Rev Software has completed design and implementation of the Screen Smart organizations new website. The site, which will be hosted by Rev Software, can be found at http://www.screensmart.ca and is a product of the hard work of all the Screen Smart organization members, including Andrew Sykes, Anne Cooper, Jane Morris, and Linda Chell, to name just a few of the volunteers who have contributed to the sites content.

The Screen Smart website will be dedicated to providing families the information they need in order to make informed decisions about screen time. This website is loaded with high quality, well cited information on all aspects of media awareness, and the effects of screens and the media on health, education, and internet safety.

As Rev Software’s lead web designer I created the site using structured W3C validated XHTML and CSS integrated with the PHP content management system, ModX. This design will ensure the Screen Smart organization members can update and maintain their website within the safe and user friendly ModX system, while enjoying fast, streamlined, XHTML & CSS code.

I highly reccommed you check this website out, and I guarantee you will learn something new.

Local internet company Adventure Touring Inc, responsible for the highly successful RV rental websites USA RV Rentals and Canada RV Rentals , has branched off in a new and local direction by registering a new company name and web domain Revelstoke Vacation Rentals Ltd.

With this new company came the desire for new corporate branding including logo design, web design, and business cards. The design of the business cards for RvR was contracted to Rev Software where we were able to match the sharp logo design of local artist Rene Turlinden with a modern design and sharp text to produce some crisp looking business cards.

The new company/website, Revelstoke Vacation Homes Ltd,  will be providing vacation property owners in Revelstoke the opportunity to list their property on a #1 Google ranked website and have the staff at Revelstoke Vacation Rentals handle all of the processing and booking of their vacation homes. The site is also the perfect place for people looking to visit Revelstoke to find the accommodations they need.

For more information on how Rev Software can help you with branding or other print related media check out our services page and drop us a line at info (at) revsoftware.ca or 250.200.0627

Today I had the unfortunate happen. I mistakenly thought I had downloaded all of our Christmas pictures from my phone camera, a Sony Ericsson k790a, and proceeded to delete all of the pictures to free up some space. This, tragically, was not the case and I was faced the reality of explaining to my wife how I managed to delete all of the Christmas pictures.

Fortunately having had to do data recovery for hard drive failures a time or two I knew that deleted data is in fact not truly deleted but rather just marked as “free space”. This means that something could potentially be done to rescue my deleted pictures assuming no new data had overwritten the lost pictures.

After a little searching I came across a little piece of freeware called PhotoRec. PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from Hard Disks and CDRom and lost pictures (thus, its ‘Photo Recovery’ name) from digital camera memory.

PhotoRec is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X and is relatively simple to use for anyone with at least a little experience in the terminal. Since PhotoRec does not come with a GUI and must be run from the command prompt it may be out of reach for some, but I encourage anyone with lost files to give it a try.

Here are the steps to follow if you are using Mac OS X:

1. Connect your phone or other device to your computer using its USB adapter or plug the memory card into your card reader and wait for the icon to appear on your desktop.
2. Download the latest version of PhotoRec / TestDisk here. Don’t worry about TestDisk, it comes bundled but since I haven’t used it I can’t comment.
3. Once the download is finished double click the tar file and the archive file should extract itself into a new directory in the same location. ( so if you have testdisk-6.10.darwin.tar (file) after extraction you should end up with a folder called testdisk-6.10 )
4. Open up a new terminal and navigate to the newly created directory. Within this directory you will find another directory called “darwin”,  and within that is the PhotoRec executable.
5. Once you have navigated to “darwin” directory you will need to execute the PhotoRec application. Type “sudo ./photorec”, hit return and enter your password at the prompt.
6. At this point you should see the following screen
   
7. From here you would select the disk that most closely matches your camera/memory card/phone using the arrow keys and then hit return. (Hint: look at the memory sizes)
8. The next screen should look like this:
   Again using the arrow keys select the partition table type of your memory card or if you are unsure leave the default and hit return.
9. At the next screen you should see the available partitions and the “Search” option should be selected. Hit return.
   
10. The next screen asks you the file system type, this should be detected by the application and is most likely “Other” so hit return.
    
