Tag Archives: Internet

New York Times on why there’s no flash in the iPad

by thomasfitzgerald on 01. Feb, 2010 in Apple, Internet, iPad

The New York Times has a good piece on why the iPad doesn’t have flash

Numerous developers and executives that I interviewed for my story said there was a trend toward offering users an alternative to Flash video, the predominant video standard online, in the form of HTML5, an open standard.

Senior-level managers from many of the top video sites online, including YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv and Flickr, all agreed that video online is starting to splinter, and as some test out HTML5 for video distribution, many will begin offering both formats as the iPad makes its way onto the market.

(Read Why the iPad Web Demo Was Full of Holes – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.)

It seems obvious to me (and to many others) that flash’s days of prominence are over. More and more websites are using css and javascript with dhtml to produce the kind of sites that would have previously required flash. Coupled with the numerous video heavy sites that have begun to offer alternatives to Flash you can easily see that developers are starting to look in another direction. John Gruber has a very good piece on this too that’s worth checking out.

I think for all the moaning about the iPad not having flash, I think the bigger concern is what effect will the iPad have on Flash. If it’s even moderately successful (and it will be) then you’ll start to see Flash disappearing from web sites. Given how poorly flash often performs, and how good some of the alternatives now are, I don’t see that as a bad thing.

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Why the iTunes in the Cloud Rumour Makes No Sense

Why the iTunes in the Cloud Rumour Makes No Sense

by thomasfitzgerald on 21. Jan, 2010 in Apple, Internet, Music, iTunes

There’s been a rumour doing the rounds the last few days that really doesn’t make sense. It started when some analyst (I think it was on techcrunch) said that they’d heard that Apple plans to offer people the ability to put their iTunes collection “in the cloud”. Basically, it would allow people to access their music anywhere in the world. CNET are now reporting that Apple have been talking to the record labels about the possibility. Needless to say the mac rumour web has jumped on this. I have doubts though. There’s one aspect in particular that just doesn’t make sense. Here’s an example From 9-5 Mac:

“Apple didn’t reveal much, but much like what was reported yesterday, the idea is that people would upload their music to Apple’s servers and it would be available to them anywhere in the world on any device.”

Why though would Apple make you upload your music? Surely it would make more sense to scan your library or even your iTunes sales records and see which tracks you’ve bought and allow you to stream them from Apple’s servers. I mean, why download a song from iTunes only to then re-upload it to another Apple server? There’s no way in hell you’ll be allowed to do this with content you didn’t buy through iTunes either, so forget about using this for music you’ve bought on CD.

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This Is Why I love Woo Themes

This Is Why I love Woo Themes

by thomasfitzgerald on 18. Jan, 2010 in Design, Internet, Technology

I’ve been running my various blogs off wordpress fore years now, and over that time I’ve tried various themes. Originally I used free themes and then progressed to using some premium ones. But even then I was never really happy. Then I discovered Woo Themes. Woo is a purveyor of premium wordpress themes, but they do it really really well. What impressed me about the company was not just that they created some really nice and high quality themes, but that they gave them a really good back end, and that they continued to upgrade them. But what I really like is the way they structure their themes.

All their custom functions, the “woo framework” as they call it is regularly upgraded, and they’ve just issued an upgrade again. However, as I’ve extensively customized the themes on my blog, this would be a pain to upgrade, right? Well, on some of the themes I’ve owned in the past this would be true, but not now. Thanks to the way they’ve organized the layout of the backend, I just have to replace one folder within the theme I’m using and hey presto, framework upgraded. Simply brilliant. In the past when I’ve had to upgrade a theme it’s been a nightmare, trying to locate all the files I’ve changed then paste those changes into the new version and so on. This is so much simpler. If you’re looking for a premium wordpress theme then I can’t recommend the folks at woo themes enough.

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Where is the outrage?

by thomasfitzgerald on 20. Dec, 2009 in Microsoft

One of the things that annoys the life out of me is that frequently technology pundits who have a strong leaning towards Windows will, every time Apple does anything remotely questionable, claim that Apple is getting a free pass and use is the stupid argument that “If Microsoft did anything like this there’d be outrage”. Well, here’s one: it turns out that Microsoft’s new twitter client for Zune HD (as well as having poor performance) is censoring swear words. Apple got a lot of stick from plenty of people on the web for rejecting Apps over censorship, so now that Microsoft is doing something similarly distasteful where’s the outrage we were promised? All we had was “this is stupid but whatever” type reports instead of the usual “this is a travesty” one comes to expect when Apple does anything App related.

If Apple apparently gets a free pass for everything (yet everything it does is lately is attacked for not being open or fair enough and blown considerably out all proportion) and poor Microsoft is (according to some) constantly the butt of unfair attacks, then where’s the massive uproar over this? Seriously, if you believe that premise that Microsoft is so unfairly attacked for perceived injustices to consumers then there should be an equally “unfair” but massive overpowering of rage against the company.

No? Nothing? I thought so.

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Lucky Escape

by thomasfitzgerald on 10. Nov, 2009 in Entertainment, Internet, You Tube

This took place in a Boston Subway station when an inebriated woman fell onto the tracks. That was one incredibly lucky escape.

[Via Boing Boing]

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CNN Gets a Make Over

by thomasfitzgerald on 26. Oct, 2009 in Design, General News

CNN.com is sporting a new design this morning. The makeover is pretty substantial and it takes on a  bold minimalist look. I have to say I like it. It’s quite strong visually. Oh, and there’s a cool animation when you first visit the site where a curtain of the old site opens to reveal the new one. It’s very nicely laid out in my opinion, and much better than the old design.

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