Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
The picture was from the official iPhone twitter app – ironically (as Dave puts it), the only two accounts who have thrown this error up have been myself and Loz Kaye’s. Two people pushing for open platforms and transparency… Both accounts are listed as unretweetable?
If you’ve not seen the video from Verifone about Jack Dorsey’s Square startup, its well worth watching if you can find it. There is a Parody which sums up everything we’re all thinking.
VeriFone’s business model has been side-swiped (pun intended), so they decided to use Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) to counter this, and hope to drive their competition out of business. Remember, VeriFone is the one who makes, and gives away, the app to skim Credit Cards — and they’re talking about trust? VeriFone, go fuck yourself with a cactus. I’m sticking with Square, who won’t rip me off.
The weird part of this whole thing is Verifone creating a proof of concept application at sq-skim.com. Which raises the whole question about hacker ethics.
Verifone putting out a proof of concept app before telling square about the flaw… And making it available for anyone to download and mess with. This is bad form, and if they were not in the business of pushing there own solution (which is much bulker and no where near as elegant) they might have told Square about the flaw and pursued them to fix it.
Verifone are certainly running scared…
I didn’t notice Instapaper now supports wireless delivery of epub’s.
Reading on the Kindle’s non-reflective, e-ink screen is easy on the eyes and great for longer content.
Instapaper provides Kindle-compatible files, easily transferred at no charge via USB, containing the Text versions of your saved pages in any folder.
Additionally, you can set up wireless delivery to automatically send your most recent Instapaper stories every day or week. Note: Amazon assesses a surcharge for each wireless delivery, and wireless delivery is not available in all countries.
Instapaper also provides ePub files for other electronic reading devices that support ePub, including most Sony Readers and the Barnes & Noble Nook.
Ok besides the Amazon surcharge (which doesn’t seem to apply if you have a wifi only kindle it seems), this is fantastic. I use to use Instapaper but switched over to using Readitlater. I might have to switch back? At least till readitlater enables the same feature (i and others have already suggested it)
I just started using Astrid on my HTC Desire (Running android 2.2) and I’m very impressed. The thing which amazes me is the integration with Locale.
Yes it a task app but the difference is with Locale, you can set conditions. Conditions like show me this task when I’m in certain location. Show me this task when you walk into a wifi signal with a certain SSID. Show me a task when blah blah blah…
Unfortunately it seems I’m behind the curve on this one. The locale team blogged about this last year.
I put on my todo list all sorts of tasks. Sometimes they are work tasks like “fill out my expense report.” Occasionally, I add random ideas like “ask the dentist about electric toothbrushes.” More frequently I add personal tasks like “get bananas.” With Locale + Astrid, I get reminders for these tasks when I can do something about them. By tagging tasks as “groceries” and connecting the tag to a situation in Locale (for example when I am near my local Trader Joe’s), Astrid will remind me to get bananas the next time I’m near the store. In the same way I can limit Astrid’s pestering me about my expense report to times I am in the office. And the next time I am sitting in the dentist chair, Astrid can alert me to get his take on the latest teeth-cleaning gadget.
While there are many tools that provide a place to save information you want to remember, most of them lack reminders when you need them. Locale gives Astrid the power to do this in an amazingly simple way, making Astrid less annoying and much more useful.
Exactly!
So theres a interesting trend of apps building on other apps. I noticed this with Dropbox. I got a feeling that because Dropbox has been out for the iPhone for longer, there might be more tightly integration that on android at the moment. But I noticed quite a few apps are using dropbox as there syncing method instead of creating there own. Its not just syncing there’s a lot more that comes with using dropbox as the storage method.
Whats also weird is I’m now expecting dropbox syncing as standard in a lot of the apps I download. After that I’m also expecting some kind of locale ability.
In actual fact, if I was to improve Astrid, I would indeed the ability to use dropbox and create tasks using a very simple XML format. It currently syncs with Google Tasks but I’ve not really got that syncing with Evolution or anything else yet, so something else would be great.
I’ll be watching this trend of apps working off the back of other apps more closely.
