Gillico

In the Spring of 2010, I was writing for a small tech blog, and was asked to produce a piece about the forthcoming iPad. I’d never seen or used one, but I did a bunch of research about it and, as usual, formed a fairly negative opinion about Apple’s latest introduction before ever using it. It reminded me of my reaction to the introduction of the iPod, when I said that first no one would want to carry a portable disk drive with music on it, then I said no one would want to carry around their photos, nor watch video on such a small screen. At least I am consistent. In any case, the piece never ran, I stopped writing for the blog, and then went out and got an iPad for myself.

Here in three parts is my take on the iPad- before owning one, now that I have one, and essential Apps on my iPad.

posted on Sunday, August 29th, 2010 in design, technology, tips, web
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I thought I’d take a moment and give a shoutout to all my buddies at the EFF and remind everyone about all the good work they do protecting freedom of speech online! ›› Bloggers’ Rights | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

posted on Saturday, June 5th, 2010 in law & politics, outlinks, social networking, tips, web
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My 90 year old stepfather was just recently claiming to my mother that kids didn’t pick on each other back in his day. When she told me about it, we nodded knowingly, smiled, and agreed he has a touch of the old-timer’s. Anyone who is a kid, has been a kid, or has a kid of their own knows that bullying is a big problem, at home, at school and on the playground. But with the advent of the internet, it’s moved into an entirely different arena- online, and taken a new name- cyber-bullying.

posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 in communication, social networking, tips, web
1 comment »

Chris Ball is the lead software engineer for One Laptop Per Child, who is a geek and wears t-shirts and has an Android phone, pretty much like a lot of the rest of us.

But recently, a local electronics retailer had a promotion where they gave away free parts to 1000 people, and Chris was one of the lucky ones to participate.

Chris made off with $100 in free electronics and decided, with the help of his wife Madeline, to put them to use in a way no one had ever thought of before- making a t-shirt that keeps count of unread emails! Right there on the front of the t-shirt, using LEDs, it keeps a total count of how many messages are waiting to be read in the Inbox. It uses an Arduino Lilypad and Bluetooth dongle to talk to his Android phone and the count displayed right on the shirt for everyone to see!

posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 in design, social networking, technology, tips
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Admit it, you watch Dr. Who, and you never miss an episode. You love Tom Baker and his stripey muffler best, but you think the new guy is doing a pretty darn good job so far.

And, you’re probably one of those types who likes to collect knick-knacks from your favorite sci-fi shows, too, right?

Think Geek‘s got you covered! The 10th Doctor’s sonic screwdriver was sadly destroyed… But, like Madonna’s career, thanks to the power of the TARDIS, it keeps coming back! Each Doctor has had a different sonic screwdriver, and this latest one is a little bigger and features the power of green light to work it’s magic.

You, too, can own one, and impress your friends while you make imaginary repairs to your inter-dimensional post boxes and time warp conduits, prepare your cube for impromptu time travel or just look cooler than the Star Wars kid.

Sound effects, springy action, and best of all, batteries included, just for $25.99! DO NOT DEVIATE!

posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 in design, tips, Uncategorized
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Sometimes when you’re bored, you put your name into Google just to see the results, right? I’ve done it, you’ve done it, we’ve all done it… Then that gets boring, so you start looking for other stuff, just to see what you can find.

The staff of Nina Hale Search Marketing compiled some of the funniest and weirdest searches that they charted on Google over the past three months from their clients’ accounts, and found:

1. gloves that people can shoot out web
2. wool gangster shirts
3. what were the boots worn by Tom Selleck in Quigley Down Under
4. do tuna cook while they swim
5. who invented friction
6. kitten smells like rotten eggs
7. is turkey poop brown
8. what is tuna made of
9. what does Farrah Faucet look like
10. did duck hunting change the world

…continue reading »

posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 in communication, social networking, tips, web
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I’m sick and tired of having to design a website more than once every time I make one. Anyone who designs websites knows what I am talking about. You design it to W3 standards, which works for every modern browser like Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera, and then you go back and make it work as well as you possibly can in Internet Explorer.

Even though Microsoft has released version 8 and is developing version 9, they are notorious for having their own standards for the web all the way back to the first release of Explorer. They are fairly capricious about which parts of CSS IE respects, and instead insist upon using their own set of “filter” commands to complete a small subset of what CSS can do.

Because it is the default install browser for Windows, it commands a large market share. The statistics on my websites show that IE users account for between 40 and 70% of my traffic. So I can’t dismiss it, as much as I would like to. But anyone who is reading this site, or is even slightly technically inclined, knows that their internet experience will be enhanced by using any other browser. Even my 90-year old stepfather surfs the web with Firefox.

posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 in design, tips, web
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I was going through my RSS feeds yesterday, when, to my surprise, I came upon a glowing review of the tech blog I used to write for. “Techi.com Will Not Bore You” proclaimed the headline! And when I clicked through, I read a shining review of how original the content and magnificent the site was. Surprisingly, for a design site, there was no mention of the site design itself, which, at least from this designer’s standpoint is plain, at best.

The sentence that really caught my attention, however, was “I’m familiar with the guy behind this project and can honestly say he knows what he is doing.” I, too, am familiar with the guy behind this project. His name is Walter Apai, and he is also the guy behind Web Design Depot, a clearinghouse for web design links that has had middling success on the web. He’s also a self-admitted control freak, micro-manager and will freely admit to knowing little to nothing about technology or how to run his business. From what I gathered while working together, he got lucky once and is hoping to replicate his success with Techi.com.

posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 in communication, social networking, tips, web
13 comments »

I don’t really want to bitch wildly, but there has been an undercurrent I’ve noticed around a lot of sites and services lately that has caused me no end of frustration, and I want to take some time to discuss my recent experiences with:

Customer service.

Those fifteen letters might as well be a four letter word, the way they make people feel lately. Yeah I know we’ve been in a recession; my wallet has felt it as much as everyone else’s. But so many companies have decided that the the fastest and easiest way to “trim the fat” is to cut back on their customer support services.

posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 in communication, eponymous, tips
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When you want to sell it, keep it believable. Hire a pro to make it look right, not like silk-screened Pop art. Link

Related topics via Technorati: bad photoshop, retouching, hack job .

posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 in advertising, design, outlinks, photography, tips, web
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