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IA Writer review and password security

So i decided today that I would try some minimalist writing, and picked up a copy of IA Writer off the App store. Its an interesting concept having an incredible plain text writer that is meant to focus the mind purely on what is being written.

I cant really talk about its interface because, to be honest, it doesn’t really have one. But on this occasion that is entirely the point. It has a keyboard, it has Dropbox integration and it can spell check.

 


In actual fact, in its full screen and distraction free mode, IA Writer doesn’t even check spelling or punctuation which in some ways is great because I actually find myself looking more at what im typing and concentrate more on what im trying to say.

 

 


So much so that I haven’t actually deviated from this article once since I started to write it. Even with my computer screen on in front of me. It certinly does seem to be effective at getting down ideas and keeping you focused on the writing instead of the layout. All for £2.99 (for iPad) or £10.99 (for Mac).

 

Another interesting thing I stumbled across today while reading about Groupon royaly screwing up is the website ShouldIChangeMyPassword. It allows users to enter their email address and then searches through a host of publicly available leaked usernames and passwords, checking to see if their email match any made available.

Not only is the site fully secured via HTTPS but it stores nothing that you enter into the email field and it hasnt a cached version of the usernames/passwords either – it just searches through what is already publicly available. Certainly a great idea given the recent activities of LulzSec and Anonymous.

As for IA Writer, so far writing this post has been a breeze and almost relaxing. I shall certainly be using it a lot more in the future.

Blog Games Site Updates

O_o

So!

Y’know, sometimes I really wish I had some sort of system of updating everything at once…not necessarily with the same stuff but just something that appears and makes me update stuff…

But alas, there isn’t.

So anyway, my exams are on their way in and as per usual the faculty has decided to lay on the coursework. So before the exams start I have 3 pieces of coursework to hand in. Now for once I happened to be on top of my work and I have one of the pieces pretty much done however with all this coursework going on how am I meant to get the time to revise?!

It’s so stupid.

Anyway, on the webcomic front, its defiantely up and coming so watch this space, I’m sure it will be here soon.

Also, I have been playing a fair bit of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 recently and there really is such a good change from the first one. The online play especially – the system is easy to use and understand. Even though there is only 2-3 game modes, they don’t really get old. And the unlock system is so much less complciated – I actually know how to unlock things, how I get points and how to rank up which i didn’t really understand in the first game.

And blowing the shit clean out of everything never gets old.

The game feels snappier to play too – I often felt the oldone really didnt respond well, you pulled a trigger and a second later (or so it felt) the gun fired – and that was both on and offline but so far I have been impressed with the game engine.

And the grahpics – I have this game for PC and 360 and the graphics are fantastic on both. Well the PC is much better than the 360 when turned up full with AA and texture filtering but the 360 version is also fantastic considering the hardware it’s running on.

So anyway thats all from me for now!

Reviews

iTunes 9.0 is here!

So I picked up my copy of Snow Leopard at the weekend and installed it to get some very nice surprises, including 12GB of my Hard Drive back, a new Quick Time, improved Exposé and overall snappier performance.

Quick Time PlayerQuick Time Frameless

Today however, Apple rolled out iTunes 9 to end users which, I must admit, is looking rather well. It’s obvious from a first glance they that have tweaked it graphically (most likely to match in with Snow Leopards modified GUI) including a new white background when viewing by album artwork and an enhanced 3D effect on the buttons and progress bars. However, they have also added some new features like Home Sharing, which allows an entire family (or network) to share all the purchased music from one iTunes store account across an entire network.

iTunes 9.0

iTunes Mini Player

Overall it does seem to have done the Snow Leopard thing, by making everything snappier and generally faster. It’s just a pity they didn’t use the same very pretty black skin that Quick Time has…