etc: Flash, now on the iPhone

Well now that I’ve caught your attention, I should point out that the title was a teensy bit misleading. If you go here on your iPhone (or on your computer) you will see a nice little animation. But don’t be fooled, that’s not Flash, it’s Gordon. In other words, its an open source Flash runtime written in JavaScript, and iPhones can run JavaScript just fine.

Read more: Cult of Mac

The Font Game: an iPhone app for your inner typographer

Whomever first said the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” never took font into account. There are literally thousands of fonts in existence, spreading over a multitude of typefaces and alphabets—it’s no debate that typography should be considered an art form in it’s own right, and many graphics designers and typographers would agree. The folks at I Love Typography seem to think so; they’ve created an iPhone game that’s aimed to sharpen our font know-how.

And it even includes Comic Sans! Don't let this stop you from purchasing this app.

The Font Game [$0.99] is a straightforward game of multiple choice where the player is given font samples and is quizzed on their ability to correctly identify them. A total of 30 questions are asked, your score is tallied and your results are given to you at the end. Simple enough, right? Well despite the simplistic gameplay, The Font Game’s library of 657 font samples is sure to challenge even the most seasoned of graphic designers. In fact, the three levels of difficulty are aptly named: Somewhat Difficult, Rather Difficult, and Exceedingly Difficult.

Once finished you can optionally tweet your score or send it to the scoreboard—The Font Game is timed so that the Hall of Fame is headed with the highest scores in the quickest times. If you’re really good there’s even a WordPress plugin to display your score on your blog.

The best part about TFG is that it shows you the correct answers at the end in a convenient list; I’ve found this to be especially useful for learning about fonts that I would have otherwise never heard of. And English typefaces aren’t all there is: I’ve stumbled across Symbol (Wingdings!) and Japanese typefaces as well. This elegantly designed game also sports a landscape mode, though you can’t make your answer selections in it, unfortunately. Hopefully this will be added later in an update.

For $0.99 this game definitely lives up to its price and I would recommend it to any self-respecting graphic designer out there. You can see a few screenshots from the app in the gallery below.

[iTunes link]

Keyboard unresponsive using Spaces in Snow Leopard

Shortly after the release of Snow Leopard, some users have reported a problem where the keyboard stops working after switching spaces. While the mouse remains responsive, the keyboard becomes dysfunctional for any key input, possibly except for the keyboard shortcut to switch spaces again. In many instances, the space selection “window” seen to right refuses to disappear and stays on top of other windows, though this is not always the case. Cnet has documented this issue before:

This problem seems to happen only when people use keyboard shortcuts to select a specific Space, rather than when activating the Spaces grid view. The Spaces indicator will activate and then seem to remain as the foremost process, not quitting or allowing other applications to use the keyboard.

Spaces is integrated into the Dock; therefore, if this problem occurs, you can regain control of your keyboard by force-quitting the Dock. Since the mouse should be working, you can navigate to the Utilities folder and open “Activity Monitor.” From here, highlight the Dock process and click the “Quit” button, which should make the dock disappear and reappear, releasing the hold on the keyboard.

In case you didn’t click on the article link, that article was posted over three months ago; the lack of attention to this problem from Apple is getting somewhat annoying. Some users have reported that if you use an external keyboard, unplugging it and plugging it back in will fix the problem. But for us MacBook owners, force-quitting the Dock is the only workaround.

Instead of navigating to the Activity Monitor, I’ve compiled an Automator script to force-quit the Dock for you. Just keep it on your desktop (or in your Dock) to relaunch the Dock and fix the Spaces issue whenever you need it.

Click here to download.

iPod Nano now with video, FM tuner

The Apple website has been updated to reflect the changes to the new iPod nano. Along with a new polished aluminum exterior, the iPod nano boasts a shiny new video camera, larger display, FM tuner (finally), and now 8 or 16GB of internal memory.

A hefty list of brand new features, all finely-tuned and perfected in the way people expect from Apple. Remember how fun Photo Booth first was on a Macintosh, playing with filters and picture distortions? Video recording on the nano features some of the same real-time special effects, to include a total of 15: Sepia, Black and White, X-Ray, Film Grain, Thermal, Security Cam, Cyborg, Bulge, Kaleido, Motion Blur, Mirror, Light Tunnel, Dent, Stretch, and Twirl. Playback on the iPod nano, like the new iPod touch, is also enhanced with a built-in speaker.

The FM tuner isn’t half-assed either. It features RDS technology—like the Zune—so you can view station-transmitted information. Then, there are the two great new features: live pause and tagging.

