Wave Theme 3 Ceramic Tile work from the kilns of Richard Macatee
Ceramic Tile designed by Richard Macatee at http://www.macateeceramics.com.

By: Robert Guy

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Wave Theme 3 Ceramic Tile work from the kilns of Richard Macatee - Video

Even as Microsoft prepares for a future dominated by touch-screen devices, it is steering its Windows system to embrace more of the past.

The divide between old and new is less pronounced in the latest, free update. That's a welcome change, as that's one of the things that annoyed many most about Windows 8.

As sales of smartphones and tablets grow rapidly, Microsoft reshaped Windows so that PCs came to look, work and feel more like mobile devices.

Windows 8 has a full-page, tablet-like start screen filled with large icons, or tiles. Traditional mouse and keyboard controls still work, but it's more efficient if you use touch-screen controls.

Windows 8 has a desktop mode that resembles older versions of Windows, but it steers users towards the touch-centric tile mode.

Many people hated Windows 8 when it came out in October 2012.

Microsoft responded a year later with Windows 8.1. With the free update, people can change settings to boot computers directly into the desktop. Windows 8.1 restores a Start button on the lower left corner of the desktop, though without all the functionality found in older versions. Windows 8.1 also lets people add their favourite desktop apps to a horizontal taskbar at the bottom of the screen.

In short, Windows 8.1 doesn't try to force people into the tile screen as often.

Still, Windows 8.1 feels like two separate systems. Your favourite desktop apps are on the desktop's horizontal taskbar, while your favourite tile-mode apps are on the tile-based start screen. How you perform tasks such as closing an app depends on which mode you're in.

Last week's update, simply called Windows 8.1 Update, brings more consistency:

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Forward to the past with Windows update

MOV00370
Water Theme Tile work from the kilns of Richard Macatee.

By: Robert Guy

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MOV00370 - Video

BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) -- The search is on for the cause of a dramatic East Bay fire that heavily damaged four businesses in a Berkeley warehouse.

It happened Saturday night near Hearst and Second streets. Smoke and flames could be seen for miles. The flames tore into power lines, knocking out service to several local businesses. Nearly 24 hours later on Sunday evening, the fire was still smoldering.

"Boy, I can't believe what I see," warehouse owner Bill DeCarion said. "I can't believe it."

"There's no evidence of the glass anywhere," he said. "I mean, it must have melted."

The five-alarm fire Saturday was incredible, lighting up the night sky. It took 70 firefighters several hours to contain it.

During the firefight, live power lines actually fell onto firefighters.

"It dropped across the battalion chief's vehicle," said Chief Gil Dong. "And actually one of the power lines did touch one of our firefighters but they did not get shocked."

Fire investigators are yellow tagging parts of the building too dangerous to enter. They're also busy combing through the rubble, looking for clues about how the fire started.

"We look at everything around the building, behind the building, inside the building," Chief Dong said.

"It had completely spread down here, despite the wind blowing this way," said Import Tile Company co-owner Evelyn Larson.

Excerpt from:
Investigators work to determine cause of 5-alarm Berkeley fire

Live Tiles are one of the best things about Windows Phone. Now, you can fit more of them on your homescreen. Microsoft added three-column support to some Windows Phone 8.1 handsets. Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

Cortana, Microsoft's digital assistant, has personality and smarts thanks to deep Bing integration. Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

Windows 8.1 brings with it Internet Explorer 11 with HTML 5 video support. Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

With Quiet Hours, you can silence your phone when you're sleeping or busy, except for interactions with select contacts. Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

The Calendar in 8.1 has nice updates, like a week view and weather notifications. Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

With the addition of Swipe functionality, the Windows Phone 8.1 keyboard feels complete. Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

Action Center brings notifications and quick settings to your fingertips. Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

Live Tiles are one of the best things about Windows Phone. Now, you can fit more of them on your homescreen. Microsoft added three-column support to some Windows Phone 8.1 handsets. Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

Cortana, Microsoft's digital assistant, has personality and smarts thanks to deep Bing integration. Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

Windows 8.1 brings with it Internet Explorer 11 with HTML 5 video support. Photos by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

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Our Favorite New Features in Windows Phone 8.1

1034 Treat Ave
1034 Treat Avenue is the upper unit in a strikingly remodeled classic two-unit building in the most vibrant neighborhood of San Francisco: the Inner Mission....

