Design on keithrozario.com

Apple's new Slide-To-Unlock patent : Why it doesn't matter

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:00:26 +0000

Apple was just awarded a 3rd patent for it’s Slide-to-Unlock feature, and while the internet is still abuzz with it, I just fail to see any reason to get excited.

Yes, Apple looks to be greedy and is apparently more than happy competing with HTC and Samsung in courtrooms rather than the open market–but we all knew this already.

Yes, Apple is patenting something so generic it may apply to ALL slide gestures on an unlock screen? – but we all knew the patent system in the US is whacky and open to abuse.

Why Apple is really suing Samsung

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 08:00:45 +0000

I’m not the biggest fan of Apple, I consistently compare my Galaxy S3 (which is great) to my wifes Iphone 4 (which is not so great). So when I first heard the news that Apple was suing Samsung for a ridiculous amount of money because of things like ‘slide to unlock’, ‘pinch to zoom’ and even ‘bouncing effect while scrolling’, I thought it was just a signal that Apple was afraid of someone stealing it’s dominance in the Smartphone market.

However, out of sheer coincidence I came across the 2007 keynote address for the iPhone by Steve Jobs. This was the original keynote for the original iPhone (5 years before the iPhone 5), and I was astounded. It was like attending a history lesson for one of the most defining moments in technology. One of the great things about the keynote though, is it ’enlightened’ me on the lawsuit, and allowed me to see the lawsuit through Apples–or more specifically Steve Jobs–eyes, and it’s only through his eyes did I understand why Apple was suing Samsung, I still don’t agree with it, but I can definitely see why Apple is going through great lengths to make life miserable for Samsung and Google.

Kickstarter Malaysia: A collection of Malaysian Kickstarter Projects

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 08:00:46 +0000

Kickstarter is a great crowdfunding platform for budding entrepreneurs, musicians and inventors to get their creations from inside their heads into peoples hands. I personally have funded my favorite youtube guitarist on kickstarter and I should be receiving an album anytime soon--with my name in the credits. How cool is it to get your name printed in the credits of an actual physical CD album--it's amazingly cool.

Initially I thought kickstarter was this once off thing, but over time, the great successes of kickstarter continue to pile up, a couple of months back we had the pebble watch–a e-ink display watch that connected to your iOS or Android phone for display and control. Now we have Ouya an Android based console hoping to compete with the Playstation and XBOX but on a RM300 price-point. This are way cool products, that anyone with even a slight inclination to tech would love to have.

Instagram Camera: Coolest thing EVER!!

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 17:31:21 +0000

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about a cool card game based on Computer processes, in hindsight the only thing that post proved was that I’m a geek. The card game was funded through a crowdfunded initiative, and that was really what made it cool.

The instagram camera is cool on its own, and the fact that it’s currently being crowdsourced through Indiegogo (a website similar to Kickstarter) makes the cool factor– cucumber cool.

In fact, as of now, it’s already reached $6,000 dollars from it’s $50,000 target in just one day. I’m willing to bet that this project will eventually reach it’s pretty low target of just $50,000 – easily.

There are however, some copyright concerns surrounding the camera, particularly since Facebook now own Instagram and they don’t even like wordpress developers building themes that ’look’ like facebook, much less an entire camera that is based on a trademark they own.

If you choose to fund the project, you’re promised a discount on the final item, which the creator hopes to price at under $350 (that’s in US Dollars). However, based on the specs, that may be a bit difficult, we’re talking about a:

Adobe releasing Creative Cloud for $49.99 soon!

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 14:48:48 +0000

Adobe is looking to release a cloud version of their creative applications online called creativecloud. From what I gather from their website it looks to be like a office365 version for creatives. This is probably a step in the right direction, Adobe software usually run into the hundreds or thousands of dollars, and buying the licenses for that software usually incur a huge capital expenditure for startups looking use these applications.

