Revolutionary Demo

Today I paid a visit to the Flock Website, in hopes of checking up on how the little jack-of-all-networks browser’s development was coming along. The page that met my eyes left me in a state of puzzlement, shock and disbelief. I was half hoping that it was all some sort of elaborate joke, but alas, it’s all real.

It seems as though the powers that be decided that the “boring” old Flock page needed a facelift. What we see here folks is plastic surgery gone horribly, horribly wrong. These surgeons are clearly not qualified to be hacking and slashing at a once-beautiful Web entity.

Thar she blows. The brand new Flock page. What a colossal disaster. And no, the extent of this apparent trainwreck isn’t just skin deep, oh no. The underlying markup looks like it was printed on A4 paper, shredded and pasted back together again.

To refresh our memories, here’s a screencap of the “old” Flock design. Skillfully hand-crafted by Bryan Veloso, it embodies the very essence of simplistic beauty. All that Flock stands… or stood for.

I, for one, have completely lost faith in the project. I was initially interested in seeing what kind of progress had been made with the browser, but now I just can’t bear to look at the thing.

Flock that!

An Update

After a lengthy conversation with Evan Hamilton, Flock’s Community Ambassador, I’ve made a discovery or two. It turns out that the new Flock design was actually contracted out to an external agency. Flock have since hired an in-house designer, who, according to Evan will be able to properly communicate their visual ambitions. Evan mentioned the difficulties that arise when contracting a design over a large geographical distance, and I fully understand.

I must say, I was very impressed with Evan’s response during our back-and-forth, he was wonderful to chat with, seemed to take notice of my criticism and suggestions, was not offended by this harsh article and just came across as genuine. Consider my faith in the Flock project restored.

ForWebdesigners.com is a popular web designers and developers resource. It not only offers user submitted links and ratings, but the site also offers a unique search component where designers and/or developers can advertise their website for a (user-defined) monthly cost. With their auto-budgeting system, advertisers set a monthly budget and only pay when they get traffic.

Checkout ForWebdesigners.com, and let me know if you find it useful. Also, if you find any other useful websites out there, please contact me!

Corkdump.com is a customizable resource for designers and developers that I think is really cool! In an effort to be completely upfront, I will tell you that I recently purchased the site…but it is still cool! And since there is no revenue model, I think I am at liberty to share.

Maybe it is me, but there were so many things I like about the site. First off, I thought the design was interesting and functional. It’s run with MySQL, PHP, and a bunch of AJAX. Here’s how it works:

Basically, visitors come to the site, check out the resources, then favorite them (by clicking the heart) if they like a particular resource. They can then come back to the site to find all of there favorite resources all on one page.

The resources are then sorted by how many people favorited a particular one (highest rated ones first). Users can also customize how the categories appear on the page. You just click, drag and drop and then hit the “Save Category Order” button to save your settings instantly.

Users can also submit (for review) websites that they like, or sites that they think others would like. It is nice that users do not have to register to get the full functionality out of the site as it is cookie based. The potential downside to that is if you loose your cookies. Ah…but technology to the rescue! After the first time you use the site, a new graphic will appear that says “Like using CorkDump?”. Just click on that link, and the system will email you a link that will fully restore your CorkDump cookies should you need it.

So, check it out and leave me comments about what you think. Is it cool, or is it lame?

I have to throw this out to the readers. I have been contemplating purchasing an iPhone for a few weeks now. I so do NOT want to stand in line at an Apple store (I am impatient that way). I also do not want to be tied into a 2-year AT&T plan. My current provider is T-mobile. I like the service, and I am on a good plan.

From what I understand, the iPhone can be unlocked to work on the T-mobile network. Has any of you had any experience with this? I believe I will have to go with a G2 Model as the new G3 can’t yet be unlocked to work with other networks.

Man, these things are sweet…and expensive! On Craigslist & eBay an unlocked G2 is running around $300-$400. Still on the fence about the whole thing. I read that there are a lot of scammers and issues with unlocking the phone to work on other networks.

…we’ll see!

I first want to start out by thanking Matt for giving me this opportunity. With this opportunity comes great pressure following in Matt’s footsteps. By the nature of WebRevolutionary’s past readership, he truly has done a remarkable job here!

That paragraph was easy…now its on my shoulders to provide something here that readers actually want to read! I suppose I should start by telling folks who I am and what my plans are for WebRevolutionary. Before you turn-tail and run, you have to give me this! After this brief introduction, I promise to write about very pertinent nonsense.

As Matt mentioned, my name is Ed (Eddie) Harrison, and I too am a “web addict”. I am married with two beautiful girls. Originally from Cleveland, OH, I now reside in Las Vegas, NV. I have been fortunate enough to work on the net full-time for around nine years. In a nut-shell…I’m a bit creative, entrepreneurial, and always looking for the next easy big thing. Somewhat techie, but I don’t have enough energy to be bleeding edge. I own (and have owed) many websites. I have gone back and fourth between being poorish, and being fairly well off.

