The Mag+ Project: One Tablet to Rule Them All
The following article was witten and published by William Szilveszter.
The only thing remotely ridiculous about this project is the name, unless you count how ridiculously good the concept, presentation, and underlying thought behind this revolutionary way of viewing your articles and magazines, um, is.
The project, an amalgamate of Berg and Bonnier (who publishes Popular Science), is truly awe-inspiring and aims to take the current paradigm of hyperlinks and images to a whole new level. So much so that I had to blog it, being the techno-freak that I am. I would love to see a world that payed this much attention to detail. The Mag+ is downright elegant and just flat out beautiful. Gorgeous even—in both the design and delivery. It is a concept derived from people that no doubt have spent countless hours thinking about a thoroughbred way of bringing magazines into the 21st century. Hopefully companies that care about their readers will organize some elaborate meeting with the possibility of Thai food and drink.
Enough with the praise, I’ll let the video speak for itself. There is a drool warning attached to the clip, so slide those keyboards away from under your chin.
Read more about the Mag+ Project over at the Berg Blog.
Taking MacRabbit’s Espresso Web Development Program for a Spin
The following article was witten and published by William Szilveszter.
MacRabbit (of CSSEdit fame) has loosed another version of their “vapourware turned legitimate program,” Espresso, unto the suspecting public. Version 1.1 expands on the “skeleton-like shell” of former iterations by adding several new features, a lot of polish, and some general refinements to the interface and operational program behaviour. Admittedly, I have given little time to this program in the past (yet I’ve always strangely wanted to like it, despite its many failings), as it proved to be quite buggy, and just too eclectic for my taste. However, this new iteration seems to tie a lot of loose ends together and is getting to be an attractive alternative to the already popular Coda. It generally feels a lot snappier and much more refined than previous versions. There are still some rough spots, but it’s certainly starting to come into its own. So I decided to give it a good, solid evening of testing.
So without further ado, let’s run through some of the most prolific components that grabbed my attention, for better or for worse.
Adobe Photoshop CS5: Less Is More
The following article was witten and published by William Szilveszter.
I wrote on John Nack’s blog about the lack of care taken with Photoshop’s interface a while ago (surprisingly, he is quite the artist himself). Turns out, he didn’t like my comments all that much. Sure, I favour companies like Apple, who take great pride in pixel perfect interfaces, but that doesn’t mean you have to be just like them to impress me. Well, John took that as an insult. Adobe pushes out some really fine products too, he said. Yes, yes they sure do John. I contend that I live in Photoshop. But (there’s always a but) my problem is the changes that have been made over the years to the UI are far and few.
Sure, Adobe really loves modifying the actual shell of Photoshop (they’ve gone from transparency, to opaque in the least two iterations), but neglects to make any real UI changes. Take a look at the Preferences pane, still the same after how many iterations? The majority of filter options have also changed little over time. The layer effects have also stagnated. Hey, how about adding a “snapback to 100% view” feature to the Navigator? Because I’m always zooming in and out (to achieve pixel perfection), this would greatly increase my workflow (GIMP has already incorporated this wonderfully useful feature about a decade ago).
Sarotech and the Sexy Wizplat
The following article was witten and published by William Szilveszter.
Being a fanatic over design and aesthetics, I fell in love when I saw Sarotech’s Wizplat (such an unfortunate name). They are so well designed and thought out, that I think my bank account is going to be hit with yet another completely frivolous purchase.
The Wizplat W-31 connects using a standard USB 2.0 cable and runs on any type of operating system. It sports the trendy “one button” backup (though clumsily placed on the back of the unit), write protection, a built in power supply, and what really put it over the top: a fanless cooling system. But the real appeal is the design. While some may not be feeling the “book-like” appearance, you have to give it up to Sarotech for creating a world-class book design.
I am hoping it comes in colour variants before I lose control and put down the cash. Whether I can get a cool silver instead of the heavy red is a small niggle though as I have already shifted things around on my desk to accommodate (at the very least) one of these.
More info at Sarotech
