Ubuntu works pretty well on the N220, but it took a couple of evenings of trying various processes before finding one that got everything working smoothly. Want Ubuntu on your N220 with minimum fuss? Here’s how.
I loved my phone when I first got it. Since then, Nokia has turned it into a pile of crap through firmware updates. Now, battery life is the only good thing about a Nokia phone.
The great thing about websites is that they never close their doors. Unless they’re rubbish, obviously.
Making bad stuff is daft. Making bad stuff that takes more effort than making good stuff would have done is stupid. Going one step further and kicking your users in the teeth is idiotic. Here’s something idiotic.
If you’re tired of clicking through from Google image search to find framed web pages instead of images, try this Greasemonkey script.
I logged on to eBay today and was presented with a message asking me to confirm my account type (personal or business). The instructions telling me how to perform this confirmation read as follows:
How to confirm your account type
1. go to My eBay
2. sign in (if requested)
3. click ‘Personal Information’ in the ‘My Account’ section…
One of the best-known books in the computer industry is The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin, which is an enlightened and timeless look at how interaction with our silicon friends can be improved. Jef died a couple of years ago but his son Aza carries on his approach to interfaces.
And this week Aza unveiled Songza,…
Word processors with automatic indexing features are cheap. Proof readers are expensive.
The references are all valid, of course – you can see the “custom renderers” entry at the bottom of that image – but it’s a wholly unclear listing. Interestingly, the simple device of capitalising the words consistently (ie capitalising the references to top-level entries)…
Getting to the point is something that some people have trouble doing. Techies can be particularly poor at it, as they often have the sort of mind that enjoys getting involved in the workings of the solution, sometimes forgetting the pragmatism that required it in the first place.
And so here are a couple of example…
I doubt I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t open their browser full-screen. For one thing, it kind of makes a mockery of the whole windowing principle (flawed as it may be), but mainly it just makes most websites look stupid. If you want to see what I mean, take a look at…
I probably wasn’t alone in being disappointed by today’s report on The Register of SMS-enabled parking meters. The Reg has of course dismantled the idiocy of the actual system, the sole purpose of which is to call for help when attacked. According to one councillor, this is “a parking system that will encourage economic growth…
Most of us these days use a number of applications which claim to be “smart.” Microsoft Word is probably the most obvious example: by default it corrects typos, capitalisation and formatting as you type, and does many other “smart” things which purport to make your life easier.
I am surely not the only person who deactivates…
Can I just point out to any passing OS designers (because I know you’re all going to read this) that allowing applications to open windows off-screen is a really dumb thing to do.
I can’t believe I’m the only person who uses an extra screen with their laptop when at their desk, so I doubt I’m…
Over the past nine months I’ve been using Flickr to post some photos, and I find it a fascinating place, mainly for the quality of images available on it and the community aspect, but also because it’s an interesting interface example, being unobtrusive and generally pretty easy to use despite constant evolution.
I’ve also been finding…
One of Jeff Attwood’s posts has got me thinking. It starts by raising the point that whilst “keep it simple, stupid” is a good paradigm for implementing an effective interface, it doesn’t generally reflect what users ask for. Most solutions developers will be familiar with the concept of being landed with a few absurdities in…
Someone has inexplicably taken the time to come up with “Favcol,” whose lack of foresight and, simply, sheer lunacy as an idea is matched only by its clumsiness as a portmanteau.
What does it do? It takes all the pictures on Flickr which are tagged with “favcol,” analyses their colour content, and works out the average…
I was thinking the other day, as part of my recent enthusiasm for feeds (the XML type, not the nutritional type – enthusiasm for those is hardly a recent thing) that it would be neat to take feeds and start filtering them to cherry-pick the relevant stuff. It fell into the large category of “stuff…
If you develop any web pages at all, and you don’t have it already, you really must install the WebDeveloper plugin. I’m especially enjoying the fact that you can visit any web page and edit its CSS on the fly (under the “CSS | Edit CSS” menu) – which not only means you can tinker…
Summer 2010: Flickr have now changed their photo pages and this script is no longer of use. I’ve not had time to write the code for the new version, but luckily for you someone else has, so I’m now using this script instead and I recommend you do so, too.
Want to post your Flickr pictures…
I had a look today for a ‘rating’ plugin for Wordpress, which would effectively allow posts to become reviews, and found Rate My Stuff. It kind of does the job but there were a couple of things crying out to be fixed, so I scrubbed it and rolled my own.
I’m still a little hung over…
Yesterday I spent a few minutes flipping CDs in the HMV sale and decided to blow a few quid on a bunch of stuff I’ve never heard of before (always a good way to move your own musical goalposts a bit). The first thing I do when I get a new CD is rip it,…