Musings on IT, Side Projects and Users
When a side project takes on a life of its own, you feel both intensely gratified and frightened all at once.
This has been my experience with all the side projects I’ve been involved with anyway. On the one hand, the reason you build product at all is to solve a problem users have, ideally in an enjoyable way.
On the other hand, you’re faced with support concerns. Before you know it, your users come to depend on your product, and when it’s not working, they want answers.
Connect, OraTweet and the iOS People app have all gone this route.
Most of the time, they run untouched. People happily get work done, and you pat yourself on the back for building something people actually want to use. Every once in a while, something breaks and people freak, and even if it’s not something you can control, it’s your fault. Because to the end user, your stuff isn’t working.
This happened to Connect and OraTweet recently. They went down due to some database issues, and due to time zone constraints, they stayed down for about 12 hours. Noel (@noelportugal) and I were off grid at the time, but over in APAC and EMEA, people were frustrated because they couldn’t do work.
When we realized the problem, we had to track down the right people in the datacenter to fix it because even side projects need IT sometimes.
The People app hit something similar last week. IT made a change that broke it, but because the app is Clayton’s (@cdonley) side project, no one thought to notify him.
All these projects have spread well beyond the small group who realize they aren’t fully supported by IT, so users were understandably frustrated because they couldn’t get answers from the usual IT channels. IT was also frustrated since they couldn’t find the right contacts.
This is a classic startup problem, but it’s a different breed when you’re spinning up projects within a company that has standard IT practices. Users expect the support they’ve come to expect from IT, but they also want useful products, which sometimes don’t come from IT. Not judging, just saying.
There’s a reason. IT is designed to support users, not for users. I’ll explain.
In the mid-90s, I did PC, server and printer support for a few hundred people, mostly in person, but sometimes over the phone. When something broke, I fixed it. I managed my own queue of requests, which essentially means I tried to help everyone as quickly as possible. Niceness was appreciated, bribes were accepted, hierarchy took precedence, etc.
Other people in other offices did the same, and we were loosely affiliated but not officially a team. At some point, someone realized this model didn’t scale very well, and that IT needed to be fully centralized and automated to do its job best. So, we started carrying pagers, logging tickets, automating the request queue, accounting for time, etc.
Users hated it. If someone stopped me in the halls with a problem, I has to have them file a ticket with the helpdesk first, which would route to me or to another person locally. This was highly inefficient compared to the old model, especially for quick fixes, but it helped the larger IT organization track its resources and costs and provide faster, more efficient support.
Users eventually got used to the system, and they got better at self-service support. IT controlled its costs and improved its support metrics.
Win-win, right?
Maybe, maybe not, but my point is about what IT’s purpose is, i.e. support.
Let’s use home support as an example. Many of you support your family and possibly friends. When they ask for recommendations, you suggest what you know, and admit it, you factor in how difficult it might be to support. I know I do.
So, your recommendations aren’t always based on what the user wants, but rather what you can support.
Therefore, IT is not for users; it’s for supporting them.
This sometimes creates a gap between what the user wants and what IT provides, a gap that has allowed social and mobile to flood into enterprises like a tidal wave.
To be clear, I’m not arguing for or against IT. I’m just musing on the ramifications and reasons behind what I’ve noticed with side projects and how they fit into enterprise IT.
I’m sure you have thoughts. Hit the comments.
Siri Will Be Huge, If It Can Scale
The thing that sold my wife on the iPhone 4S was Siri, and she spent the evening after we finally got one seeing what Siri could do.
Since then, a mere two days, Siri’s had several outages. Going through the coverage, it seems Siri is a beta service, which was suprising to read, given how much Apple is pushing the new assistant in its latest commercials.
I guess the ads are working, since Siri is reported to be driving the huge demand for the otherwise meh iPhone 4S.
I can’t imagine that the outages have made a favorable impression on those people jonesing to use Siri. If they’re anything like my wife, they’re pretty disappointed.
When it was working a few days ago, I was impressed with what Siri could do. Siri can answer natural language questions, making it supposedly smarter and better than other voice systems that predate it.
It’s funny though. I defy you to talk to Siri like you would a person; even if you start out trying, you lapse back into robot speak pretty quickly. We’ve been programmed I guess, mostly by automated telephone voice systems.
Voice systems obviously aren’t new, and the big technology players already have investments e.g. Android’s voice features, Google Voice’s transcription service, Microsoft’s Tellme, etc.
