Ok, so the word on the block is that the mighty Google are days away from completing their suite of online office apps with the launch of Presently, a stripped down Powerpoint style online app.

A lot of talk has gone on about when and how Google will do this, but all shall be revealed shortly, and, almost certainly to a great deal of fanfare amongst the blogging community.

I thought, hey, this could be cool, I will be able to make a presentation online, woohoo. But then I thought: do I actually want to?

If you have Keynote on the Mac, I think you will agree that there is not much on the market to match the slick and beautiful presentations that it can produce so easily. On the PC, Powerpoint just keeps getting better with every release, offering more and more cinematic quality effects to bring your presentations to near-professional grade attractiveness.

But when you start taking presentation software online you encounter a few problems, which I am going to be intrigued to see Google address:

Will we really see anything like the quality of animation in Presently as we already have offline?

My guess is no. After all, the app can only be as fast as your internet, and Google's servers [which admitttedly are fast]. Sure, AJAX fades and all the other script.aculo.us effects are nice, and work with a standard web site, but they're nothing compared to a 3D cube rotation or a collapsing mosaic. I can only assume that, unless Google get in to some hard core Flash trickery, Presently presentations will be full of lackluster transitions.

Will anyone ever risk presenting to the board with an online app?

Not only are you increasing the number of things that could screw up during your presentation [Browser + Online App + Internet Connection], you are completely dependent on a fast internet connection that simply can't cut out for any period of time. Sure, you will be able to download your presentation and show it in Powerpoint to avoid this high dependence on telecommunications, but isn't that defeating the object of this online application's sole purpose?

Do you really want even more of your private information on Google's servers?

Considering the number of highly sensitive pieces of information individuals and organisations share via presentations; no matter what Google says, it still makes me feel a little uncomfortable to be keeping all of this data right under a 3rd party's gazing eyes. There is absolutely no proof to suggest that Google have or would ever look into our private documents, but there's this little curiosity that remains as to who can see and what can be done to our personal files when they're on someone else's servers. It is this curiosity and cautiousness that could well put a lot of people off of sharing their most important presentations on Presently.

On the other hand, I can see a few benefits of using Presently...

Sharing and collaborating with other members of the team would be a whole lot easier if Google Presently follows in the footsteps of Google Docs & Spreadsheets [which it almsost certainly will].

The interface will probably be cleaner and nicer to use in all major browsers than most of the competition already out there.

It could turn out for a lot of people to simply be a good way of uploading, sharing, and making minor edits to presentations, with a lot of users almost never using the editing features of the app itself, but more the storage and collaboration aspect.

All in all, for now, I think I'll keep my Keynote and web hosting to do the job myself.

What do you think on Google's imminent entry into the presentation space? And, more importantly, do you think you will be converted to online presenting?

A popular graphical style at the moment is to make your text look indented. I spent months and months trying to work out how to do this after seeing it perhaps for the first time in iTunes. I always looked for a filter or a tool to "emboss" or "bevel" the text, but these never looked quite as nice, and often made the text hard to read.

One day, it hit me: it's SO SIMPLE! And the method I came up with didn't involve filters, plug-ins, or any other jazz like that.

All you need to do to create the effect of indented text is to duplicate the line of text, with the duplicate behind, and slightly below the original.

Then, make the duplicated text slightly lighter than the original text. This will work perfectly when you have dark text, just like in the title of this post.

Also, not many people realise you can use this method with light coloured text aswell. However, instead of moving the duplicated line of text below the original, you move it above, and make it darker than the original text. This will look just as good and give the same effect.

This method can be used in almost any application, but I made these with Adobe Illustrator. It's great to know that something that looks so good can be done so easily.

Hope this helps

Get the Adobe Illustrator CS2 File [1.1MB]

I read a post today about the effort members of the Panic development team went through to make the Coda interface so intuitive.

Coda, if you haven't heard of it, is an all-in-one solution for building, editing, testing, and publishing web sites. It is aimed at a more advanced market than iWeb and others due to its focus on the code rather than providing a WYSIWYG editor.

Anyway, the article explained how much effort they put into a small change to the toolbar. The Mac OS X toolbar is getting outdated, and to fit with the pretty slick interface of Coda, they wanted to change the toolbar tab button backgrounds. This seemed like a small task, until they realised what they wanted to do could only possibly be done with an annoying 3 pixel gap at the bottom, and almost gave up.

