The Metro Paris Subway iPhone application must be one of the coolest uses of augmented reality I’ve seen. Next time I’ll go to there I’ll must try out (assuming the problems with Android version are solved).
internet
27
Nov 09
Chrome OS, o sistema operativo só para a Internet
Texto publicado originalmente no Diário2
A Google sempre quis que os utilizadores estivessem permanentemente online. Com o Google Search criou o hábito de não ser preciso guardar nada encontrado na Internet, pois é sempre possível encontrar seja o que for, o Gmail foi o primeiro serviço de email de massas com espaço de armazenamento suficiente para não ser obrigatório apagar mensagens e o Google Docs leva o “Office” para fora do disco rígido. Um dos próximos passos da Google será um sistema operativo próprio, o Chrome OS, e como não podia deixar de ser será muito orientado para a web, mais do que os utilizadores provavelmente estarão habituados.
Apesar de o Chrome OS apenas estar previsto para daqui a algum tempo, a data estimada de lançamento é final de 2010, é já possível testar as suas funcionalidades através de uma versão de teste do Chromium OS, o projecto open source que lhe serve de base. E não poderia ser um sistema operativo mais simples e básico, e o facto de ter o mesmo nome do navegador da Google não deixa enganar: o sistema operativo é o navegador, e apenas o navegador. Não existem aplicações a instalar, não existem utilizadores a criar ou configurar.
O arranque, extremamente rápido, leva-nos a um ecrã de autenticação, onde obviamente são usadas as credenciais do Google (ou Google Apps) para iniciar o sistema. Após este passo temos apenas uma janela com o já conhecido navegador Chrome ligeiramente alterado: uma pequena página de inicial com acessos rápidos aos serviços da Google e as mais conhecidas redes sociais (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). E na verdade resume-se isto, não é possível instalar aplicações externas, tanto mais que núcleo do Chrome OS é iniciado em modo de leitura (um sinal muito claro da Google que trata-se de um sistema “virado para a cloud”), nem alterar definições que não as do navegador. Aqui as aplicações serão os sítios abertos nos separadores do navegador, os serviços estarão todos fora do computador e a única possibilidade de adicionar funcionalidade será através da biblioteca de extensões do Chrome.
E o que esperar do Chrome OS? Claramente não é um sistema para substituir o Windows MacOS, ou Linux. A aposta da Google vai para mudar o paradigma, para apenas usar serviços remotos no dia a dia, ou esperar que os utilizadores assumam que na verdade já fizeram essa mudança mas ainda não repararam. Ainda há muita especulação em torno do Chrome OS, mas o mais certo que nem sequer esteja disponível para instalação num computador normal, sendo apenas disponibilizado através de dispositivos específicos que não serão mais que netbooks baratos e sem disco rígido com o sistema operativo já incluído. Resta esperar mais um ano até sair a versão final.
PS – No MakeUseOf existe um excelente tutorial (em inglês) que mostra como testar o Chrome OS a partir de uma pen USB.
16
Mar 09
You can’t get more live than twitter
I’m a big fan of Twitter, it’s a pretty simple service and a great way to share thoughts with the “cloud” and interact with people, is even useful for organizations to get closer to their followers/clients/etc. Magnum Photos is one of those organizations that seems to know how to use it, and if your were paying attention to their Twitter account last week you may had seen the tweet shown above, where photographer Larry Towell spared some time to answer the questions of all of those interested in photography and photojournalism.
You can’t get more live than that, but you can still catch up with the virtual interview right here.
Technorati Tags: twitter, magnum, magnumphotos, photojournalism
25
Feb 09
Spam really gets everywhere, even dotnetkicks
Spam really gets everywhere, the screenshot on the right is from the Tags box in the front page of DotNetKicks, a Digg-like online community dedicated to .Net programmers.
Technorati Tags: dotnetkicks,spam
28
Nov 08
Save that photo!
Traditional social bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious are great for finding articles and other text that other Web surfers have tagged as interesting.
For the visually oriented, the pickings have been slim. Now, however, a handful of photo-oriented bookmarking sites are emerging to entertain the eye as well as the mind.
Tag That Image: Visual Bookmarking Sites Worth Browsing [Bits Blog]
I haven’t tried FFFFound (no invite for me) and only had a glimpse of what vi.sualize.us can do, most of my experience comes from testing we♥it.
