Google Web Designer – my take

kyriakos

Google Web Designer

Yesterday Google released a new design tool going by the name ‘Google Web Designer’. I installed it and played around a bit. It seems like they got carried away with the title cause it certainly isn’t a web design tool in the sense of Dreamweaver, its more of an animated banner creation tool. Its output is an ‘HTML5’ document (sorry for the cliche) and uses both Canvas 2D and 3D elements to create banners in a user interface that reminds me of Adobe’s Flash (still have nightmares of that) and Adobe’s new animation tool Edge Animate. If you ignore this app’s bad title, its a pretty decent tool for making banners for AdSense or other purposes. The code produced by the tool is not the leanest but works on modern browsers, and even on mobile. To see the extend of how much overhead is included check out this gist on github; the author created a new document, drew a rectangle with a sold color and saved and that was the result. This means that if you are making a very simple banner, the CSS and Javascript overhead can be substantial (consider that each banner on a page will be running on its own IFrame); on the bright site it can do things without coding that you’d normally need flash for without losing mobile compatibility. Moreover it allows you to create responsive ads; a feature that Google’s own AdSense product now supports (after many years of publisher requests).

Even if it’s destined for ads, it doesn’t mean you can’t use it to put together a single page website, but lets hope that Google Web Designer won’t be the beginning of another ‘Flash’-like era where Canvas is used instead of the Flash container plugin leading to bloated, hard to maintain, and non-indexable websites all over again.

You can have a look of how it works here:

and download it for free here:

High quality photography from simple cheap lenses using post-processing (Video)

kyriakos
Sample Results
Sample Results

There is a good reason why DSLR camera lenses are so expensive; in order to perfectly focus an image many lens elements are required making the whole system expensive to both to design and manufacture. But with the following research it seems like there is a high quality future for cheap lenses too. The research paper describes a way to post-process images, shot through a cheap single element lens and bring out the lost sharpness of the original image. The process works by calculating the way the image is distorted when passed through the lens and then reversing its effects. To do this they first shoot calibration targets and mathematically extract the distortion pattern for the particular lens. You can view the video below for more details:

I can see this having a good practical application in mobile phone imaging where due to the size of the optics its nearly impossible to include a multi-element lens.

Source: Project Home Page

Google Reader – my favorite website is shutting down – what are the alternatives?

kyriakos

The Facts

In a move that I fail to understand Google announced on the Google Reader blog that they will be shutting down their service for good on 1st July 2013 due to ‘decreasing number of users’. I and many others probably don’t think of course this is the real reason, Google Reader is one of Google’s cheapest to run products but it probably hinders parts of their greater agenda to push their social media platform Google+ (i.e. if you subscribe to an RSS feed you don’t need to follow the page on Google+ to get updated, so removing your RSS reader might push more users to Google+).Ā  Read More

PhpStorm – an IDE worth its name

kyriakos

I recently switched to JetBrains PhpStorm as my main IDE for PHP/HTML/JS/CSS development. I tried many solutions in the past such as Dreamweaver (please don’t try it), NetBeans, Aptana, Eclipse PDT, before settling with Zend Studio for quite sometime and finally a couple of months ago I gave ZendStudio the boot and switched to PhpStorm. I am currently using version 6.0 from the Early Access Program (the current stable is version 5) – and I am planning to buy it once 6.0 final is out. Read More

LaserVex – Very Challenging HTML5 Puzzle Game

kyriakos

LaserVex is a very challenging optics based game. Each level has one or more laser sources, a series of mirrors, a number of targets all on the same plane. The aim of the game is to hit all targets just by moving the mirrors around without moving the laser sources. It sounds and looks simple at first but after going through the first 4-5 levels you will start facing some real challenges. Its one of the hardest puzzle games I’ve played in a while.

It has a lot of potential and should be made available as a mobile app. The graphics are lacking a bit (its all lines basically on a canvas) and the controls need some work (moving a mirror requires yo to move both vertices) but the gameplay makes up for it.

If you don’t have time to waste please don’t try this game. You’ve been warned.

Check it out here.

How to take screenshots in Windows 8

kyriakos

Microsoft added a nice feature to Windows 8. Just hit Win + Prt Sc and you can get a full screenshot saved directly to your Pictures/Screenshots folder in 24 bit PNG format. No more fiddling with Paint or Snipping tool. Oh, and this key combination will also take screenshots of Metro apps not just Desktop.

Nexus 7, iPad Mini and iPad 3 Drop & Water Test – Which survived?

kyriakos

SquareTrade have done their ‘scientific’ drop test for the (almost) latest tablets. You should generally ignore whatever the guy is saying since he’s utterly biased (he says iPad mini survived when you can clearly see the screen got cracked all the way. Then they go ahead and submerge each tablet in water, all of them survived this test, Apple’s products remained on while in water, while Nexus 7 powers down (which is the correct thing to do when any electronics get dropped in water). The guy automatically suggests Nexus 7 doesn’t work but you can clearly see that its booting.

Android 4.2 Photo Sphere feature – a real innovation

kyriakos

Android 4.2 comes pre-installed on LG Nexus 4 which was announced yesterday (which seems like a great phone for its price, Quad Core Snapdragon S4 SoC, 2GB RAM, 720p display, 4.7inch screen and all the usual bells and whistles for 299 USD). One of the new features of 4.2 is the upgraded camera app which has a new shooting mode called Photo Sphere. It’s the next evolutionary step in the Panorama mode that digital cameras and camera-phones had for years, it allows you to shoot multiple photos from a single point and it automatically stitches them together seamlessly without any user effort. Unlike panoramas, it works both vertically and horizontally at the same time and you don’t really need to align edges manually, just keep shooting to fill in the gaps. After you are done you can navigate your photo sphere the same way you’d look around in Google Street Map. View the video below to get the idea:

This feature will probably be copied by the usual suspect and it won’t be long before your friends start sharing their ‘surround’ photographic experiences on Facebook; now all we need is Instagram support so users can start ruining their Photo Spheres as well.