• New Theme Brings Windows Phone 7 Live Tiles To iOS

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Microsoft, Rants & Raves 2 Responses

    If there is one thing that Windows Phone 7 has going for itself, it’s probably its Live Tiles home screen. Just like iOS updates the calendar’s icon once a day to show the right date, Microsoft made its entire homescreen display real-time information. It allows you for example to check when’s your next appointment, your Twitter feed or email without having to launch any app. It sounds great on paper, but they’re not quite there yet. Still, it’s a neat idea.

    Wyndwarrior, a jailbreak theme creator certainly thought so too and took up to recreate the interface for jailbroken iOS devices. From the live tiles, all the way to displaying applications, he managed to reproduce pretty much the entire experience. Of course, even jailbroken, iOS has certain limitations, so don’t expect too much from it. Still, the result is impressive. Check it out:

    [via: appadvice]

  • Different sections of tongue do NOT actually detect different types of tastes!

    // Gradly // blog, Rants & Raves, science 1 Response

    This myth is commonly proliferated by diagrams (like the one on the right) which depict a tongue’s primary senses of taste: sourness, sweetness, bitterness, saltiness, and savoriness (umami). These pictures typically show a tongue separated into quadrants by taste, but each of its 10,000 taste buds are identical! Every one of these buds contains 50-100 specialized receptor cells, each with a specialized taste hair that sticks out and detects food chemicals in saliva. Each test hair is programmed to respond to one of the five basic tastes, and when a hair is stimulated, it sends nerve impulses to the brain.Check what this BBC science article had to say about the matter:

    Your mouth contains around 10,000 taste buds, most of which are located on and around the tiny bumps on your tongue. Every taste bud detects five primary tastes:

    * Sour
    * Sweet
    * Bitter
    * Salty
    * Umami – salts of certain acids (for example monosodium glutamate or MSG)

    Each of your taste buds contains 50-100 specialised receptor cells. Sticking out of every single one of these receptor cells is a tiny taste hair that checks out the food chemicals in your saliva. When these taste hairs are stimulated, they send nerve impulses to your brain. Each taste hair responds best to one of the five basic tastes.

    Tastes and flavours

    For you to enjoy the full flavour of a sizzling Sunday roast or a rich chocolate mousse, you need more than your basic tastes. You also require your sense of smell. If you have a cold, the lining of your nose swells and you temporarily lose your sense of smell. Even though your tongue is still able to identify the basic tastes, the food you eat will taste bland.

    Additionally, temperature and texture influence how much you appreciate foods. When you eat ‘hot’ foods like chilli peppers, you actually excite the pain receptors in your mouth.

  • Samsung will ship half of its processors to Apple in 2011

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, News, Rants & Raves 1 Response

    Samsung and Apple look to be on good terms. Samsung is planning to quadruple the shipment of its mobile processor chips to chief smartphone rival Apple. Apple was receiving about 5,000 application processor sheets per month from Samsung, this is to increase to 20,000 sheets. Fifty percent of Samsung’s application processors will be given to Apple, meaning Apple will receive more processors than Samsung’s own mobile division.

    The application processor is like the CPU for PCs in mobile devices and with interests in smartphones and tablet PCs exploding this is a smart move for both companies. Samsung is now building a $3.6 billion chip processing factory in Austin, TX and a majority of the processors from that factory are thought to be for Apple.

    [Via: Korea Times]

  • Apple goes HTML5

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Gossips, News, Rants & Raves 1 Response

    Apple has relaunched its entire website with a new design using HTML5, adding a darker, glossy navigation bar and speedy new animated page layouts for Mac and iPod pages.

    The redesign officially upgrades the site from “HTML 4.01 Transitional” to the latest HTML5, enabling such elements as a dynamically resized search field in the navigation bar that enlarges to accommodate search terms, as well as adding richer support for mobile features.

    The new Mac section debuts a new “product slider” interface, which animates a series of icons depicting the families of Mac products, Apple’s desktop applications, accessories, and server related products.

    A similarly animated iPod section presents iPod models and accessories, as well as a panel of “iTunes and more,” which includes links to download iTunes, purchase gift cards, and special sections for Nike+iPod, (Product)RED, MobileMe, and headphones.

    Apple goes HTML5

    Apple has been a big proponent of HTML5, with the company’s supported WebKit open source project not only working to follow the specification but actively contributing toward it as well.

    Last week, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) introduced a new HTML5 logo (depicted above) intended to promote visibility of the next generation of web technologies now being rolled out in modern browsers, using the “HTML5” brand to refer both to the HTML5 specification itself as well as serving as a “general-purpose visual identity for a broad set of open web technologies, including CSS, SVG, WOFF and others.”

    This announcement was received with scorn by many web purists who were upset that the public might be further confused by the semantic and technical blurring of simplified branding, rather than knowing the actual role played by each different web technology. This prompted the W3C to restate that the new logo “represents HTML5, the cornerstone for modern Web applications.”

    HTML5?

    Within the same news cycle, the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), a team designated by the W3C to maintain the emerging HTML5 specification, announced that it would now be referring to HTML5 as simply HTML, because the specification would now be regarded as a “living specification” that constantly evolves, rather than being a designated version number going through a much more formal process of drafts and recommendations.

    This change erupted in more controversy from those who saw it as either a feud between the two groups or a simply a confusing miscommunication on overall strategy. However, the HTML5 brand actually has little to do with the way HTML is presented as a specification.

    Additionally, those complaining about the lack of an ongoing version number seem to assume that the WHATWG is compiling a specification that browser makers follow. In reality, such an effort would fail just as many other attempts by standards bodies to tell the industry how to work have, including the ISO’s Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocol suite (rejected in favor of the industry lead and more practical TCP/IP) or the W3C’s own XHTML 2.0, an intellectual exercise maintained between 2002 and 2009 and virtually ignored by browser makers.

    When the W3C started over to create a more practical, precise and functional new version of HTML, it began working closely with Apple, Mozilla, Opera, Google, Microsoft and the parties to make sure the standard reflected what vendors wanted to and were willing to do, rather than trying to mandate impractical ideas that would never be supported by the browsers people actually used.

    It’s Already Been Broughten!

    The result, HTML5, was originally scheduled to publish a “candidate recommendation” by 2012, with at least two “100% complete and fully interoperable implementations.” Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, once said HTML5 was likely to be finished around 2022. These dates were frequently used by opponents of portions of HTML5, including Flash maker Adobe, to create fear, uncertainty and doubt about whether HTML5 would ever be completed, with the suggestion that everyone should just remain content with using Flash to build dynamic content.

    The new shift in viewing HTML5 as simply the latest iteration of HTML means there’s no reason to wait around for perfect compliance from every browser, something that still has yet to happen for even the decade old HTML 4.01. Instead, it motivates browser makers and web developers to use the specification that now exists to build real products, constantly evolving both along with the specification to deliver the best technologies as they become available.

    [via: appleinsider]