Get The Knowledge – a collation of online articles by the people at Techdept. » New Technology

Born with IOS: techno-toddlers: a is for apple

TechDept — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:00:41 +0000

In the last chapter of her novel A Visit From The Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan imagines a dystopian near future in which toddlers in the year 2020 download music to their ubiquitous “kiddie handsets”, which also feature “finger drawing, GPS systems for babies just learning to walk, PicMail”. But if that’s the future, it’s already here. There are dozens of “finger painting” apps in the iTunes App Store, and child-tracking GPS devices have been available for years. A recent Financial Times story was headlined: “Companies target children’s tablet aptitude.”

Earlier this year, AVG Technologies, a firm that makes antivirus computer software, conducted a survey of mothers of children aged between two and five with internet access at home. They found that more of the children knew how to play a computer game than swim or ride a bike, and that more pre-schoolers knew how to use a smartphone than tie their shoelaces. Research by Plymouth council, meanwhile, found that 72% of children under five spend on average half an hour a day online.

By Thomas Jones for The Guardian, 18 Nov 2011.

It’s like steroids for web developers

TechDept — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 09:00:03 +0000

CodeKit automatically compiles Less, Sass, Stylus & CoffeeScript files. It effortlessly combines, minifies and error-checks Javascript. It even optimizes images, auto-reloads your browser and lets you use the same files across many projects. And that’s just the first paragraph.

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Discover mozilla popcorn.js

TechDept — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:00:17 +0000

Popcorn.js is an event system for HTML5 media developers. Think jQuery for video. You can leave the heavy lifting to Popcorn, and concentrate on what you do best: writing awesome code.

Popcorn Maker brings the power of popcorn.js and its plugin system to a graphical user interface, with familiar timeline controls. Completely free and open source, popcorn maker offers a collection of useful templates, but since it’s built from standard HTML, you can customize it to your heart’s content.

Who’s it for?

filmmakers
journalists
creative people of all stripes

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‘Invisibility Cloak’ uses mirages to make objects vanish

TechDept — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 13:10:09 +0000

Researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas have hijacked one of nature’s most intriguing phenomena — the mirage — to make an invisibility cloak. It can hide objects from view, works best underwater and even has a near-instant on/off switch.

To understand how it works, you need to first grasp the basics of the mirage effect. This unusual experience, sometimes seen in the desert or on hot roads during the summer, can trick your brain into seeing objects that aren’t really there.

By Mark Brown for Wired, 04 Oct 2011.

Predict how you will watch tv in 4 years

TechDept — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:00:57 +0000

By WatchTheDaily for YouTube, uploaded on 02 Nov 2011.

Interesting new touch software from adobe – proto

TechDept — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:00:54 +0000

Adobe Proto, a new Adobe Touch App, lets you create interactive wireframes and prototypes of websites and mobile apps on your tablet. Communicate and share ideas with teams and clients using a touch-based interface.

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A beautiful boilerplate for responsive, mobile-friendly development

TechDept — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:00:05 +0000

Skeleton is a small collection of CSS & JS files that can help you rapidly develop sites that look beautiful at any size, be it a 17″ laptop screen or an iPhone. Skeleton is built on three core principles:

Skeleton has a familiar, lightweight 960 grid as its base, but elegantly scales down to downsized browser windows, tablets, mobile phones (in landscape and portrait).

Skeleton is a tool for rapid development. Get started fast with CSS best practices, a well-structured grid that makes mobile consideration easy, an organized file structure and super basic UI elements like lightly styled forms, buttons, tabs and more.

Skeleton is not a UI framework. It’s a development kit that provides the most basic styles as a foundation, but is ready to adopt whatever your design or style is.

By Dave Gamache for Skeleton, 2011.

The beginning of the end for flash

TechDept — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:00:21 +0000

Even though Adobe just mentioned it was planning to invest further in HTML5 after restructuring, a rumor from ZDNet suggests the changes could go even further by dropping development for Flash Player on mobiles entirely.

According to an email reportedly received by the company’s partners, its future work on Flash for cellphones and tablets will focus on enabling developers to “package apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores.”

After years of battling with Apple and Steve Jobs over the place of Flash on mobiles it appears the company is ready to lay down its sword, with existing platforms like Android receiving only security updates going forward. If the rumors are true, we’ll probably hear an official announcement later today, along with a few huge belly laughs from the folks in Cupertino.

By Richard Lawler for Engadget, 09 Nov 2011.

The future is amazing, and microsoft has the video to prove it

TechDept — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:00:46 +0000

This might be as close as we’re going to get to a time machine. Unless they’re working on that, too.

Microsoft this morning is premiering a new video that shows how the company believes technology is poised to evolve over the next five to 10 years, based on the trends its researchers and engineers are seeing in software, devices, displays, sensors, processors and intelligent systems.

By Todd Bishop for Geek Wire, 27 Oct 2011.

Make anything a touchscreen

TechDept — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 09:00:53 +0000

The idea of a portable, impressively useful touchscreen interface has very quickly gone from the world of science fiction to depictions of dubious accuracy on mainstream shows like NCIS or CSI. The consumer, alas, has had to make due with smaller touchscreen interfaces on our phones and tablets and giant, spy-catching rigs aren’t coming to us anytime soon, but if scientists at the Carnegie Mellon Human Computer Interaction Institute have anything to say about it, we might soon get the next best thing. In a joint project with Microsoft, they’ve created a unique technology that allows a functional multi-touch screen to be displayed on almost any surface, including the body.

By Ross A. Lincoln for Tom’s Guide, 18 Oct 2011.