One thing that’s different about Siri is marketing, at least for now, i.e. Apple is pitching Siri as an assistant that can summon information and do tasks for you. Siri creates a completely new way to interact with your phone, a new interface, just like the original iPhone showed a new way to interact with your device, by touch.
To be clear, by new, I mean new to most, not new as first.
Of course, high demand has exposed a big problem, i.e. it’s overwhelming the server side, as evidenced by the outages. Siri can’t do much of anything without an internet connection; check out the first part of this post for details about how Siri works.
In theory, Siri should get better as more people use it, since it’s constantly learning. This piece in Forbes makes some good points, although it does neglect to mention Siri only speaks a limited number of languages as Gary points out on G+.
Forbes does mention emotion though, which I also noticed immediately. Unlike its contemporaries, Siri has a personality that delights users. I saw it first-hand. Apple has made its living delighting users, and Siri does that well. At least, when it’s able to connect to the internet.
So, what do you think about Siri? Find the comments.
Yes, AOL Still Has 3.5 Million Dialup Subscribers
Who are these people? Seriously, do you know anyone who still has AOL dialup?
Amazingly, AOL still has 3.5 million dialup subscribers – SplatF
I’m truly stunned. I guess it makes sense, given the steady cost AOL has maintained over many years and the recent downturn prompting people to cut back on expenses.
Still. I can’t begin to imagine how something like Facebook performs over a 56 bps connection, assuming they can even get that speed. And YouTube, unusable.
Who are these people? I’m guessing they’re not using the modern intertubes very much, and they’re a mighty patient bunch with no other expectation for how fast the intertubes *should* be.
Thoughts?
Mobile Apps Taking Aim at Parking Tickets
Another app that I’d totally buy is one that helped me find street parking and let me know if I could park there or not.
In some cities, you need a legal degree to decipher all the parking restrictions. In LA, I recall seeing as many as four signs on a post, with directions about when you couldn’t park there. Obviously, the parking authority has no incentive to make it easy to understand, so people are building apps for that.
How Mobile App Developers Are Taking Aim at Parking Tickets
While there are issues with identifying and pointing people to open spots, if you’re lucky enough to find one, it’s good to know right away if you can actually park there or not.
Would you use an app like this?
Dark Sky – Weather Prediction Reinvented
I’ve lived in several climates where the prevailing wisdom was if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. That’s why I love the idea behind Dark Sky, i.e. accurate, short-term prediction.
Dark Sky – Weather Prediction, Reinvented by Adam Grossman
Dark Sky is a Kickstarter project, but it looks like they have real, working code already. I would totally buy this app, if only to avoid leaving the house without a hoody, again.
Does Technology Make You Happier?
That’s the point right? Technology either makes life easier, which presumably creates more free time, or it provides new ways to entertain us.
Are new technologies making us happier? – The Next Web
This isn’t as easy a question to answer. On the one hand, technology obviously does what you’d expect. My wife loves Facebook because she can keep in touch with out-of-town family; she also played joyfully with Siri on her new iPhone 4S (yes, I finally got one) last night.
But today, she’s annoyed at Siri. “I think it’s broken.” Doh.
I’ve ranted here a lot about how technology should be easier, so yeah, it makes me happy, until it doesn’t.
I guess it’s a big picture question. In macro, technology makes me happier, but not always in micro.
Thoughts?
Reader and GMail Get Facelifts
Google dropped redesigns of both Reader and GMail this week, and the general reaction has been very negative.
So, like any good blogger, I’m going to pile on while the iron is hot, or something.
I use Reader all day, every day. It’s an essential tool for me. So, I was actually happy when Google announced it would be integrated with Google Plus. This makes a lot of sense, especially given how few people use Reader, and its history of head-scratching social features.
I’ve feared the worst for Reader, given the demise of other feed readers, and each time Google announces a cut list of products, I cringe a bit, expecting the worst.
I figured piping Reader activity into Google Plus might help it extend its life.
While this may be true, the integration needs work. The old Reader Shared Items, which I use extensively, have been replaced with +1s. This sounds fine, but my +1s don’t show up in my stream of posts. I think they’re supposed to, according to what I’ve read, but they don’t. This is a bummer.
It turns out you can post directly to your G+ stream by using the Share box in the black Google toolbar, top right-hand corner. This isn’t documented anywhere though, and the description included in the post, which is an excerpt from the page, looks like it’s your commentary.
