Archive for January, 2009

File Under: Other
Jan
13
2009

Pretty Loaded: Flash Loading Screens Belong in a Museum

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In a prior job as a photo editor, I used to joke that I was getting paid for watching bars slowly load across the screen. Thanks to Pretty Loaded, a museum of Flash loading screens, I can now do it for free.

Pretty Loaded has some very creative loading screens. It’s mesmerizing, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll actually be able to view them all. Almost there… Just 15% complete.

[via kottke]

File Under: operating systems
Jan
13
2009

Windows 7 Beta Preview for the Masses

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If you were eager to beat the lines for the preview edition of Windows 7, you’ll be happy to know that thanks to eager beavers of the downloading kind, Windows 7 is now available to anyone with Internet Explorer.

Apparently Microsoft’s first attempt to release preview versions to the first 2.5 million developers didn’t go smoothly, so the company decided to make it available to everyone through January 24th.

Windows 7 is known to be the streamlined version of Windows Vista. For once, it’s the nuts and bolts version of its industry leading desktop operating system capable of running on most computers without an upgrade. The tradeoff to this streamlined version is a lot of functions and applications you probably barely ever used anyway.

Don’t bother trying to download with Firefox, Safari or Chrome, of course. The download requires an Akamai ActiveX control. From there, you’ll have to burn the downloaded .iso file to a DVD. There are several free applications to do this using a Google search.

It took me the greater part of the day, but Windows 7 is now running on my Mac using VMWare. The good news is that it is blazing fast and the permissions dialogs were kept at a minimum.

The icons are big, the start button is where you’d expect it. Like Vista, the Computer icon is missing by default, but you can get it back through system settings. In general, it took me less than 5 minutes to start-up, launch Internet Explorer 8, bypass all the setup features and download Google Chrome. Launching a web browser is 80% of what I use an Operating System for these days, so I’d call that a huge success.

Now the big question is whether it is competitive with Windows XP and whether Windows 7, with its Internet Explorer 8, is (finally) the version that will allow us all to finally ditch Internet Explorer 6 support once and for all. I’m leaning towards it being better for doing its thing well: launching applications safely, reliably and without hassle.

Head over to Microsoft’s Windows 7 beta site to grab yourself your own key and leave your comments below.

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File Under: Mobile, operating systems
Jan
13
2009

Palm Pre Ups Mobile Web Ante With WebOS

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I never thought I’d say this past 2003, but it looks like Palm could be a contender. Last week, Palm threw its hat in the mobile web-enhanced smartphone ring with the Palm Pre.

There are a lot of touchscreen phones out there competing with the iPhone and Google G1. Believe it or not, the Palm Pre was the talk of the town at Las Vegas’ Consumer Electronics Show conference last week. The big news? The entire software stack is a bundle based on HTML 5 and JavaScript.

That’s right. Forget iPhone’s Objective C or Android’s Java. The entire thing is based on something most developers know like the back of their hand already.

This is a platform stack Webmonkey can really get behind. No word on how integration with hardware, such as the built-in camera and GPS. The browser is built on Webkit (same as Android and iPhone). Web pages and applications will be built into the operating system. “Cards” will provide direct links to web applications. Messaging will be built-in to the address book. The prospect looks to be a promising leap forward for the mobile web and as a mobile access point to the web.

The hardware is impressive, of course. However, the big news here is the WebOS it is built on. Similar to the iPhone and Android competition, the ability to actually use the phone on devices far into the future is the big win here. For instance, I would love to see this WebOS or the iPhone and Android OS on a netbook.

Of course, anything this exciting would forego something so tangible as a launch date. On the bright side, the phone is bound for months of speculation and opinion. Welcome back to the limelight Palm.

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File Under: Mobile, Multimedia, Software & Tools, Visual Design
Jan
13
2009

Reflections on 2008: The Year of Cloud Computing

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With both feet firmly planted in 2009, we can now look back at the year 2008 as if it were a wistful dream — that is, if you’re like me and you selectively choose your memories. In any case, thanks to the tail end of spendthrift venture capitalism and advertising-supported research and development, 2008 was a banner year from the point of view of web developers.

Accounting for what 2008 brought us, it appears the underlying modus operandi was to make the Web a much more mobile, manageable and powerful platform for web applications. Big players in 2008 were Google, Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo. Microsoft gets honorable mention for Internet Explorer 8 previews and Silverlight 2, but with Vista and the loss of Bill Gates in the captain’s chair, it was not quite Microsoft’s year.

In general, much of the big wins in 2008 came from browsers and open source technology. Some things we can thank 2008 for:

  • Cloud Computing — From the consumer’s point of view, this means cool applications on the web. From the developers point of view, point no further than Amazon’s S3 and Google’s App Engine for allowing you to offload the heavy duty backend technology so you can focus on web application innovation. The services allow you to rent servers and its processing power without the fuss of having to constantly replace hard drives manage memory and rebuild servers.
  • The Mobile Web — Thanks to the fully capable browsers such as Opera’s mobile browser or those built into the iPhone and Google’s G1 phone, the capabilities of web applications, AJAX and all, were made available to those on the go.
  • Location Awareness — In part because of the mobile web and embedded device location mechanisms via GPS and wi-fi triangulation, open standards were built to help websites discover user locations and deliver services in corrolation. experience, one where the web knows you, knows where you are, and who you are.
  • Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect (and the “OpenID Stack”) — Logging in to all of your favorite sites can be quite the chore. Facebook and Google’s account management tools allow you to log in to multiple sites without having to remember passwords. Even better, you bring along your address book with you, making address book imports and the like obsolete.
  • Interactive Graphics Without Flash — We’re not exactly referring to Silverlight, although Microsoft and NBC used the the technology to stream the Olympics over the web in high definition and it never looked better. HTML 5 brings us two elements with big graphic potential called Canvas and SVG. Designers are just starting to explore just how much animation and graphical filters they can bring to modern browsers without requiring a new plug-in or extension.
  • JavaScript engines — Once Firefox 3 arrived on our doorsteps touting the fastest browser experience, we were hooked. Maybe in conjunction, or just by mere coincidence, Google and Mozilla started focusing on how to render JavaScript for today’s demanding AJAX applications. Google introduced the open-source Chrome browser with the V8 JavaScript-rendering engine and Firefox squeaked out its answer, dubbed Tracemonkey, in beta builds before the year’s end.

Webmonkey would like to thank everyone in the industry who rose above the cruft to make 2008 a prosperous year for the web. Now, can someone please fix the banks so we can get back to upgrading our sheep-throwing applications?

[For more gritty details, check out Michael Calore's year-end take on Epicenter]