haniblog

CubeCheater helps you solve your Rubik’s Cube and it does this in a very clever way. You take photos of the six sides, it analyses them and then works out a step-by-step solution! You can manually enter the colours of course but by using the iPhone’s camera it moves this App from useful to “look what I can do with my iPhone” cool. At 59p it’s a bargain. Here’s a demo of how it works.

Boy was I wrong. I capitulated and bought the package and from the quick play with iPhoto and iMovie I’ve completely revised my opinion. iPhoto is fast fast fast now. Faces is just phenomenally fun and Places is just, well, cool. 

Okay, I’ll post a more in depth review later. I’m off to eat humble pie now.

I just noticed that the new series of Lost is on iTunes in 720p! At £2.49 per episode compared to £1.89 for SD it’s not a bad deal. The whole season pass costs a bit more, £41.99 for HD or £31.99 for SD. Bring on 1080 now!

The first time I saw a Macintosh was when I visited my brother Jamal in San Francisco when I was almost 18. He had a Macintosh Plus and I was absolutely amazed by it. The Finder! Cut, Copy & Paste! MacPaint! MacWrite! A 3.5″ floppy! The  Menu! And most significantly, the Mouse!

It’s amazing that I still have the same thrill using my Mac today that I did then, 25 years later.

As a fitting celebration, here’s a video of Steve Jobs introducing the first Macintosh. Happy Birthday Mac!

   

7up, originally uploaded by graphicology.

I love browsing Flickr. This gallery by design website Graphicology caught my eye. The photos compare how logos in products get translated to Arabic and it’s all very clever to be honest. To match the look and feel of a well-known design but in a different language isn’t the easiest of tasks. My brother Jamal does this for Artobrand, his design company.

The 7up logo in Arabic is a direct phonetic translation, where the UP is set in the 7 formation and SEVEN is the style of the English UP.

Cool.

President Obama. Has a nice ring to it.

Former President Bush. Has a nice ring to it.

Here’s to hope, progress and peace. Congratulations everybody!

For the past few years I’ve had a little Apple-related ritual. Whenever iLife is released I walk over to the Apple Store in Regent St and buy it. iLife ’06 and ’08 (they skipped ’07 I think) sit on a shelf in the study upstairs.

The one application from the suite that gets used much more than the others is iPhoto. iPhoto ’06 was a slow, clunky beast but I still faithfully used it to organise, tag and upload to Flickr (using Connected Flow’s FlickrExport) and even created and ordered one or two hardcover books. The ’08 version was much faster and the Events feature was fun to use.

iMovie ’06 was simple and straightforward. ’08 had me scratching my head a few times and came to the conclusion that I preferred the previous version. As for iDVD ’08, I don’t think I even launched it once. That’s no reflection on the software which I think is pretty good but times have changed. The ’06 version was used and used a lot. Garageband is great for recording scratch tracks for work and the ’08 release had a very handy Movie layer to sync voiceovers.

The one app I never used was iWeb. The fact that it doesn’t talk to TypePad, WordPress or Blogger was a great disadvantage and even though I know that it isn’t tethered to .Mac/MobileMe, it still feels constrained.

So, iLife ’09 is the one that’s going to break my little ritual. The one I have no interest in buying. Faces and Places? My D60 doesn’t have a GPS function (there is a third party shoe-mounted one apparently) and I can tag my photos with the person’s name. iMovie? No thanks, Final Cut Pro does the job a lot better. If iDVD had BluRay support it would be really interesting as opposed to being nearly useless now.

There isn’t a single feature that would compel me to buy this version, not one. Does anyone else have a different opinion?

This is the first serious competitor to the iPhone. I just finished watching the Pre introduction video at CES and was very, very impressed with it. The software is smooth and the first true multi-tasking system I’ve seen in a mobile and dare I say, better than the iPhone. Even the wireless Touchstone induction charger is well thought out.

No word on price yet and availablity in the UK and Europe but if whichever network bags the exclusive deal and matches O2′s all-inclusive free data then this is going to be a big hit.

Alright Apple, here’s your competition. What are you going to do about it?

I’ve avoided talking about the health kick Gillian and I have been on, until now. Yesterday I walked into a shop and bought jeans in a size I never thought I would get into.

We started doing the Lighter Life diet, a Very Low Calorie Diet, where you abstain from food for 8 weeks (or 14 weeks for women!) We existed on a 500 calorie intake per day, on powdered soups, shakes and bars. We also went to weekly counseling sessions to help us think about diet in a healthier way.

As the chart above shows, I dropped from 18 stone (114.5kg) at the end of September to 13 stone 11 pounds (87.5kg). That’s over 4 stone or 27 kilos in a little over 3 months. I went from buying jeans sized 40-inches to 34-inches. Thirty-four inches. I can’t remember the last time I was this size.

I’m gradually introducing food to my diet, going to the gym several times a week and I feel great. Now the trick is to keep the weight off.

PS, that little blip upwards towards the end of the chart is the result of having a good time this Christmas. Scared the life out of me though!

I signed up for Amazon’s new Prime service a couple of days ago and so far it’s been really impressive. It costs around £47 annually and all orders that are in the Prime category (which is massive) are delivered the next day for free. There is also an Evening Delivery option which is a bit expensive at £14.67 per order but mind-blowing. If an order is placed before 11.30am it will be delivered the same day between 6.30pm and 9.30pm on weekdays or between 2.30pm and 5.30pm on weekends (and that’s both weekend days as well.) So far it’s only for address within the M25 and Birmingham.

I placed an order midday yesterday and it arrived this morning before 9am. Now that’s service!