nivas.hr blog
From the Nivas crew to the galaxy of unknown
# Blurry logos 2 - Facebook logo
Continuing post I made about Current logo, where I criticized the execution of their logo (and got awesome feedback from Current crew resulting in them changing logo), today I will be focusing on New.Facebook logo. As you know, Facebook redesigned some time ago, and in that redesign they shrunk their logo.
However, the execution of that shrinking was done so poorly that my eyes cry tears of blood every time I see that logo. The logo as it is now online is blurry in all directions, leaving a very unprofessional and unpolished feeling. Don't get me wrong, the designers of Facebook are my personal idols because I understand all the issues they had to overcome in creating/maintaining such a huge project, and whoever says New.Facebook sucks should be put out of it's misery.
However, the logo, IT IS KILLING ME. So I took some time to try and fix it.
Here are the results:
You can see how the crispy version looks so much better. So, Facebook guys, steal this logo, and slap it up, I will not mind.
Keeping the world sharp since '79.
Share and Enjoy:
developers journal | opširnije
# Sony DSLR A900 preview
Two days ago Sony presented new 35mm full-frame DSLR camera A900 in Student Center here in Zagreb. It’s first full-frame 24.5 MP DSLR with stabilization in body!
I had a few shots with it and camera is great. View finder with 100% coverage is excellent, big and bright. People complained that camera is heavy but I found it ok with 895 g, it is after all a full-frame camera. Bad points go to position of Auto focus points which are too close to center.
I tested it only a few minutes so a have only a few shots but here they are (right click -> save as):
ISO 400, 1/90 sec, RAW converted to JPEG in post processing (16.2 MB)
ISO 800, 1/125 sec, RAW converted to JPEG in post processing (16.9 MB)
ISO 1600, 1/200 sec, RAW converted to JPEG in post processing (20.2 MB)
ISO 6400, 1/3000 sec, RAW converted to JPEG in post processing (27.7 MB)
All shots are made with Zeiss ZA Planar T* 85mm f/1.4 ( Sony SAL-85F14Z ) at f/1.4.
As you see there is no visible deference between ISO 400 and 800:
At ISO 1600 and 6400 noise is visible:
ISO 6400, lots of grain, but still, it’s 6400 and the need for it is just in very special occasions.
More test and specification can be found on dpreview.com Sony Alpha DSLR-A900 Preview
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gadgetstechphoto A900 Sony DSLR photos | opširnije
# Diesel’s SFW Porn viral
The Viral Factory has collated clips of 80s porn in a humorous new viral to celebrate Diesel's 30th anniversary and its worldwide Dirty 30 party.
Do you want some more? 
spam | opširnije
# Nivas closed down in anticipation of Large Hadron Collider experiment
As some of you may or may not know, the Large Hadron Collider will be fired up in 2 days, on the 10. September 2008. CERN is making final preparations in the test that will, i hope, reveal what makes particles have mass. Once they confirm and isolate the mighty Higgs Bozon particle, in theory it should be possible to remove it making things have no mass, yet be solid objects. Neat stuff, eh? Here is something more on the LHC.
The problem is that on 10. September 2008. the Large Hadron Collider could also generate black holes that will suck up our dear Earth. The CERN is saying that the experiment is safe, and that there is no real danger of destroying earth. However, we have seen way too many movies where scientists say something is safe, and 5 minutes later everything goes to hell. Therefore, we decided why bother working for this 2 days, when on Wednesday it could all be over anyways.
If we survive, see you on Thursday.
Until then, see the LHC Rap:
And check out what we hope will not be the outcome:
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developers journal | opširnije
# Google Chrome
Clicky image to download!
Uh-oh, lots of drama today on the intertubes related to the Google's new project, a browser codenamed Google Chrome. The news hit the web, there was a lot of dust in the air, and Google removed the prematurely-put-online site. You can read more about Google Chrome in this nice comic.