11. The next screen asks you where you would like to store the recovered files. Unless  you have somewhere specific in mind type “y” and hit return.
    
12. The final screen should provide you with the realtime results of the recovery process. With any luck in a few minutes you will have all of your pictures back, good as new.
    

Assuming you made it this far and you managed to restore at least some of your pictures I encourage you to navigate back to the authors website and make a donation, even a small one, to say thank you for the hard work that was put into this project.

I just happened across an interesting article by switch11 on why some think Amazon might be planning to release Kindle 2 in the UK and Canada. 

To sum up the article in short for you; switch11 uses a rash of job postings and recent hires in areas related to international cell phone networks, as well as the delay of the release of Kindle 2, which he supposes might be linked to failed talks with cell networks as a basis for his arguments on whether or not Kindle 2 will be an international release. 

For the benefit of those who have never heard of either the Kindle, or electronic ink / paper, here is the quick and dirty to what makes the Kindle so special.

Utilizing a new high-resolution display technology called electronic paper, Kindle provides a crisp black-and-white screen that resembles the appearance and readability of printed paper. The screen works using ink, just like books and newspapers, but displays the ink particles electronically. It reflects light like ordinary paper and uses no backlighting, eliminating the glare associated with other electronic displays. As a result, Kindle can be read as easily in bright sunlight as in your living room.The screen never gets hot so you can comfortably read as long as you like.

– excerpt from http://www.amazon.com/

Ever since Amazon’s release of the first generation Kindle I have found myself secretly coveting my vision of what the Kindle could have been. 

The Kindle-led E-paper revolution was supposed to make print media obsolete, the days of heading to chapters and buying a physical reproduction of tomes like War and Peace were over. Much to the dismay of the pulp and paper industry a single electronic device would be able to hold a persons entire library. Much like digital music has done to the music industry, ebooks would save us from space commanding books that could get lost or damaged. But this hasn’t happened. In fact most people I talk to haven’t even heard of the Kindle; and that is a shame.

What Holds the Current Kindle Back?

International Support - The current Kindle uses Sprint’s USA-Only high-speed (EVDO) data network to wirelessly purchase and download books. This means anyone outside of the USA is unable to make use of one of the Kindles best features, on demand delivery of digital media directly to the device. If I have to log on to my computer and download the New York Times then transfer it to my Kindle every morning I am no longer interested. Fortunately as switch111 discovered it appears that Amazon has been hiring new people with expertise in international cell networks, notably GSM. This could be a hint for a potential release of Kindle 2.0 in Canada and the UK.

mono-space fonts - The current generation Kindle is handcuffed by an inability to display mono-spaced fonts, fonts where each letter or digit takes up the same amount of line space. Mono-spaced fonts are used most notably for the display of computer code. This inability renders the Kindle useless for computer / programming books, and alienates a potentially massive pool of eager early adopters. Fix this issue alone and Amazon could see the number of Kindles sold increase dramatically.

colour – Even the newspaper prints at least one of its pages in colour. The current Kindle’s lack of a colour display might be the least pressing issue on this list, but I still feel it needs to be addressed.

style -  The current Kindle is so bland and unexciting as to have the curb appeal of a 90′s Toyota Corolla. Jeff Bezos of Amazon could learn a lesson from Apple and hire some seriously genius product designers to wrap the Kindle in a skin that makes people who don’t even know what it is want one.

What Could Kindle 2.0 Become?

For starters;

A replacement for aged, damaged, heavy, expensive textbooks. Every child old enough to read would be given one for school and each year the most up to date textbooks would be loaded onto the device. Just think, a single searchable device would replace every textbook in the school. No more half erased drawings and tattered pages, no more missing pages, no more out of date material.

How about the be all end all of computer libraries? I can’t count the number of computer books I have collecting dust on the shelf that are out of date and obsolete. Computers and programming languages change so quickly that by the time the book is in my hands much of it is out of date. I would much prefer to buy a subscription to say, O’Reilly’s Java Kindle Updates, and have access to all of the latest releases of their software development books. Books that could be downloaded to my Kindle in seconds, read, and stored for later search and reference. 

In short; everything Kindle 1.0 was supposed to be.

What Do You Think?