Tag: design
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Windows Metro Maoist cadres reach the desktop, and pound it flat
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Andrew Orlowski
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The revolutionary dogma of Metro is sweeping through the old Windows desktop, too, a new leak of Window 8 confirms. The leaked build, newer than the public release of a fortnight ago, abandons the 3D design elements introduced into Windows in 1990 for a resolutely two-dimensional world. The ‘legacy’ desktop in Windows 8 is denuded of anything that takes advantage of human depth perception, such as window shadows, gradients or sculpted controls.
It’s a flat, flat world.… Read More
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Compulsory coding in schools: The new Nerd Tourism
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Andrew Orlowski
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The writer Toby Young tells a story about how the modern 100m race is run in primary schools. At the starting pistol, everyone runs like mad. At the 50m point, the fastest children stop and wait for the fatties to catch up. Then all the youngsters walk across the finishing line together, holding hands.
I have no idea if this is true – it may well be an urban myth. But the media class’s newly acquired enthusiasm for teaching all … Read More
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Windows 8’s Metro means no gain for lots of pain
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Andrew Orlowski
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By far the most ill-judged design decision I can remember – AndrewThe public preview of Windows 8 has won “rave reviews” according to the Daily Mail, the newspaper that claims to reflect Middle England and is proudly conservative in every sense of the word. The Mail, it’ll have you know, is a feisty opponent of “change for the sake of it”.
So not only do I fear that somebody has spiked the water supply at the Kensington HQ … Read More
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Don’t shoot the Blackberry Messenger
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Andrew Orlowski
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BBM does things no web social network can do… it mirrors the flexibility of real lifeRIM’s fortunes have taken a catastrophic, Nokia-style nosedive in the past year – but it has a chance of pulling up. Admittedly, the odds are long, but this week the Canadian company began its fightback.
It’s certainly right up against it.
Fewer enterprise customers are dependent on RIM’s email servers. The trend to ‘bring your own’ device to work, one that works well enough … Read More
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Five ways to rescue Windows Phone
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Andrew Orlowski
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Windows Phone might be the most impressive bit of software Microsoft has produced – but it isn’t setting the world on fire. The iPhone and Android go from strength to strength – the latter proliferating so widely even Google doesn’t know how many Android systems are out there. (It can’t count the Chinese forks which don’t use any Google services and don’t phone home.)
This discrepancy puzzles people. Reviewers like WinPho a lot – it’s clean, fast, functional and … Read More
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The fabulous Muvizu
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Andrew Orlowski
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Tech startups that can truly be considered game-changers are rare – especially in Shoreditch. The more hype that the Silicon Roundabout “leisure startup” scene receives, the more painfully apparent it is that the emperor has no clothes – see these comments for example. Which is a pity, for less attention is paid to genuinely creative British tech startups.
I’ve rarely seen something as startling as Muvizu, the PC software from Digimania which allows a seven-year-old to start creating something a … Read More