Top: The new laptop, just unboxed. Centre: Publicity shots at strange angles. Above: The specs, as told by Windows. When I think about it, I’ve gone through quite a lot of laptops over the years. The first this century (as there was an Apple II-compatible that I used for some months in the 1980s, […]
Read More… from The Asus FX504 is far better than reviewers think
Megan McArdle’s excellent op–ed in The Washington Post, ‘A farewell to free journalism’, has been bookmarked on my phone for months. It’s a very good summary of where things are for digital media, and how the advent of Google and Facebook along with the democratization of the internet have reduced online advertising income to a […]
Read More… from Why paywalls are getting more prevalent; and The Guardian Weekly rethought
In amongst all the political fallout of the National Party this week—what I’m dubbing (and hashtagging) ‘caught in the Rossfire’—was a series (well, over 100) Tweets from Morgan Knutson, a designer who once worked for Google. Unlike most Googlers, especially the cult-like ones who refuse to help when you point out a fault with Google, […]
Read More… from Life inside Google—an ex-Googler airs the dirty laundry
A rebrand should be done with consultation, and that should be factored in to any decision-making. In the 2010s, it should consider out-of-the-box suggestions, especially in an increasingly cluttered market-place. It should be launched internally first, then externally. A new logo would surface after months of exhaustive design work. The result should be something distinctive […]
Read More… from How not to do a rebrand, and feeling #UnWell
I came across a thread at Tedium where Christopher Marlow mentions Pandora Mail as an email client that took Eudora as a starting-point, and moved the game forward (e.g. building in Unicode support). As some of you know, I’ve been searching for an email client to use instead of Eudora (here’s something I wrote […]
Read More… from The path of least resistance: we humans aren’t discerning enough sometimes
I’m really impressed with Meizu’s latest Flyme OS upgrades. I didn’t know that they were there, but then I have a lot of my notifications turned off. After discovering there was one, I went from my existing 4.5 (I had already upgraded once since I bought the phone) to 5.1, and everything worked fine. There […]
I never expected that the Windows 10 download would ever begin. I had registered for it, but the Windows 10 notification window kept coming up with various excuses, talking about my drivers being out of date, then claiming that because of the automatic log-in, the download would not start. Clicking ‘Tell me more’ never did […]
With the mouse being the culprit on my main computer causing mouse and keyboard to be unresponsive in Windows 7 (I’ve still no idea when Windows 10 arrives and Microsoft has been no help at all), I decided to shop for a new one again. The failed mouse was one I bought in 2012, […]
Read More… from The best mouse to buy might be a dead-stock one made in 2005
The stunning original: the Range Rover Evoque. There has been a lot of ongoing press about Landwind’s copy of the Range Rover Evoque (a road test of the Evoque comes next week in Lucire, incidentally), one of my favourite Sloane Ranger SUVs. There’s no way Landwind would have come up with the design independently, and, […]
Embarcadero Waterfront, photographed by Ricardo Martins/CC BY 2.0. I was consistent about the Basin Reserve flyover in my campaign. Yes, I agreed we needed improvements to the area. But no, spending millions on it—it did not matter whether it was from taxes or rates at the end of the day, because that still meant […]