15 min logo design for a friend.
And if that didn’t make you close down your browser window sharpish, have a look through the rest of the site. It’s all very SFW… I think…

Visited a church for a christening yesterday, yep and I’m surprised I didn’t burst into flames when I stood upon the consecrated ground too !

What tickled me was this gravestone in the cemetery.

I do worry about these online job agencies who take your CV and then email you relevant job openings. Received this marvellous offer of a job today;

Needless to say, my interview is next week. Wish me luck !!!

Hey there, if the non appearance of flash on Apple products annoys you like it does me, then all is good on jamiedurrant.com. You can now view my Graphic Design and Web Portfolio on the Ipad coded in HTML 5.
This is the latest update to the image management software I use, SlideShowPro.

You can view the portfolio here : Portfolio for Ipad.
I must say, it looks pretty damn sweet over the iPad.

So, I recently visited the App Store to see what the latest and best games were for my Ipad. Top of the list was a new game called, Fish Eat Fish. Looked a little on the simple side, but I thought with over 250 5 star reviews, it must be a sleeper hit.

Downloaded it, 59p (99cents). Oh my god. This is the worst game I’ve seen on the appstore. It’s like a game that was made by a preschooler. A visit to their website, www.goldencoastcanada.ca revealed a non existant website. Something was seriously up with this.

A further look at the “reviews” revealed a surprising similarility between the user names. I immediately sent an email to app venting my concerns and disappointment with their appstore processes. It’s only been a few days since they had a problem with fake itunes reviews. I wanted a refund and for them to investigate this problem. So far, no response and it’s still at the top of the games lists. Already had one friend who downloaded it based on the ‘apparent’ good reviews.

Apple really need to stamp this kind of scam out if they want people to trust using their appstore. I think they’d be better off installing a system that Google’s Android Store uses; in effect when you download an app, you have 24 hours in which you can get an automated refund if you uninstall it within that time. That would put a stop to these fake reviews as you’d actually be able to try it first.

Update : 2nd September

It now looks like Apple staff are in on the scam. They’ve voted Fish Eat Fish as a ‘Staff Favourite’ (See attached photo). Either they’re very simple at what actually makes a good game or something rotten is going on with the App Store. Still no replies from emails sent reporting the app and it’s fake reviews.

Update 19th September

Due to the amount of people downloading the app and writing 1 star reviews, the ‘creators’ of this app have come up with a great way to get around the average star rating of their scam, I mean game. They’ve released an updated version of their game, 1.1 what this does is to reset the display score of their app. They then get their fake review crowd to go in and rate the game at 5 stars again. So, to all extents when you visit the app, because all the ratings are on the latest version, the average rating of this app has rocketed back up again. A great way to make people think that this app is worth a download. It’s a clever use of a flawed ratings system. Not helped by the fact that this app is still a ‘staff favourite’ and bound to fool other people into paying money for it.

Update: 19:42 GMT
The fake reviews are back for version 1.1. I just can’t understand why no-one at apple seems to care about this abuse of their system. I emailed Steve Jobs last night to inform him about this vulnerability in the AppStore but have received no response yet.

I love Medium and what with season 7 soon to be showing in the US, I thought I’d edit together a précis of what happened on Seasons 1 & 2. I hope you’ll find it very informative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3B4_F6rbQY

I’m not sure if the Apple Mac would have been as successful as it is without Adobe’s suite of programs used for it. Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere. Design Creatives the world over would use an apple mac and that suite for digital creation.

I’m all for consumer choice and if Apple have such strict contracts on what you are able to access and develop for their iphone then I’m going to move over to something more open. Apple have started their own moral crusade about which apps they will or will not allow on the iphone. Let the end user decide !

With that, I made this. I’m on Team Adobe !!

June 1st 2010 update: Now the proud owner of a HTC Desire ! Lovely bit of kit.

This was just an first-pass example of skinning an already existing game with a different Interface feel and look.