Technology Blog

With the imminent release of the iPad this weekend I thought it appropriate to show some of the images created after announcement -

http://www.smashingshare.com/2010/03/15/apple-ipad-funny-pictures/

Here is an article that explains reasons why your Mac slows down over time and suffers when you load excessive items-

http://www.chriswrites.com/2009/04/17-reasons-why-your-mac-is-so-unbelievably-slow/

Contact us now and we can set you up on a MaintainIT schedule to target many of the issues mentioned in the article above.

Scheduled for exclusive global launch on April 12 2010-

http://cs5launch.adobe.com/

Latest Changes – 22 March 2010
Hi Everyone. We have been working on some slick usability enhancements in the past couple of weeks and couldn’t wait to bring them to you, so here they are, enjoy. To read the full release notes click here.

Add To Do Item Inline – You can now add todo items to a task by entering them directly beneath the task, rather than having to click on the task first
Assigning Staff to a Task – You can now assign staff to a task without having to first assign them to the job. Editing a task will reveal a Staff drop down selection menu.
Staff Task Allocation – In Preferences a new setting has been enabled that allows you to display only tasks explicitly assigned to a staff member
Job Notifications – Can be specifically directed to just the project manager assigned to that job
Job Notifications – Priority of the job is included in the email sent to staff assigned to it
Unit Price – Now displays when searching for a cost if you have the Financial Privileges
Report Builder – Now uses the time format set in preferences, and also includes Draft Quotes.
Job State – Where a job is in a state that doesn’t allow time or to be entered these jobs will no longer display in the time entry screens
Create New Client – Enter contacts email address at the time
Job Financial Summary Report – The job financial summary report now sub totals tasks and costs
MYOB Invoice Export – You can now include Job Numbers
Billable Time Report – The job state filter has been added to this report
Bug Fixes – You can now delete custom rates from the Client – Custom Rates tab
As always please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any feedback, suggestions or you need a little help – support@workflowmax.com.

A burglar in the US broke into a store and proceeded to use the computer there for various things, least of all login to MySpace and leave a trail a mile wide for the police to follow, he was only there for 5 hours-

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/18/ap/strange/main6312322.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.13

As an ex Photoshop retoucher I am always fascinated by the ability of people to extend this tool to great lengths.

I used to work with a guy (back in the 90’s) who in Photoshop V4 could create a portrait from scratch using a wacom tablet and his artistic ability, after many hours and days of airbrushing he would end up with a life like image. Incredible, nowadays this is more commonplace-

http://www.noupe.com/tutorial/40-outstanding-photo-manipulation-tutorials.html

Here at Analogue we took the SSD plunge, splashed out on an Apple branded Toshiba 2.5″ 256GB SSD drive for R&D.

The results are outstanding!

The Apple branded units come pre-configured in a case to fit into your MacBook/Pro laptop, other manufacturers do supply a generic ‘case’ or drive mounting system to fit most laptops.

So it was just a simple clone from my old Seagate 2.5″ 7200rpm 320GB boot drive, CarbonCopyCloner took care of this in a few hours, half an hour to open laptop and install into my 2008 MacBookPro 2.4Ghz.

Right away you can feel the speed and response, it makes quite a difference to boot time, GUI response, application launch and overall snappiness of the machine. Battery life is definitely increased but hard to quantify, heat is slightly lower especially on this model as it is a notoriously a hot laptop.

SSD has now come of age, in the past, size, speed and cost were prohibitive but we are approaching the sweet spot , yes they are still expensive at the moment but this cost will reduce as time goes by.

So on to the geek stuff, I ran a series of benchmarks on various configurations, here are the results-

MacBook Pro 2008 model

2.4Ghz 4GB RAM

256GB SSD drive, specs-

I used Helios LAN test to test drive read/write speeds across a few Mac’s with various drives.

