Latest posts Tagged ‘iphone’
Living from my iPhone
Thursday, April 15th, 2010 Posted in About Me
The end of day one has finally arrived. More than 24 hours have past since I last had my laptop. I realise that I am addicted to computers and I am suffering from withdrawal symptoms. I am trying my best to lead a normal life (strange for others normal for me) using just my iPhone.
Over the course of the day I have noted a couple of issues that I have come across that I will highlight here. First of all is the serious lack of productivity. It’s not me being lazy but after being used to having two monitors with large resolutions the screen reel estate is far to small to be of use on a regular basis. Browsing websites takes considerably longer to do and there is the constant need to scroll on websites that are not mobile efficient, (kinda gives me the drive to make more mobile friendly versions of the websites I make) and opening multiple tabs, though is possible, just is not efficient with the screen size.
Another reason for the lack of productivity (other than me being lazy) is the insufficient multitasking capabilities. Now I have jailbroken my iPhone (I am an advanced user remember) so I have multitasking and the ability to quickly switch between apps with a swipe or two. However even with this ability it’s very difficult to keep track of events and in particular chats on clients that don’t have sound notifications (skype).
So productivity aside what other problems have I discovered? The lack of media or lacking the ability to play media. The lack of flash is highly annoying. I have seen many links from Twitter and through IMs to videos that I cannot view due to iPhones lack of flash. In addition to this, I find it shocking how many websites that rely on flash to show work or items do not have an alternative content. Huge gaps with small ‘no flash’ icons fill pages because designers have not provided alternative content such as an image or text saying flash is required. But HTML5 will solve all the problems. No it won’t, not yet anyway. It will take a number of years before HTML5 will provide a mobile experience similar to that on a desktop. Apple get your shizzle together, stop being control freaks and give iPhone users what they are asking for… Flash! We are asking for it. We don’t care if it’s slightly buggy we don’t care if it drains battery life, we don’t expect battery life to be good on smartphones so just make us happy. Which is a strange twist from battery life being an important factor on phones in the past. How about this for an idea Apple. Add an on/off switch to allow people to keep it switched off. Best of both worlds? Adobe, if you want to piss Apple off for banning flash, how about you give flash to the jailbroken community? Just a thought.
Returning to the subject of media (I know I tend to drift off topic) I have found out that I cannot play videos or music whilst in a skype call. For someone who spends most of the day in a skype call, this is a big thing. Now whether it’s down to the skype app or the limitations of sharing of audio driver/resources I don’t know but it stops me from watching videos and playing music. One of my favourite pastimes is having a skype call with others whilst streaming media such as a film to the other parties and watching it together without geographic limitations.
These are just a few things I have noticed during the course of the day. Tomorrow I will see if I can find some workarounds for the skype issue but ultimately it’s not been as bad as I thought. I have cleaned my desk which badly needed cleaning, my room is tidy once more and I have cleaned up my mile long todo list, removing items that have been on there for months. But for now I will put my iPhone on charge for the second time today ready to be destroyed tomorrow.
Tags: adobe, apple, audio, battery, flash, from, iphone, jailbroken, living, multitasking, my, os 4.0, productivity, screen, skype, video
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Life without a laptop – Living from my iPhone
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 Posted in About Me
Well the inevitable has happened. My laptops busted once more.
I have to live my life off of my iPhone for the next couple of days trying to get on with life as normal as my MacBook is off at the Apple store awaiting repair.
For those of you who want to know, I currently own a late 2008 unibody Macbook Pro. A purchase I thought would be a good investment to compliment my life at university and first years of work in general. Purchased in October 08 and being completely new to the ‘Apple experience’ I decided that I will start with a clean slate and set myself up for the following couple of years that I will own it. Boy did I have it coming to me.
In the first 6 months everything was going well. I got used to the OSX very quickly and being an ‘advanced user’ I started tweaking and fiddling, altering the system, it’s behaviour and adding new programs to make my life easier and my experience even better. Then the poo poo hit the fan. As I was working hard to complete a deadline for university my laptop display decided to give up the ghost. Within 6 months a hardware fault occured. So external display kept me going for a month before I could spare the time to fix it. After much hassle, countless trips to service centres raised stress levels and falling respect for Apple I finally got my life (sorry laptop) back. A logic board, display and airport card later I was back doing what I normally do.
Did it end there? No it didn’t. I will summerise all the problems to save time for the last few people who can be bothered to read this but this laptop has an overheating issue, display flicker issue, USB audio problem, and now to top it all off the ‘super’ drive is up poo poo creak without a paddle.
So much for ‘it just works’. Ok rant over. For those of you that are still with me I congratulate you and thank you.
So what to do? I have unwillingly been set the task of living my life from my iPhone. Everything I do on my mac I have to somehow replicate it on my iPhone or through other means as I do not have another laptop and no money to buy a temporary one.
I can kiss goodbye my iPhone battery whilst I try to remain as productive as possible. Heck I may even get some jobs that have gathered dust on the bottom of my todo list done!
So to round up. I will live the next couple of days from my iPhone and I will report back on my blog how I get on with various obstacles I encounter and the solutions.
Me hooked on technology and my laptop too much you say? Definately :/
Tags: a, advanced, annoyed, apple, audio, broken, from, iphone, laptop, living, Macbook, my, OSX, problems, Uni Life, USB, without
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Im back
Saturday, March 6th, 2010 Posted in About Me, BAIMP, Humour, Uni Life, University
I can’t help but say I told you so!
