The relentless branding of the Internet

By tim, on August 29th, 2008 Follow tim on Twitter

For me, it started with Amazon affiliates. Before that, you mostly saw the Amazon brand on the Amazon site. After that, seemingly every web page you went to had Amazon somewhere on it.

Now we are into mash-ups and widgets; but inevitably it seems to be the big brands that dominate. Instead of going to

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August 29th, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized | One comment

Internet Explorer 8, FireFox 3 pop-under failure

By tim, on August 28th, 2008 Follow tim on Twitter

I attended a UK briefing for Internet Explorer 8 last night. An interesting product which I’ll be writing plenty more about – you can get it here. Installed smoothly on my Virtual Box Vista.

At the event I mentioned to someone from the IE team that it is annoying how pop-ups still somehow get round

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August 28th, 2008 | Category: internet, microsoft, software, web authoring | 3 comments

Apple rapped by ad standards body for not supporting Flash and Java

By tim, on August 27th, 2008 Follow tim on Twitter

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint (from all of two viewers) against an Apple ad which stated that “all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone”.

In its adjudication, the ASA stated:

Upheld The ASA noted that Java and Flash proprietary software was not enabled on the iPhone and understood

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August 27th, 2008 | Category: apple, internet, iphone, web authoring | 8 comments

Delphi and C++ Builder 2009 are available to order

By tim, on August 25th, 2008 Follow tim on Twitter

I’m choosing my words carefully, because although the CodeGear/Embarcadero site is now showing Delphi 2009 as the current version, if you click through to the order page it only offers a pre-order. Still, it must be done or thereabouts. US prices are as follows:

Delphi 2009: Pro $874.00;  Enterprise $1974.00; Architect $3474.00

C++ Builder 2009

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August 25th, 2008 | Category: c++, codegear, delphi, software development | 5 comments

Vista shell annoyances

By tim, on August 25th, 2008 Follow tim on Twitter

CodeGear’s Barry Kelly has a well-explained list of Vista shell annoyances. I don’t dislike Vista as much as Kelly but these things annoy me too, with the exception of the Start menu which I prefer in its Vista guise. Kelly doesn’t like the way Vista constrains it to a scrolling panel, but I find the

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August 25th, 2008 | Category: microsoft, vista, windows | 5 comments

Parts of EcmaScript 4 deemed unsound for the Web

By tim, on August 15th, 2008 Follow tim on Twitter

This was the conclusion of an EcmaScript meeting in Oslo last month. Specifically, as Brendan Eich explains, three features – packages, namespaces and early binding – were considered too heavyweight unsuitable for a browser scripting language. Here is Eich’s “Executive summary”:

The committee has resolved in favor of these tasks and conclusions:

1. Focus

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August 15th, 2008 | Category: .net, adobe, flash, internet, java, silverlight, software development | 5 comments

Detailed article on Microsoft’s Midori published

By tim, on August 15th, 2008 Follow tim on Twitter

The Software Development Times has an in-depth look at Midori by David Worthington, based on “internal Microsoft documents”:

SD Times has viewed internal Microsoft documents that outline Midori’s proposed design, which is Internet centric and predicated on the prevalence of connected systems.

Recommended if you are interested in what Microsoft is contemplating for a future

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August 15th, 2008 | Category: microsoft, software development | Leave a comment

Silverlight 2 threading issues, Quickstarts not working

By tim, on August 15th, 2008 Follow tim on Twitter

I’ve been working on a Silverlight tutorial involving reading an RSS feed. Silverlight has a SyndicationFeed class which is meant to make this easy – as Microsoft’s Scott Barnes enthuses here.

It is handy, but I discovered that the Quickstart Barnes refers to does not work in Silverlight 2 Beta 2. The

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August 15th, 2008 | Category: internet, microsoft, silverlight, software development, web authoring | Leave a comment

What’s new in Delphi 2009

By tim, on August 13th, 2008 Follow tim on Twitter

Today I viewed David Intersimone’s Live Webinar on what’s new in Delphi 2009, code-named Tiburon.

This is a Win32-only release. I think you will want it (if you use Delphi), if only for the new language-level features: generics, anonymous methods, and unicode strings. I grabbed a few screens from the presentation. Generics:

Unicode –

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August 13th, 2008 | Category: .net, codegear, delphi, software development | 9 comments

BBC iPlayer supporting H.264 in Flash – what’s the point of downloading now?

By tim, on August 13th, 2008 Follow tim on Twitter

The BBC’s streamed catch-up broadcasting, iPlayer, is about to be upgraded to the high-definition H.264 standard, according to this post, from the BBC’s Head of Digital Media Anthony Rose.

He says that the “Play high quality” option will be available “from this week”, though I couldn’t see any sign of it on a

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August 13th, 2008 | Category: adobe, bbc, flash, multimedia, silverlight | 2 comments
 
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