Since six months ago, when I all but recommended a prospective tablet buyer to go the Samsung Galaxy Tab, things have changed, a lot. Back when I got the Galaxy Tab, I was impressed, it was portable, beautifully build and a pleasure to use.
In hindsight, it was nothing more than a 7″ version of the Android phone I already carry with me every day.
Time for a bit of background…
I find myself reading, these days about the way things have changed lately in the world of computing. Not entirely oblivious, because like it or not it affects my every day life.
Sitting here today, six months after my last post here on the blog, I look back and I am astonished at how much things have changed since I posted about some of the things here.
Technology moves fast, very fast, and six months is more than ample time to be left out of this game. Me, Im still in the game, I have to be, its my passion, technology is what I live for, but this blog, its been left behind and I feel it’s time to bring it up to date for all 3 of you, my (once, and short lived) regular readers. (I kid, but only half) .
For myself at least, things have really changed over the last year, I graduated university and moved on into the big wide world. That isn’t even half of how things in the world of computing has changed for me though.
I want to write a little mini series that covers some of the key things that are affecting me as of late, and share my views and opinions of how I feel they could affect the rest of you.
Some of what I am about to say may seem contradictory to what I have said before, but if you see it the way I do, its evolution, change is necessary, and I welcome change.
I will start the series with the most fitting, I feel, of topics, since my last post regarding the choosing of an Android tablet; Choosing an Android tablet, take 2…
The point of this post, is to give my perspective, and opinion on Android Tablets, and hopefully give some insight to a potential buyer of android devices and tablets. If you’re looking for a comparison with Apple’s iPad, you’re in the wrong place. For me, Apple’s business strategy is transparent, you give them your money, then they tell you how you can use the device you now own (or do you?). Anyway, enough about Apple. Android is open-source, you do with it as you please. if something isn’t available as standard, you can bet someone has written some code to make it happen.
If you’re reading this you have probably looked into Android Tablets and are looking to decide which one to go with or whether or not you should buy one. If you want the short answer it is: Yes, buy a Samsung Galaxy Tab. It is by far the best Android Tablet available to date. As an Android user, and developer, I have used several devices, and seen the progression of the OS from the start. The point of this article is to give you some key points that you can use in making a decision on buying an Android device, not necessarily just a tablet.
Before I begin, I would like to cover some of the boring background stuff that I feel is important to understanding the reasons for the points I make. It all starts with the birth of Android. Later I will cover some of the important points like screen type, hardware manufacturer and Android Market.
Read on to get the low-down on how to decide on which android device to choose.
As I recently posted on my personal blog. The company I work for has just released our first Animated Children’s Book on the Android Platform (coming soon to iPad and iPhone). The book, entitled “The Greedy Sqirrel” teaches the lesson of being greedy and how the squirrel’s greed and love for nuts lands him as a tasty meal for the cunning fox. Beautifully illustrated, with the option to read to yourself or have the narrator read the story, the book is now available on Android Phones and Android Tablets (optimized for the Samsung Galaxy Tab) and will available very soon on Apple iPad and Apple iPhone.
*UPDATE* Now Available on iPhone and iPad.
Follow the link through to my personal blog for screenshots and a scannable barcode that will take you directly to the Android Market to buy the book.
[Via Hamid]
Contrary to what a lot of people have been led to believe, Windows (Microsoft) is not your only option for a computer operating system. Far from it. Now, I’m aware that a lot of people may have heard a lot of things about Linux both good and bad, but I would like to outline some of the plus points here.
I give this advice as an avid Linux user. Don’t get me wrong, I use and love Windows, but Linux can offer me things, for certain purposes, that Windows simply can’t. I won’t go through some of the more unusual things I use, Instead I’ll just cover the important things for every day users.
Read on to find out why you’ll be using Linux before you know it.
I am incredibly honoured to have been asked by the Why! Create community to write an article on “The Importance of Technology in Creativity”.
As happy as I am to speak on technology, I will let their amazing community speak for its self because I simply could not do it justice;
WHY! Is a community led agency which connect fresh idea makers with diverse creative projects. We are burgeoning professionals, graduates, and students coming together for mutual benefit. We are looking for energy, ideas and talented, passionate people.
We foster new relationships, industry experience and new ideas. By creating new relationships between people who are otherwise struggling to find each other, we hope to generate a buzz that will stimulate action. Our working motto is “Get out there and do it” and our work is facilitating that attitude in others
WHY! is Community
WHY! is Creative Energy
You can view the article via the Why! Create website Here.
One of the first, things I see when asked to fix a computer for someone is their wallpaper. More often than not they have an image that is either too small, stretched to fill the screen with terrible quality, at times so bad that the subject of the image is barely discernible. Other times it’s tiles, or worst of all simply stretched, destroying the aspect ratio.
The aim of this article is to explain some very simple concepts to get a perfect quality wallpaper for your desktop every time. At the end I have attached a sample image, the wallpaper I use for my desktop in 1920×1080 resolution along with a template file for use with the GNU Image Manipulation Program (G.I.M.P). This can of course be applied to Photoshop or similar, but the aim of this blog is to provide solution using only free software.
So, before we begin there are a few important concepts that I need to discuss. Some slightly technical, some not so technical, but I’ll try to keep it to a minimum or I’ll get bored and never finish the article.
First off, we need an understanding of how a computer monitor works. Most monitors these days are flat-screen TFT or LCD type. What they stand for isn’t important, although you will easily find pages and pages of info on them if you do a simple Google Search. The important point is how these displays work. They are made up of Pixels, this is a contraction of two terms in fact, “picture” and “element”. Each little dot is a tiny element of the picture. Why does this matter? Well, the resolution of your screen is defined in pixels. For a picture to display as perfectly as possible on your display it must have at lest the same number of pixels as your display, preferably more.