Instead, they reconsidered, and decided to build a whole new toolbar to facilitate their design decision. It was tough work, and the designers spent a while persuading the developers that it was a good idea, but eventually they got it done.

The interface is attractive, and debatably nicer than many standard OS X apps that use the system wide toolbar.

The point I want to make is that not many users would have realised the huge amounts of effort if it wasn't pointed out in a post. Sometimes, the effort that goes on behind the scenes just to make something feel "natural" really isn't appreciated by the end user.

This kind of thing happens so much in web design, and I know it does in our case, which is why we try, whenever we can to discuss what we have done to get to where we are at. Not only does this help others appreciate our work, it also helps others do things in ways they hadn't previously thought about.

Equally important is for others to comment on how people do things - did you do it the same way? Was your method faster? Do you think this way improves on the old one? etc etc.

Even better is when you can provide a piece of the effort you put in, and share it with everyone. For example, when we wanted to neaten up some CSS files, we built a PHP script to help us out. Shortly after a bit of testing and adapting, we decided to share it with you. Because we like to help

Next time you're working on a project, and you want help, or want to show just how much effort has gone in, simply post about it.

Even better, tell us, because we love to hear about your upcoming projects and the work you're doing.

If Sony's previous offering of a DSLR, the a100 wasn't up to your very high photographic standards, then listen up.

The new DSLR-a700 is a 12.2 megapixel camera featuring Sony's new 'Exmor' CMOS sensor. The frame is built from tough and light magnesium so it can resist a tough life in the dust and damp.

Despite its pro-sumer price tag, Sony have put in a lot of effort to make the camera as easy to use as possible, with a large 3 inch, 920,600 pixel rear LCD and a pentaprism optical viewfinder, as well as 14 'Creative Style' settings, which are preset adjustments in contrast, colour saturation, brightness and zone matching, with names like 'Autumn Leaves' and 'Vivid'. There’s also the new high-speed BIONZ processor which has been sped up and reduces digital signal noise.

Other features include the built-in HDMI output for connection to any HD-ready telly. It'll be out in the UK with a choice of lenses from mid-October, and so far the US pricing puts the camera at around $1,400. So looks like around double the price of the a100. I guess "that's technology" for you.

Will be updated regularly.

New version of iTunes. Ringtones on iTunes.

Astonishingly predictable, Apple are going to be selling ring-tones for the iPhone. Well, not selling, more charging you AGAIN for converting your previously purchased music into ring-tones. Hmmm. It's going to be $0.99 per song, so I guess 79p in the UK when we eventually get our iPhone. I wonder if they will announce the date for the UK release of iPhone later...

New iPod Shuffles

Simply a colour refresh, and a (RED) shuffle to boot. All 1 GB, and $79.

New iPod Nanos

As the rumours predicted, we have a lovely new iPod nano. Packed with that leaked new UI, CoverFlow [is it really needed?], video, and games. Basically the old big iPod, packed into the size of a wide nano with less storage. Very nice.

Nanos in same/ similar colours as Shuffle, including (RED), and as with previous Nanos, black.

Nanos shipped, and available by the weekend.

iPod Classic

Available in 80GB and 160GB, amazingly the 80GB will be thinner than the old iPod 30GB.

iPod Classic is like an old video iPod, with the same finish as the new nanos. Not much to say, available in black and silver.

And yet another rumour is true- The iPod Touch

Looks very very VERY similar to iPhone. [My thoughts, living in UK - how many people are gonna buy this INSTEAD of an iPhone if it comes out before?]

Very similar to iPhone- has home screen etc. Slide to unlock. Uses same multi touch technology as iPhone.

Oh wow, it has wifi. Has Safari browser, and can view YouTube vids. Man, this IS AN IPHONE. It's got everything other than the phone, this is putting me partly off getting an iPhone, depending on price difference.

Ok, pricing: available in 8GB and 16GB, for $299 and $399 respectively.

One More Thing...

Itunes Wifi Music Store

Pretty neat little app for the iPod Touch which lets you browse, preview, and purchase songs from the iTunes (Music) Store. So does this work with videos aswell? Anyone know?

Other stuff: Starbucks deal with Apple - sell more coffee, sell more songs.

To round the show off - KT Tunstall live performance. To quote Steve: “She’s very talented and she’s very hot”. Not cool Steve, not cool.