Skeuomorphism in practice

Mechanical watches have been around since 1500s, mass-produced since the 1850s. At that time, functionally the mechanical design of the watch made the use of hour and minute hands a necessity.

Above: The Pebble smartwatch

Image Credit: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

The first electronic/quartz watches appeared in the early 1970s, more or less simultaneous to the advent of display technologies. Almost overnight, watches with hands were nowhere to be found, and the numerical “digital” display became the standard. People could tell time to the split-second and believed that their speed to read the time was improved.
But today, digital watches are almost a thing of the past.
If a wristwatch is worn today, an analog display is standard — particularly for upscale watches — and could easily be mistaken for the mechanical watch of 50 or 500 years ago. Once the thrill of innovation subsided, users found that the need to tell time to the split-second was less important than the ability to quickly mentally process the approximate time of day using the analog dials on the watch.
What they discovered was that reading the numerical display took longer for the individual to process in terms of the amount of time left in an hour.
Digital displays are still used in places where precise accuracy maters, but when speed matters and approximate assessment of time is enough, hands on a clock face are more efficient. For example, aircraft cockpit designers have found that it may take longer for a pilot to process numerical versus analog gauges — so even though in an aircraft these split seconds can matter, the analog (skeuomorphic) approach has remained on many gauges.
A similar functional skeuomorphic example could be found in a car.
If a driver has information on a fuel gauge indicated 2.69 gallons remaining, he/she may get bogged down by mentally having to compute the miles per gallon, make an assessment of the length of the drive, and then make a decision to go and get gas. With fuel gauge that simply shows “Full” and “Empty,” the driver could look at the gauge pointing towards E and immediately start to think about where to refuel.
 FROM:
http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/11/ios-7-windows-8-and-flat-design-in-defense-of-skeuomorphism/

The Wayback Machine

482 billion web pages saved over time
The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format.

Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes: texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities.
From:
http://archive.org/web/web.php

iBook Author

My desire to author my own IT manual has consumed me for the last month.
This has NOT come into being as yet!!
As with many tech ideas, I only know enough to make huge mistakes!!
So I want to create this manual on an iPad and edit it with my macbook and my iPad.
Wish me luck!!

iBooks Author
By Apple
Essentials

Open the Mac App Store to buy and download apps.
Description

Now anyone can create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad and Mac. Start with one of the Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. Add your own text and images with drag-and-drop ease. Use Multi-Touch widgets to include interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations, 3D objects, and more. Preview your book on your iPad or Mac at any time. Then submit your finished work to the iBooks Store in a few simple steps. And before you know it, you’re a published author.

Apple-designed templates
• Give your book a great beginning with templates that include a choice of page designs with matching fonts, colors, and textures
• Quickly customize your book with text and images, create new layouts, and even save a custom template
• Easily add a cover, video introduction, table of contents, copyright page, dedication, and foreword

Beautiful text and layouts
• Use a variety of text styles including custom fonts to give your book a rich yet consistent look
• Add text, shapes, charts, tables, and media anywhere on the page
• Import a chapter written in Pages or Microsoft Word and apply a great-looking layout from your current template
• Add sophisticated mathematical expressions with native equation editing using both LaTeX and MathML notation
• Add any word to the glossary with a single click and easily include photos, images, charts, tables, and shapes next to any definition
• Automatically create a portrait view of your landscape book, which allows iPad readers to focus on the text

Multi-Touch widgets
• Choose from a variety of widgets that add Multi-Touch interactivity to your book
• Add a photo gallery, chapter review, movie, audio file, Keynote presentation, scrolling sidebar, dynamic pop-over, interactive image with callouts, 3D object, or custom HTML anywhere in your book
• Many widgets include placeholders for titles and captions and are automatically numbered so you can reference them in your main text
• Add accessibility descriptions to any widget so that it can be used by sight-impaired readers easily with VoiceOver

Export for iBooks Store or iTunes U
• Preview your book in iBooks on iPad and on Mac to see how it looks and works
• Submit your book to the iBooks Store for sale or free download in a few simple steps
• Export your book in iBooks format to share on iTunes U or to give to others
• Export your book as a PDF file

Requirements
• OS X 10.9 or later  (my macbook fulfills THIS requirement-but my iPad does not)
• 2GB of RAM
• 1.2GB of available disk space
• Keynote 6.0 or later (required for importing presentations created in Keynote 6.0+)
• Pages 5.0 or later (required for importing documents created in Pages 5.0+)
• iBooks for iOS 3.0 or later (required for previewing on iPad)
• iBooks for Mac 1.0 or later (required for previewing on Mac)
• iTunes Producer 2.9 or later (required for book publishing)
• Network Connection (required for book publishing)

What's New in Version 2.2

• Import ePub files
• Import Adobe InDesign IDML files
• Create customized books with new Blank templates
• New hyperlink options: link to a location in another book

Other references:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6085561
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201478

The Internet of Things

Well, with the Internet of Things taking off there are people on the cutting edge of developing very small embeddable computers.


 Read about it here!!
From: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardZero