Dayn W Creative

I’m not a giant GTD fanboy, but I do follow the basic principals when I can. Like every other iPhone owner who needs to keep a list of to-do’s, (and really, who are you people that can do this in your head!?) I am pretty shocked by the lack of a to do app native to the iPhone.

My business demands 100% uptime, so I’m not about to hack my iPhone in the hopes of finding a to do list app. So, I turned to Google. Luckily, I am definitely not the first to seek out GTD apps for the iPhone.

Here’s what I found. Patrick at justanotheriphoneblog.com wrote a great review of 5 to do list apps that play nice with the iPhone. My pick of the litter was Vitalist, a GTD adhering, sleek little number that reminded me a lot of iGTD, a desktop based GTD to do list manager as seen on Lifehacker.

Probably the most important feature of Vitalist, at least in my world, is the fact that it’s web based. I love the way iGTD works, but I could never get the sync to work right. I work on multiple macs at multiple locations, and having a web based to do list takes the whole syncing issue out of the equation.

If course, now I have to have an internet connection to view my to do list. Enter iPhone.

Popularity: 19% [?]

This issue has plagued me for years. I’m pretty sure the issue came about from messing with color profiles on my Mac. I switch between web and print graphic work a lot, so somewhere along the way I must have checked the wrong box, thus leading to color shifts when saving PNGs using Photoshop CS2’s Save for Web.

The symptom is commonly as follows. Using CSS, you have set an area to have a solid background color, say #333333. Using Photoshop, you’ve created a graphic whose background color is #333333 to match your area’s background. But, when the PNG is rendered in a browser, the backgrounds don’t match. In my case, using Apple’s Digital Color Meter shows that the background color of the PNG is actually #434343 in Firefox.

I finally found an easy fix on the Polar Bear Lamps blog. This amazing post describes in easy detail how to open a PNG after saving, strip it of meta data, and re-save it.  Apparently, the embedded Gamma meta data from Photoshop causes the shift.  Delete that meta data, and the shift disappears.

The post comments also reference tools for drag and drop use. I downloaded GammaSlamma 1.1, and its working nicely.

Thanks so much to Polar Bear Lamps for quelling that buzzing in the back of my mind.

Popularity: 15% [?]

I’m a Mac user, but this Firefox plugin is so slick, I’m actually envious of my PC based web developer brethren. It’s called IE Tab from PCMan (Hong Jen Yee). Once installed, you browse to any web page using Firefox. Then, simply right click to bring up the contextual menu and choose “View Page in IE Tab”. The same page loads in a new tab, but displays using Internet Explorer’s rendering engine.

Now there’s no reason to ever launch IE again! When I’m checking how a page renders on my test PC, I can simply launch Firefox and see both the FF and IE result.

Popularity: 7% [?]

One Laptop Per Child, makers of the XO laptop, and who’s mission is to “provide a means for learning, self-expression and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education”, will be running a Get-1-Give-1 promotion starting November 12.

For a limited time and $399 US, you will be able to have one of the Linux based XO laptops sent to a child who has inadequate educational outlets. But wait, there’s more. In addition, a second XO will be sent to you.

Falling short of the fabled $99 laptop, the XO still promises to be worth the meager investment. The worst thing one can do is to start comparing it to conventional laptops. According to the specs as read by David Pogue in his NYT Podcast, the XO sports only 1gb RAM, and won’t run MS Office or Photoshop.

The XO is, however, built on open source technology, and features wireless web access along with innovative networking software that allows the XO to find and collaborate with other XO users. Battery life for the XO laptop is 6 hours, and much more if the user is simply reading. Charging the laptop can be achieved by a hand crank (1min cranking = 10min power), or via 1 foot square solar panel. The backlight can be turned off in sunlight, increasing readability and conserving power.

I reviewed the demo images of the interface online, and it’s a little confusing to call this a laptop. Is it a mobile computing device that unfolds like a book and sits neatly in your lap? Yes. Will it do what a comparably priced Dell laptop does? No, but thats not apples to apples.

The XO is designed to be easy to use out of the box for children. It’s purpose is to open young minds to computing and problem solving with digital tools. And, since it’s based on open source programming and collaborative ideas, it’s potential for expansion is unrestricted.

Popularity: 8% [?]