And I have to say I am quite a fan the new logo, it is rather clever in my opinion. The D and W form the shape of the police box that Doctor Who is well known for. Not only that but the typography is rather nice too, it has a more mechanical appearance to it which I think suits Doctor Who.

The old site was quite image heavy and as you can image was therefore covered in compression artifacts. The new site takes advantage of all the new web standards by having transparencies and some really well though out use of typography. The new site has a very grid like layout and the whole site seems to have a better quality to it.

While mentioning the new site on Twitter Jonathan Davies @ed me saying:

@rmaspero Don’t you find the font size a little large and the lack of continuity between pages odd (on the DW site)?

But I find the larger font size helps focus on the content and tends to offer a better hierarchy system for titles and sub titles. I also feel there is continuity between the pages as similar design elements are used all over the place. The site seems to have been made up of a set of basic bricks which to me makes it feel consistent, but to others I can see how they ever changing arrangement and size of the bricks could make if feel incoherent.

For my birthday I got a EyeTV DTT so I can watch TV when I am at school. I also purchased the iPhone app to see if they have used all the potential that there is in an app of its kind.

EyeTV DTT

The DTT is the basic stick that Elgato offer, it allows you to watch digital TV and radio on your Mac as well as record it. Hardware wise the stick is just like having a memory stick plugged in. The software “EyeTV 3″ does not win any awards for looks but it is still not bad looking. The software consist of 3 basic windows the remote, the planner and the viewing window. In the planner if you double click on a show you can record it as a one off or the entire series, the one problem that I find is in the viewing windows you can also access a TV guide but it is slightly different from the one in the planner and you can’t set things to record in it, which confuses me a bit. Otherwise the experience is great as it is really easy to navigate from channel to channel and set up a record.

EyeTV for iPhone

The idea of an iPhone app that streams live TV from your laptop is an extremely appealing idea to me; and I am glad to report that the EyeTV app succeeds in reaching my expectation. When you choose a recorded video to watch you can read the synopsis or get straight into watching it, there is a slight pause before playback starts but part from that it was very smooth.

The EyeTV is a great alternative to buying a TV and is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying one at only £50. I would highly recommend it especially to some one who is going to university, as that is probable the perfect scenario to uses this in.

WWDC

With Apple pulling out of Macworld in the years to come WWCD is left as Apple only regular annual event. Even without Steve Jobs giving the keynote it was a riveting presentation to watch and there were many exciting announcements.

MacBook Pro’s

The new Macbook Pro line now includes a 13″, 15″ and 17″. The introduction of the new 13″ initially confused me as to where Apple are going with this, but after a bit of thought I believe Apple are moving their laptops in to the MacBook Pro label leaving the MacBook label free for something new.

As an avid photographer I have been waiting for the day that Apple would add some sort of a card reader into there laptops and finally they have. The addition of the SD card slot may seem insignificant but it is one of those little thing like the backlit keyboard that will help set Apple laptops apart from the rest.

Another feature Apple were emphasising was the improved 7 hour battery life. I have used my MBP for nearly two years now. As a heavy user of my laptop the battery is nearly dead (lasting just over 1 hour on a full charge). Apple are claiming that their battery will last 1000 recharges compared to a typical 300, if this translates into real life use then I am one step closer to an upgrade.

With all these great updates you would expect in the economic climate of today that the prices would rise but Apple lowered the prices.

Snow Leopard

As expected Apple went into some depth on the new OSX release. They focused on the refinement they had made, for example the reduction of the OS by 6GB and on a MBA that would be a significant help. There are also simple speed improvements throughout the OS due to many of the refinements. They spent some time discussing the new improved Quicktime 10 and the addition of exchange support.

Apple are billing this update as a no thrills update with a software speed bump, because of this again they came out with some radical pricing to entice existing uses to buy it. At $29 could anyone say no to updating?

iPhone 3.0

Before WWDC Apple held an event to talk about the 3.0 update. Some of the highlights were cut and paste, tethering and in app purchasing. Cut, copy and paste were finally announced and from playing around with it well implemented. Tethering has been a hot topic of discussion with a few free work around’s already been put out.

With the ability now to create turn by turn GPS apps, the in app purchasing is being used as a subscription method. Spotlight is another feature that in my experience has been very useful. The average person has page after page of apps on there iPhone and with spotlight it makes it easier to launch all those apps.

A feature that has been neglected is the ability for apps to now interact with add on hardware. This would be great in a word processing app where you could add a keyboard, but there is much more you could do, a barcode scanner for delicious library, or even if you want to buy something off amazon you could find it in a real store and scan the barcode then purchase it from amazon while standing in the store.

