Digital UK Design Blog

Today all of the UK’s major airports grounded flights in and out due to a volcanic ash cloud from the Icelandic erupting volcano Eyjafjallajökull. The impact of this can be seen visually on the Live Air Traffic website flightradar24.com. What would have been frenzied airway activity over England and Scotland has now been replaced my an eerie silence and clearance of planes. The yellow plane icons represent planes currently in flight, the blue crosses represent closed airports.

Impact of Icelandic Volcano seen on live air traffic

Icelandic Volcano grounds UK flights

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Opera Mini Web browser for the iPhone, iPod and iPad has only just launched yesterday but has already dominated globally Apple’s App Store in the Top 10 Free apps section. Below is a screen grab of the App Store which shows the free browser at position 1 in every country Apple currently serves.

Opera Mini Web Browser position 1 in every country in Apple's App Store

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Web design for the world

The second you launch your brand new, painstakingly thought-out and designed website onto the World Wide Web, you’re instantly global – anyone in the world (with a web connection) can and may stumble upon your site. It’s worth considering, then, that 78% of the 1.8 billion current web users do not speak English as a first language (Internetworldstats.com).

So if your website is designed solely with an English-speaking, western audience in mind, that’s less than a quarter of your potential online audience who’ll be interested in visiting your site. Crucially, for those sites with business in mind, research also shows that 85% of consumers will not buy from a website if they can’t read about the product in their own first language (Common Sense Advisory, 2006).

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Did you know how slow you run?

April 9, 2010 | Fun | Gary Hartley | No Comments »

Did you know how slow you run? Well if you’re anything like this guy, an average guy running in a suit, you’re pretty god damn slow. During this 50 yard sprint he topped out at 15.9mph which seems quite fast at first glance for a fat guy in a suite, then you overlay a selection of other runners with differing speeds and it’s pretty clear this guy would never make the bus.

I thought I was fast until I learnt my 5ft 4″ girlfriend could run the 100 metres over 2 seconds quicker at school. Maybe a am really slow, though I’ve been told you’re only as slow as your fastest competitor.

Apps for the Apple iPad The embargo is over and I can finally announce that I have not had an iPad to play with or review for the past week (not like that Andy Ihnatko fellow). Yes, I signed an embargo to not say that I didn’t have an iPad before the release. I’m terrible about contracts (I have 8 time shares, 4 adopted children, 2 wives, and an endorsement deal from Rita’s Water Ice). Now that I can finally talk about the fact that I have nothing to talk about, I thought I’d share my (completely made up) review of Apple’s new iPad.

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Just stumbled onto this fantastic Colour Theory Quick Reference Sheet For Designers and wanted to share it.

If you’re fresh into Graphic Design and wish to learn the Art of Colour Theory then this reference sheet is a great starting point. Did you know ‘Chroma’ means how pure a hue is in relation to gray. The colour purple portrays royalty, power, nobility, wealth, ambition, dignified and mysterious. CMYK is subtractive starting from white and RGB is additive, starting from black.

This reference sheet was created by and copyright to Paper Leaf Design, thanks for creating it guys.

Yesterday, Microsoft made a first developer preview of Internet Explorer (IE) 9 available for download from www.IETestDrive.com.

IE9 Test Drive

The IE 9 Platform Preview doesn’t include the IE 9 user interface; instead, it is the plumbing, specifically the new Microsoft JavaScript engine (which is codenamed “Chakra”) and the new graphics subsystem, coupled with a home page full of test sites. There’s no back button and no built-in security. It’s basically the IE 9 rendering engine and early developer tools.

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Well if you work in healthcare, or require high levels of infection control then a washable keyboard with ‘silver ion antimicrobial protection’ is for you! It’s also a pretty cool g33k office accessory! According to the BBC the average keyboard contains over 400 times as many germ microbes than lavatories, so having the option of cleaning it could be most appealing to the millions of office bound working around the world.

The Keyboard Company, a UK based company, have developed the world’s first antimicrobial washable keyboard called Silver Seal™ keyboard.

It keeps itself clean!

Silver, if you didn’t already know, is known as one of the oldest antimicrobial agents. Silver ions are thought to inhibit bacterial enzymes and bind to DNA. Humans have known about silver and its natural antimicrobial properties for thousands of years.

The ancient Phoenicians, who flourished around 1200BC, stored their water in silver bottles to prevent spoiling.

Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, noted in the 4th century BC that silver had beneficial healing and anti-disease properties.

Before the rise of antibiotics, during the first World War, silver compounds were used to prevent infection. Today, silver is widely used in water filters and in water tanks. In health care it is used in wound dressings and catheters…and now keyboards!

So…it’s up to the job ;-) Silver ion antibacterial technology rocks!

Get it bought lad

The Silver Seal keyboard retails at £29.00 ex. VAT so would make a great gift for a colleague of a self purchase. I personally would use it in the bath, or outside in the rain, just because, though I was never the smartest cookie in the jar…is that even a metaphor?

When I talk to people about getting the iPad, it’s pretty common for them to dismiss my enthusiasm for fanboyism (a word that gives me a headache, just trying to spell it “correctly”). I see this little device as the thing that will make certain tasks easier, and maybe even get me into old habits again. So, while I patiently wait, I’d like to share what makes me excited about the iPad:

Reading

Books on the Apple iPad I had an argument with a coworker the other day about how I just don’t read books. There isn’t a reason. I like books, and I like to read. I do it all the time with blog posts, news articles, and instructional writings. Honestly, the internet is probably the best thing to happen to my reading habits. The problem is that I’ve migrated to the browser, so my reading experience is looked at as browsing the web instead of the traditional kick-back-my-feet book reading. I know that there will be some kind of awesome news aggregator app designed specifically on the strengths of the ipad, and with the ibooks app, I will finally have a traditional ereader (or should it be ireader?). I might actually be able to find some comfortable middle ground between traditional reading and my browsing habits.

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S352U2RER.smallWhether you are an IT professional or a computer novice, choosing the right backup system to use at work or home is a difficult, and frankly uninspiring use of time, and one which almost always results in making undesirable compromises. There always seem to be far too many options and the good solutions come with a price tag that almost matches the cost of the system they were designed to support. A good backup system should satisfy, at least, the following requirements:

  • It should be affordable.
  • Operation should be reasonably well automated.
  • It should be easy to restore to one of several points in time.
  • There should be some redundancy.
  • It should be simple to store some backups offsite.
  • Media should be encrypted for security.

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