Pinterest + Martin Luther King =

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:51:27 +0000

A couple of days back, I wrote about how copyright law was preventing a lot of us from listening the entire Martin Luther King “I have a dream” speech because it was protected by copyright, and in order to listen to it you had to pay Martin Luther Kings family royalty. Today I did some searching on pinterest, and found some rather remarkable works of art around Martin Luther King that were pinned in pinterest, these works of art would not be possible if the family had further copyrighted other aspects of MLKs life, and with newer stricter copyright laws that could very well be the case.

Remember for a pinterest invite, just leave a comment on the post and I’ll send one to you as soon as I have the time. For now, enjoy!

Source: google.it via Francesca Rufina on Pinterest

From pinterest User Effeluna

Good Design: Google reminds you that you recently changed your password

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:29:53 +0000

A couple of weeks back, Dreamhost reported a security breach on it’s servers, so I thought for security sake I should change my passwords as well. I’d been using the same password for the past couple of years and it was time for a change anyway.

However, as most of you will notice, whenever you’ve just changed your password you instinctively try to re-enter the old one on your next login. This obviously prompts and invalid password prompt which should point you in the right direction. If you’re like me though, you end up thinking you typed it wrongly and try again, this can go on for a while and if you’re not careful you could lock yourself out of your account because you entered the ‘old’ password 3 times in a row.

A good piece of design I noticed from Google is that if you’ve changed your password recently, they actually remind you that you changed it and when you changed it. Thereby stoping your automatic response in it’s track and getting you to type the new one. Just a small piece of code and small feature but a rather good piece of design.

Amazon releases new icons for AWS

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 08:55:37 +0000

Amazon Web Services has formed the IAAS backbone of many corporations IT infrastructure, through it’s various tools and offerings you can do almost everything under the sun on the cloud. You can spin EC2 instances till they merge together to become one giant super-computer, you can host webpages on their Simple Storage Solution (S3) platform which offers nearly limitless storage, you can even host that data on edge servers via CloudFront to reduce load times, and the list of offerings go on and on.

Facebook sues developer while Google takes youtube domains: What's the difference

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 20:38:30 +0000

wpCandy reports that Facebook recently sued an Indonesian blogger who created a wordpress theme that could turn your wordpress site to look like Facebook, and the similarities were really striking. For one your post look exactly like status updates on your Facebook profile and comments on those post look exactly like your friends commenting on your status updates in Facebook.

Similarly, TechCrunch reports that Google has gone after a couple of rather confusing typo domains that look remarkably similar to Youtube. Although not so similarly, Google is making a request for control of the domain rather than suing the pants of those cybersquatters (which it probably should), and not so similarly Google has a much stronger case.

The Ugly side of crowdsourcing

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:11:27 +0000

Crowdsourcing seems to the buzz these days, with LG crowdsourcing a cellphone design off crowdsourcing website crowdspring and starbucks receiving more than 17,000 coffee ideas of the web from their crowdsourcing platform mystarbucksidea.com. However, as with all new trends there are detractors and with crowdsourcing the number of detractors seems to be growing each day.

Previously I blogged about the wide spectrum of crowdsourcing , from the low end and mundane on Amazons Mechanical Turk, to the high end and niche Crowdspring. However, when a detractor to the term includes wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, then it’s time to study this a bit more in depth. So what is the ugly side of crowdsourcing and what does it strike a nerve with Jimmy Wales…and just about every designer I know.

QR codes making a comeback with Wikipedia?

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:40:26 +0000

QR codes may be making that all important comeback. Apparently QR codes were all the craze a couple of months ago, but now (just like the Royal Wedding) seem to be out of fashion. Fortunately, though there seems to be life left in this brilliant invention. The Wikimedia blog recently made a strange (yet interesting) announcement that they’re launching QRPedia.

Wikimedia are the guys behind wikipedia and they’re using the great power of QR codes by offering a fantastic service via the wikipedia API.

