Neil Duffin Blog

Apple have announced the much rumoured and anticipated 2nd generation iPhone. As expected it comes with GPS (assisted), 3G and a host of improvements in the v2.0 software.

The good news is that it’s faster and cheaper. That’s sure to annoy a few early adopters but it’s normal for new product lines.

Improvements (some seen in the software Beta) include…

• Really good Enterprise connectivity for Microsoft Exchange. Home users can get similar functionality using the…

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Adobe have released a beta of their new Flash Player version 10. Along with a number of other new features, it includes built-in support for 3D. This would have been very useful for some of the movies I’ve built over the last year or so - one with molecules in particular.

What’s particularly nice is that the new player off-loads to graphics handling to the computer’s GPU (Graphics Processor Unit). These are now in just about…

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The Apple iPhone event on the 6th has announced a number of new and interesting features. The next version of the firmware (2.0) will allow connection to Microsoft Enterprise Servers with direct ActiveSync support. This should help sales to corporates. Personally, this isn’t that interesting as there’s only me at work at the moment and so I don’t really need to sync with anyone but my Wife and I can do that by just talking…

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Programming is an ever evolving technology and web programming in particular. Adobe’s new ‘AIR’ is a novel approach to allowing applications to break free of the internet.

It allows applications to be downloaded and run on a Mac or PC desktop - without continuous connection to the ‘net being needed. I suppose it’s a bit like Java but being based partly on Flash technology, it’s much more graphically orientated.

Hopefully, it will be a little more…

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As previously shown (hacked) on a couple of sites, Apple have released an update for the iPhone. The firmware adds a number of new features…

• Configurable home-screen icons, plus multiple home-screens. Up to 9 of them.
• SMS messages with multiple recipients.
• Location finder on the maps. This isn’t very accurate and the device really needs a built-in GPS receiver. There are also some additional features on the map - drop pins, hybrid view & real-time traffic information (does…

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Apple have posted a list of the Apple Design Award winners (and runners up) for 2007.

There are some interesting applications on here and it’s definitely worth a look if you own a Mac.

Apple have announced that the new version of their operating system, OSX 10.5 or Leopard, will be available in October.

It’s been a long wait but with over 300 improvements it should be worth the wait. You can find out more on Apple’s site.

Update - Keynote speech

The keynote speech is now online and worth a watch. It’s very, very long though at an hour and a half. It covers…

EA are bringing Command & Conquer 3,…

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177Kb isn’t much these days. If I create a new Microsoft Word document and place the word “Bum” in it that takes up 20Kb.

That means this truly amazing demo called Debris from Farbrausch (via ComputerMusic.co.uk) takes up only 8.85 “Bums” yet runs for over 7 minutes. Even the music is pretty darn good.

There’s been a lot of online debate about the pricing of Adobe’s new CS3 software. Nigel Moore has produced an article on this which looks at the price of Adobe’s software in various territories.

His price comparisons are before local taxes are added and show some pretty large differences. Adobe’s official stance seems to come down to a matter of the cost of running the business in the various areas of the world and, for the…

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It’s official, Adobe have now announced Photoshop CS3 in two versions - standard and extended. They have also released new versions of Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, Illustrator, etc, etc. These are available bundled in various version of their Create Suite package. For my uses the Web Premium version looks ideal - particularly since they appear to have now made Dreamweaver support close integration with Photoshop and Illustrator. This now appears to have the features included in…

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