Archive for March, 2010

Today is Ada Lovelace day.
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace was born on 10th December 1815, the only child of Lord Byron and his wife, Annabella. Born Augusta Ada Byron, but now known simply as Ada Lovelace, she wrote the world’s first computer programmes for the Analytical Engine, a general-purpose machine that Charles Babbage had [...]

In Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Alan Turing describes the famous Turing test for detecting machine intelligence. Did you know that Turing’s thesis was heavily influenced by Ada Lovelace’s critique of Babbage’s Analytical Engine, wherein she states that “the Analytical Engine has no pretensions to originate anything,” arguing that computing machines do not exhibit creativity? You [...]

I’ve always liked Ada. She was the first to see the musical potential of computers. Here, look at this old blog post in which I mention her. As proof! Homebrew Adventures ;)

A tip of my hat to Ada then. And tips all round to that small elite of n…

I was looking for new phone wallpapers last night and stumbled across loads of examples of this. The iPhone doesn’t have a main calendar screen like other manufacturers but what I love about this is the way that people have made do and shared their work with the world. There are themed ones, valentines ones, [...]

Inspired by this brilliant picture and wee post over at the Panic Inc. blog I’ve not been able to shake the idea of making a similar status view for us to use when designing Ubuntu and related products. We’re always looking to enhance our processes and what I really like the idea of is creating [...]

I really can’t tell you how exciting a place to be Canonical towers is right now! Yes, it’s hard work keeping up with all the feedback from the community, we’re terrifyingly close to a release and have to deliver final and updated assets until the cows come home and YES it’s UDS in 8 weeks [...]

Many of you have been asking for some correspondence regarding the button position in the window manager.
Here it is.
At Ubuntu we have a golden opportunity not only to make our OS as good as the competition but to make it better. The button position discussion and analysis started with:
- Why do Mac OS and Windows [...]

I’ve spent some time attempting to make a Cocoa that lets you burn an Ubuntu ISO to a USB memory stick on OS X.

I think I’ve got as far as I’m gonna get with it now, sadly.

How far I got…

The UI is pretty concise
A USB stick gets detected when pl…

Here’s a photo of Iain, design team project manager, edited to expose his love of colour:

Here’s a photo of Iain, design team project manager, edited to expose his love of colour: