Antikewl Daily » Software

Brushes: The iPhone drawing app

Trevor May — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:59:46 +0000

Here’s a fantastic must-have little app for any illustrator, artist or designer… providing they have an iPhone, of course!

Brushes allows you to use your iPhone handset as a virtual canvas, with your finger as the “brush”. When I was originally told about this I was pretty sceptical… how could you achieve any kind of detail with a big fat finger on a tiny screen? I was happily proved wrong. While it doesn’t have any kind of pressure sensitivity it does allow you select brush sizes, types and zoom in for those trickier parts.

If that’s not enough to get you to grab it already, what if I told you that artist Jorge Colombo has already had his Brushes art featured in (and of the cover of) the New Yorker Magazine? Thought so. Brushes is available for £2.99/$4.99 from the iTunes App store.

Also check out these sketches produced by Disney Art Director, Stef Kardos. Anyone know of any other artists doing cool stuff with this thing? (thanks Steve)

Brushes £2.99/$4.99 (iTunes App Store link)

Feedly: Making Google Reader Fun Again

Trevor May — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:50:25 +0000

I struggle to keep up with all of the feeds in my Google Reader account. All the sites I subscribe to are there because I enjoy them but when there’s 1000+ unread items it starts to feel a chore. So much so that I find myself firing up Reader less and less. So, what can you do?

The guys at Feedly think they have an answer. Feedly is a free Firefox browser plug-in that reformats the feeds from your Google Reader account into a nice, friendly, magazine-style format — and not in an “I’m a print magazine on screen” way either. It presents your unread items in a wonderfully digestible fashion, prioritising feeds you mark as favourite and laying the whole thing out into nice clean columns, topping it all off with images grabbed from the articles that it links to.

It also acts like a personal StumbleUpon. A little tab appears at the bottom of the screen urging you to click “next” taking you to pages that friends have recommended to you. If that isn’t enough it allows you to share and favourite stuff as you can through the Google interface, pulls in Twitter and checks FriendFeed to see if anyone else is talking about the article that you’re currently reading.

You can even use Ubiquity keyboard commands if you’re into that kind of thing.

Firefox 3 Beta 1 Rolls its little butt out

Trevor May — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:38:20 +0000

Mozilla have just released the first beta for the next Firefox. Obviously not for day-to-day use, but great for developers. Read the release notes for more details, too numerous to mention here!

Getting games to run properly under Windows Vista

Trevor May — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 20:57:45 +0000

Ever since I installed Windows Vista and discovered that it didn’t like to play nice with my video games, despite me running a fairly capable set-up (AMD Athlon 64 4000+, 2Gb RAM, 7800GTX graphics card), I’ve just slipped into my “comfortable old slippers” Windows XP partition and played them there.

This week, however, perhaps freshly fueled by my installation of Bioshock which ran (well, hobbled) like a spluttering, stuttering mutant — and annoyance with World of Warcraft playing at between 5-20fps — I decided to find an answer. And I did! At least in part.

After much trial and error I fixed World of Warcraft to run again between 35-50fps at 1900×1200 under Vista by doing the following:

Right clicking on the application icon and choose “Properties”, then clicking the “Compatibility” tab.

Enabling the check boxes next to: “Disable virtual themes”, “Disable desktop composition” and “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings” and Windows turns off Aero and all that other resource-hungry GUI crap while you’re running the game.

Running it in “Windows XP compatibility mode” didn’t seem to make any difference.

With that fixed, I decided to take a look at Bioshock, which really didn’t play nice in Vista at all with the audio stuttering and the high resolution texture maps not showings up — no matter what resolution I ran it at or whether I chose the lowest quality settings despite it running perfectly happily in XP on the same machine. I’d assumed that there was something buggy with the on-board Realtek ’97 audio drivers or the nVidia video drivers but, with my newly fixed World of Warcraft behind me, I thought I’d have a go at trying to get it to run properly as well.

Firstly, I changed the compatibility options as I did with WoW, above, but this didn’t seem to make much of a difference — if anything at all. Then I remembered reading something about disabling vsync when trying to fix WoW. I didn’t work for WoW, but I thought I’d try turning it off in Bioshock. I also forced it to load in DirectX 9 mode by using “-dx9″… and it all seemed to make a slight difference. Not enough to make it playable yet, but definitely an improvement.

