Blogging and all that Malarkey

In Monkey Business, the first episode of our new show Unfinished Business, Anna Debenham and I talk about why a show about business is important and why one needn’t be boring. We chat about last week’s CES and if and when designers and developers might need to buy new devices. And of course, I talk about Planet Of The Apes while Anna nods politely.

Yesterday, when I appeared on The Web Ahead, I issued this challenge to anyone who complains about hearing familiar faces speak at web conferences:

For the second year running, Cole Henley has compiled the results from his survey of freelancer demographics, rates and working practices in the UK.

Even within a business culture of openness and transparency, some things are meant to be kept secret. NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, are meant to help with this, but most NDAs are the opposite of open and transparent because they’re written in the same jargon-laden legalese that I avoided in Contract Killer. So I’ve written ‘ Three Wise Monkeys ’, a plain speaking, easy to read, open source NDA.

After I boasted how nice my site looks in IE10 on a Microsoft Surface tablet (it really does), Grant Hutchinson thought he’d put it through its paces on an Apple Newton MessagePad 2100. Turns out it’s not too shabby.

I spent last week in Geneva. Nothing out of the ordinary about that as I’ve been working there fairly regularly over the last couple of years. But last week was my birthday week — Tuesday. 47. A new wallet. Thanks for asking — so they had to be very special people to persuade me to spend the week with them. They were. Good honest folk.

After I posted my review of Hammer – the simple to use, GUI app that helps me design with HTML – this week, several people tweeted a few alternatives. Oooh, oooh, let’s go look!

Summary: If you use OSX and write HTML, screw the trial version. Buy Hammer. You’ll earn back what you spent on it during the first hour you use it.

It’s coming up on four years since I published my original Contract Killer over on 24ways. The reaction to it was astonishing and over the last four years the feedback I’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive. I feel very, very happy that so many people have found Contract Killer useful.

Although Adobe have said nothing officially, their silence says it all. Unofficially my little birdies tell me that Fireworks is not being updated for retina displays so the tool I’ve used and loved for a decade or more is effectively dead.