Crowdfunding has been steadily proving itself as a viable way for increasingly commercial projects to seek upfront financial support from their customers, yet up till now, no-one has attempted anything quite as big as the £32m Ubuntu Edge project. Ubuntu Edge aims to build and ship 40,000 mobile phones, all running Ubuntu. It’s already breaking records and I want to give you three reasons...
I conducted 5 qualitative interviews with developers and here are some findings. You have two problems. The first problem is to design the API. The second is to help people learn to use it. Great API design Is consistent, predictable, learnable. You are creating an API that developers will interact with. In the same way that a graphical user interface (GUI) might use visual design to provide...
Reading Roger Scruton’s essay in The Times made me think. I like that. The title of the article is ‘What has art got to do with beauty?’ – in a time of Turner prizes – a very interesting question I am sure you will agree. The article raises many interesting points and rather than dilute, I shall only address one of them at this time. This search for aesthetic order...
I commute. The price I pay for living where I want to and working where I want to is approximately 4 hours a day travelling; about 2 hours 10 minutes of which are spent sitting on a train. I undertake a whole range of activities while I travel: sometimes I sit and think, sometimes I catch up with friends (the Stella express we like to call it), I read, I listen to music, listen to books, work...
The Balkan Witch is now happily solar powered by the very friendly and helpful people at ecological hosting. Thank you to Jamie for all his help rescuing my blog. Why solar powered? It dawned on me that I bang on about the environment a lot but had failed to consider how much power was being consumed just keeping my little blog alive. I googled and am happy with the results. Now I can blog from...
I signed up for a free iSip trial.
It seems to be helping me get round the fact that my direct line simply refuses to be fixed!
Yay!
I like Line Rider. It reminds me a bit of a cartoon called La Linea (or Bajum Bajum!) that I used to watch when I was little. Now, thanks to Ajax web 2.0 wizadry we can make our own. Hurrah! It’s a long way from the Dragon 32 that I had when I was 8 and watching the afore mentioned cartoon. I could play chess, space invaders (not sure how the parents let the space invaders slip through but...
So here is quite an interesting article about the use of robots to replace humans in the workplace. “Just give it electricity, and a robot can work for long hours, even doing repetitive work, and you don’t have to worry about labor laws,” Sudo said. I can see the appeal from the business perspective but my first personal reaction was negative. It’s bad enough to be greeted...
Ivanka Majic works in technology. She was Head of Design for Ubuntu, service managed Digital Marketplace through to beta, was acting director of digital for the Labour Party. She lives and works in Brighton where she works with the council’s digital first team, does a bit of teaching at Sussex University, and works with her husband on projects like restaurantsbrighton.co.uk and the BRAVOs. She has also started a podcast with her friend Michael which you can listen to at grandpodcast.com.