By: climbsf

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1034 Treat Ave - Video

In a world with so much stuff, from phones and chargers to cameras and even the dog, it's hard to keep tabs on all of your valuables.

There's hurried cab rides and so-called friends and family who like to "borrow" your stuff without asking, only to have said stuff go missing. Or maybe you're the forgetful type who's prone to "misplacing" your keys and wallet. Whatever the case, you have no idea where it might be, you need it now and you can't find it.

Thankfully there are a slew of devices that can help to locate your lost items. These small gadgets and apps work by affixing a GPS-like tracker to objects like laptops, handbags and bikes, which makes it easy to find them if you ever lose track of where they are.

We've rounded up seven great tracking gadgets with alternative options to help you monitor your essentials and prevent you from actually losing your mind.

Small but effective

You can't get back all of those lost keys, wallets and remote controllers that have mysteriously vanished over the years, but thanks to a new device called Tile, you may never lose anything else again. Tile can either be stuck to objects or affixed with a key ring and lets you track items you often misplace using a companion app for iOS.

The slim and waterproof tracking device will show you the last known location of the item on a map as well as a radar style view of how far away you are from it, as long as you're within the 50-150 foot range. A tiny speaker inside each Tile emits a little beep, helping you zero-in for the find once you're close by, with a "warmer, warmer"-style direction to the object.

One thing that sets this device apart from the many others on this list is that the Tile iPhone app works via crowd-sourcing. Tiles communicate with one another, effectively having other users helping you find what you've lost. For example, when someone else who uses the app walks past your lost Tile-touting object, the location of your Tile is updated for you, which makes it far more invaluable than a device on its own, especially if it's been stolen.

Price: You can pre-order from the Tile website for shipment in June for $19.95/Tile.

StrickR to me

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Round Up: 7 gadgets to keep track of the things that matter most to you

Wednesday, April 2, 2014 Sunday ferry service will be impacted by ongoing renovations to the Alderney Ferry Terminal in Dartmouth in the coming weeks.

The ferry will not be running on Sundays in order to complete tile work and overhead work on the ferry ramp. The work will start on Sunday, April 6 and is anticipated to run on consecutive Sundays for approximately 4 weeks.

During this time, Metro Transit will provide bus shuttles between Alderney and Water Street running on the same schedule as the ferry, as an alternate to the ferry. Regular fare will be charged for this shuttle service.

These ongoing renovations to the Alderney Ferry Terminal are intended to improve traffic flow, increase the attractiveness of the terminal space, and improve overall customer experience and satisfaction. The work includes:

HRM and Metro Transit apologize in advance for any inconvenience this construction may cause.

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Alderney Ferry Terminal Renovations, Impact to Sunday Service

Michael Freeman Rafael Guastavinos tile vaulting for the now-closed City Hall subway station, inaugurated in 1904

If all politics is local, then much architectural history is also a neighborhood matter. Thus I harbor an abiding personal fondness for the ingenious structural creations of the Spanish migr master builder Rafael Guastavino (18421908). Time and again in old New York buildings, its a delight to lift up your eyes and unexpectedly find Guastavinos distinctive herringbone terracotta tile patterns overhead.

Many of those locales are straightforwardly utilitarian, such as Bridgemarket, a supermarket inside the Manhattan base of the Queensboro Bridge. Ive enjoyed countless lunches at the Guastavino-vaulted Oyster Bar, in Warren & Wetmore and Reed & Stems Grand Central Terminal of 19101913. (Not least among that restaurants pleasures is overhearing crystal-clear snatches of conversation projected across the noisy space through an uncanny whispering-gallery effect.)

And one of my favorite Gotham architectural pleasures is to stand at the front window of the downtown number 6 subway between the Canal Street and Brooklyn BridgeCity Hall stops to catch a fugitive glimpse of a phantom Guastavino masterpiece. His gorgeously tiled IRT City Hall station, inaugurated in 1904 as the southern terminus of Manhattans first underground mass transit line, has been closed to the public since 1945, but remains eerily well-preserved, testimony to the materials exceptional durability.

