Category: Articles

So, Apple has revealed the new iPhone 7, and the biggest shock is, it doesn’t have a headphone socket.

Which has caused much hilarity all over the internet (such as http://appleplugs.com/ (which is a really nicely designed single page site for a joke, look at the movement of the plugs in the design / perfect fit section, gorgeous design), and with late night television hosts in the United States such as Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers.

While the iPhone 7 is a nice evolution of the previous iPhones, it’s nothing revolutionary, there’s an improved camera, better battery life, etc. This is the first iPhone to be water resistant, nothing new in the phone market (my 2 year old handset is water resistant (or at least it was, I’ve cracked it by dropping it, so wouldn’t want to guarantee that any longer)), but a very handy addition to stop you wrecking your phone if you drop it in the sink (or even the toilet, although I’m somewhat dubious of who wants to keep using their phone after they fish it back out).

As mentioned before, the major change everyone is looking at, is the removal of the headphone socket. Apple has said this is due to the socket being excess to requirement, many users have no use for it, the new headphones that Apple are selling are Bluetooth (airpods, since I guess airbud is a movie about a basketball playing dog, and you don’t want to accidentally put that in your ear), so wireless, and if you really, really want, there is an adaptor for the Lightning socket which allows you to plug headphones into that (both adaptor and conventional headphones ship with the iPhone 7).

Now, people are completely flipping over this decision by Apple, for various reasons none of which I really get. If you’re plugging headphones in, how much extra work is it really to plug the adaptor in too? And the extra functions that the new Bluetooth Airpods offer seem pretty cool (wireless earbuds with mic, dual accelerometers and optical sensors for detecting being placed in the ears of its users), not sure what they’re going to do with that, but seems that you could do some pretty amazing stuff with that. And to be honest, how many people use the headphone socket on their phones anyway? I don’t think I’ve plugged a set of headphones into any one of my last 3 phones, and when I last did, I had to fish out a substantial amount of fluff which had gathered inside.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m no fanboy of Apple, I’ve got a few iPods, but have never owned an iPhone or a Mac. And to tell the truth, for a company which is sold almost completely on it’s user experience (simplicity of use, cool designs, etc), my iPod’s infuriated me every time I bought a new one. I’m not sure if they’ve fixed this particular problem in the latest models, but I know it stuck around for a bunch of years. During the set up process, near the beginning, you set the date and time on the device. Then a few steps later, you set the timezone that you’re in . . . which adjusts the time by whatever it is different to the default one in California. Which means you’ve got to go back and set the time again if you’re anywhere but California. Which is a pretty infuriating annoyance, when just transposing those 2 steps, would have solved it. Not the best user experience design, and very disappointing for a company that prides itself on its easy and enjoyable to use devices.

So what’s the problem with them dropping the headphone socket? None that I can see, so people should just get over it.

There’s a question amongst computer types when someone says something is free, “Free as in Beer or Free as in Speech?”, the difference being if someone gives you Free Beer, you can drink it, or sell it, or you can pour it down the drain, but you can’t make the beer, it’s yours, but only in certain ways. Whereas if you’ve got free speech, you can say whatever you want, there’s no limits on it.

Well, I’ve been looking around the web, and found some stuff which can be yours free, some of it free as in beer, and some if it free as in speech. Some of this is useful to everyone, some of this is a bit niche and geeky and useful to only those building their own stuff.