App referrer sends app links to your friends via qr codes via Lifehacker
We’ve all been in that situation: you’re sitting next to your friend, with both your phones out, and you tell them about this "awesome new app you found". Then he or she has to pull up the Market and manually search for the app ("What’s it called?" "Space or no space?" "It’s spelled with leet speak?"). There are a number of ways to share files and apps between phones, but App Referrer keeps it simple—you don’t need to set up any kind of connection between the phones, just open it up, tap the app you want to send, and it’ll generate a Market QR code that they can scan right then and there.
I stood up at Mix 2009 (the Microsoft developer conference in Las Vegas) and said to the Windows mobile team,
One of the benefits you have with Windows Mobile is the CAB format (Cabinet). You can share the CABs with friends over email, email, bluetooth, etc… Yes its not as sexy as the apple store but when you want to share an app it just works and you don’t want to give directions on how to download it on the app store. Microsoft should keep that format and allow people to share apps if there free on the app store.
Did they listen to me? No… They followed the Apple model and forced people to download from the app store. I told them they were crazy, people were using bluetooth to share apps and media. Anyway, I’m happy that I wasn’t the only one thinking this.
App referrer is interesting but one thing I noticed on my Android phone was an app (HTC or Orange) called App sharing. You can share via,
I guess when you do any of these it sends a APK file, just like I suggested to Microsoft back in Las Vegas…!
Fact is App sharing makes sense (specially when the app is free), why force people to the app store to get the same app as there friends…? Crazy! I swear theres some lessons which can be learned from the pirates dilemma.
I know a lot of people have hated the Windows Phone 7 adverts but I don’t know I kind of like it.
There are times when we (me and my friends) and we do all pull out our phones and twitter, facebook, 4square, etc. It does look a little stupid but hey what can you do? Ideally our phones should be more transparent but right now there still a status symbol. Its part of the reason why I like apps like Locale. A little bit of automation is certainly what I think the mobile is good for, and its consistent with the idea of the mobile as the life remote.
In March 2005, Judge Robert Restaino jailed 46 people when a mobile phone rang in his New York courtroom and no one would admit responsibility.
So we invented Locale. Problem solved.
Locale was recommended to me by my good friend Sheila. And within a moment of playing with it I started thinking wow this app can do so much for me.
Locale simply makes the android phone do (setting) something when a set condition is triggered (situation). And thats about it. But this is the clever part, there are loads of plugins to make locale work in different ways.
One of my current favorites is the speak Text and Email setting which does just that. When I’m at home, I usually have the phone next to me on the sofa or on the coffee table. Using "say my name" it will speak the email or text out loud to me, so I don’t even have to look or touch the phone. Of course it also says the person calling if thats the case.
The problem is I don’t want my phone to read out messages when I’m in a public place. But this is easily solved with Locale!
I have a situation setup to say if the phone spots my ssid for wireless and/or its pluged in via usb and charging. Then change the setting to allow speaking aloud and reading my messages.
Its that easy!
One of the most common situations I’ve seen and setup myself is to turn on wifi when at home (once again using the SSID) and turn it off when your not near wifi again. I also added a setting to change the ring volume if I’m at home and when I’m not.
There are tons of conditions and sensors which can be bought and setup. From Battery, Bluetooth and Cell stations to Time, Orientation and SSID for the conditions. Volume, Sync, Brightness, Gtalk, Lock, Ringtone, Wallpaper, Wifi are some of the settings which can be tweaked based on the condition (and these are just the free ones).
I said a long time ago, (maybe before I started blogging even) that controlling your profile on the phone would be the key to mastering it. Problem was that changing profiles required too much attention. I mean who has the time or can be bothered to change the profile each time they walk into a meeting or get on the bus? Instead Locale does all the hard work by turning your phone into a series of cleverly thought out sensors…
…and this is just the start. I keep coming up with interesting uses for locale like for example if I was on Foursquare, gowalla or facebook places. I could tell my phone to automatically send a http post to a url when I’m in the location (by gps, 3g, ssid, etc) to automatically sign me in to a location.
