from Daniel Koskinen

Responsive design shouldn’t be just about checking screen width and removing stuff on mobile devices, even though this is what it often amounts to. I also admit to doing this myself. Designing with a mobile first approach is sensible, but we run into problems with the typical wireframes/photoshop/html pixel-perfect workflow.

Stephanie Rieger made this excellent presentation on pragmatic responsive design with lots of good points:

You should check out her other presentations too.

Original post: On Pragmatic Responsive Design

from Daniel Koskinen

The iStat App from Bjango is one of the many cool reasons for having an iPhone. In addition to giving system stats of the device itself (not so interesting) it enables easy monitoring of remote servers. There’s a free server app for those with a Mac server they want to monitor, but most interestingly they have a command-line app for Linux and Solaris.

Setting it up requires some command-line tinkering, but to anyone familiar with configuring and compiling with configure and make this should be a breeze.

Once the server daemon is running, using iStat on the iPhone is really simple and easy. You set up a profile for each server and can access real-time data on uptime, load averages, cpu, pageins, pageouts, network & memory usage.

I’ve had two remote servers running iStat Server for a couple of weeks, and can only say it works like a charm! All I wish for is a similar Mac desktop app for remote servers – the iStat Pro Dashboard widget only shows info of the system it’s running on. Know of any?

Original post: Using iStat to monitor remote servers

from Daniel Koskinen

PvPonline has a funny iPhone-related strip for today.

Original post: iPhone madness

from Daniel Koskinen

At Google they seem to know how to make good mobile applications. After getting a hint from a friend via email, I installed Google’s latest mobile map software on my Nokia 6233 phone. Initially I ran into some trouble — for some strange reason the UI was all in German! Perhaps they thought that wouldn’t matter, since Finland is so close to Germany. Well, unfortunately it seems the only way to change the language is to switch the whole phone’s language from Finnish to English. I hope Google fixes this in the future…

Anyway, once I got the language issue out of the way, the app started by showing a general view of Finland. It’s easy to zoom in by clicking once on the main navi button, or type in a location via the menu on the left. You can have up to 9 favorite locations by adding a ‘star’ on the map.

For drivers who don’t need a full gps-based navigation system, Google’s offering seems really useful. It’s easy to get driving instructions simply by entering the starting and ending point. I’m also really impressed with how fast and responsive using the map is, even here in the middle of the Finnish countryside using regular GPRS. Point your mobile phone browser at http://www.google.com/gmm.

Original post: Google Maps for mobiles – very nice!