For your Desktop or your Android Phone

Yes, we love Android and we created this wallpaper full of Android Robots.
There are so many that they could easily amass an army and conquer us all.
Made with Cinema 4D R12 and retouched with Photoshop.
We also included a 960 x 800 version, meant to be used with your Android Phone.

• Download the 1920 x 1080 version (for your Desktop Computer) 448 KB.
• Download the 960 x 800 version (for your Android Phone) 193 KB.

Enjoy!

The Epsilon Creations Team.

The why and the changes

Our new website redesign is finally ready, we hope you enjoy it as much as we were delighted in creating it.
The big news is that this time around we decided to go (completely) the CMS way.
The old version was static, but a little more than year ago, we created a sister blog, where we discussed design topics and news about our company, even if this blog was dynamic, it was separated from the main website, so we decided to mesh the 2 into one.

Our preferred CMS is WordPress, because it is easy to use and to modify, and almost all our clients are (by now) using it.
We went big this time and gave everything much more space to breathe, the font sizes, line heights, and word spacing are bigger, making the text easier to read. White space is better, we removed the clutter and excess information, going for a more visual approach.

New Features

• Dynamic content using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS).
• New photo Galleries.
• jQuery is used broadly to create ease of use and effects.
• Integrated search functionality.
• Lightbox type effects for photos.
• Google Analytics and Google Site-maps integration.
• SEO was optimized.
• Blog and News.
• RSS feeds.
• Wufoo Contact Form.
• Twitter Integration.
• Clients Service Integration for communication and project management, with the help of Collabtive.
• CSS3 use for modern browsers.

Other technologies used

Old Design Websites

In this gallery you can see the changes of this website throw time.

The future of gaming and graphics technology is happening in real time. Whether it’s 3D graphics, game development, or digital media production, your imagination is driving the visual computing industry. Immerse yourself, and unleash your Visual Adrenaline.

What is Visual Adrenaline?

Visual Adrenaline is an Intel^® initiative, its goal is to publish a magazine for topics related to games and visual design. The magazine itself is geared towards software developers and talks about success stories about companies, games and software in general that uses the Intel^® technologies to thrive. Things like physics, Intel^® Core™ i7, 64bits computing, new software and technologies are common denominators in this great mag.

Even if yourself are not a software developer, it is a wonderful read and a great way to learn about new technologies and software in general, keep reading to know what’s inside the last issue.

What’s inside?

The photo showed in this post comes from the last issue from the Visual Adrenaline Mag, that would be issue number 3, here is a small summary of the topics included in the 40 pages of the PDF publication.

• Wolfenstein* is Reborn

  Seventeen years after the groundbreaking original, an all new Wolfenstein is true to its roots.

• Take a Look at Larrabee

  Tom Forsyth shares his thoughts on how it feels to be on the leading ed of the gaming graphics universe.

• Victory for 2008 Indie Game developers

  Three winners, three games—how the win from Intel has helped these game developers.

• Autodesk® Fuels Triple-A Game Creations

  A trio of applications from Autodesk animates and energizes Triple-A game development.

• Launch of Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers: Virtual Graphics Support for Your Game Studio

  Realize full graphics performance potential with minimum effort.

• Empire: Total War* Takes to the Waves

  Featuring real-time 3D naval battles, Empire: Total War targets the revolution and rebellion of eighteenth-century England.

• Cakewalk Software: Composing Audio for Video Games

  The audio soundtrack of a video game can make the experience an adrenaline-drenched adventure.

Where and how to get it

• Subscribe to get the PDF links monthly here: Intel Software Dispatch for Visual Adrenaline
  It is free and quick.
• Read about the Intel^® software partner program, the Intel^® communities, Intel^® Headlines and Technology focus and much more here: Intel Software The same content that you can find inside the magazine can be browsed in this website.

What is Wufoo?

Wufoo is an online service that helps you create forms without writing a single line of code.

It is so easy to use that even the greenest web designer or freelancer, can have wonderfully styled forms inside his or her own web pages, and without the need of even one single aspirin to combat all the headaches associated with the creation of forms.

