Hard News: The Southern Apps
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But one thing remains clunky and difficult in a multi-touch interface -- selecting (and, therefore, copying, pasting and formatting) text.
One trick that I found useful on my PDA which has a touch screen - turn your finger upside down and point with your nail. You get a much smaller, more precise point that way. It takes a little while to get used to. You could use a stylus too, but that's something you have to carry. Mind you, anything will do for one, a plastic fork or toothpick from the plane would have helped.
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Moroccan roll...
I am loving this band (discovered them thru writer/reviewer David Maine's blogspot), I'm wondering if the Bats / Minisnap's Paul Kean has some Tuareg blood... ;- )
Tinariwen have been round since the late '70s and their Blues is Niger/West African based not the US iteration - and let's face it the Tuareg are the original blue people ! -
My workplace has a morning tea tradition of doing the Dominion Post 5 minute quiz. Today one young person enlightened the rest of us about the Grinder app.
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Apple's slim new box will run iOS4 and provide access to a TV version of the App Store, which will offer streaming video, dedicated interactive apps from major news organisations and other content providers, games, and whatever else the app development community thinks might fly
Which is all well and good, but remains thoroughly useless in a country where data is metered by the gigabyte if you're lucky, by the megabyte if you're not, and is mostly not discounted even if it originates over a connection that costs your ISP a very nominal fee per month to maintain.
I've been on Orcon's Purple+ at my new home for a couple of months now, and absolutely love the speed (we're training at 20Mb/s, and getting nearly all of it at the desktop), but am really disappointed that the O-zone appears to have stagnated in the 15 months since it was launched. The launch partners are still the only content providers involved, despite there being many, many sources of streaming media and large, legitimate downloads around NZ. It's somewhat reflective of the general malaise in the NZ ISP environment about encouraging use of peering and making things like the iTV affordable to users by keeping traffic as local as possible.
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and the Playstation 3, which now offers you a slightly unstable dedicated player for TVNZ ondemand
I think you left out "...and appallingly low-resolution..." between the words "unstable" and "dedicated". I use it occasionally to catch up on a 6pm news bulletin and usually find myself switching quality settings only to find I already was in "high" quality mode.
And where is Sony's Play TV with Freeview support?
And everything Matthew just said about NZ ISPs and traffic. Also, too.
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Rupert Murdoch, who lost 90% of his readership when he put up a paywall at The Times website this year,
Was it that substantial? I recall reading a figure of 27% just recently.
then had lunch with Paul Norris, Christine Vavasour and Bryan Pauling
Ruth didn't get a lunch invite?
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Ruth didn't get a lunch invite?
Didn't see Ruth!
Also, I spelt Kristine's name wrong. I'd go in and fix it, but the plane I'm sitting in is about to take off.
Anyway, it was the usual worthwhile experience: good course, bright, engaged kids.
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One trick that I found useful on my PDA which has a touch screen - turn your finger upside down and point with your nail. You get a much smaller, more precise point that way. It takes a little while to get used to. You could use a stylus too, but that's something you have to carry. Mind you, anything will do for one, a plastic fork or toothpick from the plane would have helped.
You can do those things on resistive touch screens but they won't work on capacitive touch screens like the iPad, iPhone, and other smartphones have these days.
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one irritating quirk of the iPad: unless you're prepared to jailbreak your device, the iPad won't mirror its screen in general use
"Irritating"..."little"...?
Just what are you willing to sacrifice to the bonfire of Apple gagetisation?
and really, yet another Apple review? Come on Russell, you're better than this.
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and really, yet another Apple review? Come on Russell, you're better than this.
I found it interesting. It wasn't "the iPad could be good for this". It was "it was good for this". That's actually a lot more interesting than speculation.
You can do those things on resistive touch screens but they won't work on capacitive touch screens like the iPad, iPhone, and other smartphones have these days.
So a stylus doesn't work? Bugger there was me thinking they could be useful for some kinds of art. I guess they still can, you just have to blow the area up you're working on.
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Speaking of things Southern, I'm recommending this very good analysis of "the Dunedin sound and the myth of isolation" from the excellent Mysterex site.
Loosely related song below. Actually, with this title, it could have worked over at David Haywood's.
