Notes From Afar
Whilst making my coffee this morning I remembered this video I shot a while back as a test of iMovie on the iPhone and iPad.
I was surprised just how good the video from the iPhone is, but also surprised at what a palaver it is to get the movie off of the iPhone and onto the iPad for editing.
Getting data on and off the iOS devices is fast becoming a real chink in Apple’s armour I believe, but I digress.
Ladies and Gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure, I present my first iMovie:
For months now I’ve been searching for a new theme for my blog. I wanted something simple yet stylish, with great typography, that used textures and colour well, and I quite fancied a retro Americana feel. Above all I really wanted it to be a responsive design.
I’d just about given up looking, and was moaning about it on Twitter, which prompted my friend Prisca Schmarsow to generously offer to work with me to create a bespoke theme for my blog. As we talked through some ideas I stumbled across the Liquorice WordPress theme; a theme which, whilst not perfect, seemed to tick many of the new theme boxes. I decided to see what I could do with Liquorice.
An evening hacking Liquorice around had it pretty much where I wanted it.
It’s a shame that Prisca and I won’t get to work together on a blog theme as we shared some nice ideas I feel, but I hope that when time allows maybe we will.
Within a few days my new theme had been commented on by a good friend who thought it was “more me”, and by my wife who, seeing it over my shoulder, spontaneously said how much she liked it without being asked by her needy husband.
But there was one vital ingredient missing: it wasn’t responsive.
Many of you are probably wondering what all this responsive malarkey is all about, and I can’t blame you as it represents the latest in web design thinking. In simple terms a responsive website is one that responds to the size of screen upon which it is being viewed; changing layout and dimensions to best suit that screen. Responsive design is supported by all modern desktop and smartphone browsers which makes it possible to easily create versions of a site tailored to the smaller screens of iPhones and iPads for example.
Responsive design is new to me, and I thought it was going to be a complicated exercise to retro-fit it to my new blog design. Luckily Liquorice is well coded, and even more luckily a good friend of mine Richard Wiggins of Pixel Creation offered to make my site responsive, and at the same time help me learn how a responsive design is created.
It was a fascinating, illuminating, and fun session; I was surprised by just how little code was required to transform this site. Richard did a superb job.
I’ve known and worked with Richard for over 10 years. He worked at the agency I employed to create the Psion Dacom website whilst I was New Media Manager there. He then left to create his own web design studio Pixel Creation. Richard is a very talented designer and one that is quickly able to transform what I’m thinking of into pixels. I’ve worked with some of the biggest agencies in the world and I choose to work with Richard whenever I can. I can’t recommend him highly enough.
If you’re reading this on an iPad rotate it to see the site respond to the portrait and landscape views.
If you are on a desktop or laptop make the browser window smaller to see the site respond.
If you are reading this in IE8 or lower I’m sorry. I decided against the hacks required to make it work perfectly in your browsers although it works well in IE8. I highly recommend you move to a modern browser such as Google Chrome or Safari.
Lastly if you are reading this in a RSS reader get your arse over here now to see my new blog design.
I look up from my iPhone and notice that sitting diagonally opposite me, on the other side of the train, is the friendly guy from my local Apple Store. He sold me the earphones I’m listening to now.
He’s immersed in his iPhone as I was in mine. I wonder where he’s going.
Should I be bothered that I recognise him? Wonder if he recognises me.
Following my post The Best Camera I was keen to try an up to date camera phone; so I got in touch Sony Ericsson to see if I could borrow a C902 for review. It seems that the C902 is a now couple of years old now, and so Sony Ericsson don’t feel it’s representative of their current products. This being the case they kindly offered me a Satio for review.
Now I will admit to being out of touch with all mobile phones except those from sunny Cupertino so I was gobsmacked to find that the Satio includes a 12 megapixel digital camera. 12 megapixels in a phone – that’s incredible.
However as we all know there is so much more to digital camera quality than mere megapixels, but Sony Ericsson have always had great cameras so I’m really looking forward to trying out the phone and its camera.
They say the best camera is the one that you have with you, and these days most of us have a good digital camera with us almost all of the time on our mobile phones.
I have an iPhone 3G which has a 2 megapixel camera, and takes average photographs as demonstrated on my trip to New York. However I was rummaging around on Flicker the other day and came across this photograph:
I accept that it isn’t perhaps the greatest photograph ever, or even that I have taken, but for a cameraphone shot I was struck by its sharpness, colour and quality of light. Then I realised that it was taken almost five years ago by a 2 megapixel cameraphone: my Sony Ericsson K750i.
So was this:
And this:
I don’t believe that the iPhone would have taken any of these photographs anywhere near as well; so much for progress.
I’d forgotten about my K750i until I saw these photos, and I’ll admit to having become more than a little nostalgic for it. It was a lovely, compact, solid little phone with, as we can see, a great camera.
It is of course woefully ill equipped compared today’s ‘smartphones’, but it did what it was designed to do very well, very well indeed. It made phone calls, and took great photographs both of which the iPhone struggles with.
I’ll admit when I saw the Buy Button I was rather tempted, and then quickly disappointed when I found that it wasn’t still in the Sony Ericsson store. I guess the spiritual successor is the C902, and I will admit the idea of a good quality camera in my pocket again is very tempting.
And then when you see a K750i running Google Mail I begin to wonder if I really need need an iPhone.
I love Instapaper; it’s one of my most favourite and most used web and iPhone apps. Merlin Mann seems to quite like it also. Start using Instapaper today; you’ll thank me tomorrow.