Since the beta launch last June the Glubble team have worked non-stop to create the 1.0 version. And if you detect a little touch of pride in my tone it’s because I think the new version is nothing short of an internet revolution.
When Ian Hayward contacted me last April about doing some freelance stuff for Glaxstar he gave me an impassioned speech about how he had a vision about protecting young kids on the web. Well, not only has he done that - but Glubble also makes it easy for parents to give their kids some really cool content.
So? What’s new?
Well, pretty much everything’s changed but the concept - So I’ll give you the top five coolest features.
Usertabs - These little suckers make it so easy to log into your Glubble user account. Simply click your tab and (if you’re a helper, kids don’t need passwords) enter your password to unlock Firefox. Oh, and the ability to auto-disable the browser lock has been added to.
Family Homepage - This is cool. You get your own family center where you can check out what your family’s been up to online and send each other little messages on your family wall.
The Glubble Library - The new Glubble Add-on comes with a whole load of “content bubbles” or Glubbles for your kids. These are basically groups of links that have been checked by our experts and are certified safe and fun for kids. The ability to create your own Glubbles and share them with family and friends is coming soon.
My Secret Homepage - Each child gets their own secret homepage containing all their most used content. They can also write on the family wall from here and pretty soon they’ll be other cool, customizable stuff they can do!
Visual Favorites - When a child adds a page to their Favorites (bookmarks) Glubble automagically creates a thumbnail of that page and puts it in their Bookmarks Bar for easy access. I want this Add-on for Firefox myself! It’s so much easier to remember what a site is from a screen shot rather than just a title.
Try Glubble
If you’ve got young kids and you’d like to give Glubble Add-on for Firefox a go. Then get yourself a copy now. It’s free! (maybe that should have been the top feature)
Well, no great supprises but it turns out that there was an iPod touch in the box.
So far I love it!
In the box you get: The iPod (ohhh momma), Headphones, USB cable, A silky cleaning cloth, one of those dock adapter things (so you can use the Touch with Apple Speakers, etc) and a crappy little plastic stand. No stickers (didn’t they used to give you them with everything?) and a useless quick start guide in every language on God’s green Earth.
But onto the main event, the Touch itself. The interface is amazing! Even the keyboard (which pops up whenever you need to type anything) is easy to use, despite the keys looking too small for my chubby fingers to press. It really is well done, and well thought out!
The pinch-zoom is awesome, as is the double-tap - both really intuitive. No wonder they don’t provide a big manual, when it’s this well thought out it’s easy to use. You just kind of instinctively know what to do. Even the built in sound effects give you that warm glow of a well delivered feedback.
I LOVE Coverflow on this - I only wish iTunes could find more of my album art. The accelerometer (the device that flips the display or puts the ipod into Coverflow mode when you tip-up the device) makes yet another thing that could have been a User Interface nightmare a snap to use.
The only few gripes I have with it, so far, are…
No Mail - What? Why? Come on Apple, why no mail app, surly this would be a natural thing to add in seeing how we have a web browser. Maybe they’ll release this soon
No Bluetooth - This would be really useful to transfer photos, etc with my mobile and other devices.
The bug in Videos - Sometimes (randomly) videos will pixelate to such an extent as to make them unwatchable. This is sorted with a restart, but it’s still annoying.
No Quicktime in Safari - Again, What? Why? Maybe something to do with the zooming. Come on Apple, I’m sure your boffins can sort this.
No games - Only a matter of time though I think
So in summing up - yes, it was a bit of a splurge (the first big spend I’ve made in a very long time) - but I’m very impressed. I’m sure they’ll be a new post soon about the dangers of the Mobile iTunes store! So look out for that one.
I’m on holiday for a week now, so roobottom will be back after a short break.
Instead of the standard Wordpress list of archive months, the Archives display a full list of posts in a kind of pseudo calendar view. In this way, it’s easy to browse back through the years and take in the wonder and beauty of roobottom through the ages.
But now, even more goodness. I’ve integrated my Flickr photos in with the archives, so that each time you visit you’ll see a random picture for each month (if there are pictures for that month). You can even link directly to the full Flickr archive.
Oh, and I’ve updated the comment system to give you a little more feedback. It hopefully will put an end to the confusion over comments being held in moderation.
So what next? I’ve made upgrades galore, but it’s stuff that I wanted and I thought was cool. But what do you want? Do you even care? Here’s a few ideas I had to kick off.
An easier (but still spam-proof) way to comment
Monthly Video Blogs (my face and voice coming at ya)
More fun with the Archives.