Most memorably to me, though, is having been married beneath the majestic ninety-one-foot-high Guastavino dome of I.N. Phelps Stokess St. Pauls Chapel of 19041907 at Columbia University. A crucial Guastavino connection occurred in that same space in 1961, when the art historian George R, Collins (my wife Rosemarie Haag Bletters dissertation adviser), had an epiphany that changed how architecture scholars understand a crucial chapter in the history of modern design.

During a memorial service in the campus church, Collins was suddenly struck by how closely its exposed terracotta tile vaulting resembled the work of Antoni Gaud, the maverick Catalan architectural genius on whom he was the leading authority. In fact, Gaud, who was a decade younger, had gone to the same Barcelona technical college as Guastavino, and it appears that Guastavino perfected the industrialized crafting of strong, thin, curving surfaces that Gaud would take to such memorable extremes in his unconventional biomorphic architecture.

Not only did Collins thereby establish a link between Guastavino and Gaud, but when the Guastavino family business folded in 1962 and its records were about to be discarded, he secured them for his schools Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, an invaluable act of cultural salvage. The Guastavino offices meticulous working drawings allow a full understanding of a structural methodology that would otherwise be lost to us today. In fact, many large architectural firms for whom the Guastavinos worked would confidently leave portions of their own blueprints blank but labeled Guastavino here to indicate that vaults would be skillfully filled in by their trusted collaborator.

This long overlooked inventor and his New York-and-Boston-based firm are now the subject of Palaces for the People: Guastavino and the Art of Structural Tile, a fascinating exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York curated by G. Martin Moeller Jr. of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. and the MIT engineering professor John Ochsendorf, author of the lucidly written and beautifully illustrated Guastavino Vaulting: The Art of Structural Tile. The MCNYs compact display, which occupies a single large gallery, includes drawings, photographs, plans, tile fragments, and an illuminating video that explains the Guastavinos proprietary masonry techniques.

In New York City alone, there are no fewer than two hundred fifty examples of Guastavinos quintessential contributionthe lightweight, low-tech, long-span vaulting technique that systematized and modernized a late-medieval masonry tradition based on terracotta tiles. Guastavino introduced his refinement of that age-old building method (which originated in Islamic practices brought to Spain by Moorish invaders) just when iron and masonry were giving way to steel and concrete as the favored structural materials of the industrialized world.

Born in Valencia, where the technology he expanded upon was devised in the late fourteenth century, Guastavino scored a youthful triumph with his Batll textile factory of 1871 in Barcelona. (The large and prosperous Batll family commissioned a number of other noteworthy buildings in that booming manufacturing city, including Gauds most celebrated residence, his dragon-like Casa Batll of 19041906.)

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The Master of Fireproof Modernism

Kyle Russell/Business Insider

Windows leader Terry Myerson

At today's Build conference, Microsoft announced a number of changes that it hopes will improve the user experience for those using the Windows 8operating system on laptops and desktops.

The biggest change is that computers with keyboards will launch in a traditional desktop-computing environment, instead of the tile-based look Microsoft had been pushing with Windows 8.

This is an acknowledgment that Microsoft's attempt to reimagine Windows in a more tablet-like interface did not work.

The tile-based look of Windows 8 was baffling to people who grew up using Windows-based PCs. It was a big turn-off and contributed to a decline in PC sales.

After users install the updates rolling out today, Windows 8.1 will give current laptop and desktop users options to enable the above features. The company says it won't force anything new on people that they might not want.

On new products from Microsoft's licensees, however, laptops and desktops (anything with a keyboard and mouse or trackpad) will automatically default to having these new settings turned on.

Back in February, Microsoft executive Joe Belfiore said that most users who have a touch-screen laptop prefer the tile interface in Windows 8.He also said that users without touchscreens tended to prefer the Windows 7-style desktop environment.

With sales of traditional PCs falling bydouble-digit percentages,Microsoft is doing anything it can to bolster its position.

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Microsoft Just Killed The Tile-Based Look Of Windows 8 For Laptops (MSFT)