And don’t get me started on the UI. It’s so stark and unwelcoming, not very good for scanning or sustained reading. Plus, like the GMail redesign, it’s a touch-friendly design, with lots of space for tapping. This creates a lot of whitespace and dramatically reduces the amount of content you can see above the fold. Again, bad for reading.
It’s not just me. I have yet to see any positive feedback, with Brian Shih, ex-PM for Reader, producing an appropriately scathing review that everyone is citing. I’m even more worried about the future of Reader after reading Brian’s points about how much it has departed from the original goals.
Oh, and the performance has been atrocious for me.
Unsurprisingly, I have the same issues with GMail. UI consistency is good, but Reader and GMail are so much alike that I found myself in GMail frustrated that I couldn’t find a post I’d shared in Reader. They’re that much alike.
I’m not usually a fan of installed feed readers, mostly because Reader has always been just fine. However, yesterday, I ponied up $9.99 to buy Silvio Rizzi’s (@silviorizzi) Reeder. I’ve used his iPad app for a long time now, and I liked what I saw in his OS X beta version a few months ago.
In Reeder, you can still share items, although I don’t know how long this will last. So, for now, I’m sharing items still, and they’re getting pushed to Twitter by dlvr.it. If I feel like it, I’m also sharing them to G+. It’s a bit clunky, but I expect this will normalize soon.
By now, you’ve probably run into the new Google designs somewhere.
What do you think?
Find the comments.
Very Subtle Updates to iOS Visual Design
Some of you will click through on this link and shake your head. Others will understand.
Users Illusions – Apple has made some very subtle updates to the…
One great thing about the intertubes is that it proves once and for all that you are not alone in the world. There’s someone out there who shares your compulsion. Noticing single pixel differences in UI or font changes in a block of text is one of my compulsions. I can’t help it.
I’ve been lucky enough to find kindred spirits (e.g. Rich @rmanalan), and I’m glad we’re not alone.
Not sweating the details makes you average.
Miscellaneous iPhone Musings
I’m finally upgraded my wife’s original iPhone last week. Despite her protestations that the old one was just fine, she’s in love with the new one, a 4 not 4S.
The reason I got an iPhone 4 is, well, they’re easy to find, and I wanted this to be a surprise with instant gratification. The 4S, on the other hand, is scarce. You can order it online, but if you want to go to a physical store, you’re stuck with the reservation system, which feels like playing the lottery.
I thought this would be fine, but now Siri sounds like a useful feature for her.
Now, I’m in a weird limbo between AT&T and Apple.
AT&T says I just upgraded, so Apple can’t sell me the 4S at the subsidized rate. Full bid is $649. I would go directly to AT&T to get the 4S, but they have no stock and no idea of when any will be arriving.
Apple has stock online, but I’d have to downgrade the phone, hoping the old one would work at all while we waited for the new 4S to arrive. Bit of a bummer. The best bet now is to try the reservation system for the physical stores, but that’s dicey.
Why can’t these things be easy?
And with Black Friday looming, does Apple plan to let this shortage continue?
Anyway, beyond that pickle, this is first time I’ve seen an iPhone 4 up close and used one, and I have to say it’s a great device. I haven’t used an iPhone much since I went Android last year, and the iPhone I left behind was an original one which I’d carried since they were introduced in Summer 2007.
The 4 is a beautiful device, fast, responsive and fun to use. So, pretty much what you’d expect from Apple, and that last bit gets lost for me on Android at times. I love Android and don’t plan to switch any time soon, but it can be a chore at times.
Plus, the wife loves the new phone, which is good.
Probably the biggest difference I’ve noticed is the camera. We take lots of pictures and video of our infant daughter, and the colors from the iPhone camera are so much richer. Plus, there’s very little shutter lag in the camera app, whereas my Nexus S constantly misses cute moments due to a bad lag.
This is set to change any day now, I hope, with Android 4.0.
Moving on to semi-related musings, one thing trend has become clear. Apple has been releasing an incrementally better iPhone in odd years, the 3G S in 2009, now the 4S in 2011. I assume this helps their supply chain empty some components, since outwardly, the S iPhones are identical to the predecessors.
If it holds, this cycle screws the people who buy in the S year because they are forever tied to a two-year contract, meaning to get the awesome new hotness released in the even years, they’ll either have to buy out or pay to upgrade after only a year or wait an extra year after their contracts expire.