With Wufoo you can visually create a form, just adding elements with drag and drop mouse gestures, visually change its design and presentation (colors, backgrounds, font-type, sizes, etc.). And also decide what to do with the information later on, like for example send it to your e-mail box.

It even creates reports and charts of the submissions, has the ability to export data to many different formats (like for example Excel or PDF files), and many other options that we will talk about later.

We are truly in love with this service, we not only use it ourselves, but also recommend it to all our clients, let it be its free incarnation or a paid one if the free plan is not enough for them.

But before we talk about Wufoo, let’s first see what exactly HTML forms are, what can be done with them, and why it takes so much time to implement them.

HTML Forms

Almost every web site in existence has at least one kind of form embedded in its pages, it could be just a simple contact form, a newsletter e-mail form, or even a complex client or product survey form.

The extended use of forms in web pages showed how indispensable they were for communications purposes, and we shouldn’t forget that they brought us the first real dynamic and interactive aspects of internet. They continue to be very useful, even if their complexity have grown exponentially.

The creation of a form is not a complex task for coders or programmers, but it did, and it still does, prove often difficult for beginners or graphic designers.

The HTML code in itself is not the real problem. Using normal HTML (in this case with XHTML formatting), a simple normal form could look like this:

<form id="ContactForm" action="submit.php" method="post"> <label id="Name" for="Name">Name:</label>
   <input name="Name" type="text" />
   <label id="Email" for="Email">Email:</label>
   <input name="Email" type="text" />
   <label id="Message" for="Message">Message:</label>
   <textarea cols="25" rows="10" name="Message"></textarea>
   <input class="submit-button" name="submit" type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

The real problem is what to do with this information once that the user clicks the “Submit button”, and how to do it. And we are not even talking about how to style it with CSS, that also, is very time consuming.

There are many methods to process a form after it is submitted, like for example using cgi-scripts, PHP, python, server extensions, etc. Also we need to take into account how to store that information, let it be into a file, a database or just to send it to our e-mail.

Let’s check some of this methods in more detail.

A little history on how we created forms

With the passing of time, we found ourselves creating forms in very different ways throughout the last 10 years.

• In the beginning, we used FrontPage to create them. This program allowed us to make a new form in a WYSIWYG way, just dropping a form into a page and consecutively its components, modifying its options one by one. If the hosting allowed the use of FP extensions, we didn’t need to worry about any coding, any scripts or problems, the extensions managed everything for us. We just configured the form to send an e-mail and to save all the information into a .cvs file.
• A few years later, when we started to get more serious about web design and found out how bad FrontPage was at creating standard and valid code, we moved forwards and started using cgi-scripts. By then we were using Dreamweaver and just starting to understand the use of CSS, but we quickly found out that this method was a little more complex to set up and make it work just like we wanted. We were using much more of our time into coding and solving script problems. The results, at least, were more than satisfactory.
• Not so long ago, we changed our form creation habits yet again, this time choosing for an even more complex but more controllable way of creating and managing them, that was the start of the age of PHP and databases. They were more secure, the use of databases allowed us to quickly create reports and lists of all the submissions and we were able to accommodate almost any kind of strange client requests. The drawback was that the level of complexity did jump a little higher, not to mention that the servers were busier with PHP and databases running, and that we needed a lot of time to code and configure each form. It is also noteworthy to mention, that by this time we also dropped WYSIWYG methods and start coding more and more by hand, helped by code editors.
• How do we create forms now you may ask?
  The answer is simple.
  Enter the Wufoo world.
  We don’t need any coding, any scripts or any worry. We only need to concentrate in the design itself.

How does the Wufoo service work?

Wufoo is an online service, so you need to create an account with them and use their website for everything.

Wufoo uses a fantastic AJAX interface with a Web 2.0 look, so most of its functions and menus have the same feeling as a desktop application, things like drag and drop, visual changes, configurations and so on, work right from the web UI, and all of this is presented without a page refresh.

With the free version, you can create a maximum of 3 forms, have 100 submissions per month, and use no more than 10 fields per form.

