Design posts

If you are a web designer then Apple’s mobile devices can help you work better, smarter — and out of the office. Here’s six apps you really should take time to get to know. 1. Ego $1.99 This is a splendid app (image above) not just for a developer but for anyone who has ever run a Google search on their name, which is everybody (but me) obviously. Ego watches the social web: Ember, Feedburner, Google Analytics, Mint, Squarespace, Tumblr, Twitter and Vimeo. It lets you track the number of visits to your website (including daily, hourly and monthly numbers), feed subscription totals and changes,…

Hey, y’know iStockPhoto? Well, hold onto your MOTHERLOVING hat, because this business just came to your iPhone. Just now. Yes, it did. I swear. Right now. “Inspiration and ideas often strike when we least expect,” claims iStockphoto’s COO, Kelly Thompson. It’s totally cool that I can save images for later and share them with my colleagues and stuff – the usefulness for quick collaboration is apparent. I have to point out that this app is pretty useful if you’re a contributing artist. iStockphoto Al fresco lets you track your downloads and sales, which rules if you’re the kind of person who likes…

I can’t not cater to the design crowd, so let’s get off track for a second. This is possibly the only ‘internet quiz’ I’ve cared to fill out in awhile. Click here and allow the almost-suspiciously soothing voice of a faux psychologist (or maybe he’s real, I’m not qualified to say) walk you through a series of simple questions that define you as a typeface (that’s ‘font’ to the less designy folk). I was amazed at the accuracy. Check it! Source: Pentagram…

Hey, wanna look like a time traveller? That’s a stupid question, yes you do. This here thing what you’re looking at is not an ancient Atlantean technomantic power talisman, but a goddamn watch. A watch! Okay, yeah, it does other things too – things like act as a Bluetooth headset for your phone, a remote for Skype, a controller for your MP3 player. Y’know, stuff you’d expect it to do. But I’m honestly more impressed that the folks at Tokyoflash have found a way to cram a timepiece into this thing as well. And, in true Tokyoflash fashion, they’ve found a way to make it confusing as dicks to figure out. In…

How have you been making use of your time? PixelOptics have spent the last decade developing emPower, which is – get this – electronic spectacles that can change focus via an electrical current run through a layer of liquid crystal in the lenses, effectively rendering the bifocal obsolete. You tell me what’s not bad ass about that. Just tell me. I dare you. The specs have three modes: when off, they act as a regular progressive lens – not the greatest, but suitable for everyday activity. When in manual mode, the electronic layer is locked in the on position, and the glasses function more or less like…

These days, if you asked most people which company is out to destroy the PC, they’d tell you ‘Apple’. But it isn’t just Steve Jobs out to crush the personal computer. In fact, a much better symbol for the end of the PC came recently when Google launched an on-site video editing app on YouTube. Why? It was one more step in a trend that moves computing away from the desktop and onto the web. And nowadays, you could even skip editing on the web – the new iPhone will let you edit movies and then upload them directly to YouTube, no computer required. Things that were unimaginable just a few short years ago are now…

Oh dip. This is a sultry unit. Toshiba is celebrating its 25th anniversary by dropping a true iPad killer into the fray. Billed as a ‘concept product’, a limited quantity of the Libretto W100 are being released into the wild as a test to see if consumers will dig it. Hell, I, for one, dig it. Just look at this thing. With a 62gig SSD, 2gigs of RAM, dual 7-inch screens at 1024×600, Bluetooth, WiMAX, and, perhaps most importantly, Windows-goddamn-7, the Libretto W100 sounds a lot like the future of mobile computing we were all hoping the iPad was going to be. This is a real computer, running real, grown-up…

Guys. Guys. You NEED too see this. If there is one thing you need to see today, it is this. I just choked Ensure all over my keyboard. Yeah, I drink Ensure, so what? No, wait, my sullied keyboard is not what you need to see. No, come back, here, I’ll show you. This is iBallz. Possibly the stupidest-looking iPad accessory you’ll ever see, iBallz may also be the most useful. Basically, it protects you iPad from falls. But based on the geometry of this thing, I’m willing to bet it would also protect it from intentional throws. There’s really not much more to say about this thing’s function. That is all. But the…

Gear up for the white knuckle thrill ride of the holiday season that will speak to the soul of every man and every woman who’s ever been in love. Or something, I guess? Columbia Pictures has released the official poster and website for The Social Network, Hollywood’s version of the tale of everyone’s favourite ad-targeting service. The David Fincher (Fight Club) flick will feature Jesse Eisenberg, the ‘poor man’s Michael Cera’ (but with arguably more acting talent) as a young Mark Zuckerberg. It’s been rumoured that this film might even get some Oscar attention. For real? I mean, the Facebook…

“Interestingly enough,” says Shahriar Afshar, “I’m not a gamer myself. I’m a physics professor.” Afshar is not of our generation, and as such finds today’s videogames a bit noisy. That said, he understands the gamer’s need to immerse himself in the sound of loud gunfire, rock music, and angry grunting at full volume. So he got to thinking. And boy, did he think. The Kor-FK is Afshar’s answer to the conundrum. Looking like a set of headphones melting around one’s neck, the Kor-FX is essentially a Rumble Pak (albeit a far more sophisticated, subtle one) that straps onto a gamer and translates what…