And, as with all such hard hitting news people started speculating how will the internet react. Many of those people claim that Google will overtake browser market, and eat up all the rivals. Now, what I want to do here, is get one thing straight:
Everyone in Nivas uses Firefox as a default web browser. And as such we are well aware that Internet Explorer will never in the near future (10 years) be removed from use. Because, you see, Internet Explorer comes preinstalled with the Windows OS. Linux, currently holding about 1% of the desktop computing power, is irrelevant. Mac OS, even tho it shows strong growth, is still far away from making a serious dent in the Windows armor. So basically this means that vast majority of desktop computers have Internet Explorer running. And here is the bit that every zealous Firefox fan frequently forgets - when you install fresh copy of Windows onto a fresh machine, you will most likely use Internet Explorer to download Firefox. Combine that with the fact that of all the internet population only a small fraction are power-users. And regular users will not use their preinstalled browser to download another browser. You can argue all you want how IE is not safe, and it is bloated and whatnot, but my parents, and your parents, and other casual users will simply not use a perfectly valid tool to get to the same tool.
So in conclusion, even though I am looking forward to see this new Google's child, the chances that it will make a significant impact on the market are slim to none.
As an added bonus, if Internet Explorer 8 turns out to be really good browser, I might switch back to it, and use Firefox just for Firebug. Until someone makes Firebug for IE =)
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developers journal | opširnije
# Use your mobile to decode me! :)
Today colegue of mine showed me crazy feature on his new Sony Ericsson P1I. By a press of a button, he took photo of a business card, OCR-ed it and added contact from business card to his phonebook. Pretty nifty! Well, not really because we all know how OCR needs to be trained, and OCR on mobile phones is noways still light at it can get.
However, I digged around and found another interesting thing. Have you ever heard about mobile codes? This is old stuff really. Originally, bar codes represented data in the widths (lines) and the spacings of parallel lines and may be referred to as linear or 1d bar codes. But they also come in patterns of squares, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns within images termed 2d matrix codes. As cameras and mobile phones progressed some phone manufacturers started shipping their phones with build in bar code reader applications - thus words "mobile" and "code" in the name.
Two currently most popular open-standard formats for 2D codes in mobile phone applications are Datamatrix (DM - now owned by Siemens and covered by an ISO standard, public domain) and Quick Response (QR - developed, patented and owned by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave initially for car parts management, public domain).
Graphical output of Datamatrix (DM) looks like this:
and Quick Response (QR) open-standard like this:
I can't say I understand the whole point behind it. Idea was to use matrix codes to encode URL's, emails and small messages and do what exactly with this? Why would I print unrecognizable encoded picture somewhere and force people to scan it? What's wrong with good old numbers and letters? Barcods are made to automate recognition on a large scale recognition operation (eg. manufacturing, warehousing etc), but I just somehow don't see 1000 people waiting in line with their mobiles to scan our website url encoded on a sticker. Email protection? Scan this to see my email? Are you kidding me?
Experts predicted bright future for matrix codes and spread in various applications. Couple of years later, I really can't say I saw much of it. However, couple of days ago this press release made me rethink the whole concept again. NTT DoCoMo announced that they developed the acoustic OFDM (Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) technology, which can be used to embed URLs and text data in broadcast music/audio. Consumers' mobile phones "listen" to the music/audio and extract the embedded URLs/data. About 100 characters can be transmitted in a second.
This sounds really cool compared to scanning codes on a sticker mentioned before. But where are they going with this? If you owned ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 you definetly had tapes. Ever listened to any of these tapes? Like 20 years ago I remember a show on local radio station where guys even tried to "send" programs over the air to listeners. They would play C64 tape in the air and tell people to record it. OMG
Anyways it's getting pretty late and I have to catch some sleep. If you wanna give mobile codes another go, get readers for your mobile here or here and start playing around.
update: I just got contacted by Roger from 2d-code.co.uk. If you are interested in mobile coding, I highly recommend that you check out his web site. It's full of news and interesting mobile coding application. Gooo Roger!
gadgetsmobile | opširnije
# Will Microsoft IE8 block ads and affiliate cookies by default (or by accident)?
There is a lot of hype in the cyberworld regarding new privacy-enhancing feature of the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 called "InPrivate Blocking". Imagine if all things that are bad for you would just one day disappear (for your protection)? Where is fun in that.