The form creation is very simple, you only need to drag and drop your components, after you finished configuring your form you can then use a theme or create a new one (colors, font-types, etc.). The last step is to copy and paste the HTML code, generated by Wufoo, into your website, and there you have it, a wonderful looking form with AJAX functionality, reports, e-mail notifications, etc.

Now let’s look at it in more detail.

Creating a form and its fields

Go to the Wufoo Website and choose a plan. I recommend the Free plan, at least to get started, it might be all you need after all.

After you logged on into your new account, you can start creating forms right away.
Your start page is the form manager, where you can see a list of your forms and view them, edit them, edit or view entries, change notifications, choose a theme or delete them. In my preview I have 3 forms already created.

Now you can click the New Form! button to start creating your form. You can manually add fields or choose between many templates for free. The process is simple, use the left column to choose a field and drag and drop it inside the right column. You can change many options per field with just clicking them in the right side, like name or label, description, if it is required or not, etc.

The last step is to edit the Form Settings (the last tabbed menu in the right side). There you can give the form a name, description, change the Confirmation Message and so on.

Using Themes or creating a new one

Our new form has already a default theme applied to it, but we can change it to compliment the colors of our own website. This is done in the Themes menu. Here you can change many options like colors, font-types and sizes, borders, shadows, and even upload your own logo or use your own CSS stylesheet. Wufoo also offers a Theme Gallery, where you can choose already created designs.

Once you finished with the theme, save it and apply it to your form in the Form Manager.

Using the Form in your site

Now the last step is to gather the code you need to use the form in your own website, in the Form Manager choose the Code button, this will take you to a page with the many options that allow you to use your form (link, embed, full page, pop up, XHTML/CSS, etc.), normally I choose the second option “Embed Form Code” because I can just copy and paste the code inside my own pages, it uses an iFrame to gather the information from the Wufoo servers.

Managing Entries

Now that we have a fully functioning form, people can start to use it. We will receive an e-mail notification every time that this happens, and with the Entries function, we can manage and view every single post. In the Form Manager click the “Entries” button under the Form name.

Every time you click in one of the entries, the form view appears and you can edit them, create new ones or make comments on them. If you have an address field, it will even show a map of that location, a very nice feature.

Statistics and Reports

Wufoo provides a very nice statistics view for every form (accessed via the “Statistics” button in the Form Manager), so you can view the form use daily, weekly, monthly or by year.

It is also possible to create reports for every form, a full list of all entries (you can choose specific fields to be included if you want) and even add a nice Pie, Bar or Line Graph. All reports can be viewed online or exported to a file in Excel format, as TXT with tab separators or as a CSV file. This function is very useful, so take the extra time to create your own reports, mostly if you are expecting many responses.

Benefits of using Wufoo

• You don’t need to know anything about HTML, PHP, cgi-scripts or AJAX to create a wonderful form.
• It has a free plan and is priced reasonably compared to other services.
• It is easy to use, fast and a lot of fun.
• It integrates with your own website, using your own colors and design.
• It looks beautiful and it has AJAX effects, like date pickers, help hovers and data checking.
• It has a very nice UI, great Help and Documentation, and a large community.
• W3C Valid XHTML and CSS
• It degrades gracefully (Runs with or without JavaScript, CSS and Cookies)

Nothing is perfect – The negatives

• It is not free if you want more functions like file uploads, more users, SSL, payment integration, more forms, more submissions, more fields, etc.
• Themes could be a little bit more configurable.
• The free version only has 3 forms, 3 reports, 100 submissions per month and 10 fields per form, also you can’t use a 2 column layout.
• You have to rely on their 24/7 up-time, and is not in your hands to solve any problems they could have.
• Free version shows a powered by Wufoo link and a logo after submitting.

