Ript

In an effort to make computing as user-friendly as possible, and to aid the transition from a 'traditional' desk top to a technology driven one, software vendors have long been trying to recreate real-life scenarios and workflows on the screen, starting of course with an OS's desktop.

Somewhat amazed though I am that companies still feel the need to do this, despite the fact that a technology based workplace and home-life seem second nature to me (or should that be 'first nature'?) - this paradigm can often end up expressing itself in very cool and interesting ways.

The latest of these I discovered (on Dennis van der Stelt's blog) is Ript, which sets about the common task of providing an on-screen alternative to all those bits of paper one would normally leave things jotted down on.

Although it achieves this well in a fairly intuitive and user-friendly way, I was most impressed by its Scrapbooking feature, in which you can easily arrange photos with text, in the style of a scrapbook, and have them looking very cool in no time. This allows for easy present-making, opportunities, especially useful for someone as clumsy as I when it comes to manual things such as cutting and sticking ;)

I was planning on making a little page of our holiday snaps from the weekend, to show you how easy this is to use, but as Will's currently holding all the photos at ransom to ransom, I decided to knock up a little tribute to my housemates and minor band of last year, from a fun summer gig back in 2006 :)