Don’t worry if you didn’t understand that last sentence,here’s what it really means…The scenario is something like this, imagine you’re out in a Museum and you’re admiring a wonderful piece by a Van Gogh (as an example I’ll use Starry Night) , at the display there is also a QR Code which you can scan on your device (much like the guy in the picture is scanning QR Code). The QRCode takes you to the specific wikipedia article regarding Starry Night (or Van Gogh, it’s entirely the Museums choice). So far so good.

What’s different now, is the wikipedia API can detect your language setting. So if you’re phone is set for French or German, it will take you to the French Wikipedia article on starry night and you can enjoy more facts about starry night in your native language.

I'm an Ikea Hacker...woot!!

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 21:18:08 +0000

So I’ve just moved into my new place and my wife and I wanted to convert our upstairs hall into a study area for the both of us.

Problem is that I wanted a standing desk and my wife was having none of it. So a comprimise was in order…in this case we’d have 2 desk one for each, mine would be a standing desk and hers a regular sit-down one. I’m no master carpenter so our greatest hope was to hack ikea. If you’re wondering what hacking ikea means, well the ‘original’ Ikea Hackers says:

Cool poster!

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:22:19 +0000

A cool poster from bonkers world demonstrating just how fragmented IT companies really are…I’m not sure where they got the data from, but it’s just cool.

notes.io : A great way to jot down notes online.

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:54:04 +0000

Notes.io is a great simple online app that allows you to store your notes in a quick online interface. Of course you’re wondering why you’d need a note taking app when you carry your iPhone or Blackberry all over the place, but notes.io offers a couple of cool nifty features that make it quite practical.

Doing one thing Right: 6 websites that excel at just one thing.

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 06:24:30 +0000

Every now and then you get websites that do a whole bunch of stuff, but never really excel. The following examples are 6 great websites that were designed to accomplish just one goal, and they excelled in its execution extremely well.

Coolendar: Wonderful Calendar App

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 11:51:52 +0000

Google just added appointment slots to their online Calendar in their quest to successfully emulate MS Outlook on the cloud. Quite frankly, Googles getting pretty good, I can organize my whole life online and now with appointment slots I can allow people to book my time online, just like they would do with a MS Outlook Meeting Request.

For those of us who miss the good ol’ days of pen and paper though (like me!!), there’s a spectacular app that does just the calendar bit and nothing else. It’s call coolendar and it’s really cool (pardon the lame pun)

Creative Vcard designs

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 02:32:44 +0000

Previously I bloged about creative resumes, and that seems to be one of my highest hitting web pages, so in my shameless attempt to garner more hits, I’d thought I’d blog about creative v-cards as well.

Vcards are a fad that didn’t really catch on, think of them as virtual business cards (because that’s essentially what they are). So instead of handing out business cards, you hand out urls that point to this awesome looking page that has all your contact information. Since vcards are mostly used by freelance web designers, the designs of vcards are excellent, ranging from beautifully minimalistic to outrageously awesome.A good vcard design should answer 3 important questions,

Use Minutes.io for your meeting minutes

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:25:34 +0000

Ever had to share minutes across multiple people but never really got down to it. Some people love to jot down minutes in an excel spreadsheet, and then attach that spreadsheet to an email that is then blasted to relevant people in the group. The problem with that is that the minutes are never really up to date, at any one time, you’ll either need to forward everyone in the group a separate emails (with updates) , or just accept the fact that they’ll be lagging behind until the next checkpoint.

Intels Museum of Me and privacy concerns it entails

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:39:37 +0000

Popular Websit

e Gizmodo, today posted a link to Intels new Museum of me that allows Facebook users to grab information from their facebook profiles and post them up in a really cool museum like format.

I’ve been unable to view it, I suspect it’s due to the fact that 100,000+ people have liked it since it launched barely hours ago. Talk about an internet sensation. It remains to be seen though if the website itself is overloaded of facebook has blocked the auths from intel. It sounds totally cool, but what you’re essentially doing is granting permission to a corporation to view you personal data…all of it. Not just the stuff you fill up in a form but all the stuff on your facebook.