Other alternatives

There are not many alternatives to this wonderful online service, at least not one that is so elegantly constructed and presented, or one that is so easy to use, but some of them are worthy competitors, and you should at least take a quick look at them:

• A very similar service is FormSpring, it has almost the same functionality and options, the same ease of use and it generates nice and clean code, you can’t use templates thought you can’t use templates in the free version, but the free services are almost exactly the same as Wuffo, and the basic one has even the same price. It is worth mentioning that I like the usability of the website a lot, almost as good as Wuffo itself.
• Another online service that deserves a mention is FormAssembly, being very similar to Wufoo in many regards, but not so customizable and with different plans. The free one gets you unlimited forms, reports, charts and notifications, but it lacks advanced features like file uploads, export to different formats (no Excel), etc. But still, both services are good, and you should weight their pluses and negatives, choosing the one that best fit you.
• Another alternative is GoogleDocs, that allows to create forms and embed them to your pages, this option is a very simple solution, that works fine, but it doesn’t have any extra functions like AJAX, themes or advanced fields, but in reality, it will be more than useful and enough for most users. It is free and it doesn’t have any restrictions.
• ZohoCreator is also a very good alternative, but much more complex as is not only related to forms, but to full database applications. Also I don’t like the code that it generates, it uses a lot of tables and is not clean. The other drawback is that the free plan is only for personal use.
  Still, it is a very nice tool if you give it some time and learn it.

Even more alternatives (not yet tested by us)

• FormLogix
• TheBlueForm
• Appnitro MachForm
• FLOVV (Free Online Multipage Form Builder)
• Survey Gizmo
• WyaWorks
• JotForm
• Perfect Forms

Conclusions

We designers, and mostly freelancers, tend to be in the cheap side, and will try to get by without using a single penny.

Our views are based on the FREE versions of every one service, as you could guess, almost all of them also have more powerful paid versions, in this case, you should compare yourself their plans to see what you get for your money. The memorable quote “you get what you pay for” is very true in this case.
If you have a small website and need a form, any of these services will make your life easier, and speed up your work flow, so don’t hesitate to take some time to review them and to try them out, you won’t regret it.

Wufoo gets our top vote, as you could read throwout this post, its ease of use, great design and fun work flow is unbeatable. But in reality, any of the alternatives will do just fine. If you could just get by using Google Docs, please do, it is totally free and it works perfectly, it doesn’t have some advanced features, but you don’t have any limitations like the rest.

If you can live with just a few forms, a few submissions per month and you don’t need that many fields, Wufoo and FormSpring are the winners.

Are you creating more serious websites and you care about your clients, consider a paid plan.

Of course, if you have all the time in the world, keep coding everything by hand, no service beats that freedom.

Sony Ericsson P1i short description and specifications

The P1 is the fourth Symbian OS v9.1 and UIQ 3.0 enabled phone in the Sony Ericsson portfolio, following the P990, M600i and W950. The P1 supports a wide range of push email solutions and Web browsing applications, plus connectivity via hi-speed UMTS and WLAN. The P1 is also a slimline model, being just 17mm thick and 124 grams in weight. Other notable specifications are as follows:

• Integrated 3.2 digital camera, with double led flash and autofocus. Video capable.
• 240×320 full color Touchscreen with Pen Stylus.
• Full QWERTY keyboard with rocking system.
• Video Calls capable with secondary front camera.
• Memory Stick Micro™ (M2™) support (up to 8 GB).
• Business card scanner.
• Bluetooth™ 2.0 stereo.
• Push email.
• Music recognition with TrackID™ technology.
• RSS feeds.
• Handwriting Recognition.
• Full organizer functions, Microsoft office documents editing and viewing, PDF+.
• Multimedia viewer for music, videos and photos of every type.
• FM Radio.
• BlackBerry Connect and Exchange ActiveSync.

A little history about UIQ

Even if in reality the UIQ as an OS is dead, it is still very much beloved by many people around the glove, it has lots of followers, developers and fans, just like me. And even until this day, you can find new mods, themes and programs for it. UIQ was always in the forefront of innovation, bringing us the latest of technology, even touchscreens, years ago. With a little bit of hope, we can expect some of this wonderful OS inside the new Symbian Foundation, who UIQ is now part of.

The UIQ system was always very responsive and fast, and open with lots of possibilities, and that was exactly what made UIQ a preferred choice, reaching a well deserved status of even stardom, mostly with geeks, because even if the UI and options weren’t that complex, you could always dig deeper and reach an outstanding degree of complexity.