So why is this great application not available on the iphone platform?
The control of the operating system, is squeezing the innovation at the app level. Heck i’m not the only one saying this. And this level of control will ultimately be the downfall of the iOS platform (imho).
Yep for ages I’ve been waiting for Froyo because although I love my desire phone, I keep running out of space. Which is stupid because I got a 8gig micro Sd card in the device but for some reason android pretty much ignores it. Froyo came out a while ago with the perfect solution for using the Sd card for apps, but I’ve had to wait for Orange and HTC to put up a update before I could upgrade.
Anyway time for the upgrade… i’ll let you know how it goes
If you want to upgrade yourself, there’s a quick and easy way to do it. (I wish I’d done it myself a while ago to be honest)
I can happily say I’m upgraded and enjoying Android Froyo, thanks Google, HTC and Orange.
This is true of Apple fans, they seem to want apple shiny stuff no matter what. Tragic… Found via the excellent digg reel. My flat mate suggested setting one up in real life in the uk. Well you never knew…
Google have really hit it out of the park this time. Google App Inventor (sign up page) allows almost anyone to build a Android application using a simple interface. Now don’t get me wrong, the interface is pretty nasty but heck Google are democratization app development and in my book thats great news for content producers or just people with good ideas and a little time.
This all flies in the face of Apple’s restrictive SLA which prevents apps being made with a application on another system.
I look forward to seeing what other democratization google does in the near future, but boy do google need some good designers, because this looks pretty ugly. Hopefully that won’t put people off. Maybe Google should get Adobe involved in this one?
Louis Grey, A large fan of Apple just turned his back on Apple, why? Well thats best explained by him. But there’s some real good points which I also made in a recent episode of TechGrumps.
For me, more than the over-used phrase of "open", the promise of true multitasking, and the platform’s integration with Google Apps, was one word – "Choice". Choice of handsets. Choice of carriers. Choice of manufacturers. Second behind the word choice has to be "Momentum". I can see that Android has momentum in terms of improved quality, in terms of the number of devices sold and users, and yes, applications, which are growing in quantity, soon to be followed by quality. I really do believe that if Android does not already have a market share lead over Apple yet in this discussion, they soon will. It is inevitable. The growth in the number of handsets, carriers and users will drive more developers to the platform, and the holdouts who are not there will eventually make the move. And yes, third is "Cloud" – the idea that I don’t need to be tied to my desktop computer to manage data on the phone, but instead, the phone is built to tap into data stored on the Web. Fourth is "Capability". The Android platform, as the Droid commercials offer, simply does more. The power of the mobile hotspot cannot be understated, and the iPhone is a zero there.
Agreed.
So I finally got my HTC desire from Orange. It took a bit longer that expected due to Orange changing the upgrade process but I finally laid my hands on this sweet handset.
I was comparing it to my old HTC Touch Hd 1 which also now runs Android thanks to the amazing job the guys at Xda developers have done. Although they have sorted out the scrolling issue and started to get the bluetooth working it good to finally have a real android phone. And you can’t go wrong with the snapdragon 1ghz processor, it really makes things go along super smoothly. Some more memory would not go a miss but generally its fine.
I can honestly say this is the best phone I’ve ever had. Its so good move away from the windows mobile camp and I thought I might have to give up some of the features like the usb tethering option but its still there thankful. Theres also a ton of tethering apps which I can use if it wasn’t included. I’m so glad I switched over as this operating system is something else. My next step is to root the phone because I want to mess with the inners of the phone a little bit. So hopefully that will be a simple task….
I know the iphone4 was out at the same time but honestly I couldn’t buy one even if it had a better resolution than any other phone on the market. I did consider other phones but to be honest there was little else on the market to consider except the sonyericsson’s and samsung’s. The iphone4 may have the better screen but to be honest its a nightmare for a user like myself. The whole iTunes integration means the phone has no chance with my current operating system (Ubuntu) and why would I lower myself to that type of integration when theres a better way? I really did put my Apple hate to the back of my mind and reviewed the iphone4 on practical grounds and it was certainly not for me.