Particles.js

This is a cool little Javascript library which adds a particle effect to the background of your website, it looks great, and I can see some sites which it would really suit, and it’s kind of fun just to head over the the site to play around with the particles as the dodge your mouse pointer.

http://vincentgarreau.com/particles.js/

Bideo.js

Full screen streaming video is an incredibly cool thing to have on your site, and this plug in Javascript library does just this.

https://github.com/rishabhp/bideo.js

SQLectron

SQLectron is a user interface for easily connecting to and managing databases, 10 years ago you would have paid a hefty licence fee for similar software, SQLectron, Free.

https://sqlectron.github.io/

Freepik

A fantastic resource for free-to-use pictures for your website or blog, what more needs to be said.

http://www.freepik.com/

Pexels

Free stock photos, again, what more could you ask for.

https://www.pexels.com/

Pixlr

A free to use picture editing program with a lot of the functionality of Photoshop, and it’s web based so you can access it from any internet connected device, no need to install software, and if you really need a desktop version to use when you’re offline, they’ve got that too. Amazing.

https://pixlr.com/

BeFunky

Not photoshop, but if you need some amazing effects added to pictures, you can’t go wrong with BeFunky, it’s quick, easy to use, and pretty fun too.

https://www.befunky.com/

Freebbble

A collection of free templates and images from Dribbble, all collected together for convenience, from Icons to complete PSD templates, very cool, and a great starting off point for projects.

http://freebbble.com/

Postleaf

Now this one really got my interest, a simple beautiful blogging engine, that really is easy to use, just click on an element and edit it, designing your blog has never been easier. It’s not a match for WordPress yet, but it’s elegance is absolutely breathtaking. I’m going to need to find a project to test it out on, can’t wait.

https://www.postleaf.org/

Grafika

Now this is one only for coding nerds to get excited over, Grafika is a image manipulation library for PHP, allowing creation and editing of images within the code to be incredibly flexible and easy.

http://kosinix.github.io/grafika/

Browser Logo Gallery

Not the most exciting thing in the world, but if you’re building a website it could be pretty handy, a collection of the logos for almost every browser out there. You’ll have heard of Explorer, Chrome, Safari and Firefox, you may even have heard of Opera or Iceweasel. But this is an extensive collection, and I’ll bet you’ve not heard of them all, Iridium, Puffin, Seamonkey, nope sorry never heard of you.

https://github.com/alrra/browser-logos

Lightgallery.js

A fantastic Javascript library for displaying images, I’ve never seen such a versatile library with such an array of user options, Zooming, Full Screen, Download and Social sharing, a joy to use both as a developer and a user, just great.

https://sachinchoolur.github.io/lightgallery.js/

For many years I’ve been quoting a rule, that 80% of a job can be done in 20% of the time. And that the remaining 20%, will take the remaining 80%. Today I discovered the name of this principle, The Pareto Principle.

Simply put, the final 20% of any project is the fiddly, finicky parts of the job which require lots of extra time. This means in the early stages of any project, you seem to make massive strides, building the framework upon which everything else is hung, and this makes the project look easy. However, the final 20%, consists of the fine tuning, and lets be honest, the hard bits that you were probably avoiding as you knew they’d swallow up a whole load of time to get done.

The inverse of this is however, if you’re willing to accept a project only 80% as good as it should be, you can probably get it done in only 20% of the time. Which is useful for prototyping, where the rapid progress will allow you to see the way a project will look and generally feel, before you invest the rest of the time into completing it. Or projects which may only require 80% of the quality, and may not actually need the rough edges removed and the polish put on which will take the 80%.

Microsoft for example noted that by fixing the top 20% of the most-reported bugs, 80% of the related errors and crashes in a given system would be eliminated.

It is also noted in business, that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers, and the rule itself was named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, and that 20% of the peapods in his garden, provided 80% of the peas.

So, no major revelations from me today, just finally a name to something I’ve been quoting for many years without being aware that it was actually a real “thing” with a proper name. The Pareto Princple, also known as law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity. Fancy that.

The joy of the variety of projects we’re getting involved with is the little discoveries, so I’ve been taking a lot of pictures in the past couple of days (over 1,100 so far, and the project isn’t done yet), and one of the more notable was this Gravestone from Irvine Old Parish Churchyard, if you click through for a look, you’ll see the Gravestone is to William M Dunlop, Ship Master,1834-1866, Massacred by Pirates, which certainly made me look twice.

