SOPA Blackout

By james-p | Published: 18/01/2012
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA, S. 968) are controversial“piracy”bills being debated in the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively. Supporters claim the bills target “rogue” foreign websites that encourage online infringement, but their real effect would be to slow down job-creating tech innovations at home and create devastating new tools for silencing legitimate speech all around the web.
In spite of historic opposition from a diverse coalition including civil liberties and human rights organizations, tech industry leaders, security experts, legal scholars, a bipartisan group of legislators, and many more, the bills are moving quickly through Congress, fueled by massive infusions of cash from big content companies.

 

US law, but will affect everyone.

 

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Dirt Planet

By james-p | Published: 16/01/2012

Concept art for an iOS game. Maybe I’ll make it someday…

Dirt Planet

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Movember

By james-p | Published: 23/11/2011

Movember – raising vital funds and awareness for men’s health.

>>http://www.movember.com/m/1339312

Mine so far



Edit: Thank god it’s gone!!!

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iPhone 5 Predictions

By james-p | Published: 01/09/2011

There’s a lot of rumours about what the next generation iPhone will be like, with a lot of people predicting a larger screen. I think this will be very unlikely.

Unlike Android, almost all iOS apps are not designed to be viewed on different screen sizes, we have the luxury of being able to hardcode dimensions knowing they will look correct across all iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches. (Even if you try to write apps like this you run into a lot of problems, it’s not easy.) If Apple increase the screen size most of the apps in the App Store will stop displaying correctly. They could always increase the size and drop the ppi, but then they will no longer be able to call it a ‘Retina’ display.

I would not be surprised if Apple came up with a clever solution I hadn’t even considered. But I’m going to stick with my prediction that screen size will remain the same.

Edit: iPhone 4S is indeed the same, we’ll wait and see what the iPhone 5 is like…

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Lion

By james-p | Published: 09/08/2011

Really good, in-depth review of Lion.
>> ars technica

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iPhone 4 is thicker in white

By james-p | Published: 28/04/2011

>>iPhone 4 is thicker in white

Turns out the new white iPhone is a tad thicker than the black. So that’s what taken so long, applying all those extra layers of paint.

Edit: No it isn’t!

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iPhone Folder Icons

By james-p | Published: 26/04/2011

I’ve been getting back into Angry Birds recently and noticed something that’s starting to annoy me about the iPhone’s folder icons. The icon consists of a 3 x 3 grid showing the 9 icons of the apps inside. When opened however the folders show a 4 x 3 grid holding up to 12 full-sized app icons.

The problem is that the folder icon and it’s contents don’t match up. I’m constantly looking at the icon. seeing Angry Birds in the bottom left and then opening SandSlides instead. I imagine this discrepancy is down to the fact that a 4 x 3 grid wouldn’t fit and that the individual app icons would become too small to recognise, but it is now giving a false representation of the folder’s contents.

A simple solution would be to match the 9 icons on the left of the folder. This would mean that when only a few apps are there some are omitted from the icon, but even now the icon doesn’t show all the apps inside and at least it would be consistent!

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Apple Launches Subscriptions

By james-p | Published: 16/02/2011

Apple Launches Subscriptions on the App Store

Apple has recently published information about it’s new subscription services. They’re now enforcing the rules about in-app purchases and seem to be extending them to include apps like Kindle. This is despite the fact that content has never been bought through the app, but rather on a separate web page. Originally I’d assumed that Amazon would simply up the price of the in-app purchases to keep their profits but that doesn’t look possible:

“Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app.”

This isn’t so bad for small publishers who have complete ownership of their content, but it will be interesting to see how companies like Amazon and Spotify react and if they’ll ever allow Apple to take a 30% cut of their sales.

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The Slide from “Self-Regulation” to Corporate Censorship

By james-p | Published: 14/02/2011

The scale and significance of moves to entrust internet intermediaries with a cornerstone of democracy – open electronic communications networks

>>Read the PDF

EDRi has recently written about the problems of “self-regulation” by ISPs and how this is a big step forward for censorship. These private companies are being given more authority to uphold the law and punish what they see as illegal activity on the internet.

This leads to less transparency in the laws and does nothing to stop illegal activity, only inconveniencing law abiding users and in the worst cases actually making this material easier to find (blocking websites gives a massive clue that there is something there).

Transparency and openness on the web is the only way forward, enabling legitimate users access without hindrance. People will always find a way to beat censorship legislation. As John Gilmore famously said:

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

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Adobe BrowserLab

By james-p | Published: 14/02/2011


I’ve been using Adobe’s BrowserLab to see what my site looks like as I was having some trouble with the header layout. It’s a really good tool, takes a little while to load the page in all the browsers but then you can have a really nice side by side comparison. It even does onion skinning too, so you can see exactly how much the layout differs.
I now know this site doesn’t look quite right in IE 7 and below, but them I’m not too bothered. I’ll have to wait and see if the real browsers match up though.

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