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The Open Source Teacher (… is born)

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  Let’s keep this first post quick, a foot in the door and an introduction. The past year has been somewhat tumultuous and that was before even the dramatic events of the past year; I took a gamble with my career and it didn’t pay off, yet. Most people support the notion that the path to success is paved with failures; they lead us to learning key lessons and provided that we take something from each, we will make it there, some-when somehow. It’s not easy that’s for sure and the more you have in life, the greater the risks you face when you try to put yourself out there and try something new. This particularly project though is a personal one, an experiment if you please and a way to find a way to become part of the conversations that take place around certain subjects: Open Education, Technologically Enhanced Education and Open Source. I have always had an interest, but just never found the time to actually roll my sleeves up and get stuck in, until this year, for a couple of reasons
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A Look at G+'s Photo Editing Features

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From a business perspective it is very easy to explain why Google Plus is a great platform, an important element in on-line marketing strategies and search engine optimisation, particularly whilst Google's market share for search traffic stands around the 90% mark  (StatCounter, Jan 2014)  in the UK. Many are confused by the platform currently, and this is due to the precedents set by Facebook and Twitter for example, it isn't simply a page with lots of features and it doesn't really matter from a business perspective that only 300 Million Active Users visit a month  (Barr, Oct 2013) In addition, from a professional perspective it is an easy argument too; the articles and conversations are essentially focussed around more professional issues, therefore the content is largely relevant to a professional audience irrespective of discipline or industry. From a personal perspective, it is less-apparent to most, why the platform is valid or of interest. To counter though, th
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Auto Awesome Adds Another Dimension

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Over the past couple of weeks I have noticed something very strange happening with photographs being synced from my phone to my G+ account; I would login on a computer and then see strange animated versions of burst shots right through to panoramas, the feature apparently, is known as auto-awesome. I was instantly impressed, the standard of the photos produced automatically without any kind of deliberate action was good, but when I realised that Google had added an edit button to the gallery, then I saw the potential and another dimension to G+ that surely cannot be ignored. I would suspect that this is an attempt to pitch G+ right up against Instagram now, and with the additional bells and whistles it is definitely a contender in that court, as before against Facebook and Twitter alike. Google don't do things by halves, G+ is maturing into some kind of super hero social network; they have the resources, you can't fault them for using them to stay ahead. The thing is, ha
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Whatever happened to APNG?

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Sometimes you find yourself questioning the direction technology takes, including such conundrums as; why has it taken so long for fibre-optic to take off when we have known of its benefits for decades? why has it taken so long to converge tv, radio and internet into one product? Why did it take so long for SVG to be popularised? And for me most recently, why didn't APNG take off; it seems almost illogical. APNG is a format for animated PNG sequences, a format itself which is widely used and arguably the best for internet usage, certainly the most versatile. APNG has all of the characteristics of PNG including complicated alpha transparencies and a 24bit colour palette; it just seems to defy all logic that the format didn't become supported and part of the W3C strategy for HTML 5. Animation with APNG is just better when compared to GIF, and if browsers supported the format there would have been little need for plug-ins for simple short animated sequences. It isn't interac
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Google Says Bye Bye to Bevelled Look

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The new logo on Google UK 'looks flatter' according to BBC News's Leo Kelion (2013); I have to admit I was unsure if this was an actual change or not, to start with and took a double take, but it appears to be on a slow roll-out, the changes to the interface are subtle but very focussed on removing distractions and streamlining both the page layout (if it could be any more streamlined) and the user experience. Clearly, there are larger changes afoot, but if they are as subtle as these most users perhaps will not notice so much. The logo itself does feel cleaner now that the bevel has been removed, but could this be argued too simplistic? Eddie Kessler of Google (2013) stated in their official blog that they have also updated the colour palette and the letter forms, but these are very subtle differences indeed; the relationship between the first 'G' and 'o' does seem still to be quite awkward, but as ever this logo is as much about the negative space as it
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ITV Identity

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I have been mulling over this one for a couple of weeks now, not really being one who is ready to just jump in with criticism. The new series of idents / logotype designs were definitely not my cup of tea to start with, but their predecessors were very bland and corporate. Personality has certainly been instilled; it says to me This Morning, Jeremy Kyle and I'm a Celebrity... therefore, in this regard it must be hailed a success. On that basis, is the new identity a guilty pleasure? The brand that never ceases to fail to provide cringe-worthy programming,  has produced a logotype equal to it's  "I can't look, but can't turn over moments". There appears to be much negative subjective criticism out there (on the web), so it remains to be seen whether the new identity will be well-received given a warming period. I personally don't appreciate the logo in its static form, but feel much differently about the dynamic animated incarnations - where it comes in
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Flash Player, HTML 5, Apple and Web Standards

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It has been running in my head for a while now, the issue has certainly been covered by thousands of blogs and news articles, but it still grates a bit for me from two perspectives - firstly as someone who develops using the Flash environment and secondly as a media lecturer. Flash player is essentially dead on the mobile web, less so on the desktop based version - and I appreciate using the AIR environment to create 'native' applications, which is proving to be great - although there are always going to be things that can't be achieved with it in comparison to developing say for instance in Java or X-Code. The problem is in killing it off (Flash Player not Flash itself) there are likely to be millions of resources which are inaccessible, it was never great for building websites unless there was a need for it - and for me there can be a need to create highly interactive and animated web content, Nikon's Universcale is one example for instance of many wonderful resour
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