Will that matter? Will it encourage carrier competition?
Back to camera apps, one thing my wife wanted was an app that did rapid shots, another great way to catch a cute moment by delaying the processing. This will be in Android 4.0′s camera app, but it’s not in iOS.
After asking Twitter, Hipstamatic was recommended. So, I ponied up the $1.99 to try it.
After last week’s discussion of skeuomorphism, I was surprised to find such a terrible example. Hipstamatic is one of the many retro-filter-adding apps like Instagram, but they’ve taken a slavish approach to retro, copying the tiny view finder and faux mottled plastic.
The view finder has to be 30% of the screen, which makes it very tough to see your subject.
Plus, the interface is so retro, the controls to swap filters and flashes are hidden behind an icon you can barely see that has no affordance for its function. I’m a very experienced user, and it took me 15 minutes to find it. As for the rapid fire, no affordances at all, just poke the giant yellow take-picture button repeatedly.
Unfortunately, like Instragram, Hipstamatic saves your filtered image, but not its original, unfiltered version. I wonder how many people who are gaga for filtered pictures today will be sad in ten years when they can’t recover the actual images as they were.
I’m not sure if they strip the EXIF, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Anyway, Twitter also recommended Camera+, which does a much better job at everything for only $0.99. No filters, no auto-saving images, usable UI.
I told you in the title these were musings. Find the comments with your own.
A View of Android Fragmentation
Michael DeGusta (@degusta) has an exhaustive chart depicting Android fragmentation. Maybe someone can visualize the data in a slightly easier to consume way, but it paints a good picture.
the understatement: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support h/t TechCrunch
Aside from a minor quibble with the original iPhone’s green status (iOS 4 launched a few days prior to the OG iPhone’s third birthday), the picture is clear and accurate. Android users are rarely on the most recent version.
I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing, having run Android on a phone exclusively for more than a year. I’d argue that the majority of Android users rock mid and low-range phones, which has bolstered Android’s overall share. These people are content with a good-enough experience that allows them to do Facebook on their phones.
New OS features are for media, for technophiles and for people coming out of contract or looking to upgrade devices on their current carrier.
The latter group almost exclusively wants new phones, not OS upgrades. Hence the trade-in programs run by Best Buy and others.
Apple does right by its users, who have paid more by-and-large, keeping their devices delightful and magical to amortize the initial outlay.
So, yeah, Android is fragmented, but it doesn’t matter as much as this chart leads you to believe, with the exception of ongoing support and security releases. That’s a big deal that Google, carriers and device manufacturers need to address.
Interestingly, high-end Android devices like the HTC EVO 4G do follow the Apple model and are still being updated.
Anyway, food for thought.
Nest, the iPod of Thermostats
Interesting post about Nest, the thermostat from the co-creator of the iPod, and more broadly about the so-called Apple-fication of other areas outside computing.
Nest is a very handsome device that has an impressive list of features that any household could use, mine included. I actually may buy one of these after the initial kinks are resolved. I’m assuming there are kinks, as with any new product. The iPod was that way; I recall the headphone jack on the original iPod Mini I bought my wife was bum on not one, but two separate blue models. The gray one we finally got as a replacement was fine.
So yeah, kinks exist.
The first thing you’ll notice from the comparison of Nest to other high-end thermostats on the market is its minimalism. Nothing but the temperature, a color to indicate heating/cooling and a dial. There’s a leaf too, which reminds me of what’s missing, namely all the glyphs you get on a thermostat display. Ever look at those closely especially in comparison to another brand of thermostat? Absolutely no consistency, meaning you have to wing it or break out the manual.
Anyway, generally speaking, this type of Apple-fication trends design toward minimalism and simplicity, which is good.
Contrast this to the discussion about the skeuomorphism and vaguely patronizing nature of Apple’s software design trends I posted yesterday. John (@empoprises) pointed out a much more detailed and insightful post on skeuomorphism that is worth a read.
Jony Ive’s industrial design chops create beautiful, minimalist hardware, and generally, the software is complimentary. At some point, the delight turns cloying.
Anyway, loosely coupled items. Discuss.
On Apple’s Design Aesthetic: When Delight Turns Patronizing
Found this fascinating post by way of Kottke.org, it accurately describes something that has bugged me about areas of OS X Lion, specifically iCal.
