Comparing Smartwatches: Moto 360 vs Pebble
14 Mar 2015
My first impression of the Moto 360 is “sweet!” The screen is gorgeous. I love the inductive charger/nightstand. The notifications on it look fantastic. The “ok google” voice commands work mostly well but sometimes doesn’t do what I’d expect. For example, when I set a timer or alarm, it’s not setting the alarm on the phone; it’s only setting it on the watch. I’m never qu...
My iPad Experience with a Bluetooth keyboard
04 Oct 2010
On an impulse, I decided to buy the Bluetoothed Apple Wireless keyboard for use with the iPad. I felt there were times where I would want to create content without wanting to pull out my laptop and still have the flexibility of putting the keyboard away to enjoy the usual benefits of the iPad. I'm sitting in the middle seat of a six-hour flight home and thought, "this would be a good time t...
Review: Logo Design Love
17 Feb 2010
Logo Design Love is a book written by David Airey that covers the whys and hows of brand identity development. The book is broken down into three parts: The importance of brand identity, the process of design and keep the fires burning which looks at how to find motivation and inspiration. It's a light 200 pages with readable type and plenty of examples. David Airey aims this book at the aspiri...
BookArc
21 Nov 2009
After having seen Matt Brett twitter about it, I knew I wanted one. The BookArc is a laptop stand, pure and simple. It fits the Mac aesthetic very nicely with its brushed aluminum look—the site says it's made of "heavy gauge" steel. Suffice it to say, this product is solid. It has soft silicone feet and silicone inserts so as not to scratch your desk or you MacBook. There's 3 diff...
Review: Fancy Form Design
13 Nov 2009
Sitepoint has recently released a book called Fancy Form Design. Sitepoint was kind enough to provide me with a copy of it and being only 176 pages, I was able to finish it in short order. Fancy Form Design is a quick read and has a clear focus: design quality forms. The book is broken down into 5 sections, each building on the one previous using a single project over the scope of the book. For a...
Review: Mobify
11 Nov 2009
A few months ago, the folks at Mobify were kind enough to create a mobile version of my site using their service. Mobify is a web-based service that allows you to create a custom mobile version of your site. Since my redesign, I got an opportunity to play with the service first-hand and felt that it might be good to share my experience. What does Mobify offer? Why would anybody use a service...
Review: HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions
27 Oct 2009
This book, HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions, by Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson is subtitled, "A Web Standardistas' Approach." As you might imagine, the book takes a purist approach to teaching the basics of HTML and CSS to the reader. Jumping into this book, I wasn't sure what to expect. By the end, though, I felt that this is more than just another book: it's a textbook. ...
Review: Things.app
08 Feb 2009
Productivity, or the lack thereof, is something that I've been struggling with for some time. Keeping track of what I need to work, when I need to work on it, and what is on the priority list are all things that distract me from getting a productive day of work done. I've tried to-do lists, white boards, post-it notes, and a variety of applications to keep me on track. That is, until Things.app ...
HTTP Monitoring with Charles
27 Nov 2008
With Ajax applications, there's often a need to see what information is being transported back and forth. Am I sending what I'm supposed to? Am I getting back the right response? Most JavaScript developers have Firebug locked and loaded but its requirement to post data back to the server just to inspect the request isn't always a very pracitical solution. The information you get back may not alway...
Navicat for the Mac
24 Nov 2008
I like desktop GUI interfaces for database administration. When I developed for MS SQL Server, I used to use the query tool that came bundled. Then I switched to working mostly with MySQL and have bounced around various apps including the query browser and migration tools provided by MySQL. Eventually I had settled on SQLYog as it had provided one key feature: the ability to edit a query result. I...
Service Review: W3 Markup
29 Aug 2008
In an effort to force a more regular schedule of posts, this will be the first in an official series of review posts where I'll review books, products and services that I manage to get my hands on. Every Friday I'll try and post a new review. First up is W3 Markup. W3 Markup is an HTML slicing company that can take a Photoshop or Fireworks file and produce the HTML and CSS to go with it. I've use...