MacBook Pro 256GB SSD results-

MacBook Pro 120GB SATA HDD results-

Xserve 500GB SATA HDD results-

I also ran XBench and compared it to other similar hardware with SATA standard drives, results-

http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=431864&doc2=431521

Drive speeds at the bottom of page.

This is the way the world is moving, already major manufacturers are offering SSD options and Apple now have an SSD boot option for 2009 Xserve’s.

Other SSD manufacturers have offerings which are faster than the unit we tested, they can get quite pricey though…

In a gathering last night at LaZeppa the winners for the AOY were-

Agency of the year – Draft FCB

Indie agency of the year – Special

Media agency of the year – OMD

Direct and interactive agency  of the year – RAPP

CEO of the year – Bryan Crawford Draft FCB

Wildcard – Glen Wiggs

Congratulations to the winners…

Just to keep you updated with where Analogue is at these days-

We have just released our ‘flash’ new website, check it out here – http://www.analogueltd.com
Many thanks to Jenny Styles from Neato (awesome interactive designer) who designed and built the site from the ground up – http://www.jennystyles.com

This month we are releasing and updating our existing products to deliver to the creative, design and print industries -

• Web based (landing page branded) flash page turner hosted application, see demo here - http://www.proof-me.co.nz

• Web based (logo branded) FTP hosted service – http://www.analogueltd.com:8008/WebInterface/login.html

• Web based (logo branded) upload and download interface for you to deliver/receive files via corporate clients behind locked down firewalls – http://www.analogueltd.com/altd/filemanager.php

• WorkflowMax, we are now official resellers of this great SAAS workflow management tool, we even use it ourselves – http://www.workflowmax.com

• We have many other new and updated services that may benefit your business, contact us today for a free consultation and demo.

And of course our flexible IT support packages that suit your needs, not ours.

Apple have started to accept orders in the US for iPad’s.

It is ‘estimated’ that 50 000 orders were placed in the first 2 hours of opening March 12.

New info has been trickling out regarding specs, changes and updates-

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/12/apple-features-iwork-applications-for-ipad/

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/12/apple-ipad-model-a1337-phreaks-the-fcc/

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/12/apple-rolls-out-ibooks-feature-page/

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/12/ipads-mute-switch-replaced-with-screen-rotation-lock/

I have seen a few in my time coming from Asia, this one is by far the best-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_TZfpEvzrQ

Looks really good until you see the accessories and the GUI, LOL

iPad software holding up production. Apparently Apple held back a week or two to put the final spit and polish on iPad OS. So this article states-

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/05/ipad-ship-date

Apple have officially stated ‘late April’ for rest of world, it remains to be seen when Apple NZ will get their shipment… dont let anyone tell you different-

and pre-orders start on March 12, but alas only for the US. Not sure when NZ will get any as there have been reports of delays at the production plant in China who are not going to make the 1 000 000 units for launch.-

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/04/minor_delays_in_ipad_production_could_limit_apple_launch_to_200k.html

Apple launch announcement here-

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/03/05ipad.html

All I can say is lucky I ordered mine through US, bring it on!

Steve Jobs told Apple employees – “They (Adobe) are lazy. They have all this potential to do interesting things, but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.”

This is a man possibly way ahead of his time, he has stubbornly refused to allow Flash on the iPhone and upcoming iPad.

Youtube and Google both have alternative beta’s in development instead of Flash based ones, these are HTML5 based.

Problem is most web sites these days employ some form of flash and it would take a major shift by online delivery to re-develop existing websites away from flash to HTML5.

That has begun with Virgin America, they have now released their new website sans flash, new and improved with HTML5!-

http://www.virginamerica.com/va/home.do

Story here-

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/03/virgin-america-dumps-flash-over-lack-of-iphone-support/

Saw this on Digg today, lol, the Aussies better re-define your geography according to Fox news, at least they got NZ right.-

http://www.thrfeed.com/2010/02/fox-news-flunks-geography-again-pic-.html