Steve Jobs resigns from Apple

August 25th, 2011 by Mike Categories: Blog No Responses
Steve Jobs resigns from Apple

On the 24th August 2011, Steve Jobs, CEO and Co-Founder of Apple resigned. In a letter addressed to the board, Steve said “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”

An inspiration to many, including myself, I wanted to share some of his best quotes on technology and life in general…

On Technology:

“But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light — that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.” – Wired Magazine – Feb 1996

On Design:

“That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” – BusinessWeek – 25th May 1998

On Apple Products:

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.” – Fortune – 24th Jan 2000

On Life:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Stanford Commencement Speech – June 2005

The last two quotes are from an inspirational speech given by Steve – This is available to download on iTunes U for free.

What is Google+ – Q&A with the project’s technical lead engineer, Joseph Smarr

July 15th, 2011 by Mike Categories: Blog No Responses
What is Google+ – Q&A with the project’s technical lead engineer, Joseph Smarr

Google Plus Logo

Google+ invites have been flying around recently and the project’s technical lead, Google engineer Joseph Smarr has been responding to an online Q&A session about the service — and he has already shared a number of details about Google+’s development, technology, and plans for the future.

An insight into some of the cutting edge technologies used to create Google+
“A couple nifty tricks we do: we use the HTML5 History API to maintain pretty-looking URLs even though it’s an AJAX app (falling back on hash-fragments for older browsers); and we often render our Closure templates server-side so the page renders before any JavaScript is loaded, then the JavaScript finds the right DOM nodes and hooks up event handlers, etc. to make it responsive.”

But Google aren’t going to rest on their laurels…
“…Personally I’m eager for many of the features other Google+ users have asked for recently: smarter ranking/collapsing/filtering in the stream and notifications… integration with more Google products… and an API so I can start hacking on cool uses of circles, etc.”

Google+ API….
“You can sign up at https://services.google.com/fb/forms/plusdevelopers/ to learn more as soon as we’re ready.”

What’s the ultimate vision for Google+?
“We’d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests. We think we can make sharing better and make Google more social (and useful) in the process.”

So there we have it! :)

See more Q&A on AnyAsq

Knapp Hicks and Partners

July 18th, 2010 by Mike Categories: Portfolio No Responses
Knapp Hicks and Partners

Knapp Hicks and Partners have provided Consulting Engineering Services in Structural and Civil Engineering and other specialist areas such as Geotechnics and Materials Consultancy since 1966.

Design Magic were asked to redesign their website and provided a clean and simple design based around their existing brand colours.

Check it out at www.knapphicks.co.uk