Archive for the ‘Web Technologies’ Category

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HTC Sensation overview – is it any good?

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

Today, I thought I would share with you a video I have just recorded about the new phone from HTC -  HTC Sensation.

HTC Sensation uses a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor with a 4.3in screen, resolution of 540 x 960 pixels (~256 ppi pixel density). It has an 8MP camera that can capture 1080p HD videos and the camera has a new instant capture feature. You can also record sound in stereo.

Without any more talking about the phone, let me share a video I have created with you. Enjoy watching! :-) (~256 ppi pixel density)(~256 ppi pixel density)

 

 

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“Build websites that work with Adobe Dreamweaver CS5″

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Build websites that work with Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 by Marek MularczykI am thrilled to let you know about my brand new book!

I cannot wait to tell you more… As people on my mailing list have known for quite some time, I have been working on a book, a book about Dreamweaver. And of course, about building websites in an easy way using Dreamweaver CS5 – a web industry standard.

And just a few weeks ago, the book went for print. This is the book I’m telling you about:

“Build websites that work with Adobe Dreamweaver CS5″

And now the book is officially available on Amazon! This is fantastic news!

Here’s a link for you:

“Build websites that work with Adobe Dreamweaver CS5″ on Amazon

You can now grab it from Amazon. Or you can order it straight from me. I could send you a signed copy… ;-)

Here’s the link if you want to get it straight from me:

“Build websites that work with Adobe Dreamweaver CS5″ from me.

Enjoy! :-)

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Adobe abandons work on Flash Player for mobile devices

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

Adobe Flash PlayerYes, this is true. Adobe abandons work on Flash Player for mobile devices.

Software developer Adobe Systems is halting development of its Flash Player plug-in for mobile devices.

As BBC claims ” Adobe says it now believes the alternative HTML 5 technology offers the “best solution” because it is “universally supported”".

As most of us know, Flash Player is banned from iPhone and iPad, it works on Android, Blackberry and other mobile platforms. In the past, Flash delivered a lot to the web browsers and the experience was just amazing. Over the last two years, Flash Player was delivered to mobile devices to bring the same experience to the mobile devices users while browsing through the web.

Because HTML 5 is now widely supported on mobile platforms, this makes it a perfect method of deploying content in  the web browsers on mobile devices. Adobe are now joining other “big players” to spend more time and efforts to bring full HTML 5 experience to the users.

As Danny Winokur, vice-president and general manager, interactive development at Adobe, says:

” Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores.  We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.  We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations.  We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations.”

This will allow Adobe to focus on HTML 5 and bring innovations to Flash in gaming and video, as Danny states. Adobe are already working on Flash Player 12 with some new features in delivering high-definition entertainment experience.

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Android (Linux) – a threat to iOS?

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

iOS vs AndroidUnless you spent the last few years living in a cave, you have heard about the rising popularity of iOS devices (iPhone and iPad). You may also have heard about the rising popularity of Android devices.

In case you don’t know, Android is a Linux based operating system developed by Google and it is an operating system for mobile devices (mobile phones and tablets).

If you follow what’s going on in the world of technology, you may have heard about Apple claiming that Google’s Android is a rip-off of Apple’s iOS. Here’s something that comes from Steve Job’s biographer – Walter Isaacson. Quote:

” Steve Jobs claimed that Android was a rip-off of Apple’s iOS and that he will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong, to destroy Android. “

Interesting enough, because Apple claim that Android “borrowed” many of the iOS features, here’s something about Android:

  • according to Eric Schmidt from Google, Android project started before iPhone, which is true because Android project started back in 2003, long time before iPhone;
  • some features of the last two major iOS releases, iOS 4 and iOS 5, are inspired from Android’s design choices;
  • over the air updates: Android OS had this feature from day one;
  • iOS’s new messaging application called iMessage is clearly inspired from BlackBerry Messenger application;

It is fair to say that Google also was inspired by some Apple features and used them in Android, but that’s what software companies do. But what Apple are trying to do here, is sue everyone they can. Maybe it’s right, maybe it’s wrong, I’m not here to judge. But maybe, they could work on enhancing their software or hardware instead of spending money and time fighting other companies?

Especially because Android’s popularity is on the rise all the time. Google has already activated more than 100 million devices! (April 2011), so it’s more now. To add to Android’s popularity, it is supported by 36 OEM’s and 450,000 developers from all over the world. Pretty impressive, isn’t it? Also, the Android market now has more than 200,000 applications (370,000 applications as of November).

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Google Panda changes searches

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

Google Panda algorithmGoogle Panda, Page Rank replacement, that was introduced earlier this year, changes how Google ranks web pages.

As Google stated online “websites creators should continue to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on websites and not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals.” Interesting…

As you may have guessed, Google doesn’t reveal the signals in algorithms. They do offer us some questions that give us insights into how their algorithms work to distinguish high-quality websites from low-quality websites.

Here are some of the questions received from Google:

  • Is the article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
  • Does the site have duplicate, overlapping or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
  • Does the article have spelling, stylistic or factual errors?
  • Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
  • How much quality control is done on content?
  • Is the site a recognised authority on the topic?
  • Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
  • For a health-related query, would you trust information from this site?
  • Are the pages created with great care and attention to detail vs little attention to detail?

These are just some of the questions to give you an idea of how Google Panda is changing the world of search. I hope you enjoyed it.