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"please, Steve"
Call me picky, but I prefer a platform where of there's a functionality hole, users can fix it by coding, not obsequies.
Of course, open cellphones will take down the network. My Android did only last week. Didn't you notice the smoke?
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You can get styli for capacitive screens. Not sure who stocks them in NZ.
I was thinking of trying a 1uf tantalum as an alternative.
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You can get styli for capacitive screens. Not sure who stocks them in NZ.
I was thinking of trying a 1uf tantalum as an alternative.
Corner of a damp sponge works, as long as you hold the sponge with your hand.
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You can get styli for capacitive screens. Not sure who stocks them in NZ.
Try the butcher - sausages apparently work quite well.
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You can get styli for capacitive screens. Not sure who stocks them in NZ.
I saw a thing where a stick/pencil/whatever was wrapped in foil with a tip made from extremely fine grade steel wool, which, news to me, can come in 'so fine it's not scratchy'.
I sketched up the idea I had http://i.imgur.com/yLuh8.png
Having an active communication channel means you can distinguish stylus from fingers. They way I envisioned it was using touch to control the view and stylus to control the contents of the view. That would address the text selecty issues that Russel mentioned.
Pressure and angle sensitivity are just bonuses.
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irritating quirk of the iPad
does seem to understate the problem. It is a mysterious and apparently deliberate defect that makes even Apple's own software essentially useless for the task it was designed for: not even Keynote will show the slide on both screen and Pad. You get a virtual laser pointer though, so you can point at things you can't see on your lovely screen. Apple seem to have purposely dropped the ball on this one, and I really can't work out why. I really don't see what is being protected or gained by disabling the device like this. Isn't it obvious that we all want to walk around like Steve, Pad in hand, whilst giving our presentations?
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Have you tried wearing a turtleneck? Maybe that's the workaround.
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Maybe obvious useful functionality (PXTs, projector support, front-facing cameras) get left out so they can be added later as a marketing tactic?
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I'm ready for the turtleneck to make a comeback. Its heyday was what, in the 70s? Usually under a blazer, sweatily. We need to start that up again.
Here, have Cee-Lo's *stonking* new song, for the three of you who haven't heard it yet:
ETA: Uh, NSF people who don't like swearing. Obvs.
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doesn't smell like team spirit...
...the pilgrimage to Whisky Galore
Russell, did your dram-man have anything to say about the recently discovered cache of Shackleton's Mackinlay's Rare Old Whisky and the Australian Brandy down in Antarctica?
Personally I think it is a piece of obscene preciousness that they are returning all these "artefacts" to the ice - when most of them could be sold for a small fortune at auction, thus helping Antarctic preservation and research - at a time when they most need funds it is arrant madness! -
Rupert Murdoch, who lost 90% of his readership when he put up a paywall at The Times website this year,
Was it that substantial? I recall reading a figure of 27% just recently.
At the risk of making the all too easy mistake of not fact-checking, I seem to remember the drop was 27% if you only counted the people who didn't bother to even go to the paywall, but leapt to 90% if you counted the people who reached the paywall and then refused to go further.
Do some people really chose stats to suit their view?
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Maybe obvious useful functionality (PXTs, projector support, front-facing cameras) get left out so they can be added later as a marketing tactic?
I suspect that the stuff they left out that is common on phones (PXTs, cameras, calling) was done to try to differentiate the iPad from a phone. Even so people still disparaged it as "just a big iPhone". Though the difference in screen size makes all the difference for many uses.
Projector/external monitor support is there, though obviously the lack of screen mirroring is bad (and strange). Since the iPad has to be tethered to the projector/monitor anyway it's not ideally suited to giving presentations in that way, IMHO. I think the way I'd do it would be to drive the projector from a laptop and then use the iPad to control the laptop (via VNC or whatever) wirelessly.
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does seem to understate the problem. It is a mysterious and apparently deliberate defect that makes even Apple's own software essentially useless for the task it was designed for: not even Keynote will show the slide on both screen and Pad.
Actually, that's not correct at all. Any app can support mirroring and plenty do. The browser app I also used yesterday even did the nice trick of not showing the virtual keyboard on the second screen while I was typing URLs into the browser window on the iPad.
It's just that they decided in Keynote to make the iPad act as the remote control rather than presenter's monitor. I did n't find it that big a deal, really.
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