I have been messing about Ubiquity for the first time today and what a nice, intuitive suprise it was!
After a very simple and easy install I was up and running. I must admit this isn’t something I could see less tech-savvy people using, but I guess that’s not really who it’s aimed at. The way it enhances the web and integrates with all of your web applications is really interesting, something very ‘different’.
I guess the next big question is what the uptake will be like from developers and web services. It has the potential to be one of those web applications you wonder how you survived without before.
Download it here and have a go yourself.
On first look the Photosynth website looks seriously sexy and that’s before actually knowing anything about it… In fact, I still no nothing about it so I’m none the wiser. When I clicked on the ‘Go’ button I was faced with this inspiring bit of copy:
So, I guess I’m going to have to wait and see exactly what it is that Microsoft Photosynth can do. In the meantime I can revel in the glory of Microsoft admitting that PC’s are shit and Mac’s rule. Fact.
I stumbled across this really nice (and simple) concept by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Constant Setting.
It’s a website that pulls in creative commons photos from Flickr and then displays sunsets in ‘realtime’ for that specific town or city where the sun is actually setting. You can read more about it here.
Visually it’s a really nice, clean way of dealing with what is a very simple concept. It would be nice if the Google maps was embedded into the page when you clicked on the location link, if it was possible to view more sunset images for that location it would be good too.
Anyway, lovely idea!
A very quick post really. I wanted to say a massive thank you to Steve for getting the Caffeinehit blog working with Wordpress. It’s working brilliantly and now sits perfectly with the rest of the site.
I’d recommend him 100% so if you need any Wordpress hacking done then you can find him at Peeled Carrots.
Finally, the much hyped Startup Predictor from YouNoodle has gone live. A very impressive little application which (I’m sure) is incredibly accurate.
I’m wondering how I’m going to spend my retirement. Caffeinehit has been valued at $14,400,000 for in three years time (August 1st 2010). Lovely.
It’s great to see coverage of MyBuilder and Kublax in the FT today (6th August 2008).
I’ve got the pleasure of working with MyBuilder at the moment and have recently pitched for doing some design work for Kublax. Having seen what Kublax can do (it’s just gone in to Alpha) I can happily say that it’s one of the first websites that I’ve seen that I actually thought “you know what, that could be really useful”. Once the design is nailed (obviously if it’s not done by Caffeinehit it won’t be quite as good!) but it will be awesome, a definite success.
MyBuilder is another one of those sites (although maybe not as relevant to me) that you will find really useful. I often hear friends and family saying “do you know anyone that could do…”. With MyBuilder it allows you to find and use builders on the site that are local to you and recommended by people that have used them through the site.
The team at MyBuilder are awesome and I honestly think that if the ‘credit crunch’ and property market behave themselves they could find themselves in an incredibly interesting position in the next year. I hope so at least.
Read about all the other success stories (and failures) from last years Seedcamp on the FT.com.
If you think you’ve got what it takes you can submit your idea to this years Seedcamp.
Right… I don’t know why I’m using this blog as more of a ranting platform than a design blog. I’m sure I can try and bring it back round to ‘design’ somehow.
So, I bought a pair of Bose headphones last September to replace my Apple headphones. Don’t get me wrong the Apple headphones are good, they just get a little painful when you’re wearing them all day, every day. The Bose headphones seemed like the way forward.
Anyway, since I got them it seems to be one thing after another. First the wire went funky, then the replacement pair just disintegrated, now the third pair appear to have lost all base in them - wtf is that about!? It’s not like I walk particularly energetically or put my headphones through unecessary stress or strain, so why do they keep breaking?! I always thought that Bose were shit hot when it comes to audio. Am I wrong or do they only become shit hot when you’re spending a few thousand pounds?
Has anyone else had problems with their Bose headphones, is it really just me or is it a bad DESIGN?