Jonathan Markevich

Author: Jonathan

  • Google Play Books redux

    I gave a quick review of Google Play Books when it first came out with user uploads.  (tl;dr version: meh.) It turns out that the iOS version is the weakest of their representations.  As foolish as that is, I should have known.  Now that I have tried the Android version, I see some significant advantages.…

  • Arc Reaction

    I got myself a Kobo Arc when they had them on sale just over a week ago.  About 22 hours before they announced new ones.  Well, this time I don’t mind. What I ended up getting was a pretty decent tablet/reader.  I got it primarily as a reader, though I recognize how much better e-ink…

  • Raspberry Pi – gone WiFi

    I was using an older WRT54G as a client/bridge for my Raspberry Pi to my home network.  It was working OK, except it would skip and stutter when playing back MythTV streams. I didn’t think a USB dongle would prevent that, but it would be nice to replace the complexity of the router with a…

  • iWork for iCloud Beta

    I just got to try it out. It’s… OK.  Definitely nicer looking than Google’s Docs offering, with some more conversion and graphics options, for sure, but some things elude me.  In Pages, for instance: Tabs/margins? Dragging or clicking on the ruler does nothing. Columns as shown on this page don’t seem to be possible. Editing or…

  • Office for iPhone

    So Microsoft finally released Office for iPhone.  Even two years ago I would have cared, but I can’t get excited enough to investigate it beyond skimming a few announcement pages. Maybe it’s related to the fact that recently I have been so disgusted with Word for Mac beachballing when I try to do something complicated…

  • The look of iOS 7

    I agree for the most part with this post. I’m not crazy about the icons – I particularly dislike the settings icon. Me: “I don’t like the settings icon” Tina: “Yeah I preferred the gears better” Me: “It is gears, see?” Tina: “It looks more like the fan in the back of a computer” But,…

  • OS X Mavericks and iOS 7

    Most people are talking about the new look of iOS 7, but isn’t that why Jony (and the pre-show text) basically said that design is about more than looks? I got a lot more excited about the internals of the new OSes this time.  I really enjoyed Snow Leopard’s advances, and actually Lion brought some…

  • New CRTC Wireless Regs

    It looks like the new CRTC cell phone regulations have been enacted. We may still have 3 year contracts in Canada but with zero termination fees after 2, we effectively have the shorter period now.  It remains to be seen whether carriers will make up the difference with reduced subsidies (higher handset prices) or still…

  • Google Play Books

    I was excited to hear about Google Play books now accepting uploads of your own ePub and PDF books. Up to 1000 can be uploaded and read (and theoretically synced) between devices.  All the advantages of say, the Kobo environment without the downsides (namely, having to buy all your stuff from Kobo). I envisioned a…

  • Backbone dynamic elements

    I recently discovered Backbone’s setElement function. What it allowed me to do was dynamically create a view’s container in Javascript and transfer/assign the view and its events to the new element. Using jQuery within the view initialize event: this.el = $(‘<div id=”\’newView\'”></div>’); this.setElement(this.el); $(‘#content’).append(this.el); I manipulated the this.el attribute directly, without using an interim variable,…