color.
I originally considered purchasing NovaMind Express software because of its cost and the Mind Map it produced was similar in appearance to iMindMap. However, after trying out the two applications for my simple needs, I have decided to purchase the iMindMap Elements. I’m sure it’s the right choice for me.
Note: NovaMind has announced version 5 will be coming in September or October. At the time of this article only version 4 was available. I’ll be happy to review version 5 if they would like to get it to me for evaluation.
Till next time, I see a lot of Mind Mapping in my future.
Your camera date really does matter
August 6th, 2009Camera Timestamp
In the past, I never bothered with setting the time and date on the camera. I never printed out the timestamp of the camera on the pictures. So what was the point? It just seemed like a waste of time. Today, I had a revelation, the date really does matter.
Flickr cares
I joined flickr today, I posted some of our recent photos from our vacation. When I did a search for “Sundial Bridge” to see the most recent pictures I posted along with the others, my images didn’t show up. I was perplexed, I knew I should see them at the first of the list when I clicked the most recent link. I had to figure out why these pictures weren’t showing up. I went back to my photostream and clicked on one of the pictures that should have shown up, then I clicked on the more properties link. The properties is the EXIF data embedded inside the JPEG file.
EXIF data
The EXIF (Exchangeable Image File format) data is used by digital cameras to embed camera and image information inside the JPEG file. Just a few examples of the kind of data stored is Image (Height x Width), Resolution, Image Description (Camera), Software, Compression information, GeoLocation and last but not least the date the image was taken and digitized.
The Timestamp fix
The problem was my images were timestamped with a date of 2000. This date corresponded to a default date of the camera. 1/1/2000. It had never been changed, so it kept it. NOTE to Camera User Interface designers, if you’re going to store the date in EXIF data, then set the default to a year before the software release and have your users set the date at least to a year software is released. ie. If your software was released in 2009, you would set the default date to 2008. Then remind them every time the camera is turned on to set the date to a date beyond your software release date.
I eventually fixed the EXIF problem by using software to change the date taken tag.
Problem resolved
Unfortunately, I had to delete then upload these pictures again. Fortunately, there was only a dozen of them, so it didn’t take too long. I executed a search as I had done a few hours before and got the results I had originally expected.
I have learned my lesson, loud and clear. I have set my date and time in the camera, and will do so forever more.
Till next time, don’t forget to set the time and date in your camera.