Sorry I just had to get that out of my system. At the start of this blog I said it wouldn’t take long before it went stale. However, after a considerable break I am back and writing another blog post. The last post left off with me finishing year 1 at uni. I am now well into year 2 and I have almost finished it!
Yes it has been that long since posts! But without much further delays and without going into all the stuff that I have been up to (because quite frankly it would be boring) I will update you with that I am currently working on.
Behold the games project! A twelve week assignment in groups of 4 or 5 with the aim to create some sort of interactive game in either Unity3D or Flash. What initially started off as being a simple project in my eyes has turned out to be a lot more difficult that I imaginged.
As with all my projects my ambitions far surpass my abilities but with the help from the rest of the group we may once again be victorious!
That is if I don’t collapse in a heap in the uni mac labs a bumbling mumbling idiot due to the sheer amount of scripting that has to be done.
The reason why I have managed to spare the time to write a blog post is because my laptop has decided that it requires a hard drive scan to fix errors. I started it initially at 9am this morning and it’s now 15:15. There is only so much work you can do on the iPhone. But the good news is that I have managed to make a considerable dent in the number of non essential items on my to do list (this blog post being one of them) bad news is that I am running out of time for those important to dos.
Anyway I have bored you enough with my ramblings and I have spent too much of your precious time already so all I can say is thanks for taking an interest in reading this far down and have a good day, what’s left of it anyway.
The long gone but since returned for a while,
Matthew Shield
Oh and before I forget again, I have finished my portfolio I just have to theme this blog to suit (another item on the todo list)
ok ok I’m going now
Tags: back, BAIMP, bournemouth, break, chill, cinema 4d, errors, fix, game, interactive, iphone, media, off, production, project, time, unity 3d, University
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One Day Project (28th October)
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 Posted in BAIMP, University
On the 27th October we were set another one day project. (I thought we were only supposed to get one every project title?) This weeks one day project is a bit harder than last week’s one. I had 24 hours to come up with a brand for a charity named “Paradox”. The charity focused on raising awareness of environmentally friendly ways of using technology.
Its a bitch of a project. We had to create logos, letterheads, websites, and other advertising, promotional and visual motifs. It was to be aimed at men and woman in the 15-24 age range. Again, the work had to be submitted on my blog and available for all to see by 3.30pm on the 28th in room W112.
So last night I fired up Firefox and had a hunt around for ideas on deviantart.com flickr and Google Images to see what ideas I could come up with. After about an hour I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do. So I fired up Photoshop and decided to follow a tutorial to see what I could create.
This is the result I came up with (with a fight with Photoshop telling me I couldn’t save due to lack of RAM)
First Idea
As you can see, the image is rather dark and may not exactly work well with many applications. It also doesn’t have any particular “logo” or brand identification that stands out. So this morning when I walked into the mac labs at uni i decided to scrap that idea and try a different approach.
I created a logo based on two P’s that are flipped and inverted (See image below). I then had an idea of added the globe and the power icon into the centre of the P’s to help connect technology and nature together. I then had a play around with various other text effects and styles until I found something I like.
Base Logo
So here is the base logo that can be used pretty much anywhere with all sorts of styles and colours. This is helpful when placing them on different media because it can be tailored to suit pretty much anything. So using this base image I went on to creating different styles to be placed on the different media. I first created a standard header for a website using help from this tutorial I created the banner.
Main Banner
I went for a more “earthy” feel to the backdrop to connect to the nature theme, and then you have a more metallic text which connects to the technology side, however its not “overpowering” but fairly simple. If i were to add texture to it, like mud or electronic stuff, it would have less of an impact and look too busy.
I decided that the image would look well on a website which was set out in a similar colour scheme, and so I have done a mock up of what it could look like. Bare in mind, I did not spend a huge amount of time on it. But this what it would look like on a website:
Banner on Website
I also created some promotional merchandise for the brand. I created a business card and letterhead that the charity could use. I have tried to keep these simple and not as flashy as the website, but still rather effective and attention grabbing. It also shows how the main logo can be used in a different way and with a different colour scheme.
Business Card and Letterhead
Business Card
Letterhead
I simulated what promoting the brand could be like by putting it on a variety of advertising media. I chose to simulate placing the advert on a billboard and a piece of mobile technology (in this case the iphone).
The billboard uses the “eathy” feel again as it looks rather effective with the light rays going across the text. However, with more time, I could possibly customise a different style for that sort of advertising.
Billboard
This is kind of an idea I had for promoting it on the Apple iPhone. This image was done in a few minutes and if I had more time, I would create a more detailed image regarding viewing various things on mobile media, and probably expand it showing another image with a more conventional browser.
iPhone
So there you have it… The results to my second one day project. I have learnt a fair bit about how to view things, and create a full brand and various visual motifs in such short space of time. The logo was the hardest thing to get my head around, trying to create something that can be used almost anywhere and could be recognised easily. Its not easy, take it from me!
Overall though, I am happy with the work I have done today, but I wish I can do things a little quicker, because I finished writing this blog very close to the 3.30pm deadline… Will I ever learn???
Tags: banner, billboard, business cards, day, iphone, letterhead, logo, one, paradox, project, website
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