What the P1i brought to the UIQ world was more raw power with a faster processor, more memory, smaller and better design, in the real world usage it ran much faster and stable than for example the P990i, its predecessor, who was almost the same as the P1i but with less memory, making it almost impossible to use with many processes running at the same time, sometimes even bringing that mobile to its knees.
Even if the P1i was a following of the beloved M600 with the same form factor and design, the inclusion of more memory, a camera, wi-fi and many other options made the P1i an easy winner.
The P1i uses the 3.0 version of UIQ, some new phones have the UIQ 3.3 version, that runs even better, but none of those phones have a QWERTY keyboard.

Now, let’s talk about what I think about the P1i as hardware gadget and the software it uses.

What I really love about the P1i:

• The form factor, is very small compared to most smartphones out there, and it has a full keyboard, that once you get used to it, is unbeatable for speed typing.
• The choice of internet browsers you can use. Even if the one embedded with the latest firmware is just an old version of Opera Mobile, there are many other options you can use, including the fantastic Opera Mini (my favorite for its speed and ease to use), Opera Mobile 9.5, Ozone, and the list goes on.
• The sync options with your PC. The default PC Suite is not that good, but the totally free MyPhoneExplorer is unbelievable, it works like a charm, it is fast and very easy to use.
• The incredible array of programs (most of them for free) that you can install in your P1i. Everybody is raving about the Apple Store, but they forget that UIQ has years and years of programs created for it, and it shows in the amazing selection.
• The scan music and guess who it is function. When my friend showed me this function in his brand new iPhone, and told me it was a groundbreaking invention, I remind him that Sony and UIQ has this already and since years.
• The possibility of reading almost any document know to man, images, videos, PDFs, Office documents, OpenOffice documents, etc.
• E-mail integration and push mail, it works great, even with IMAP accounts.
• The integration of RSS feeds and Podcast, the default programs work great, but there are even better free options you could install.
• I can watch Youtube videos without problems, and in high res with the last Core Player.
• Long battery, much better than most Smartphones, it last at least 3 days with heavy use, and all this after more than one year usage. (I do turn off 3G and Wi-Fi if I don’t use it thought).
• Easy Contacts and Calendar functions.
• Not like other Smartphones, I can use Copy & Paste, make videos, make video conference calls, send and receive MMS and much more!

Things I don’t like or could be better:

• The cold start time is quite slow to load, the same as when it reboots, but I don’t turn off my phone often, only in cinemas and places that don’t allow mobiles.
• I miss Adobe Flash, even if I do have the Flash Mod installed, it only works to view SWF files or play games, and only inside the old Opera 8.63 browser, that I don’t use, and not in newer browsers, at least not yet.
• It does have a gorgeous display, but it could be a little bigger and have better resolution, it is noticeable when you compare it to other new smartphones with bigger screens, but you can’t have both a small design and big screen.
• The screen gets dirty very fast, you can clean it but the smudges made with your fingers will come back.



• It doesn’t have EDGE or HSDPA, and here in Europe is needed. Still, the fast UMTS 3G network works quite well and it is fast here in The Netherlands.
• It doesn’t have an accelerated video chip, so no real 3D games. Still, some Java and UIQ games are in 3D, but they are not as smooth as in other mobiles as they rely only in the processor.
• It doesn’t have an integrated GPS, but you can buy a GPS connector, via the cable or via Bluetooth.
• It is the last good UIQ phone with a keyboard that will ever be!
  Sony Ericsson left UIQ and even if it is part of the new Symbian Association, it is leaning more to WinMo phones, I do like the XPeria, but I wish that it could have been an UIQ handset.

List of interesting links for the P1i

Other recommended software to use with your P1i, they are all free

• Swiss Manager – Much better than bundled system options in the P1i, very useful.
• Opera Mini – In my opinion the best browser at the moment for the P1i.
• Opera Mobile – Still in beta, but it is looking already very good.
• Ozone Browser – Great webkit browser only for UIQ 3, very clean and fast, still in beta.
• Google Maps – Indispensable and it works great.
• Kobo Deluxe – Great little UIQ game with touchscreen support.
• Escarpod – Great little program for RSS feeds and podcast, it can download files directly to your phone.