Still… one out of two isn’t bad.

Update: I managed to improve game play in Bioshock further by using an X-Fi sound card instead of on-board sound upgrading my processor to an Opteron 180. I’d imagine that I’d be able to play it full-screen at 1920×1200 with maximum settings if I had an 8800 graphics card — or at least one with more than 256Mb of RAM. Half-Life 2 already runs much more happily.

Update 2: This Bioshock Tweak Guide might also help you gain a couple more FPS.

Facebook Friend Wheel

Trevor May — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 13:24:38 +0000

It’s been over a week since I posted anything? Doesn’t time fly when you’re trying to do two full-time jobs at once?!

Anyway, I just stumbled upon this fantastic Facebook App. I’m a big fan of technicolor visual representations of stuff and this makes just that out of my friends — at least the ones that are on Facebook anyway. What was most interesting to me was to see how segregated my friends are — different groups of friends had never met or been involved with other groups.

If you’re signed into Facebook, go to the Friend Wheel app page to check it out for yourself. (via Aleks‘ Flickr stream)

Second Life while you “work”

Trevor May — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:47:12 +0000

AjaxLife: British student Katharine Berry has created an in-browser AJAX application that allows you to log into Second Life, sans graphics, to chat and teleport around. (via Wonderland)

Why Second Life will never go mainstream

Trevor May — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:27:44 +0000

Why Second Life will never go mainstream: For me, this biggest thing that put me off was the enormous learning curve. When I first played World of Warcraft I was up and playing like a noob that thought he was a pro in minutes. Second Life had me fumbling around for half an hour before I got fed up and uninstalled it.

Second Life Secondfest Roundup

Trevor May — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:03:00 +0000

Aleks has a round-up of Secondfest, the Second Life virtual festival that happened over the weekend. Related posts:Second Life while you “work” Why Second Life will never go mainstream I finally downloaded Second Life the other day. Oh dear. Related posts:

LEGO Digital Designer 2.1

Trevor May — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 14:48:54 +0000

LEGO have a rather cool bit of software available on their site (for Windows and Mac OS X) called the LEGO Digital Designer (currently version 2.1) which allows you to mess about with all the bricks and other weird pieces that they have in their catalogue and make your own vehicle, house, town or whatever crazy idea from your imagination.

When you’re happy with it, you can check the price and, if you haven’t fainted from the price, buy it online to make at home. Fantastic!

Slife 1.1: Track your computer activities

Trevor May — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 17:50:02 +0000

Ever wondered where the hell the day went? Now you can become your own “big brother” and track your every move. If you dare!

Slife observes your every interaction with applications such as Safari, Mail and iChat and keeps tracks of all web pages you visit, emails you read, documents you write and much more.

For Mac OS X. (via swissmiss)

WeFi: Wifi hotspot sharing & mapping application

Trevor May — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 10:03:57 +0000

WeFi is a new collaborative wifi mapping tool that records open wifi networks that your computer can “see” and uploads them to a central database. Anyone can then browse their website for access points anywhere in the world and see them on a Google-powered map. The ultimate goal is to “make open Wi-Fi act more like a wireless infrastructure that can compete with 3G networks, except freely created and shared by the users.”

Wonderful idea, though their site seems to think I’m in Slough. (via Boing Boing)

Apple reveals Windows Safari web browser beta

Trevor May — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:18:48 +0000

Apple launches Windows Safari beta Related posts:Countdown to Apple “Showtime” Firefox 3 Beta 1 Rolls its little butt out Showtime at Apple Related posts:

Microsoft ripping off European customers?

Trevor May — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:04:11 +0000

Disregarding all the other pointless versions, Windows Vista Utimate Upgrade edition:

Amazon.com: $249.99 (£127.13)
Amazon.co.uk: $466.06 (£236.99)

Er, Microsoft. We’re not stupid! How about you come back here and re-price the EU editions of your (already overpriced) new operating system? Thanks.

