Super Ginormous

Year: 2007

  • Cisco and Apple Settle

    So, the Apple v. Cisco showdown has finally been resolved. Hallelujah.

    AppleInsider – Cisco and Apple settle iPhone trademark dispute

    Cisco and Apple said Wednesday that they have resolved their dispute involving the “iPhone” trademark.

    Why do I get the impression that this is far from over? Sure, they’ve declared a cease-fire… but what’s going to stop Cisco from firing back when/if the iPhone becomes incredibly popular? Cash… hard cold cash. And stacks and stacks of it. Oh yeah…

    Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the “iPhone” trademark on their products throughout the world.

    This dillutes the iPhone brand for both sides. Sure, Apple will probably promote their iPhone as the “Apple iPhone”. And most people (I hope) are going to be able to tell the difference between a VOIP phone and a cellphone. But is the market big enough for two iPhone products? Only time will tell.

    Both companies acknowledge the trademark ownership rights that have been granted, and each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark.

    Translation: “Apple gave us enough cash to have amnesia. We’re BFFs now! Wait, what were we talking about?” – Cisco

    In addition, Cisco and Apple will explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications.

    Other terms of the agreement remained confidential.

    Sounds like Cisco got what it wanted… plus, loads of cash. What did Apple get out of it? A monkey off of it’s back, and freedom to continue using a name essentially thrust upon them by the public and media. Don’t get me wrong, I like ‘iPhone’… but it’s very vanilla… People were going to lynch Steve if he didn’t deliver the goods.

  • A Second Look at Outlook 2007

    Outlook 2007 Product Box ShotI wrote an “Open Letter to Microsoft” over a month ago. It was a short diatribe on Microsoft’s decision to use Word’s rendering engine for Outlook 2007 instead of Internet Explorer. Well, I had assumed that it would be quite some time before I had to worry about testing designs in Outlook 2007, but that day came much, much sooner than I had anticipated. I snagged a copy of it off of Amazon.com (product link) for $89.99.The interesting thing that I’ve discovered while using the new version, is that where it fails with rendering emails – it excels in handling contacts, calendaring, etc. The mere fact that the new version of Outlook supports the iCal standard, viewing RSS feeds, etc. makes it a pretty solid upgrade. Having said that, I don’t expect you to run out and buy a copy. How it renders email is a huge flaw, and one I have tried hard to ignore while using the product.

    CONS

    • Email rendering sucks. Standards-based email designs blow up. Old School HTML is the only way to fly if you’ve got any customers, clients, etc. that use Outlook 2007. This is the single-most important concern I have over the product, and one that I hope gets addressed in the near future.

    PROS

    • Beautiful interface. Everything is logically organized when viewing email. You can view your mail, mail folders, To-Do items, and upcoming tasks all in one window. The inclusion of Vista fonts like Segoe UI, Calibri, Cambria, etc. make everything easy to read… with ClearType enabled, everything looks beautiful.
    • iCal Support. I use Google Calendar as my primary calendaring app. The fact that I can now subscribe to them via Outlook is awesome. I also use Basecamp… and I can import individual project calendars if I choose to. Being able to pull those into a desktop app makes sense. (I only wish I could write to those calendars through Outlook – but that’s a fault of Google and Basecamp, not Microsoft.)
    • RSS Support. Anything that helps bring RSS feeds more mainstream is a win in my book. The only downside I’ve seen with this feature is that it treats new posts like emails… which doesn’t work for me. (I much prefer using FeedDemon/NewsGator Online to keep up on all the feeds I am subscribed to.)

    Aside from the most obvious defect in Outlook 2007, it’s a solid upgrade from Outlook 2003. Hopefully, Microsoft will address the rendering issue at some point – but for now, we’ll have to make due with it the best we can.

  • Nintendo Wii Desktops

    I just uploaded some Wiimote inspired desktops I created to my flickr account. They’re all designed for 1600×1024 … but should scale pretty nicely for most resolutions. I used to make a lot of desktop pictures in my free time – many of which can still be found on MacDesktops.com. If you like these, let me know. It might inspire me to continue this little hobby…

    (more…)

  • Recovery

    I got hit hard with the flu this year. I knew it would get me eventually. I didn’t think eventually would mean this year. (That’s why there’s been a lack of updates for a number of days.)

    On Thursday, I went home early. I wasn’t feeling well when I woke up in the morning, but didn’t think too much of it. I chalked it up to a simple headache… a head cold maybe. By noon, I felt a lot worse. I had achy joints, lots of sinus pressure, a headache, a bit of congestion… At this point, I was having a hard time concentrating. I got a few things done that were lingering on my queue, and then went home.

    I hardly ever go home when I’m sick. Our office is setup in such a way where each of us has some degree of space between our desks. Most people would probably stay home if they’re sick. Here, we pretty much stay head’s down unless we’re feeling bad enough to go home.

    Well, on Thursday, I felt bad enough to go home. That’s how my wife knew I was really feeling badly: I went home. I took my temp… it was at 101º. Not good… So I laid down, and took a nap. I took my temperature again around four o’clock and it had increased to 103.5º. I called my wife, and she suggested I try to get an appointment with our family doctor as quickly as possible… (They were unable to see me until Friday morning.) So, she took me to a Prompt Care clinic close to our house, and around six o’clock I was able to see a doctor.