 

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The history of the Web – the key moments

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Today, I thought I would share with you some key moments in the history of the Web – the last twenty years with some major moments.

1991

The Enquire project launches World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee develops the first website.

1993

The year of Mosaic – the first web browser hits the market.

1995

HTML 2.0 – Tim Berners-Lee develops HTML 2.0, that becomes the first standard specification with the future ones to follow.

1996

Macromedia releases Flash 1 – a vector-based platform for multimedia on the web.

1998

Google launches a search engine that changes the way people search for content online

2002

Web 2.0 launches – the next generation of web technologies emerges to bring blogs and web applications to the masses.

2004

Facebook launches and changes the way people connect online, it is the year that starts social networking.

2008

Mobile devices start ruling – this is the first year when more people use mobile devices than computers to access internet.

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Adobe Flash Player 11 launched!

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

Flash PlayerWe have seen many “incarnation” of the Flash Player since the Flash Player 10 release a few years ago – 10.1, 10.2, 10.3. Now it’s time for something new…

Adobe launches Flash Player 11, quite an unexpected launch since in the past new versions of Flash Player were released with the releases of Flash Professional (Creative Suite).

This is another news straight from Adobe MAX in the US. If you haven’t been to the MAX, or if you haven’t heard about it, it  is a yearly event by Adobe that takes place in the US. It used to take place in Europe as well until around 2005 or 2006, but not any more. Nowadays, it is US only.

Together with Flash Player 11, Adobe released AIR 3. There are many new features in Flash Player 11. Here are just some of them:

  • hardware accelerated 2D and 3D graphics rendering through Stage 3D, which will be available on Mac OS, Windows and connected televisions (no mention of Linux though),
  • Flash Player can now take advantage of native support for 64-bit operating systems and 64-bit web browsers on Linux®, Mac OS, and Windows®,
  • H.264/AVC software encoding for cameras,
  • Content protection support for mobile,

and many more.

Enjoy! :-)

 

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You and your equipment

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

Hello everyone,

Today we’ll talk a bit about photography. If you’re a photographer then are you really concerned about the equipment you use? If you are, what brand do you use? Canon? Nikon? Sony? Maybe something else that I’m missing here…

There are so many different manufactures on the market now that it’s hard to mention all of them here. Here’s another question for you:

If you use a camera, let’s say Canon or Nikon, do you use the original lenses or do you rely on the third-party lenses? I’ve used some lenses from Sigma in the past and I was very happy with the optical quality of the lenses. The built of the lenses was very good as well. What I wasn’t happy with was the auto focus, a bit too noisy and a bit slower than Ultrasonic from Canon. In terms of auto focus even the cheaper Canon lenses were better than Sigma Ex series (I’m not sure about HSM lenses, I haven’t tried them). As it comes to the quality of the optics, I found Sigma lenses equally good to Canon lenses (and cheaper).

In my opinion, it all comes down to what you expect from the equipment you use. Yo may be happy with the slower and a bit noisier auto focus and get a really good quality lens from third-party for a fraction of the price of the “branded” one. It is your decision and it depends on your expectations.

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HDR made simple

Monday, September 26th, 2011

HDR in Photoshop CS5You may have heard about HDR, but do you really know what it is? Do you know how to use it?

These are some of the questions I’m going to answer here.

To start with, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and it was created to help in dealing with the challenges of capturing the entire range in an image. Especially difficult if you have the light source in your image. What HDR tries to capture is the entire range of brightness, from the lightest to the brightest parts of the image you’re photographing.

In photography, the camera cannot capture the entire range in one shot. You will get either the highlights or the shadows clipped. What you can do though is to capture a number of shots of the same scene at different exposure settings, usually at one or two f-stops distance, i.e. one shot normal, one shot +1 f-stop, one shot -1 f-stop etc.

For best results, it is advisable to capture many shots, at least five. I would usually capture 7 or 9 frames, and I would shoot raw of course (for quality). Remember to capture the normal exposure and then overexpose 1 and 2 f-stops (more if you can), and then underexpose 1 and 2 f-stops. Remember to keep the same aperture and just change the shutter speed as changing the aperture would alter the depth of field.

On some digital SLR cameras, you can use exposure bracketing. Most cameras would only have 1 f-stop spacing, but then you can easily capture 7 or 9 shots.

Then, you import the images into Lightroom or Photoshop to create an HDR image.

But this will come in the next post, so stay tuned. :-)

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Canon Pixma MP460 – is it worthy its money?

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

Good day to you!

Today, I would like to share with you a review I did of a printer. Actually, it’s more than just a printer. It is a printer, scanner, and a copier.

Here’s what Canon says about this device:

Think of it: with one machine, you can print beautiful, long-lasting photos and laser-quality text. Copy important documents with results that are more faithful to your originals. And scan photos or forms, even thick notebooks. The 1.9″ color LCD display lets you enhance images before you print for better pictures. Plus, you can print from your computer, or direct from memory cards, cameras, even camera phones!

Well, maybe it prints beautiful photos if you work with photos from a good camera and if you print on a photographic paper, I haven’t tested it.

There are some things I wouldn’t agree with and I wasn’t really happy with it. The specifications look impressive:

  • maximum printing resolution: 4800 x 1200 dpi (colour)
  • scanning: 1200 x 2400 dpi

However, there were a few things I wasn’t happy with. To find out more, watch the video I created for you:

 

 

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