Follow Santa around the world with Google Earth

Trevor May — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:10:36 +0000

Follow Santa around the world with Google Earth on Christmas Eve. There’s also a toy tracker game: Santa’s elves have hidden gifts around the world. Follow the clues to find the next one. A new gift is added each day. (via Lifehacker)

I finally downloaded Second Life the other day. Oh dear.

Trevor May — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:40:04 +0000

“I finally downloaded Second Life the other day. Oh dear.” Greg Howson at The Guardian seems to have had the same reaction to Second Life as me. I just don’t get it. I’ve played World of Warcraft, and at least that seems to have a purpose… even if it is just effectively collecting harder and harder to obtain artifacts. Can someone enlighten me as to why this thing is so popular?

DigiGuide Lite as a movie guide

Trevor May — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 20:55:16 +0000

I’ve been using the DigiGuide TV guide software for years and was about to download install it on the, less capable, PC in the lounge to let me know what movies are showing on TV in the evening when I get home from work when I noticed they now had something called DigiGuide Lite.

Digiguide Lite is an application which lives in the system tray and updates automatically to show what’s on TV in the UK, regionally adjusted, over the next few hours. One of the best features, for me at least, is the ability to filter shows by type. This means that I can see when I get home from work, at a glance, what movies are on TV that evening. Perfect! The best part? It’s free!

Small business project management: Part 2

Trevor May — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:25:02 +0000

I was recently looking for a simple solution for handing day-to-day tracking of quotes and invoices. I mentioned Mark Boulton‘s upcoming Flow web app which enters Beta very soon, but I also re-discovered Side Job Track. It’s changed quite a bit since I last saw it and I’ve decided that I’m going to go ahead and use it for now — it seems that this app (of the ones currently available) is best suited to my present needs.

It’ll be interesting to compare the two upcoming apps, Pro Job Track (Side Job Track for SMEs) and Flow compare when they’re both released. I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on them both.

Now, all I have to do is decide between QuickBooks and MYOB to handle my accounting… and find some time to do some design around all this paperwork!

Hey Gramps, Can I Borrow Your Mac?

Trevor May — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 23:59:57 +0000

Hey, Gramps, Can I Borrow Your Mac? “Apple’s commercials like to portray its users as young and hip. But a new study is offering some contrary information.

When it comes to home computers, nearly half (46%) of Apple’s U.S. user base is 55 or older. That’s compared with only 25.2% of home PC users who are in that age category, reports MetaFacts Inc., a national market research firm.”

iTunes 7: It’s a bit buggy isn’t it?

Trevor May — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 09:04:55 +0000

Engadget has a little article on the glitches within the newly released iTunes 7. I have, so far, only encountered a couple:

Firstly, scratchy playback. This I managed to fix by opening up Quicktime preferences and turning off safe mode, which had inexplicably turned itself on after upgrading.

Secondly, and more annoyingly, I store some of my older music tracks on an external network drive. When I used to fire up iTunes 6 with my iPod installed and had forgotten to turn the drive on, iTunes would happily skip those tracks. They’d still be listed in iTunes and on my iPod, but they just wouldn’t update. Which was all good.

Now, with v7, if I want start iTunes with my iPod connected I have to make sure I’ve started up my network drive, opened the drive in Windows Explorer and then start iTunes… or it’ll just hang using 100% CPU. I have to then force quit the application and the helper before starting it up again.

I hope they fix that bug soon!

Showtime at Apple

Trevor May — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:22:15 +0000

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been announced by Apple this afternoon:

iPod beefed up to feature 30Gb and 80Gb models.
iPod Nano gets new, uglier, mini-style design. Presumably, as Grid212 mentioned, because of the problem the original had with scratches. It’s also been bumped up to 2Gb, 4Gb and 8Gb models and has a brighter screen.
iPod Shuffle gets smaller and restyled to match the new Nano.
iTunes 7: Movie downloads, Cover Flow (flip through your DVD and CD covers), updated interface and Automatic Album Art (which sounds rather scarily Big Brother: “As long as you have an iTunes Store account, iTunes will automatically fetch available album art for any CD you imported to iTunes.”).
Downloadable games for iPod like Tetris, Pac-Man and Bejeweled.
Movie downloads. Still 4:3, though a slightly higher (but still small) 640×480 resolution. It also, predictably, seems to be Disney content right now.