    They checked my vitals… temperature was up to 102.8º… noted my various symptoms… The Doctor concluded that I had the flu. (Lucky me! Yay!) He gave me some Motrin (for the fever and joint pain), a prescription for Tamiflu (which works wonders), and sent me on my way!

    The barrage of meds I through at the flu seemed to do the trick. By Saturday I was up and out of bed… and I’m back at work today…

    God, it’s good to be back to “normal”. Being sick is awful. Maybe I’ll start wearing my jacket more often.

  • Design Quote

    Fantastic quote by famed Apple product designer, Jonathan Ive:

    “I don’t want to see a designer wagging his tail in my face. I want to see a problem solved, and in a way that acknowledges its context.” – Jonathan Ive

  • I survived

    I survived Career Day.I just got back from a long morning over at Evans High School, and things went better than I had expected. I spoke with three classes – primarily 9th and 10th graders. It was weird to talk to people about the kind of work that I do. Quite a few seemed uninterested in what I had to say. (I know I would have been, too.) But there were a couple of students that asked some really great questions. One asked about whether they needed to have Vista if they were going to do design work. I told them that we’re avoiding Vista like the plague… it wasn’t necessary. XP would suffice. Another asked whether college was necessary. I answered honestly, by saying it was absolutely necessary, but even I would benefit from a more formal design education.All in all, I had a great time. It was nice to know that at least a handful of kids thought my presentations were worthwhile.Can’t wait to do it again next year.

  • Sneak Peek

    Here’s a little preview of the upcoming design for cdharrison.com:

    cdharrison.com sneek peak

    I’ve been putting a lot of thought into the UI design, trying to make the site easier to use. I don’t have a timeframe for roll-out, but you’ll start to see bits and pieces of the new design starting to appear soon. My site has long been about stuff, and that’s why I’m calling this release “Effercio” (Latin for, you guessed it, “stuff”). This will be the 14th major iteration of the site, and the third since migrating over to WordPress. (In case you’re wondering, I called v13 “Nanideska”. “Nani deska” is a little Japanese phrase I picked up from watching too much anime in my younger years… it literally means “what” or “what is it?” That’s what I kept asking myself about the direction I was heading with the site and the design…)

    Redesigning, or realigning, a site is one of the more rewarding aspects of what I do. You take what works and you make it better. You take what doesn’t work and you throw it out the window.

    “The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven.” – Cameron Moll

    With every iteration of this site, and pretty much every site I work on, there is a strong desire for me to push my skills a little bit further. Design, in general, should be fun. It isn’t when you’re doing the same thing over and over again.

    So… here’s what you’ll be able to expect with v14:

    • Full Sandbox integration. Sandbox supports microformats like hAtom and hCard right out of the box. It’s a great theme upon which to build a site.
    • Better navigation. Browsing through the ‘stuff’ on my site will be a bit easier than before. Navigation will be more apparent throughout the site.
    • Better organization of content. Categories should be easier to use. Older content should be easier to browse through.
    • Better accessibility. An alternate stylesheet will be available for High Contrast. (I’m hoping to accomodate text-resizing a bit better as well.)
    • Better design. v13 evolved from a theme called Qwilm! … but it’s never been exactly what I wanted. v14 changes all of that.

    I’ll post something in the next few days detailing more of my process of taking an idea, mocking it up in Photoshop, and then turning it into a design…

  • Do everything via IM

    Wow… so Will just told me about imified and here I am trying it out. It’s an IM-based service that works with Basecamp, Backpack, Blogger, Google Calendar, MovableType, WordPress, and more… If this works like I hope it will… man oh man… IM just went from productivity killer to productivity enhancer.

  • Career Day

    Just a quick note to let you all know I will be speaking at the 2007 Career Day at Evans High School – in Evans, Georgia – on Wednesday, February 7th. I’ll be speaking to three classes about the kind of work that I do. To be honest, it’s a little intimidating. Some kids’ professional future might be impacted by what I might say. Thanks again to Mrs. April Nunnallee for inviting me. (It’s hard to believe we worked together over 6 years ago…and now she’s a teacher!)

    Regardless, it’ll be fun to get out of the office for the morning. I’ll post about the experience on Wednesday afternoon. I really need to do more stuff like this.

    If you were a student, what might you want to learn from someone coming in for Career Day?

  • Can you digg it?

    Well, a few bad apples have ruined it for the rest. Intent on gaming the system, some “diggers” have forced the digg.com staff to remove features from the site in order to maintain some semblance of control on the site. You can read more about the changes here: “A couple changes…”

    Digg.com, in a perfect world, is designed to be a democratic news publisher… Popular news gets pushed to the homepage where it gains even more exposure. Links that have been “dugg” to the homepage usually result in thousands of visits, if not hundreds of thousands of visits.  It’s probably safe to say, that in most cases, digg.com works. But, with anything in life, there are always those intent on manipulating the system for their own gains.

    I admit, removing the Top Diggers List is a minor thing. But the fact that it had to be done in the first place is sad reflection on the efforts spammers will make to hijack anything they can.