My favourite Android apps

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Acer Android netbook review: first look

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Following Acer’s announcement of its dual-boot netbook that boasts both Google Android and Windows 7, I got an opportunity to spend some time with the netbook in question: the Acer Aspire One D250 with Android.

On this occasion, it isn’t the hardware I was interested in, but the software. For this is the first netbook PC Pro has seen to include Android as the OS, and the big question is – just how well can an operating system designed to work on a phone work on a full-blown PC?

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Google Picasa 3.5: First Look – Wow

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Hot on the heels of the latest Photoshop Elements 8 (click for full review) comes the new Picasa 3.5.

This adds a few  features across the board, such as a revamp of importing and various interface tweaks, but the clear focus of the new release is on in-depth tagging of images via a new side panel that offers three tabs for applying text-based tags, locational geodata and new face-based tags.

To be honest my heart sank when I heard this – what I’ve always liked about Picasa is that it keeps things simple and doesn’t treat managing your photos as a full-time job. Moreover I’d recently come away less than impressed with Photoshop Elements 8’s new face tagging not so much because the technology doesn’t work (it does though imperfectly), but rather because the gains aren’t worth the effort.

So how does the new Picasa 3.5 shape up? (more…)

Google and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of Google’s browser-native approach to web application development. Strategically I can see the advantages (wide and open access) and politically I think it’s admirable (open standards) but, in design terms, this lowest common denominator approach proves disastrous.

For example in a comparison between the barebones HTML-based Google Docs and the slick Flash-based Acrobat.com, I’d reserve the term RIA (rich internet application) for the latter and dismiss the former as a mere “web application” (more importantly I know which one I’d prefer to use).

Recently though I have to admit that Google caused my jaw to drop… and made me question the distinction.

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Firefox 4 looks awfully familiar…

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Firefox 3.5 is still fresh, but Mozilla has been busy mocking up its early concepts for the big move to version 4. Now, these images come with a great big disclaimer that “These are NOT FINAL! THEY ARE ONLY FOR BRAINSTORMING/EXPLORATION!“, but it’s interesting to see which direction Firefox could be taking. Take a look for yourself and form your own opinions, but from where I’m sitting it looks like a certain other browser seems to have had an influence on Mozilla’s designs.

The first design is fairly typical Firefox, with the tabs beneath the address bar (click to enlarge):

The Aero effect looks nice, and it’s a very clean interface, with only minor changes from the Firefox 3.7 concept images which Mozilla recently released. But there’s also a mockup with the tabs – unusually for Firefox – moved above the address bar: (more…)

Keyword tagging – the key to SEO

Friday, July 17th, 2009

Recently I’ve been looking at the changing nature of search engine optimisation (SEO 2.0). This change is perhaps most apparent when it comes to the seriously under-appreciated importance of tagging.

The essence of SEO is an understanding of how search engines operate…

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Microsoft’s Office Web Apps dilemma

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Microsoft finds itself in between a hard place and a particularly large chunk of stone with the impending launch of its Office 2010 Web Applications.

Make them too good, and Microsoft risks slaughtering one of its two biggest cash cows (Office and Windows being the products that keep Steve Ballmer in sharp suits). Water them down too much, however, and Microsoft runs the risk of powerful rivals such as Google or Adobe making vast improvements to their own online Apps and stealing Microsoft’s lunch.

It’s a problem Microsoft is clearly conscious off. It’s bravely decided to give consumers and small businesses free access to the Office Web Applications via Windows Live, even if they haven’t bought a copy of the client software.

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Google Maps meets SimCity

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

If you, like certain members of the PC Pro team, wasted many, many hours of your formative years fashioning little cities of your own in Will Wright’s fiendishly addictive Sim City games, then this little gem will soon see you rummaging around your loft for your dusty, once-cherished floppies.

Some bright spark has taken Google Maps’ rendition of Hong Kong and sprinkled it liberally with two-dimensional, isometric goodness. Forget Street View, forget Bing’s Bird’s Eye view – this is better. Much, much better.

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GMail goes back to beta

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Google may have brought GMail out of beta yesterday to allay the fears of business users, but it seems some GMail users are equally spooked out by the disappearance of that little beta tag after five long years.

Google, as ever, has the answer. A new GMail Labs feature called Back to Beta that “soothes the soul by putting the familiar beta sticker back on the Google Mail logo”.

Nice work.

(Thanks to PC Pro forum member MattLevy for the tip off)

The Guiding Principles of SEO 2.0

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

I recently posted an item highlighting how the nature of search engine optimization (SEO) has changed out of all recognition over recent years. Once SEO was a questionable practice largely conducted in secret and actively discouraged by Google who would ban your site if it thought you were trying to game the system. Nowadays SEO, or rather an amended version of it (SEO 2.0), has come out into the open and is even actively encouraged by Google.

This change from SEO 1.0 to SEO 2.0 is perhaps most apparent when it comes to the use of meta tags…

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