UI pattern

Usually, most of us as designer needs to find a UI control or widget or pattern to do a job in a software or website. We end up looking for various controls from different website or software's or OS etc. The major confusion we have is what to use and when to use a particulars control, widget or pattern.

Here are links to few website that had solved and given answers to most of the common questions that we have:
http://ui-patterns.com/
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/index.php
http://patterntap.com/

For example, lets say we are thinking about calender control and why and when to use. We can easily follow these 2 links to find calender controls and there implementation in different websites:
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/pattern.php?pattern=calendar
http://patterntap.com/tap/ (click Collections > Select Calendards and then click Filter)
http://www.welie.com/patterns/showPattern.php?patternID=event-calendar
http://interface.fh-potsdam.de/infodesignpatterns/patterndetail.php?pattern=97

So, the result shows various calender controls used in different websites and what problem does that design element solves.

Biometrics on the iPhone?

So Apple files patents all the time for improvements on existing technology that they have, but recently they filed for something a little bit our of the ordinary. It looks like they are looking to incorporate biometric sensors in the iPhone and iPod Touch! Apple suggests that embedding biometric sensors in locations where users already touch devices is their plan. In the case of the iPhone, a patent drawing shows a biometric sensor embedded in the display sensors beneath the area of the screen that is used to unlock the device.

Other drawings also show sensors embedded in a notebook trackpad and on certain keyboard keys. The patent application discusses a number of other authentication methods, including facial feature recognition and even retinal scanning, although those may not be coming any time soon. I think we could see biometric sensor technology in the Apple laptops and the iPhone as soon as October 2009.

Gmail fails: Tech world grinds to a halt

There's calamity in Cloudland this morning as Gmail fell over rather majorly. Problems started at about 10.30 UK time affecting both individual and corporate Gmail accounts as well as some apps.
There's not a peep about the problems on the Official Google Gmail blog, but then that is run from the US. The communications team in London were unable to send out statements on what went wrong... because their email was down.

A spokesman said: "A number of users are having difficulty accessing Gmail and we're working to resolve the problem. We know how important Gmail is to users so we are taking this very seriously and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.

"We encourage anyone having technical difficulties to visit the Gmail help centre at mail.google.com/support."

The Gmail problem was flagged up immediately on Twitter, with many users, though not all, saying they had Imap access running as normal. So anyone being clever and running Gmail through Imap on a desktop email client or through their iPhone app may well be fine.

It is inevitable that this will happen from time to time. What it does prove is that the more data we entrust to the cloud, the more important it is that we have reliable backups in place.

A similar crisis occurred when Amazon Web Services went down almost exactly a year ago; thousands of web-based businesses rely on Amazon for their storage services and after two hours of downtime, users were observing that cloud computing can't become mainstream, certainly for businesses, until it becomes almost infallible.

Within minutes of the Gmail downtime unfolding, I was sent a very pertinent message on Twitter speculating on the cost of the problem:

"Let's count the cost: 25m users, 33% affected; average of $50 per hour lost productivity = $415m per hour economic cost..."

• Update: Two hours later, we're back up. I was asked to do a captcha as my request "looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus of spyware application" - which could well be a clue to the culprit. If someone out there did manage to hack the mighty Google, they will be feeling very chuffed with themselves, regardless of how much disruption they have caused. Now back to work...

Google vs MicroSoft

Google strengthens mkt war to take on Microsoft

NEW YORK, USA: Web search leader Google Inc took another step on Wednesday towards direct competition with Microsoft Corp by recruiting IT resellers to market its Web-based applications to business clients. From the end of March, authorized resellers will be able to sell, customize and support premium versions of Google Apps, which includes word processing, spreadsheets, calendars and email. Google Apps is broadly similar to Microsoft's top-selling Office package except that Apps is completely Web-based and is part of Google's push into so called 'cloud computing' or software-as-a-service. Microsoft said in October it is also looking at adding Web-based features for its Office applications. Since it launched Google Apps in February 2007, Google has only sold directly to business users over the Web. Analysts said the move to work with third parties is necessary if Google hopes to compete seriously with Microsoft or IBM. Microsoft, which is the world's largest software company, sells more than 95 percent of its software through more than 440,000 third party resellers, according to Gartner Research, and intends to spend around $3 billion on managing those sales channels in 2009. By comparison Google has so far only dipped its toe in the water, but sees a great opportunity after running trials with more than 50 resellers in 25 countries. It also has a 9-month old relationship with Salesforce.com Inc. "We feel that Google has had limited success in winning customers with a singular sales channel," said Tiffani Bova, an analyst at Gartner Research, who estimates Google has around 200,000 Premier customers. IT resellers typically sell services such as Web hosting, setting up servers and backing up data, as well as software to hundreds of thousands of end user businesses of all sizes. "This is a chance for those types of companies to get into the cloud computing revolution," said Dave Girouard, president of enterprise at Google. To win over new resellers, Google said partners will buy the Premier Edition at a 20 percent discount and keep the recurring revenue for the lifetime of their customer relationship. The search leader already offers a basic package of Google Apps for free to consumers, prompting some industry watchers to see it as a major threat to Microsoft's profitable "Office" business. But Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst at Nucleus Research, said Google is a long way from hurting Microsoft. "We've seen in the applications space that Google is a strong email competitor, but so far it is only a complement to Office -- not yet a replacement," she said. Google's move to offer applications is part of a wider drive to diversify its revenue base, which has been completely dominated by hugely profitable search advertising technology. As the advertising market comes under pressure from a slowing global economy, investors will likely be paying more attention to Google's small but growing businesses.

SKIGYM simulator lets you break a hip from the comfort of your living room

The Wii Balance Board may be all well and good if you want to play things safe, but those looking to up the danger level a tad will no doubt want to give this new SKIGYM simulator some serious consideration, with it promising to improve your skiing ability and give you a workout in the process. Apparently, you can either hook the fully-motorized device up to your PC and play the included Alpine Ski Racing game, or simply use it on its own as a piece of exercise equipment -- we're guessing it's also only a matter of time before someone uses it to control a robot. Not surprisingly, this piece of living room clutter will also put quite a dent in the old bank account, with it running €1,649, or roughly $2,300.



Source

IPhone Tutorial

http://www.icodeblog.com/

• This is my first individual experience regarding the tutorials
• This blog i have found the best one regarding the approach and the modularity
  
• It has got the latest tutorials on latest MAC OS X 10.5.5 and X Code 3.1

Three Upcoming Web Technologies that Work Offline

Google launched Gears Beta Web Application ,which is an open source browser extension. It lets web applications provide offline services.

Advantages:

Database installation on client system
Uses data from local cache
Synchronizes data in the cache with online services.
During unavailability of network, synchronization is deferred.


Adobe launched Air:

According to Adobe , Adobe Air is a cross-operating system runtime that allows web application developers to use their existing web development skills (HTML, Javascript, Adobe Flash®, Adobe Flex™, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop.
In other words, Adobe Air helps users to update their information to the url once they connect to the internet.

Advantages:

Installation files can be much smaller
Allows integration of the technologies together (Flash, HTML, PDF) on a much lower level than may otherwise be feasible.
Standardized and consistent security model for Adobe AIR applications and users.


Microsoft launched Silverlight.:

Silverlight is termed as a rich plugin for browsers. Its focus is on animation, graphics and video playback capabilities of Windows Presentation Foundation.

Advantages:

Supports the display of high definition videos.
Microsoft to host silverlight media files and applications to stream large media files.