My own grumble about the desire is the USB connection which is micro USB instead of mini USB, which means I got loads of USB mini cables which are now pretty useless. I should get a few adapter because I got so many of them and only one Micro cable. Very tiny grumble but one never a less, at least its correct with the EU regulation now.
I’m looking to hopefully sell my old Hd1 but to be honest if the price is right I’ll sell it to CEX, although the idea of selling it as a android compatible device is a little far fetched for now. Give me a shout if your interested in buying it.
One step closer to moving to Islington Wharf, now I actually have a deposit down on the flat I wanted. I’m just waiting on Plumlife to agree I’m able to join there scheme (which was ok last year, so not expecting any upset) and then I can apply for the mortgage (which shouldn’t be a problem this time due to the highly motivated mortgage advisor I got). After which I should be able to get everything going and maybe move next month or so.
On the computer front, I just upgraded my Dell Laptop from a 120gig to 320gig and then gave it a brand new Ubuntu install. Not only did I upgrade it but I also switched to the i86_64 version as my laptop runs a Intel Core 2 duo 2 chipset. No idea why I’ve never done it before but early indication says so far the resource control over the applications and switching is much better and I’m shocked at how smooth things are. Don’t get me wrong the x86 version was fine but there is certainly something extra about the 64bit version. What is strange is the amount of memory available to the machine, it still indicates there is about 3gig of memory available (3262meg) not the full 4gig. I also have a couple of problems with getting Dropbox and XBMC working. Plus settings for Firefox, evolution and gnome wifi networking didn’t transfer over so well. Which is a pain. I can still boot into my old 32bit partition using a usb enclosure which means if I knew where the correct files were I could drag them over easily enough.
Finally Orange are being a pain in the ass and I can’t now upgrade my phone till August, which means the HTC Desire isn’t the phone it is now. Even the HTC Incredible will be old news. Maybe the Dell Lightning and Mini5’s will be of interest? Anyway in the meanwhile, it seems Android running on the HTC Touch HD or Blackstone has progressed to a point where the screen does not always stay on and so the battery doesn’t die within a few hours. Actually if you turn off Wifi, it will last a day which isn’t bad. So most of the time I’ll have my phone running Android in the near future. I just need to get the settings for 3G/HSDPA and work out how to divert the sound to the headphones instead to the loudspeaker.
So while in Ireland for Media 2020, I got to play with a couple of people’s iPads. Now you all know I’m not a fan but these are my honest thoughts while playing with it.
Its bloody heavy, I expected it to be much lighter. When you use two hands its ok but I can see why people end up resting it against something for a while. The screen is vivid but you can see the pixels easily and even worst with apps which are blownup using x2 option. Reading an actually ebook was disappointing and felt like readiing from my on laptop. Adjusting the backlight down helped but no where near the ease of eink.
Why is it curve on the back? It seems to make even hard to hold and its not helped by the shiny back. I really would not want to carry this in a crowd in fear of it slipping out of your hand due nudges and the usual human traffic or if someone really wanting to nick it off you. Talking of which, what on earth kind of glass screen tech are they using? It picks up greasy finger prints in seconds. Not good.
Finally I thought it was meant to be slightly bigger that my Sony Ebook reader, no actually its exactly the size of two of my sony ereaders side by side. Which says to me its far too big. One of the people who had bought one had a special rubber case which i guess helps it stay clean but geez its ugly. Obviously not designed by Jon Ive.
I’m getting a little fed up of seeing this company, that company are preparing to launch video streaming using HTML5 so they can catch the Apple ipad users.
Don’t get me wrong HTML5 video streaming is a good thing, finally we can get away from Flash and Silverlight type non-standard technology and give the user the video they require. I do wish they had sorted out the Theora/H.264 codec issue but its too late now, and both are a major step ahead of using Flash. But what gets me is that all these companies are doing purely for the iPad? I’m sure supporting the ipad is in there somewhere but to do a massive swing the other way because Apple launches a massive ipod touch?
Worrysome.