Weblog

Posted at 11:03am on 25 Sep 2008

Clever Umbrellas

An amusing collection of high tech and/or innovative umbrellas.

Sadly it seems that noone has yet managed to invent one that works even when you forget to bring it with you.

Posted at 1:59pm on 10 Sep 2008

NOPE.

This is brilliant:

www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com

Those nerdy enough to view the source will also appreciate the JavaScript-based joke that controls the text. I would suggest that the following would have been funnier though:

if (typeof(world) == "undefined")
    document.write("YUP.");
else
    document.write("NOPE.");

Posted at 5:36pm on 08 Sep 2008

Esquire Brings <BLINK> to the Printed Page

In a move that will bring the printed word bang up-to-date with The Web (circa 1994), Esquire's October 2008 edition will be the first magazine ever to feature blinking content.

Some sources were unimpressed by this technological revolution, but the potential of this E-Ink technology and the flat, flexible battery that drives it is huge.

I can't wait to see what the second and third commercial applications turn out to be.

Posted at 10:03am on 02 Sep 2008

Parallel Processing

Not the most technical demonstration of the benefits of parallel processing you'll find, but certainly the most entertaining:

1100 barrel paint ball "graphics card"

Courtesy of Engadget.

Posted at 12:58am on 02 Sep 2008

Google Chrome

Google have announced that they're releasing a new open source web browser today. Using an innovative multi-process model for improved stability, and the Apple Webkit engine for fast, standards-compliant page rendering, this has a lot of potential. Read about it in their excellent comic-book-style blog posting.

I suspect that it will be the death of Firefox. Firefox's user experience and browser technology is better than IE (though Microsoft is catching up fast) but worse than Safari. It's a bloated memory hog, with a quirky non-standard UI, and it only exists because it's open source, has great plugin support and is arguably the only decent browser on Windows for the discerning web user (Opera is too complicated and Safari is too alien for the average Windows aficionado).

Google Chrome is open source too, and historically Google have encouraged people to build mash-ups with their technology, so one would guess that it will support plugins.

Google is not quite Apple when it comes to user interfaces, but the design they've outlined for chrome is simple and elegant - more so than Firefox. Chrome will probably never look as good as Safari does on a Mac, nor will it be as ubiquitous as Internet Explorer on Windows. But for the comfortable 15-20% of Internet users who use Firefox on Windows, Chrome could well become the de-facto choice overnight.

Update: Various sources are reporting that Chrome's maket share has surpassed 1% after a single day. That's already more than Opera which has been around for nearly 15 years.