would almost be tempted to say that the iPhone's spell-check puts more weight on where keys are located, while the Blackberry's is more of a straight dictionary search
I think that's true -- probably one of the better insights of Apple's approach. This may explain why there are times I misspell a word out of ignorance, and it won't correct it, because it's not due to incorrect keystrikes.
"Don't drink and drive. You might hit a bump and spill your drink."
But, about the iPhone keyboard: my point is that I'm familiar enough with its layout that I can type without looking at it, as long as I'm holding the thing in the proper way.
Consider it "virtual touch-typing" -- I know where the keys are, relative to my hands' position on the device, so I can just type without looking. Similar to what I do on a physical keyboard.
I am so used to the iPhone "keyboard" now that I can essentially touch-type. Sometimes I fat-finger it and hit the wrong key, but the correction feature is pretty good about that. I'm not saying the iPhone is better or worse than other smartphones; merely, it's what I have now, and the typing does not feel much different than when I had a Blackberry.
FWIW, I type roughly 85 words a minute on a full-size keyboard (with 95% accuracy).
We get charged by the kilobytes for online cellphone useage here in New Zealand, watching a 30 minutes youtube movie would probably cost at least 50USD
iPhone users in the U.S. are typically REQUIRED to pay for a $30/month unlimited data plan, on the assumption that you will either use a lot of data, or AT&T still wants to make a buck off you.
FWIW: I replaced a relatives' dead router with a spare WRT54GL I had (long story). One primary use for it was a streaming video box (Sky Angel) which could use 802.11g. Oddly enough, under DD-WRT, the video box would lock up if encryption was required for the wireless. This problem did not occur with the original Linksys firmware. I have no idea why; I just know that in this case, it didn't work. Still a pretty good router.
Perhaps it is more of a "portable" in the sense of the old Osbornes and Kaypros: sure, it weighed 20 pounds, but it had a handle on the back, therefore it was portable!
And yeah, it's interesting. I certainly don't have those kinds of modding skills. My hat goes off to the guy.
If the site has to interface with older, obscure, and/or legacy databases in other government divisions in order to gather its data, then that will eat up a lot of time and money. I suspect that the front end was the cheapest part. It's the back end that probably had the I.T. guys pulling out their hair.
I work for a nonprofit organization that receives grants from the federal government. Any web sites for the US-funded projects must be Section 508 compliant. That means:
Navigation must be coded certain ways.
Tables of info must be coded certain ways.
Graphics and image maps must be coded certain ways.
Interactive multimedia must have 508-compliant alternatives.
Videos must have transcripts.
PDFs and downloadable PPTs must be similarly 508 compliant; e.g. a chart or illustration must be marked up with 508-compliant meta information.
I started programming and repairing computers in the 70s. There was a certain coolness to knowing things that other people didn't know, almost as if you possessed magical powers. Modems? BBSs? Networking? A printer? You can recover a file off my floppy disk? YOU ARE A GOD, SIR, and you just saved my ass.
No longer. Everybody knows this stuff, or at least they pretend to know it, enough to be dangerous. Or else it's been supplanted. E.g. nobody cares that I wired my house for gigabit Ethernet; they just want to know how to jump on my WiFi access point. 802.11b/g/n/w/t/f is really not important. Need to recover a file? Oh yeah, Norton came with my computer.
It's like the photography industry, which barely resembles the industry of 20 years ago because everyone has a fancy digital camera now and can take better pics than they could back then. Or you can hop on iStockPhoto.com or sxc.hu and get cheap/free stock photos that used to be really expensive. Or the graphic design industry: now every "hack with a Mac" (or a PC) can "do" graphic design, no special skills required.
The trick is to be so good at problem solving (or camera angles/lighting/composing, or graphic style) that people still recognize you as a wizard. I mean in the I.T. repair sense, not the 6d+3 sense. This requires creativity, and not everybody has that. If you don't, but you need that feeling of recognition, then you need to either play a lot more WoW or find a new field/niche.
With crappy hardware, all they can do is browse porn, and, uh, use cs4, apparently.
Not very well, though. CS4 runs too slow on a 2ghz Core Duo, much less this little machine, though the real limiting factor will be the 2gb of RAM. You need 2gb of RAM just to look at Photoshop's application icon; try 4gb to make it usable.
The only way this could work is if site owners could somehow manage the content, perhaps by authorizing some users to leave comments. Or perhaps they'll work it like Adwords, where the highest-paying contributor is listed first -- and maybe the site is paying for that. Or there would be some kind of vetting process for contributors.
Slashdot Mirror
In short: sometimes it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
would almost be tempted to say that the iPhone's spell-check puts more weight on where keys are located, while the Blackberry's is more of a straight dictionary search
I think that's true -- probably one of the better insights of Apple's approach. This may explain why there are times I misspell a word out of ignorance, and it won't correct it, because it's not due to incorrect keystrikes.
