Gallery Updated, Windows 8 Backgrounds Added

Posted on November 6, 2011 by NeoSmart Technologies

Just a quick and friendly note to all our users: we’ve been working on the NeoSmart Technologies image gallery and have pushed out a number of updates that should make it both easier on the eyes and easier to navigate.

Some of the changes include nicer icons for all the albums (verses a mosaic of contents), links to full-size images on our extensive collection of tech-related wallpapers, fixing of overall alignment, and a few other cosmetic issues. If you have any suggestions, recommendations, or feedback, please do share because we’re (as always) all ears.

For lovers of beautiful backgrounds, we have two “new” collections to share: the official Windows 8 wallpapers to date, and the OS X Lion wallpapers bundle. We’ll be updating the Windows 8 backgrounds with each released build, so check back often! Some samples after the jump.

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Google’s Chrome Gets a New Logo

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi

Google Chrome has a new logo, and it wants to make sure everyone knows.

Those of you updating to the latest Chrome builds (in this case, 11.0.696.12 dev, running on Mac OS X 10.7) will find that the new version comes with a bold new icon. We’re not sure if we like it just yet, because it definitely takes some getting used to.

The new icon is at the top-right of this post. For comparison, here’s the old one:

The new one is distinctly more 2d, less shiny, and far more abstract. They say that’s the natural progression of logos, but Chrome and its logo certainly haven’t been around since the 60s for us to be discussing that.

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Google Adds Support for Customizing Homepage Background!

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi

Google, ever the world’s biggest supporter of the minimal user interface, appears to be having second thoughts about the advantages of ascetic design and no-frill search pages. If you go to the Google homepage while signed into your Google account, you’ll be (pleasantly?) surprised with a small link in the bottom-left corner titled “Change Background Image.”

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Google Hiding URIs for Certain Search Results

Posted on November 30, 2009 by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi

Google is now unfortunately hiding the URIs for certain search results far more often than they ever have done in the past… and it’s quite annoying. The Google search site is the pinnacle of function over form: it is sparse, plain, simple, and yet contains tons of information. But it seems that they’re taking it a bit too far now, hiding valuable data making the results pretty useless. Marissa Mayer, where art thou?

As an example, search Google for “libmhash” right now. The first result is the result you want, but you’d never know it from looking at the search result:

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Does it GTK/QT/Win32 Really Matter for Chrome?

Posted on February 15, 2009 by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi

A recent article on OSNews highlights the changes expected to come in Google’s Chrome 2.0 for Windows and the progress being made on the Linux and OS X fronts for Google’s new browser.

In the article, Ben Goodger, lead Chrome UI developer, states

[Google avoids] cross platform UI toolkits because while they may offer what superficially appears to be a quick path to native looking UI on a variety of target platforms, once you go a bit deeper it turns out to be a bit more problematic.” [... Your applications end up] speaking with a foreign accent.

But there’s something we’re not getting here. Obviously given enough brilliant programmers and a good team lead to keep the different codebases in sync, going with native APIs is the better approach. But the reasons Goodger is offering aren’t very convincing.

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Making Gmail a More Welcoming Experience

Posted on May 19, 2008 by NeoSmart Technologies

It used to be that when you opened your Gmail account you would see a bland, blank page with the text “Loading…” in the upper-right corner of the screen, as you waited for your browser to download the Gmail scripts and to make contact with the mail server to download the list of messages and other content that appears on the Gmail “dashboard.”

We’ve long felt that Gmail’s approach was not befitting of the Web 2.0 service with all its sky-blue shades and flashy appearance – and now it seems that Google’s felt that way too.

Here’s the new loading interface… Subtle, simple, and effective:

(Click image to see more changes)

After all, first impressions are everything!

Vista’s Purple Screen of Death

Posted on December 3, 2007 by NeoSmart Technologies

We’ve all heard of (and, quite unfortunately, experienced) the infamous Blue Screen of Death. Some of us who tested the earlier Windows Vista beta builds had the unique experience of trying out the Red of Screen Death, which occurred when the bootloader experienced an un-handled exception (we experienced more than our fair share of these during the early days of EasyBCD development!). And then there’s Vista’s Purple Screen of Death, which few have seen.

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Apple’s New Animation Framework

Posted on June 8, 2007 by NeoSmart Technologies

Although we try our best to be impartial when it comes down to OS wars, and we have, throughout the years, presented the pros and cons of Windows, Linux, and other operating systems, you’ve probably noticed that NeoSmart Technologies isn’t too big on Apple. Well, color us purple, but this we have to talk about.

Apple [[AAPL]] has a new technology due to ship in Leopard that is pretty damn impressive to hear some of the developers (or at least those at liberty to discuss what they’ve been told) talk about it. According to this Wired News article, this framework will focus on making it easy for developers to add Next (Delicious) Generation graphics to their applications, bringing the concept of UI to a whole new playing field.

While it sounds just plain awesome, we can’t help but look at it with mixed feelings. Since this is Apple and not Microsoft we’re talking about, we’re pretty darn sure everything they say can and will be found in the RTM release of OS X Leopard *cough* WinFS *cough*, but whether or not it will revolutionize the concept of user interfaces everywhere remains to be seen.

Granted, the effects are supposed to be astounding. But that’s not the question, next-gen UIs (hereby dubbed “Desktop 2.0″) are almost always a matter of how and not what. As the Wired article states, these same “amazing” graphical innovations with the UI do already exist in certain programs (like Disco, the CD burning utility for OS X), the only difference is, Apple promises to make it much easier to get the same end results.

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What Geni is Missing…

Posted on March 7, 2007 by NeoSmart Technologies

The (already!) multi-million dollar startup Geni has a lot going for it. It taps into the obsessive “art” of genealogy – once you get going, you can’t stop. It has tons of money (from 0 to a 100MM in two months!) and a huge work-force. Unlike all other genealogy websites: it doesn’t really need maintenance. Family trees are created by the users, and maintained by the users. End of story.

But Geni is missing something – the big picture. I can create a family tree and propagate it as well as I can, and sure, I can invite anyone ON the tree to join in the fun – just put their email in the box, and they’re invited to join the family tree and start expanding. But the problem is, it’s lacking the one thing that makes genealogy so exciting: finding someone new.

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