A feature that was only announced at WWDC was Find My Phone, it uses the MobileMe service to track down your iPhone and place its location on a map. We have already seen how it can save people from loosing there phones and might make MobileMe a worthwhile purchase.

iPhone 3GS

The climax of WWDC culminated in the announcement of the next version of the iPhone. The new phone offers an improved camera with 3 megapixels, auto focus and video. The new phone is reportedly much faster and has a built in compass which dramatically improves the GPS experience. There is no alteration to the case design which in my opinion was a mistake, the matt backing which we saw in many of the leaked photos would have been a good choice for the new 3GS model.

Palm Pre

Just before the announcement of the iPhone 3GS Palm released the Palm Pre. From what I can gather from reviews of the Palm Pre, physically the device is nicely designed but where it really excels is in the Web OS it uses. Its use of gestures makes it easy to navigate around the phone and the UI is very good. Palm are also taking a very active ad campaign against the iPhone as users come to an end of their two year contracts. The Palm Pre is by far the iPhone’s best competitor but personally I think the iPhone still offers more.

Website

The first thing that is anoying is that the url is all weird, you would think amazon.co.uk/mp3 would work but no this is the url.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/MP3-Music-Download/b/ref=topnav_storetab_dmusic?ie=UTF8&node=77197031

What the hell is going on! And not only the URL is horrible, trying to find a song is impossible, and if you have no idea of what you want then don’t even try. On the other hand the previews are good and stream well the songs are cheap and DRM free.

Software

The software is not pretty but does the job well, you will need to install it if downloading an album but singles can be done without the software. It can be set to put the song straight into iTunes which is very helpful if you use iTunes. You have to see the software as a tool not as the service, but it is by far the easiest part to do.

Service

When you purchase a song you have a limited time to download that song which can be a pain if you don’t, but customer service people are very efficient and helpful and will often let you download it later if needs be.

Overall

It is not something that will take the place of the iTunes store for me, but I will consider it when buying a song or an album, with some brand new albums costing £3. As a new site it has done well, but with a few improvements it could be some really competition for iTunes.

Things

I have tried out many to-do apps, but after a few days I start to find flaws in the way they work. This time it was different, Things worked seamlessly and integrated better than any other to-do app into my life. I would love to write all my school notes on the computer and do my to-do list on it, but sadly I don’t carry my laptop to every lesson, this makes it difficult to maintain my to-do’s. Cultured Code the creators of Things have even solved this for me, with the creation of Things for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Desktop

Things on the Desktop is a well structured app that flows well, and makes it super easy to manage your to-do lists; by putting them into Projects, Areas or just what is next up. You can schedule to-do’s, add notes, ratings and add even keywords. You can add things to you Today list to keep you even more on target and focused. Things also has a very handy “Quick Entry panel” (shown below), you can call it up with what ever short cut you wish.

Things Touch

The addition of the mobile application makes it super easy to keep track of tasks by just simply entering them into the app and when you get home or even on the same Wi-Fi as your computer, and it syncs seamlessly over the Wi-Fi back to your computer. This means when I am at school I just write down my to-do’s on my iPod and and when I get back and they are all there ready for me to check off.

Conclusion

Both apps have an amazing user interface and work really well, but the only quarrel I have is that the sync is manual. You do have to have Things open on both the iPhone/iPod Touch and the computer for it to sync, this is because Apple will not let them run the process in the background. Things has dramatically improved my work flow and the efficiency of how I do tasks. It is an app I would highly recommend especially as for a few more days it is free on the Mac before they start to sell it.

My birthday was on the 4th October an so as you would expect I gained a trunk load of Geekery. As you would guess from the title I will be taking about Spore and Aperture.

Spore

Spore is an amazing game from the creator of the Sims Will Wright. In basic terms you are charged with bringing up a race of creature to your design, over a few thousand billion years. The game is great fun to play mixing the best bits of load of different game styles. There are a few problems with it, each level is very short and you can compete it easily in 4 days like me, but there are so many possibility so you can play it and every time come out with something different. Another problem I have found is the glitches, the game is divide into 4 stages and the final stage space I have yet to play as the game crashes every time I click buy on the interstellar drive to power your space ship from planet to planet. It is by far easiest to beat the game as a evil massacring savage civilization. I would highly recommend the game to anyone.