Photo bookmarking, or visual bookmarking, it’s such a clever idea that you think “why haven’t anyone came up with this before?”. Nevertheless it’s a kind of service that’s still on its infancy and has some issues that aren’t solved:
- Browser integration- still no proper extensions are available, vi.sualize.us has a Firefox extension but they could go much further than that (I’m thinking of something as feature rich as the Delicious plugin).
- Current photo communities- how would such a service deal with the Favorites feature in photo communities like Flickr? Some kind of integration (if I’m a Flickr user then “favorite” that photo also) or think of at as a complete replacement? Because I still think I’m doing the same thing when “favoriting” a photo in Flickr/Zooomr or visual bookmarking in one of these services.
Either way I’m very curious to see how visual bookmarking services will evolve, and what others that may appear in the future can add to those already around.
Technorati Tags: delicious, we♥it, we heart it, ffffound, vi.sualize.us, visualizeus, social bookmarking, bookmarking
11
Nov 08
Exposure for dummies
Gadling, one of my favorite travel blogs, realized that people have a “nasty” habit of taking photos while traveling, probably from looking at huge amount of pictures available at their Flickr group’s public photo pool. What they may have also realized is that some of them aren’t that good, and it’s always heartbreaking to see fabulous places shown in boring photos.
Whatever the reason may be, the guys at Gadling started a new series, entitled Through the Lens, where the basics of photography are explained in a simple way, specially target for backpackers with almost no camera skills. Their latest entry is dedicated to the simple concept of exposure, or how shutter speed and aperture diameter affect the amount of light that goes inside the camera and how a funny thing called ISO allows me to take photos with low light.
PS- With the valuable lesson you may even get a Photo Of The Day.
Through the Gadling Lens: apertures and shutters and ISOs, oh my! [Gadling]
9
Sep 08
Some of my thougths on Google Chrome
After the first week playing around with Google’s browser and a few things caught my eye:
- I’m not sure the idea of putting the tabs on the top improves anything in usability terms, but it doesn’t bother me either. I guess it’s more like a design statement to make a difference than a real improvement.
- Sometimes I have some font rendering problems issues (I already submitted a bug with that).
- The lack of plugins is an issue, I need my Delicious extension and Greasemonkey scripts while others have other needs, that’s the beauty of extensibility (this is Firefox’s turf) that is lacking on Chrome, .
- I like the security and stability of having each tab, and each plugin, running in their own process, which can be confirmed using Process Explorer:
This is something Firefox still is behind, even the 3.1 version shares the same process (Internet Explorer 8 will also handle a tab as a separate process).
- I much prefer the darker colour scheme of the incognito window than the default (minus that icon with dude in a raincoat), it’s much more sober and less annoying than that XP style blue that comes by default.
Theme support would be nice but a handful of colour schemes other than “baby blue” would be nice. - Lots and lots and lots of eye-candy! Everything is smooth and sleek: the animation while opening a new tab, the search results that appear in the scroll bar, the resizable text boxes, and so on. Everything’s is smooth an
- It’s fast.
For now I’m impressed but I still need a Linux version, because the current option ain’t a decent alternative.
11
Aug 08
It’s just lazyness I guess…
I’m not very happy with the current hosting of this blog: the platform is becoming a bit outdated, looks like no activity going on over there (I don’t like “dead” services) and the it’s becoming a bit too slow for me. I have paid hosting with lots of storage and traffic available, and with a fully customizable Wordpress installation available with just one click.
So sometimes, many times actually, I wonder why don’t I migrate to my own host, or at least to Wordpress.com, and end this once and for all. Probably because I have to buy a new domain, I don’t think I could fit a tech oriented blog like this under temujinphoto.com, and importing all the posts from one blog to the other won’t be an easy task.
19
Jul 08
deviantART Version 6 is out, but…
The latest incarnation of deviantART, one of the largest online artist communities, is out but this release, like all the others throughout the years I’ve been there, is more focused on “sleekness” and having a cool interface than adding real features.
deviantART still is missing the point in a few important issues: crappy RSS support or no API or similar among other things.
There’s no way to embed deviantART elsewhere, I can’t put my messages or my contacts photos on my Netvibes, I can’t put deviantART News on my Google Reader, I can’t use data via a public interface to create things like a desktop uploader or a cool mashup. In other words: deviantART is closed, outdated and monolithic and is clearly missing how the Internet is evolving, and a fine example of that is their FAQ item #335:
Are RSS feeds available?
to be updated……….
