Flashless
Posted by Vincent at 8:19 - Views: 1,132
David Hyatt is one of the driving forces behind the increasing popular Webkit and with the accelerating evolution of the web standards, it’s becoming a threat to Adobe’s Flash which is also being threatened by Microsoft Silverlight. Microsoft’s solution faces two major problems: Mac users trust and usage. Mac users don’t trust Microsoft because of their history of suddenly killing (Mac) software. If you want people to use your software their is a factor of trust, in continuity, development cycles and support. Microsoft has effectively killed this. The second part is usage: Mac users don’t install Silverlight! For what reason?
An other problem Microsoft is facing is the Mac development community isn’t embracing Silverlight. It’s not a part of their Adobe workflow and they don’t have the tools to do so (Microsoft Expression). These tools were previously all Mac software (Expression, iView etc.) which they (suprise) put down to rest. So Microsoft tries to kill Adobe Flash without the help of Mac development community. The Adobe Flash 7 Player worldwide ubiquity is reaching 99% (to put views in perspective Apple’s QuickTime Player is 62%, according to Millward Brown) isn’t helping either.
Web standards are moving away from proprietary plugins and offering solutions which are available within the browser like SVG, CSS and JavaScript. CSS and JavaScript are becoming more and more powerful making animation, custom fonts, 3D etc. all possible without ever needing an extra plugin. So why is it taking so long for users and developers to embrace these great technologies? It’s because of one simple factor: Microsoft Internet Explorer. The user base is still huge, it’s declining but still huge. Companies aren’t switching to better available browsers so developers have to support and build for Internet Explorer, which doesn’t support all these goodies and probably never will!? Firefox is safely hovering around 20% market share, hopefully this will change but I don’t think anytime soon.
Conclusion we will be probably stuck for some time with the shitty processor intensive Flash implementation of Adobe although everybody knows that things can change all off a sudden and rules that divine our status quo today can no longer count tomorrow. I challenge you developers, to shape and form our future without the limiting factor of Microsoft (both OS-wise as browser-wise) and Adobe Flash (plugin-wise).
Tags: David Hyatt, Flash, SilverLight, Web Browser, Web Standards, WebKit
Less is more
Posted by Vincent at 9:57 - Views: 623
With the new version of QuickTime X some stuff is missing I hope this will change in the final version of Snow Leopard.
First the most obvious: the preferences are missing, I guess they will come back otherwise you can’t configure QuickTime X. Second the New Player, A/V Controls and Movie Properties are missing. So QuickTime editors can’t create a new blank window, control Audio Video settings or view/edit movie properties. I know in interfaceland less is more and Apple is king of the hill at it but don’t over do it and create a crippled application version.
Because this not a final version I will not give a final vote yet, let’s see what will happen in the mean time.
Tags: QuickTime, QuickTime X, Snow Leopard, Technology
Eliza wasn’t there
Posted by Vincent at 20:55 - Views: 563
The flight went very smooth, no complaints there, Tristan was just amazing he even slept in the plane. We had rented a Hyundai Getz from Hertz, yeah you can call it a car but I say it’s a tin can (sorry for your Asian car lovers but they just don’t know how to make cars!). One advantage of this car was it’s amazing fuel efficiency and of course the gasoline price in Santorini, Greece (€1.17).
They forgot to book a child car seat although we asked specifically for it. The service, if you can call it that way, was rude. We received a letter at the check out desk from Eliza, she wouldn’t meet us in person to answer any personal questions (VERY BAD!!!). Luckily the service team met with us and gave us the appropriate information. We could use the biological garden for tomatoes, basil, rosemary, pumpkins, pickles etc. so I tossed up a wicked salad with some nice fresh fish.
The Ramni House was excellent except for the beds, concrete sleeps better 
but then again we’re kinda spoiled with our bed from Poliform.
Santorini is a beautiful place and the locals are very kind and pleasant. They really loved Tristan and he took advantage of the opportunity to get some Greece TLC.
We have done some occasionally snorkeling but it was kinda hard with the little guy, we did it in shifts which I don’t like because we usually follow the scuba diving buddy system. It was a pleasant and rememberable vacation. Greece is a nice country with lovely people and great food. It was definitely a thumbs up vacation, we’re a bit spoiled by our previous locations to which we will return in the future.
Tags: Eliza was here, Family, Greece, Lifestyle, Oia, Personal, Ramni House, Santorini, Thera, Thira, Tristan, Vacation
Santorini the circular one
Posted by Vincent at 7:00 - Views: 467
The coming weeks there will be no posts because we’re going on vacation to Santorini, Greece. The name Santorini was given to it by the Latin empire in the thirteenth century, and is a reference to Saint Irene. Before then it was known as Kallistē (Καλλίστη, “the most beautiful one”), Strongylē (Στρογγύλη, “the circular one”), or Thera (Θήρα).
Thera with an area of approximately 73 km² is forming the southernmost member of Cyclades group of volcanic islands in the southern Aegean Sea. The Cyclades are part of a metamorphic complex area known as the Cycladic Massif, which formed in Triassic to Tertiary time and were folded and metamorphosed during the Alpine folding around 60 million years ago.
It is the most active volcanic centre in the South Aegean Volcanic Arc, though what remains today is chiefly a water-filled caldera.
The island is the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions the planet has ever seen: the Minoan eruption (sometimes called the Thera eruption), which occurred some 3,600 years ago at the height of the Minoan civilization. The eruption left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash deposits hundreds of feet deep and may have led indirectly to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, 110 km (70 miles) to the south, through the creation of a gigantic tsunami. Another popular theory holds that the Thera eruption is the source of the legend of Atlantis.
This will be Tristan’s first vacation and in an airplane. We have prepared and planned this well so let’s hope everything goes as planned and if not we’ll have to improvise. We have rented a nice accommodation called the Ramni House (see picture above). All the arrangements were made by Eliza was here (dutch) travel agency.
