CityBlogz Design Studio / Blog

I haven’t had much time lately to write up any articles, but I’ve finally found something that may be useful for those of us who work quite a lot with SQL on the DB2 platform. We don’t need to write up a Java program everytime we want to query for information based on specific time intervals. We can just use the date/time functions built-in to DB2 SQL to manipulate and query the database. More.

For the life of me, I can’t remember where I found this cheat sheet. I apologize in advance for not being able to give out the reference.  

If you could just carry one gadget with you what would it be? Maybe an iPod? How about a Pocket PC or Palm PDA? Cell phone? Digital camera? Video camera? Gameboy? USB thumb drive? Laptop/notebook computer? Arrgh! Stop. Think about it for a minute. Some of us have all of these gadgets and I know some people would like to just be able to carry one device that is a jack-of-all-trades. Here’s a list of what I’d want in such a device.

I think that if such a device was to exist, it would probably cost $1500. Hey Steve jobs! Maybe, Apple Computer Inc. could step in and use their industrial design expertise to design such a device. Just a thought.

I came across a very interesting page discussing design guidelines for Apple software. It may be of interesting reading for other platforms and developers wanting to improve the experience for software and web users. Here’s a sample outline.
Human Interface Design

• Human interface design principles
• Keep your users in mind
• Extending the interface

Attributes of Effective Design

• High performance
• Easy to use
• Attractive appearance
• Reliability
• Adaptability
• Interoperability
• Mobility

Personally, I think that Apple’s software and website are very well designed and easy to use. They continue to set the standards for the industry to follow.  

Here’s a double dose of entries for you. From a prior announcement that I made on on April 28, 2004, I talked about this Russian website Allofmp3.com that offers insanely cheap downloads for legal online music. For me, it is the only real competition to iTunes. I’ve finally had a chance to try it out and I must admit that it works like a charm. Initially, the website was slow, confusing, and the issue of trust was a big concern of mine. After surviving 2 months, the site has seen a big boost in speed and reliability.  For the doubters out there, just sign up, and use your PayPal account to add funds to your Allofmp3 account. You may choose to use your credit card if you totally trust the site. I put in $10 into my account and with that I can download 1 GB worth of music. The best part is that you can choose what encoding format your music comes in. If you really want the basic 128 kb MP3 encoding, you can download about 250 songs! For me, I’ll stick with that.  For those audiophiles out there, you can choose OGG VORBIS, FLAC, or Monkeys Audio lossless encoding. From now on, I’m only going to download music from iTunes if I can’t find it on Allofmp3.com.

I found it interesting that now Hotmail has joined the webmail storage space wars by offering 250 MB for its free email service and 2 GB of storage for its paid service. It’s getting crowded now. Here’s a summary of who’s offering what.  

• Gmail – 1GB storage, 10MB attachments
• Hotmail Plus – $19.95 per year, 2GB storage, 20MB attachments
• Hotmail free – 250MB storage, 10MB attachments
• Yahoo Mail Plus – £11.99, 2GB storage, 10MB attachments
• Yahoo Free – 100MB of storage, 10MB attachments
• Lycos UK Personal – £41.88 per year, 1GB storage, 50MB attachments
• Lycos UK – free, 10MB storage
• Spymac – free, 1GB storage
• Ask Jeeves – free, 250MB storage
• Ask Jeeves Excite Gold – $19.99 per year, 2GB storage
• Shiremail – £42 per year, 1GB storage  

By the way, I’ll give a review of how my new Google Gmail account in the upcoming weeks.  Thanks to Ha and Chris for the Gmail invitations!  

I finally sold my old digital camera. After weeks of reviewing new digital cameras, I’ve finally decided to get the Casio Exilim EX-Z40 4 megapixel camera. It is pretty new (released March 2004). From all the online reviews that I’ve read, this is a very highly rated camera. I bought it at Dell.com for $327 after tax, shipping, and discounts. Thanks to Techbargains.com. Normally, it retails for $399 plus tax. Can’t wait to try it out!
http://www.casio-europe.com/euro/dc/exilim/exz40/