With other matters more important on their mind, Yer Maw Brewing took a break from developing their designs, but happily got back in touch early this week with some ideas, and sent us through the below images that they’d been sketching in a notebook.

We were only too happy to take this design, and develop it into the below designs which Yer Maw has accepted.

Work is now progressing with a generic “Yer Maw” beer label to use as a basis for each of their beers as they are released, as work continues we’ll update with that.

To write this blog entry I’ve got to introduce a couple of bits of information about myself, firstly I’m a bit of a technology geek which is perhaps obvious if you’ve read all my blog entries about the technology behind the web that I’ve been writing recently. The other piece of information is that I’m a father of 2 boys, one 18, the other 11.

As my kids have grown up, they’ve always had computers around them, and while daddy has his own computer to work on, there’s a shared computer that anyone can use in the living room (so their use can be monitored), and more recently a computer they share upstairs.

Now, I grew up fascinated by computers, while as a kid I watched movies, I knew that I could never grow up and buy the starship Enterprise, or the Millenium Falcon to be a space pilot, I’d never get a light saber and be a Jedi. However, the movie Wargames, with it’s lead character who was a hacker, was something that I could actually do. So that christmas (I was 12 years old) I asked for a computer. And my use of computer came from making them do what I wanted, I learned to program before I even got a computer, borrowing books from the local library and writing out games and applications in old school jotters.

And I assumed that my sons having access to computers would have an interest in a very similar way, that they would want to know how to get these machines to do whatever they want, that they would want to learn to make things on them, but while are both very IT literate, they’ve not gone down that path at all.

But the way they use computers is far more integrated into their attitudes, and has amazed me. They communicate with them.

My sister lives in South Wales with her family, both my sons chat almost daily with their cousins many hundreds of miles distant, the older ones discuss politics, news and probably girlfriends, the younger just chat about games. They all play online games with each other, giant tournaments of Civilization 5, with players here in Scotland, and in Wales, setting up when they’re playing, gaming until someone’s bed time occurs, and then picking up again a day or two later. The hundreds of miles between them doesn’t stop them being best friends, a situation foreign to me since I don’t even think I can name all my cousins.

They have shared experiences and a connection with family, which continues as they are starting to move off in life (one of my nephews is learning to be a pilot in Europe at the moment, and still remains part of this shared group).

The old promise of my generation when we were trying to convince our parents to buy us a computer has also come true “It’ll help with my homework.”, I’ll see my sons sitting on facebook chat to their friends asking about a certain question they’ve got as homework, sharing notes and web pages pertinent to the question.

And while I’m at work, around 3pm each day, the messenger app on my desktop would ping, and my son would ask me how my day was going, and I could ask him about his, so even though I was working at that moment over 30 miles away, I was still there for him (even for silly questions like I can’t find the TV remote).

Communications Technology is an amazing thing, and kids are using it in ways I’d never even considered when I was young, if I’d known the internet was going to exist, I’d have thought maybe I could do homework on it by accessing databases and information, but this generation are using it to talk and connect and help each other in so many ways.

The question is, what will they bring to the workplace with this innate use of communications technology, and how will it change the workplace, all I know is it’ll be fascinating to watch as we all have to struggle to keep up.

As part of various projects we’ve being doing about our home town of Irvine, I’ve been doing lots and lots of research, and as well as getting overly excited about the Monorail (read about that here) I’ve been looking into the long history of the town.

Amongst many other things I’ve discovered for myself (I’ve only lived in the town 12 years, so maybe this is all old news to other inhabitants), is the below video. Which apart from being amusing due to the 1971 production values and a fairly clunky script (“Good Irvine milk”, “And good Irvine bottles”, camera cuts to production at the glass factory), is also fascinating, as many of the sights seen in the film were gone within a year.