Creative Resumes

Wed, 18 May 2011 11:08:14 +0000

Some companies re

ceive so many resumes for each job application, they filter out applications based on your resume photo. Imagine, your resume was probably not read simply because your photo wasn’t eye-catching (imagine resumes like mine that have no photo!). It’s nobody’s fault, if you receive thousands upon thousands of resumes you need to have some filtering ability that doesn’t require time.

Obviously you shouldn’t be putting your photo on the resume, but the questions remains on how to get people looking at your resumes? The idea is to break away from the standard thinking that Resumes need to be linear. Microsoft word has far more capability now then when you wrote your first resume, and even then it’s better to use Adobe InDesign, Photoshop or even Scribus to create your resume. Resumes don’t need to be linear, but they need to be standard, it needs to have the standard information people are looking for and it needs to be presented clearly. A hiring manager isn’t bothered to look and search for your experience, it needs to be ‘presented’.

Ridiculously cool wallpapers from Jalopnik

Wed, 11 May 2011 16:07:53 +0000

Jalopnik a website closely related to Lifehacker has been having a series of ridiculously cool wallpapers featuring ridiculously cool cars. If you’re into having cool cars grace your laptop screen so others can view something a lot more beautiful than the windows cloud head on over to Jalopnik and download you ridiculously cool wallpapers there. Warning , these wallpapers are so cool you’ll probably want them all.

Other ridiculously cool cars available besides the Aston Martin are the GT-40 and a 64’ Corvette

via [Jalopnik]

Unique facebook Icons

Wed, 11 May 2011 15:26:22 +0000

Wonderfully Unique and fun Facebook icons. For a long time people have been bugging Facebook to give us some more flexibility is the quick comment sections rather than just ’like’, but these beautiful icons from Leonard Savage really take the cake. [via Designer Daily]

What if Ikea designed sci-fi manuals

Tue, 10 May 2011 10:42:00 +0000

Ever wondered if the Ikea designed the manuals for constructing the Delorean from Back to the Future or a Lightsabre. Wonder no more thanks to the folks from College Humor [Via Gizmodo]

What is a QR Code

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:35:59 +0000

Ever wonder what that funny looking Barcode thing on newspaper ads and beer cans is? Well it’s called a QR code and it’s a fad that catching on. Just like a barcode that encapsulates information into lines of varying size–remember that thing cashiers scan at the checkout aisle? A QR code is exactly like a bar-code but in 2 Dimensions rather than just 1.

A QR code encapsulates information into a digital block of black and white squares. However, unlike barcodes that are single dimension across one line, a QR code is 2-dimensional across both length and height. That extra dimension however, allows it to store FAR more data than a regular barcode. This extra dimension is why some call a 2D-barcode.

QR codes act like barcodes, but instead of storing numbers that need to be deciphered, QR codes store actual information in text form. So for instance the bar code for a bottle of Orange Juice would be deciphered as 11232323 , and then the supermarkets computer would tie that number to the price and description of the Orange Juice. From my previous knowledge of working with these things, I believe their called SKUs.

The QR code for the bottle would be deciphered as, Sunkist Orange Juice 5L: made in America. With all that information in text form, rather than just a number to be looked-up.

Hire Me!!

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:11:41 +0000

One of the reasons I starte

d this blog was to try out new things and see if I could land a job with an impressive website. I love my current job, but it’s a bit unstable, so I’d thought it’ll be wise to remain marketable. It’s one thing to tell people I’m a Business Analyst with strong technical skills, and a whole other thing to display a full blown webpage with yourname.com.

So I searched the web for resume templates, my initial idea was to have 2 wordpress themes. One for the main blog, another for the resume. However, I discovered it’ll be a whole lot easier to just find a CSS/HTML template and copy that to a separate location and link it from my blog.