"Don't drink and drive. You might hit a bump and spill your drink."
But, about the iPhone keyboard: my point is that I'm familiar enough with its layout that I can type without looking at it, as long as I'm holding the thing in the proper way.
Consider it "virtual touch-typing" -- I know where the keys are, relative to my hands' position on the device, so I can just type without looking. Similar to what I do on a physical keyboard.
I am so used to the iPhone "keyboard" now that I can essentially touch-type. Sometimes I fat-finger it and hit the wrong key, but the correction feature is pretty good about that. I'm not saying the iPhone is better or worse than other smartphones; merely, it's what I have now, and the typing does not feel much different than when I had a Blackberry.
FWIW, I type roughly 85 words a minute on a full-size keyboard (with 95% accuracy).
In fact, my four-year-old has a t-shirt which says exactly this. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
How does it know which part of the photographs to mask out prior to composition? Have they pre-masked all the images in its database?
I'm more interested in tethering -- I mean, officially-supported, I-don't-have-to-violate-my-warranty tethering. It's been promised for awhile.
We get charged by the kilobytes for online cellphone useage here in New Zealand, watching a 30 minutes youtube movie would probably cost at least 50USD
iPhone users in the U.S. are typically REQUIRED to pay for a $30/month unlimited data plan, on the assumption that you will either use a lot of data, or AT&T still wants to make a buck off you.
FWIW: I replaced a relatives' dead router with a spare WRT54GL I had (long story). One primary use for it was a streaming video box (Sky Angel) which could use 802.11g. Oddly enough, under DD-WRT, the video box would lock up if encryption was required for the wireless. This problem did not occur with the original Linksys firmware. I have no idea why; I just know that in this case, it didn't work. Still a pretty good router.
on my last project the CMS alone cost a quarter of a million GBP before we even started to customise it.
Which CMS? (no, I'm not going to suggest anything open source; I have run some of the expensive commercial CMS's and am just curious what you meant)
"She's beautiful, she's rich, she's got huge... tracts of land."
I remember that -- but the marketing called them portable.
On Slashdot, you only have "Handbook Friends"....
Perhaps it is more of a "portable" in the sense of the old Osbornes and Kaypros: sure, it weighed 20 pounds, but it had a handle on the back, therefore it was portable!
And yeah, it's interesting. I certainly don't have those kinds of modding skills. My hat goes off to the guy.
If the site has to interface with older, obscure, and/or legacy databases in other government divisions in order to gather its data, then that will eat up a lot of time and money. I suspect that the front end was the cheapest part. It's the back end that probably had the I.T. guys pulling out their hair.
Mod parent up. This isn't your everyday database problem.
I work for a nonprofit organization that receives grants from the federal government. Any web sites for the US-funded projects must be Section 508 compliant. That means:
It can be difficult.
They're putting the NSF back into NSFW!
Now THAT would be a party!
"Twanking" -- okay, I nearly spit up my coffee. Thank you.
Oh come on -- it's like the command line that you UNIX types are always talking up. Now you want a GUI???
I started programming and repairing computers in the 70s. There was a certain coolness to knowing things that other people didn't know, almost as if you possessed magical powers. Modems? BBSs? Networking? A printer? You can recover a file off my floppy disk? YOU ARE A GOD, SIR, and you just saved my ass.
No longer. Everybody knows this stuff, or at least they pretend to know it, enough to be dangerous. Or else it's been supplanted. E.g. nobody cares that I wired my house for gigabit Ethernet; they just want to know how to jump on my WiFi access point. 802.11b/g/n/w/t/f is really not important. Need to recover a file? Oh yeah, Norton came with my computer.
It's like the photography industry, which barely resembles the industry of 20 years ago because everyone has a fancy digital camera now and can take better pics than they could back then. Or you can hop on iStockPhoto.com or sxc.hu and get cheap/free stock photos that used to be really expensive. Or the graphic design industry: now every "hack with a Mac" (or a PC) can "do" graphic design, no special skills required.
The trick is to be so good at problem solving (or camera angles/lighting/composing, or graphic style) that people still recognize you as a wizard. I mean in the I.T. repair sense, not the 6d+3 sense. This requires creativity, and not everybody has that. If you don't, but you need that feeling of recognition, then you need to either play a lot more WoW or find a new field/niche.
With crappy hardware, all they can do is browse porn, and, uh, use cs4, apparently.
Not very well, though. CS4 runs too slow on a 2ghz Core Duo, much less this little machine, though the real limiting factor will be the 2gb of RAM. You need 2gb of RAM just to look at Photoshop's application icon; try 4gb to make it usable.
The only way this could work is if site owners could somehow manage the content, perhaps by authorizing some users to leave comments. Or perhaps they'll work it like Adwords, where the highest-paying contributor is listed first -- and maybe the site is paying for that. Or there would be some kind of vetting process for contributors.
Never mind. You're right, it will never work.