Live pause is just what it suggests—it allows you to pause the live FM transmission. No need to exemplify the practicality of this. Tagging allows for the Shazam-like tagging of songs. As Apple puts it:

It’s quite a dilemma: You’re listening to the radio and you hear a song you like, but when you go to iTunes, you can’t remember the name or even who sings it. Enter iTunes Tagging. Now, you can use the Click Wheel on iPod nano to tag the song. iTunes creates a list of all your tagged songs so you can easily preview or purchase them when you sync iPod nano to iTunes.²

With this you can find out the title of a song playing on the radio, then purchase it on iTunes. A brilliant move on Apple’s part, and will definitely give a boost in iTunes music sales.

Genius, the shuffle VoiceOver, and a pedometer are among the list of new features. Though despite all these extra bells and whistles, in my eyes the tuner takes the cake. The new iPod nano starts at $149 for the 8GB version, and $179 for the 16GB model.

[via Apple]

Microsoft Office ‘Spaces’ issues finally fixed?

MacRumors has recently reported that most of the issues with Microsoft Office and Apple’s desktop “Spaces” should finally be fixed in Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. The problem, which had serious consequences on usability had made many users permanently switch over to iWork, including myself. So what took so long? Microsoft pinned the blame on Apple, citing the architectural implementation of Spaces in Leopard as the cause of the issue. However, in a recent blog post Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit senior product manager Mike Tedesco has announced that both Apple and Microsoft have worked together to fix the problem in Snow Leopard:

Q. Are there any differences with Office 2008 for Mac running on Snow Leopard vs. Leopard?
A. Office 2008 for Mac is Snow Leopard tested and ready! Best of all, with the launch of Snow Leopard, the bulk of the Word 2008 Spaces issues have been fixed after our collaborative efforts to address the problem.

Mike’s wording connotes that there may still be a few lingering bugs. The Microsoft Mac help and support site suggests that there are problems when the Formatting Palette is open:

Note: With the release of Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard, a number of Word 2008 for Mac Spaces issues are fixed. For example, when the Formatting Palette is closed, there is improved performance between Word 2008 for Mac and Spaces.

Hopefully everything will (soon) be fixed in upcoming updates.

[via MacRumors]

Snow Leopard wallpaper

Still haven’t upgraded to Snow Leopard? What about trying the next best thing and making it look like you’ve upgraded? While there’s no reason not to upgrade given Snow Leopard’s low price, if you’ve still haven’t gotten around to upgrading yet, you can experience what it’s like to at least pretend you’re on a Snow Leopard machine by using its wallpaper. Download link after the bump.

To save an image in full resolution (2560×1600):

1. Click on the image,
2. Right click,
3. Save image as…

Read the rest of this entry »

List of Snow Leopard reviews

The reviews have been trickling in, most of them quite positive. There’s one thing that pretty much everyone agrees on: Snow Leopard’s price point makes it an easy, obvious upgrade. Read what they have to say about Snow Leopard below:

• Ars Technica – John Siracusa “This time around, Apple goes light on the glitz in favor of some heavy work under the hood.”
• Associated Press – Peter Svensson “Snow Leopard will likely be a no-brainer upgrade, given the low price”
• Chicago Sun Times – Andy Ihnatko “A speedy no-brainer upgrade”
• CNET – Jason Parker “With a ton of technological improvements, Snow Leopard is worth the $29 upgrade fee”
• Computerworld – Michael DeAgonia “Apple’s Snow Leopard opens door to a fab future”
  
• Engadget – Joshua Topolski “If you’re a Leopard user you have virtually no reason to skip over 10.6“
• Gizmodo - Brian Lam “Lightened and enlightened”
• InfoWorld – Tom Yager “Perfection, refined”
• MacFixIt – Topher Kessler “As far as my recommendation goes, I’d say go for it and install the new OS”
• Macworld – Jason Snell “Mac OS X 10.6 upgrade adds Exchange support and a host of tweaks”
• New York Times – David Pogue “Apple’s sleek upgrade”
• PC World – Randall C. Kennedy “Snow Leopard is a pale imitation of Windows 7″
• SlashGear – Vincent Nguyen “At $29 it’s frankly a no-brain decision for OS X Leopard users”
• The Apple Blog – Darrell Etherington “a nice collection of system refinements and improvements”
• USA Today – Edward C. Baig “Many of Snow Leopard’s refinements are subtle”
• Wall Street Journal – Walt Mossberg “Apple changes Leopard’s spots”
• Wired – Brian X. Chen “the $30 price is more than fair for the number of performance improvements Snow Leopard delivers”

Did I miss any? If you want your review on this list, leave a comment with the web address and I’ll add it as quickly as I can.