I am not going to bore readers here with a lot of details about my life and career path in this post. If you are interested in these nauseating details, you can read WebRevolutionary’s About page once I update it in a day or so. The main reason I will post more details there is because I hope to inspire others regarding the potential (and pitfalls) of being a web entrepreneur. It truly has been a ride!

At this point, I don’t have an exact blueprint for what WebRevolutionary is going to evolve into. But I do plan on continuing to provide more WordPress themes, some tech reviews, and some business and SEO discussions. I love involvement, and hope that readers comment and contact me with ideas and/or criticism. I would also like to have a few contributing writers. If your interested, send me your thoughts and qualifications via the “Contact” button at the top.

That’s it! Remember, I’d love to hear from you. ~Eddie

Now this is just super slick. Using some sort of freaky combination of sound recordings, live video and 3D CGI visualization, boffins at NASA’s Space Science Lab (UC Berkley) have devised a way to visually represent the invisible forces of magnetic fields in video available at Animate Projects. Check it out.

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries . All action takes place around NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries . Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers’ produced by fleeting electrons . Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?

Take a peek at the Magnetic Movie page for a more detailed description and another video.

Apple’s minimalistic, aesthetic-focused product design philosophy seems to work very successfully in nearly every product they produce, bar one glaring exception; The Apple Mighty Mouse. For some reason, this product is, frankly, an ergonomic nightmare. Oddly, it seems to be shaped like some sort of alien pod from the future/space, not formed subtly to the natural flow of the human hand like you’d expect from a direct input device. This means that not only is it difficult to use (I sometimes find myself contorting my hand in wrist-tingling ways just to complete certain tasks as a part of my daily routine web-browsing and designing) but even more annoyingly, the pitifully tiny and strangely shaped scroll ball just stopped working for me a couple of weeks after purchase.

At first it wouldn’t scroll down, then upwards motions stopped registering and finally it just completely stopped responding. Upon checking the Apple support forums I discovered a huge number of folks with similar issues, and none with a working solution (at least, for me).

So, being completely fed up and ready to hurl this little smooth white hunk of useless shiny plastic through the wall, I ran out to a computer store and picked up the Logitech MX Revolution, having read such positive reviews for the thing by some respected bloggers (namely Glenn Wolsey).

And wow, what a difference! I honestly can’t believe I’ve been using anything else over the past years. This mouse feels absolutely comfortable to hold, and has more features than ever imaginable. I’ve now set it up to have complete control over my iTunes, I can increase/decrease volume, skip forwards and backwards between tracks, play and pause the current track and even hit the “quick search” button to bring up CoverSutra’s awesome input box to skip to specific tracks by typing in keywords.

This is the best mouse I’ve ever held in my hand, and is in stark contrast with Apple’s rounded thing. If you’re considering a new mouse, then be sure to read more about the MX Revolution, and by god, think twice before grabbing the Mighty Mouse.

I’ve been stunned by some of the design that’s being showcased using the brand new Sharpfolio theme, and today I’ve uncovered three wonderful designers who’ve chosen to use it to present their work to the world.

Tim May, Ryan Klaverweide (who found a use for white.css, which will be a part of future versions) and Ali Salem have made me very proud by choosing Sharpfolio to display their beautiful work.

Here’s a couple of my favourites. Click the images to view their full portfolios.

And just remember, you’re absolutely welcome to slice, dice, rip, tear and modify the Sharpfolio theme in any way, actually, I encourage it. Use it however you wish.

Leave me links in the comments here to show me your awesome work in Sharpfolio, or what you’ve done with it.

I’ve just rolled out a massive update to Sharpfolio, my WordPress Portfolio Theme. There’s a heap of new features, including things that many of you’ve been asking for like comment support, automatic “lightboxing” and image resizing, custom pages and a completely re-worked design.

Since this is a complete refresh, there’s bound to be a couple of outstanding issues (from my personal testing it’s fairly air-tight), and I’d love to hear what you think, so if you’ve got any comments be sure to throw them my way.

Enjoy.

In my opinion, there are no mobile phones in the market today that deserve to be labeled an “iPhone Killer”, or even a rival to Apple’s holy device. However, that doesn’t mean to say that I think the iPhone is the best phone on the market, there just isn’t much yet that is geared the same way.

But there’s one device that is slated for release in the second half of 2008 that has really got me excited. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 looks absolutely gorgeous, with an amazing 800 x 480 pixel resolution, 3 inch screen (compared to 320 x 480 pixel for the iPhone), supporting basically every network standard and a featuring full QWERTY slide-out keypad (along with full touch-screen capability). The software is based on Windows Mobile, but Sony Ericsson have put a huge focus on building the user interface, in an attempt to appeal to the iPhone generation. Coupled with full GPS functionality, Google Maps, WiFi, Video Calling, and a slew of other features, it really looks like the iPhone will have a worthy opponent later this year.

If you’re as enthused as I am about the upcoming release of this device, then I suggest subscribing to inexperia to stay as up to date as possible with the latest developments.