"A Microsoft spokesman said that the feature, to be known as 'InPrivate Blocking,' was never designed to be an ad blocker, though 'there may be ads that get blocked.' Instead, it was designed to stop tracking 'pixels' or pieces of code that could allow third-party sites to track users as they move around the Web." - via SlashDot
I support ad blocking, but not by any means by default! Badly produced Flash ads (banners) can seriously degrade your surfing experience (and some can even cause epilepsy), and if you really want to get rid of them, you can for eg. use Adblock Plus addon for Firefox. IE users as a rule - don't ever never configure their browser. They don't know what configuration is, so whatever Microsoft decides to enable 'by default' in IE8, will actually change the way of the web as we know it.
The so called "tracking pixels" are different ball game. I never liked them but they make money go around the web. For noob webmaster they are fool-proof way of implementing very simple functionality. Without them - webmasters would have to implement that functionality in their code on their own, which is nothing more than just a silent way of tracking stuff. Does Microsoft say that silent way of tracking better than 'public' tracking?
We will have to just wait and see.
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developers journal | opširnije
# A trip to the Google Toolbar land and back
Couple of days ago I posted an article about the SplinQ Firefox extension we made. Firefox rocks, and building extensions is a breeze, but that only covers Firefox users. Since we need to target wider site audience, therefore next logical step would be to develop Internet Explorer Add-on.
I remember Google Toolbar back in the days Firefox wasn't so hot. It added nice web search ability to Internet Explorer and many IE bundles had him preinstalled. Google Toolbar is installed by default for Windows/IE users whenever Flash is installed or updated from Adobe's website, and the penetration of Adobe Flash appears to be around 99% so I suspect Google Toolbar penetration is quite good. With all this in mind we decided to try extending Google Toolbar.
I have done exhaustive research regarding Google Toolbar and after couple of hours of prototyping I came to conclusion that we CANNOT reproduce desired behavior from our Firefox extension. Only way we could "port" Firefox plugin is by writing ActiveX Internet Explorer Addon control.
I have used Google toolbar v5 beta since earlier versions of the toolbar are completely useless. The idea was to setup the feed to reload every X seconds and to say to SplinQ server an URL of the website where user is right now, and based on that, toolbar button/gadget would know should it show alerts and notifications by icon change or not.
I tried to simulate events by using Google toolbar RSS feed feature which enables toolbar gadget to load a remote RSS feed in certain interval times. Interval can’t be less than 20 seconds (another Google limitation). This feed can:
- change the dropdown menu icons (when clicked)
- replace icon in toolbar
- add alert texts beneath the toolbar icon
The main reason for a failure is security feature from Google toolbar that prevents developers to automatically send in any way URL of current site user is browsing. That is off course serious security hazard, and I completely understand why Google doesn’t allow this. Malicious user could be able to track all sites you are visiting and record that into his log files. Big fail!
However, Google toolbar can send current URL, but only if user:
- used search option within the toolbar
- pressed toolbar button
Both ways don’t enable us to have seamless way of user notification. What we need here are events, which will trigger upon user visit of new site in browser. Google toolbar doesn’t support this.
You can send some data from user by using two mentioned methods by using special tags (more on this on Google toolbar variables reference and scopes):
{query} - <search> element
{url} - <search>, <site>, or <send> element
{url.host} - <search>, <site>, or <send> element
{url.noescape} - <search>, <site>, or <send> element
{domain} - <search>, <site>, <send>, or <feed> element
{locale} - <search>, <site>, or <send> element
{selection} - <send> element
{option1} - Must go in a URL in <search>, <site>, <send>, or <feed> element
{random} – all?
So, what now. This only leaves us with one option, and that is to start writing ActiveX Internet Explorer Addon control.
Screenshot 1 – Alternate search provider:
Screenshot 2 - RSS feed icon changes and alerts:
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Screenshot 3 – clicked button / plugin config screen:
developers journalnivas | opširnije
# Pixels are classic (filmed in Papervision3D)
When I saw Radiohead's "House of Cards" video I was truly amazed how pixels can look good in 2008. What does that video have in common with Papervision3D? Press play on player and read on...
