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Quote of the Week:

User experience nostalgia

I was installing a driver for my Epson scanner last night, and noticed that while some of the progress window elements were using OS X-styled elements, there were a lot of elements in there that come straight from the OS 9 days. Keep in mind OS 9 was in vogue over ten years ago. The progress bar, in particular, is a straight holdover from OS 8.6.

So, are the folks at Installer VISE lazy, or nostalgic, or nonexistent?

Labels: mac, software, UX

posted at 8:00 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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5.11.2009

The new MacBooks are here! The New MacBooks are here!

I feel just like Navin R. Johnson in the Jerk, when the new phone books arrived with his name in them. Except for me my excitement comes in the form of a new 15-inch MacBook Pro. I just finished migrating all my files, etcetera, over from my 12-inch PowerBook G4, and am going through the applications and making sure everything works well.

If anyone has any tips on migrating from a Power-PC-based Mac to an Intel-based Mac, send me an e-mail or drop me a line over at Twitter with your thoughts. In the meantime, I'm going to play with my new Thermos, with vinyl and stripes and a cup built right in, until my eyeballs fall out.

Labels: advice, mac

posted at 2:41 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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4.20.2009

How to use MarsEdit on a Joomla SIte

I love MarsEdit. Quote possibly one of the nicest offline blogging tools out there for the Mac. And it's always played well with most of the blogging platforms out there (I'm using it right now to write this post to my blogger-based--but notchcode-hosted--blog). A tool like MarsEdit allows me to compose blog posts without having to be online, using some blogging site's wonky WYSI(almost)WYG interface. I can even tag articles, select posting times, add media to posts, and so on.

I'm making a move to update my website, using Joomla. Figured it was time to get rid of the old-and-busted tables-based layout that I put up at notchcode.com over a weekend in 2001. Joomla is a nice, free, and extensible Content Management System (CMS) that I develop about 70% of my clients' sites in, and decided it was time to drink my own kool-aid and use it for my own site.

One of the main issues I had, however, is that there didn't seem to be any built-in support to post articles to a Joomla-based blog from MarsEdit. A slightly-longer-than-normal search of the internet returned a solution, and I'm on my way toward a new site that allows me to still use my favorite blogging tool! Oh, internet, is there anything you can't provide an answer to?

You can read the step-by-step process of how to enable Joomla and MarsEdit to talk to each other in the RedSweater forum post here.

Labels: blogs, joomla, mac, productivity, software

posted at 4:49 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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7.28.2008

Graphic Design Icon: Susan Kare

For those of you who don't know her by name, you've still undoubtedly seen her work. For, you see, Susan Kare created the face of Apple's Macintosh computer back in the day:

You see, Apple needed a series of icons for it's newly minted Macintosh Operating System back in the early 1980s. As Apple's screen graphics and digital font designer for the Mac, she was charged with creating icons that, today, are among the touchstones for a whole generation of computer users. Her Apple portfolio page has more samples, but I have to show you my favorite:

The classic in error message iconography.

For those of you who weren't born when the original Mac came out, you still probably have seen her icon design work. For, you see, she is the designer of many of the original Facebook gift icons, as well:

She is also a typeface designer, and has a wide range of other work. Go check it out!

Labels: icon, mac, typography

posted at 5:00 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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7.23.2008

Testing a post from MarsEdit

I'm trying out MarsEdit, since they just announced a new release, and so far it's working fine. It's nice to compose messages offline, and a heck of a lot more efficient. I have to see if it does things like create future posts, etc., and make sure it plays nice with my feed, etc. I'll let you all know what I think of it as I play around!

Labels: blogs, mac, software

posted at 2:23 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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7.01.2008

80% of US Businesses have Macs

Surely that must be a typo, you say. But according to this new study, it's true. So for all those people who say a Mac won't work for them because "we can't use them in the office": get your heads out of 1995, and join the rest of us in easy-to-use, high-design workin'!

via TUAW.

Labels: mac

posted at 12:00 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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2.14.2008

Server go Boom!

While we were off graphic-designing, and branding, and marketing for clients this morning, the notchcode servers went boom. All is better now; sorry for the inconvenience of not reading this blog feed instantaneously this a.m..

Labels: hardware, mac

posted at 11:54 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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11.28.2006

secure

I've been reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon over the holiday weekend, and it reminded me just how paranoid I can be sometimes. It's basically a sci-fi mysery thriller set in the late 1990s and World War II, and is about gold, codebreakers, nerds like Alan Turing, marines, and more nerds. But the thesis is this: encryption is a good idea.

So to that end, I've reviewed Notchcode's security practices, and made some improvements. All client data is now encrypted, as is all communication and data on our project management site. And all the backups and archives are encrypted. Never mind that they are already locked in a Fortress of Solitude-like structure, but now in addition to being physically secure, the bits are secure, too.

I've posted some queries up at Apple's Support Discussions database about this issue, too. The Mac has a mostly-useful feature called File Vault, which encrypts your "Home" directory, where, presumably, all of your documents are stored. Except when they're not. File Vault also has the added problem of being a bit slow, and buggy--at least in my experience. So there are a lot of people who have given me some other options to think about, including everything from general backup strategies, to specific products to use.

One thoughtful poster asked me what my industry's standard practices were regarding encryption and data security, so I checked: the AIGA, at least, has very little to say on the matter (this seems to be a theme with them: when it comes to some of the nitty gritty operative details of how to run a Creative Firm, they avoid all discussion, choosing instead to talk about the larger issues. Which is fine. But when you are getting pragmatic, it's a bit annoying for your professional organization to be so high-minded).

So, I solicit your opinions, gentle reader. Leave a comment for me using the Notchcode Contact Form, if you have any experiences to share or advice to give. Now excuse me, while I type in my new 4096-character password and get back to work!

Labels: aiga, encryption, mac, security

posted at 9:41 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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