Stories by Mark Gibbs

Pixelmator costs $15 and does 95% of the stuff we use Photoshop for

UPDATE: When I wrote last week's Gearhead, "No more Adobe Dreamweaver, so how about Xara Web Designer?" I had looked at Adobe's online shop) to make sure that CS6 wasn't available. Clicking on the dropdown showed:

Ten jobs robots won't take away from you in the next 10 years

There are jobs that robots might be able to do in the near future. Gibbs has ten that they're unlikely to steal from meat machines.

No more Adobe Dreamweaver, so how about Xara Web Designer?

If you're doing serious Web content engineering you might well choose an all-singing, all-dancing product such as Adobe's Dreamweaver. The latest version of Dreamweaver in Adobe's Creative Suite 6 (released just over a year ago) was really impressive with new features such as an improved user interface, support for jQuery UI widgets, better cascading style sheet Version 3 support and support for PhoneGap. All in all, a very cool and comprehensive Web development platform.

The International Space Station Goes Linux and RunRev goes open source

On the ISS, Linux is in and XP is out and open source is the way of the future

Why your next big IT project is doomed

Have you had a IT project go astray? Maybe you were lucky and it was a brief hiccup with minimal financial consequences. Or maybe you had a disaster of biblical proportions, such as the one that befell Levi Strauss in 2008.

Enterprise vendors: There's no such thing as product secrecy any more

Some enterprise vendors try to keep what they are offering away from what they think might be the wrong eyes. This is never a good idea.

Pneuron, an outstanding enterprise data infrastructure solution

How would you like to build a global enterprise-scale data access infrastructure? A daunting prospect, yes? Imagine creating a system that could make any subset of any significant data resource in your organization available where it's needed without incurring insane implementation and maintenance costs ... sounds too good to be true?

Directly connected to the Internet of Things

Last week here in Backspin I discussed how real-world "things" that aren't easily augmented with digital instrumentation, such as bicycles, cars and even dogs, can be indirectly connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) using physical ID tags and online proxies. This is, as I pointed out, a powerful concept.

Taking a look at Jynxbox Android HD and Seagate Wireless Plus

This week two outstanding products: The Jynxbox Android HD and Seagate Wireless Plus

Opinion: Indirectly connected to The Internet of Things

Not everything needs to, or can, connect to the Internet of Things by IP

Logitech Broadcaster Wi-Fi Webcam: Outstanding portable video

Considering the enormous webcam market and the number of products available it's hard to believe that anyone could come up with anything new, novel and useful but, impressively, that's just what Logitech has managed to do with its Broadcaster Wi-Fi Webcam, a really well-designed webcam for OS X and iOS only.

Being green and the madness of crowds

Some time ago I had a call with a company that ran data centers they claimed were "green." Their argument for their greenness was they purchased power with green credits, which meant they paid a premium for electricity to fund alternative energy programs. Along with that they had a car park full of solar cells.

iOS VPNs and portable storage for Apple devices

First up, serious networking stuff concerning Apple and how iOS supports VPNs and how it won't in future.

Facebook and Minnovation

Facebook's big announcement was a big "so what?" and minimal innovation at its finest

Globalgig Hotspot: Taking the pain out of data roaming

Business travel is, under the best of circumstances, a royal pain in the butt, and when you're roaming internationally with a smartphone and need to make some calls and keep up with email, you face a zonking great bill when you get home.