In production of this video they haven't used any cameras, but data from 3D laser-enhanced scanners. The Making-of "House of Cards" video is pretty crazy, check it. If you wanna get freaky with pixels - Google Code is hosting the Data Visualization application and accompanying iGoogle gadget. Interactive Flash piece was made by Aaron Meyers (Torrent Raiders, Digg Swarm) and Aaron Koblin using Papervision 3D. It's pretty slick.
But all this is nothing compared to this baby. Benoit Beausejour from Turbulent built crazy demo using Papervision3D effects branch which transforms video stream to something similar and very very cool. Be sure to check it in full screen playing Kraftwerk’s "Little Computer People"! WOOHOO GO PV3D!
flashmoviesmusic | opširnije
# Photoshop Powertip
What I have been doing for years by right clicking on layers, can be easily done like shown in the picture above. Create keyboard shortcut for copying and pasting layer style, and your life will be changed forever.
Love from Nivas!
(By the way, is it obvious that we are back from summer vacations?)
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developers journal | opširnije
# David Hasselhoff’s Social Network
"This is the official David Hasselhoff Social Network. Let's socialize!" OMG! I just had to post this. While developers around the world struggle to build better, faster and more attractive social network web sites, Hoff by not even trying - manages to rule them all. Check it - Hoff Around The World!
If Chuck Norris starts his own social network - I am sold!
spam | opširnije
# SplinQ Shopping Firefox extension
Do you remember SplinQ Shopping project which we released half a year ago? Currently it's primary focus is on Dutch market, so in the case you missed it - SplinQ is a community site that makes online shopping cheaper and easier. You automatically save on everything you buy online! You sign up for free so the shop can identify you and we can give cash back to you.
Well, reactions to the project were overwhelming, and people like it a lot! But, the biggest complaint from users is that when they have to buy something - they are in a hurry and they completely forget about existence of SplinQ. In a survey among people that saw SplinQ, but do not use it, conclusion is that no matter they would save money by using it, they just forget to go to SplinQ. So, we came up with the solution to that - completely free 100% secure and easy to use SplinQ Shopping Firefox extension (beta)! Wheeee!
SplinQ Shopping Firefox extension runs on Firefox 2 and 3, it will be hosted at addons.mozilla.org as soon as it gets reviewed by Mozilla guys, but for now you can get it here. You may have to right click to download it, then drag the file onto your browser window. This is beta version, and functionality may change in future. Since Firefox has nice update functionality, your browser will update add-on automatically and you don't have to worry about a thing.
Once you have installed SplinQ Shopping add-on into your Firefox, you will notice 2 grayed out letters "S". First in main toolbar (right of the address and search bar), and second one down right in Firefox status bar. That means add-on is working perfectly. Now, you can try it out by surfing to website of any store found in SplinQ store database. Eg. try navigating to Perfectly Basics web shop ( perfectlybasics.nl ). Once you are on site, add-on will detect it and if that specific store is found in SplinQ store database, it will alert you that cashback is available by changing the color of letters "S" to SplinQ green color ™ and showing an information on toolbar in bottom of your browser. You can disable alert for specific site by clicking on [x] icon on the toolbar, and you can enable it again by left clicking on little "S" in the status bar and selecting "Show toolbar...".
Your feedback on extension is more than welcome.
Screen shot of SplinQ extension running under Ubuntu
cssdevelopers journal | opširnije
# FEZ - best game concept since games were invented
You have to see this to believe. This game mixes 3D and 2D with such superb idea that I have pooped my pants the first time I saw it. By rotating a 3D world, you create new 2D pattern where depth of objects do not matter and which behaves like classic Super Mario jumper game. I want this, and I want it NOW!
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developers journal | opširnije
# The sound of summer
I think it's time to break the radio (erm. blog) silence, and write new post. It's summer time in Croatia and the weather is hot. Life is a bit slower here at Nivas so we updated our website with few latest project we have been working on. Some of us returned from vacation, some are still on seaside, other are yet to leave for long waited and definitely earned vacation.
Until next post, enjoy this picture taken by me couple of weeks ago on island of Hvar. We had great time there, but it seems like it was 10 years ago.