If the resolution of your picture is more you can simply cut some off and it will fit. The best way I can explain this is as follows; If you take a photograph and a photo frame. You need to fit the photo in the frame to display it right? OK, so, we start with a picture that is too small, what happens? We have an empty space around the edges. Now imagine that paper could be stretched to fit the empty space. It wouldn’t like right anymore. However, if we start with a photograph that is too big we have a couple of options. First we could try and cram the photograph into the frame. It may fit, but it will be creased and rough and not very nice looking. The second, and preferred option is to take some scissors and cut some parts from the edge. Cut out the part of the picture that you like, exactly to fit the size of the frame, and you now have a perfect photograph for your frame.
The same goes for images on your screen. Resizing them causes the computer to do some “processing” on the picture. If you make an image smaller, the computer will guess which pixels to destroy and which to keep. In fact there are several complex methods that the computer can use to do this, some are excellent, some not so good, but none are perfect. It is impossible to re-size an image without destroying some data. Just as a computer allows you to make an image larger (by stretching). The computer will “guess” where to place new pixels and what colour to make them leaving you with a horribly distorted or “fuzzy” image.
What’s the solution? Get out the scissors. No, on the computer it is usually called “cropping” This allows you to “cut” areas from around the edge of an image, usually you select the piece you want to keep and it cuts out the rest. This method does not change the size of pixels, it does no processing on the image and it ends up as clear and perfect as it started, just smaller.
OK, so where to start? First we need an image, or we can make one (take a look at the template I included in the download). The image needs to be high quality and larger size (in pixels) than your screen resolution. If you can find an image exactly the same resolution as your screen then you can stop reading now, because it doesn’t need anything more doing to it. Just apply it. If you’re not sure how to find your screen resolution, it’s quite simple. It varies between different operating systems but in windows you can generally find it by right-mouse clicking on the desktop and selection properties. In Windows 7 it will show “Screen Resolution” when you right click. Older version will open up some display properties under which one of the tabs contains your screen resolution. As a side note. To get the best out of your screen, the “slider” in the screen resolution should be all the way to the right. This does not apply to CRT (the old, fat type of screens) because the might try to display resolutions they are not capable of and can in fact be damaged by doing this. If however you are using a flat screen you are safe. If the resolution doesn’t work simply wait a little while and it will revert t normal.
In order to crop our image we need an image editor. Photoshop works extremely well, but it costs a lot of money. There is an alternative, I use this one personally. The program is called “GNU Image Manipulation Program” shortened to “G.I.M.P.” Yes, I am aware that the name is somewhat “humorous”, but at least you won’t forget it now will you? G.I.M.P is an open source program released under the GNU license. Essentially, this means you can do what you want with the software’s code, so long as you give credit to the author for creating it. And if you wish to re-distribute it, you must give access to the “source” code from which it was created. But that is a book in it’s own right.
First, go download and install the G.I.M.P. from HERE. The install process should be fairly simple. Take note however of the advice I gave in the article HERE, on minimizing junk, because the G.I.M.P. has over 26MB worth of language files that you probably don’t want to install or will never use. Next, download the file attached below. It contains a PNG image 1920×1080 pixels. I’m assuming this is large enough to be the same size as or larger than most peoples displays. I know there are displays much larger, so that’s why included the template. You might be wondering now, how come this download is so small if this is such a large, high quality image? Well, it’s deceptively small. This is due to the compression I applied to the archive, I will write a whole article on compression, but for now, just know this. Inside that tiny file is over 14MB worth of image and template. I will reinforce the fact that it is always good to start off with a huge image with excellent quality, because it’s easy to shrink the size or reduce the quality, but to improve the quality of a poor image is impossible.
Now lets begin. I have laid out the “tutorial” into an easy 2-step picture guide for you below.
I promised a mobile theme for the site so that you can read all the useful information on the go, and here it is. This is based on the Carrington Theme with nothing more than a visual modification by me in order for it to match the desktop theme. I hope you enjoy using it with your mobile devices and viewing the blog on the go.
For the time being I have only modified the Smart phone theme for devices such as the HTC Desire that you see above. Once I get my hands on a less “capable” phone in order to see what I am doing, I will modify the simple theme to match too.
Enjoy.
Hamid’s I.T. now makes it easier to share the useful information you found. With easy links to share by Facebook, Twitter, download as PDF, email to a friend or even print to article. There should be no problems sharing any useful advice you find with your friends. I have chosen a group of the most popular sharing sites to begin with and will shape this more based on feedback.
I hope you find this new addition useful as the site begins to grow.
Those of you who like to play around with their computers a lot will be familiar with the need to “format” or what is sometimes incorrectly named “reboot” their hard drive (also misunderstood at times to refer to the tower type box of the computer containing it’s components. It does not.)
The reason for this need to “format” and “reinstall” your Operating System is because with time and use the hard drive gets filled with “junk”. I call it junk, because to most it is just that. Install logs, error logs, system logs, backup files, backup logs, update files, installation files, temporary files, internet content and much, much more.
Now, these files do of course serve their purposes. But most of the time, the average person doesn’t require them, and infact, back to my post on privacy and security, these files can at times be compromising, because esentially they keep track of everything you have done via your computer (to an extent).
There are several ways to minimise and reduce this junk, and I will cover a few here. The most obvious ones, at least t o me right now are the following; Install less, clean regularly, automate where possible/simple.
Ok, so that’s all good and well, but what does it mean? Well, Installing less means exactly that, install less to your computer. Now it doesn’t necessarily mean don’t install all the software you want, but it does mean at least do less of it. Programs that claim they will boost your RAM or improve performance are a load of cobblers. How cam you make your notepad have more space by filling it with notes? You can’t. You have to add more pages, or erase what’s already there.
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