Aperture

I finally got 4GB of RAM for my birthday and so upgraded from iPhoto to Aperture at the same time. With the 4GB the performance is greatly improved. From what I have done in Aperture it is slick and works fast and well. The workflow is extremely easy to understand and uses. Apple also have loads of handy videos on their site. I have tried Lightroom but Aperture just seem to be more my cup of tea. It runs great for me and I can’t wait to try out some plugins.

I have had mine for about a month now, so have had a good amount of time to play with it. The one thing I initially found about Facebook chat is that it was slow, to send and receive messages. but the more time I have spent with it the less you notice it,. One thing about it that is not a feature that is cool, is that during this month of using it I have only once logged on to find no one on and that was at 1 in the morning, so no surprise there. I think this is due to how easy it is to add and find friends compared to thing like MSN. The UI is really nice to use and simple, it fits in well with the Facebook look.

One thing that has annoyed me is that since they have put this feature in they seem to have become Twitter (always down). This really annoys me as it is a great feature and now I use Facebook a lot morebecasue of it. the feature appear at the bottom of the browser windows, there are 3 buttons at the bottom of your screen that make up this feature far left is notifications, Who is online and your chat . When you chat you get a little bleep telling you have a message, and you can see other peoples status.

Overall Facebook chat is great reason to use Facebook on its own. The only real down fall is the that it is a bit slow to send and receive messages, but other wise it is great addition to Facebook .

Speed

I did not think that FTP apps could have varying speed that were noticeable and compared to Cyberduck Flow is extremely quick some people have said ti is the fastest FTP app out there, that is a big label to carry and yet it keeps going fast.

Quicklook

The new feature in leopard that allows you to view any file with a tap of the space bar in seconds. Yep that is the one it is in Flow and works great there is a little icon that you look for and then it works as normal. Cyberduck and Transmit do not have the feature but Cyberduck beta 3 does so you might see that soon in Transmit but Flow is the only one to have it now.

Feel

One of the things that make a Mac amazing is how everything looks great and feels it and Flow is not exception it has one of the best UI’s I have seen. With the help of Core-animation There are quick a few effects and transition inside that app that add its slickness.

Path and Tabs

The path is one of those small but yet oh so helpful features. Flow has a path at the bottom of the window so you can just click back and forth really quickly. Tabs again is an amazing feature I makes it so easy to copy things from one folder to another from one server to another.

Editing

Most of us edit our piece of code and then upload it to your sever but when we need to edit again we have to download it then edit it and upload it again. This can be really complicated and long to do. Flow offers the ability to edit with in it and on to the server. You juts click edit and you are off. It also offers a live previews for stuff like HTML so you can view it.

The Downsides

There are really very few downsides to Flow but I have come across one problem. Some of the time when you upload an image it get corrupt and the only way to fix it is to disconnect and reconnect. It does not happen that often but it is very annoying. Another problem I have come across is when you quit the app which out disconnecting it can destroy some files, for example once I lost a whole styles sheet to it but luckily I had a backup.

Conclusion

Flow is a great app for FTP and I reckon in a couple weeks they will have all the kinks out. The is really not that much missing and the whole app could really improve you workflow and the speed you work at. It cost $29 which for an FTP app is about average.

I will start off with iShowU there are not amazing feature nothing to mention that any other screen capture software can’t do, but that is exactly what makes it great, it so simple. The only down side is that some of their presets are not what you expect, so don’t go off and recoding a 15 minute video with out testing your settings. I went and made my own present for screen capture, so I know what I am getting. It is extremely simple to use and configure, you can start recording in a matter of seconds and the rendering of the video takes no time at all. It is better than SnapzPro for video because it is so much simpler to use.

The neat thing about these two products is they work together; you can send your video from iShowU into Stomp, so if you have a podcast you can put it into different formats such as for iPod Apple TV ect.. Stomp has a great deal of presets which work great inlike the iShowU ones. Stomp also allows you to crop your video and add some basic effects such as Sepia if you want. Stomp is so easy to use. Again it has not thrills but thats what makes these pieces of software great they are simple and quick to use, no messing around just click and you are done.

Photopresenter has full integration with the iLife suite so it is a simple clip and drag for iLife and all other photo’s. Photopresenter offers you the basic slideshow with fades between slides, and music in the background. They also offer a huge choice of animated slide shows such as the iTunes city, Apple TV’s intro, coverflow and loads of others. If I want a good looking slideshow it is were I go. It is extremely easy to create dynamic slideshows in seconds and I mean seconds. Yes iPhoto can do slideshows but nowhere near this standard. It has a tiny price tag of $8 and the download page is here

The makers of Photopresenter Arizona software have give me three copies to give away so all you have to do is just leave a comment and the winners will be announced on the 25th April.