The bridge featured in much of the early part of the film, was demolished and replaced by the shopping centre which now dominates the centre of the town, as were the streets that the main character complained that had probably not been changed since John Galt left.

I’m also not sure what to make of the main character rowing his way over from Canada, the fact that the main character is a recognisable scottish actor (weren’t any canadians actors available in Scotland?), or the slightly disturbing and creepy music and setting of the slaughterhouse featured later in the film, and hey those 70’s knitwear fashions.

Anyway, just something I found amusing and interesting, I present for your delectation, One Day in Irvine.

 

Oh, and a much later, Another Day in Irvine, made in 2014 comparing the town as shown in the original, and now.

 

 

 

Gamification of websites is a popular trend the past few years, but what it is eludes many people. Simply put, it’s putting elements of playing games into your users experience of the website. Perhaps the most obvious example of which is the like count on Facebook, which is pretty much a score. You play the game by writing posts which people like and share, increasing your score. Whether you know it or not, your mind probably edits as you write on Facebook, instinctively wanting the boost you get from achieving a higher and higher “game” score.

Other ways of Gamifying the user experience is to award medals and titles on achieving certain levels, the way eBay awards you medals as you complete more successful transactions, or untappd, a beer review website where you win “badges” for performing certain actions such as reviewing a range of dark beers, the site will give you a “dark lord” badge, or british beers it’ll give you a “rule brittania” badge (actually I don’t know if those two are real badges on untappd, but if they’re not, they certainly should be).

The idea is that these hooks into peoples competitive streaks make them come back, the need to get that higher score, for more badges than their friends, drives them on. But it’s also a reward situation, where you’re giving people something, which may be completely worthless to tell the truth, but it still hits the part of the brain where they feel rewarded by your website, and therefore enjoyed being there a little more. Finally, theres the feeling of status, by making them a supreme wizard of selling on eBay, or giving them more medals than General Patton on untappd, the user feels important, they feel like the regular crowd look up to them as someone of superior status.

And there’s a lot to be said of this concept, because while we all don’t like to think we can be played as simply, the treatment of our experience as a game and rewarding us does bring us back. And as we interact more with the site, we get rewarded more by the site, which itself is improved by all the interaction that we’re adding to it.

So whats the next step for Gamification? Well personally I think it’ll be the addition of rpg-like levelling up, where as the user earns more points, they get to spend them on improving their status on the site, buying a fancier profile page, more storage, titles, medals and badges to go on their page. So not only do you get their interaction in earning the points, but you also get them interacting as they spend the points. But who knows really.

A personal lesson from Gamifying a site I built in the past is to make the rules set in stone, and automated if entirely possible. I made a site where each week there would be an event, and those I decided completed the event earned points and medals. However the same competitive streak which drives them on to achieve the awards, also drives them to complain and attack each other, and to tell the truth the site pretty much broke down into open warfare, all over some pixels on the screen I was awarding for making the most posts, or posting a photograph of themselves somewhere famous showing the site logo, etc. So if the rules are set in stone, and only a computer decides who gets the awards, then it should stop the worst of the squabbling.

Well, I hope I’ve given you something to think about, and I hope you can think of some interesting ways to help build traffic on your own site by adding some of the reward driven elements of games.

Well I wanted to write something on Cross Site Scripting, but the always wonderful Tom Scott (he’s who I want to be when I grow up, and sadly I’m older than him) got there first by quite a long time.

Cross site scripting is another of those problems you can pretty much forget about if you’re using a good Content Management System like WordPress, however it’s pretty interesting stuff, and anyone with even the slightest interest in how web sites work (and how you can break them) should have a watch.

There’s so many ways those hackers try and break websites, and Cross Site Request Forgeries are just another tool in their box, it’s nothing most people should worry about, but again, Tom Scott presents it in an informative and useful way.

And one last video about digital crime, but this one not really based around web-sites, but again a wonderfully explained, and very useful piece of knowledge about how hackers are out to get you and how they do it.