Writing a WP plugin to make the Archives available to all
Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed that my Mac has been slowly grinding to a halt, overheating and basically not bringing me as much maccy joy as she used to.
After a little investigation, I discovered that (for some unknown reason) Dashboard was chewing up memory and processor power by the fistful. In fact, it was claiming a mighty 80% chunk of my 2.3 Ghz core 2 duo.
80% !?! Something had to be done.
After a little investigation I discovered that there was a way to completely disable my little used Dashboard. The Dashboard app is run as a process of the Dock, so it’s a two stage task to disable the pesky thing.
Avast! The fine fellows at Talk Like a Pirate have put together a video on how to speak like a scurvy dog pirate to get you started.
Most notably tho, Flickr has gone all out in support by adding a new language option for the occasion, so go and check it out quick before yarrrr miss it!
I’ve got a cool new icon on my dock, that of Joost - an on demand Web TV service. First impressions are pretty good, for a ‘friends only’ beta it works well and the programs load and buffer pretty well (although that could have something to do with my shiny new ADSL connection).
Joost is a stand alone application that links to their service. It starts up in full screen mode, and works pretty much like any other digital on demand service. You can pick your channel and show from an easy to use menu. There’s also a ‘My Joost’ menu with things like an on screen clock, but I didn’t really see the point in all this.
It’s an ad paid for system, but that’s cool, and you only get one 30 second advert for each 15 min of TV.. Which is a lot better than ITV.
One thing I did miss was an indication of how much of the program was buffered. I really missed the ability to pause and let the stream catch up with itself, this would have saved a little jerkiness I noticed later on. Maybe when some of the US users were logging on and slowing the servers?
It performed pretty well in window and full screen modes, although don’t expect HD quality. The compression is pretty obvious on a 15″ screen, although it looks mint in window mode.
I’ll be looking forward to this system getting noticed and attracting some (much) better programing, as to be honest the shows they have at the moment are a little pants. Anyway, if you want to check it out, drop me a line and I’ll invite you..
As some of you know, I moved jobs recently to work for the Birmingham based Glaxstar as their in-house web / UI guy, and I have my first major bit of news… Glubble is born!
Glubble is a extension for Firefox aimed at children under 12, and aims to provide a fun, safe browsing environment for them. It comes with around 350 sites (in what we call the Glubble World) that have been pre-vetted as safe and just downright cool for kids. The parents and extended family and friends (’helpers’) can then add sites to the childs Glubble.
And vise-verse, If a child clicks on a link they’re not allowed to see, they can ask a ‘helper’ for permission. So Glubble is infinitely extensible, and very personal to a particular family, group, school, whatever!
There’s a new UI for kids too! It includes a thumbnail bar so kids can easily view and click on their bookmarks. It even screenshots new sites that are bookmarked for easy of finding later.
It’s a shared experience too, and it’s easy to add other kids or helpers into your Glubble. They then can request from the new helpers and the helpers can add sites for their new Glubble children!
And the Reaction?
The whole team, especially those currently in the USA have worked their proverbial socks off, and many a late night has been spent hunched over a laptop screen to get this launched on time. I for one am very proud and privileged to work with such a bunch of hardworking, driven people.
The reaction from users and tech-heads around the net has been somewhat mixed. I’m pleased to say that we managed over 1000 downloads in the first 24-hours. The product has had mentions and reviews galore, not least by such shining lights as The Washington Post, Wired, Lifehacker, CNET and Techcrunch… (to name but a few).
But don’t take their word for it, why not just bing-bash-bosh download yourself a copy from glubble.com and try it for yourself. Just remember, you need Firefox to run it, but that’s ok, Firefox is probably better than your average web-browser anyway.
The very last site I did while at Trinity was Ar-Ger for the company of the same name who specializes in selling spiffing properties somewhere in France.
I don’t know if it was the fact I had a week left to finish it, or just because I’ve got a hidden passion for French property websites (sometimes, I wake in the night, my head full of fine wines and blue cheese), but this is perhaps the best site I’ve done to date.
So, so long Trinity, I had a fine three-and-a-bit years with you, but onwards and upwards. There’s gonna be some exciting things coming out of Glaxstar in the next few months so keep an eye out for them.
Mozilla have just announced the alpha version of a new ebay plugin for Firefox that looks pretty awesome. You can sign up on the site for an alpha test when it’s launched later this month.
If you’re a fan of Firefox and an ebay user then this may be the very thing for you. A secure and quick way to keep an eye on your ebay stuff built right into your browser. Sweet.