They also announced that they’re working on a sleek looking set-top box tentatively named iTV (no relation, I assume, and, pending a lawsuit from ITV, I am certain it will change) which transmits video from iTunes to TV.

eDonkey Gets Shut Down

Trevor May — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:35:44 +0000

As of today the eDonkey network has been shut down. MetaMachine, the firm who created the eDonkey 2000 software, has agreed to pay $30m to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits from the recording industry.

Under the terms of their agreement they can no longer distribute the eDonkey software or any of its variants. An attempt to run the software will inform you via a pop-up that the network is no longer available and attempts to uninstall itself in a self-destruct fashion.

Visitors to the eDonkey website are now greeted with the message:

The eDonkey2000 Network is no longer available.

If you steal music or movies, you are breaking the law.
Courts around the world — including the United States Supreme Court — have ruled that businesses and individuals can be prosecuted for illegal downloading.
You are not anonymous when you illegally download copyrighted material.
Your IP address is x.x.x.x and has been logged.
Respect the music, download legally.
Goodbye Everyone.

As of posting, a federal judge has yet to give final approval over the settlement.

Several file-sharing services have yet to reach settlements with the recording industry, including Warez P2P, Limewire and Soulseek. (via Associated Press)

Countdown to Apple “Showtime”

Trevor May — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 11:36:41 +0000

Countdown to Apple “Showtime”: Blog212 sifts through the last minute rumours and speculation over Apple’s forthcoming announcements. Call me cynical but I reckon it’ll just be iTunes 7 with “enhanced” video downloads.

Democracy Internet TV player v0.9

Trevor May — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 11:28:48 +0000

Democracy Player v0.9 released: “Stop squinting at tiny web video. Instead, download and watch all the best internet TV shows in one powerful application: any video RSS feed, video podcast, video blog, or BitTorrent file. Fullscreen, high resolution, 100% free and open source. New channels arrive daily in the built-in Channel Guide.” For Windows, Mac and Linux. (via BoingBoing)

Mozilla Bookmarks Synchronizer

Trevor May — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 22:33:05 +0000

I use a whole array of computers to browse the web but was often driven mad knowing that I’d bookmarked something on one computer but wasn’t able to recall it on another. I just wanted a solution where I could automatically synchronise bookmarks between them. I also wanted a solution where the bookmarks weren’t public or stored on someone else’s server.

Here’s the answer, providing you’re using Firefox of course: the Bookmarks Synchroniser Extension. I’ve set it up so that it automagically synchronises with an xbel file on my server via FTP when I either open or close Firefox on any of my machines.

No more hunting for bookmarks!

Looking for answers in all the wrong places

Trevor May — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 13:19:17 +0000

I’ve just spent the morning trying to fix problems which should have been very easy to fix… but weren’t because I was simply looking in the wrong places for the answer!

Firstly, I attempted to collect my email. Thunderbird fired up fine, as usual, but just stopped at “Connecting to…” I thought the problem was my mail server but no, I could connect via IMAP and webmail just fine. Turns out the problem is Norton… again. Now, aside from being a hideous resource hog, Norton Internet Security is a lovely little app that runs in the background where you let it do its thing and forget about it. Of course, because it’s forgotten about it’s the absolute last place you (well, I, at least!) forget to look.

Secondly, I thought I’d have a play with OrangeTV, Orange’s new app (currently for the Nokia 6680) which streams “TV” to your UMTS/3G mobile. Now, I had a play with this a few days ago but couldn’t get any sound to accompany the video. Figuring it was just a network problem, and because I hadn’t used it before, I didn’t think too much of it.

This morning I gave it another go; again no sound.

When I first received this new handset I found the warning tones a little bit too loud for my liking and, as Nokia still don’t have the option of reducing the warning tone volume independently, I’d turned them off. Strangely, the developers of the OrangeTV app have chosen to disable the audio if the warning tone is turned off in the selected profile. Very odd.

Anyway, I’ve just wasted half a day sorting those out. Now I’ve wasted further time writing about it. :)