Apple’s aesthetic dichotomy | Made by Many
I use iCal every day, all day, and when I opened it for the first time on Lion I felt annoyed and vaguely patronized by the ripped pages, bogus leather stitching, drop shadows, faux texture, overly soft colors and superfluous animations. Here’s the funny bit. I’d been running the iOS 5 beta on my iPad for a while before I jumped to Lion, so I recognized this new look for Calendar.
And yet, somehow, on the iPad, it wasn’t as patronizing.
One reason I can think of is that I don’t take the iPad very seriously as a computing device because it simply isn’t a serious computing device.
Another reason that makes sense is that iOS devices are new in the pantheon of computing, and Apple has done fantastically well convincing people (correctly) that they already know how to use an iPad and iPhone. Because touchscreen devices are relatively new, Apple focused their software design on comforting users with “delightful” and “emotional” connections. These are words you’ll find in the iOS Human Interface Guidelines (HIG).
If you read the HIG, you’ll find passages like this:
When appropriate, add a realistic, physical dimension to your application. Often, the more true to life your application looks and behaves, the easier it is for people to understand how it works and the more they enjoy using it. For example, people instantly know how to use the realistic address book that Contacts on iPad portrays.
On the iPad, it does feel appropriate to have a realistic address book, primarily because I can hold it in my hands and touch it like I would its physical analog. Not so much with my laptop, which I don’t interact by touching and swiping in the same manner.
Therein lies the rub.
Emotionally, I might appreciate these realistic easements on a touchable device, but they just patronize me on a keyboard/mouse one. Even if I didn’t have a ton of experience using a traditional computer (can’t believe I’m calling it that), these design elements wouldn’t translate as well on non-touch devices, simply because the input mechanisms aren’t the same.
Anyway, add this to my growing list of objections to the coming age of touchscreen devices.
A nice bonus, if you read the post I linked above, you’ve learned a new word: skeuomorphism.
Thoughts? Find the comments.
Dreaming of a Smooth Upgrade
Oneiric means of or relating to dreams or dreaming. I had to look it up, and the reason I did so was because the latest release of Canonical’s popular Linux distro, Ubuntu, is called Oneiric Ocelot.
I made the jump to Ubuntu in July 2008 with Hardy Heron, and for the most part, I’ve been satisfied with it.
That is, until the time comes for an upgrade. The Ubuntu release schedule has been a model of regularity since I switched, the x.04 version dropping in April, followed by the x.10 version in October. They’re now up to 11.10 with Ocelot, which is very impressive.
I had been humming along with Maverick Meerkat (10.10) since I got a new Dell laptop late last year, but as new versions came out, I began to wonder how long Meerkat would be viable for me. The updates had slowed down, with most of the development going to newer releases.
Plus, the pull of shiny new things became a bit unbearable.
I had a plan, which was to stay one release behind the latest version. So, when 11.10 (Ocelot) dropped, I went to upgrade to 11.04 (Narwhal).
Because Narwhal isn’t the latest version, I had to create a live USB of it to upgrade, rather than using the built-in upgrade function. No worries.
The upgrade went fine for the most part. After a while, I was able to boot Narwhal and begin adding back software that didn’t upgrade.
I’d heard that Unity was a jarring experience for longtime Ubuntu users, and sure enough, it was. Very. Even finding critical stuff like the system control functions is an adventure.
Anyway, I worked my way into a fully functional install, and then, at some point, I decided that bumping to 11.10 would be a good idea.
It wasn’t.
I should mention that I’m sick and not really in any condition to be making decisions. It must have been the cough medicine talking.
After the upgrade finished, I got a blank screen on restart.
Doh.
I wasn’t completely desperate initially because I’ve been here before with 9.04, i.e. Jaunty Jackalope and with Meerkat when my Dell E6410 had Intel video driver issues that prevented it from being used without an external monitor.
You read that right. My so-called stable install of 10.10 only worked in the dock, attached to a monitor.
So, yeah, I’ve had a rocky past with Ubuntu upgrades.
Anyway, this felt like an Xorg issue, so I took the laptop out of dock. Sure enough, the display worked, but the keyboard was possessed. I’d type something, and only a few characters would register. After some angry key-punching, I finally logged in and got it going. I updated the system, restarted, then attached it to the dock, and everything seemed hunky dory.
Then I hit a random freeze, did a hard restart and boom things went haywire. When I rebooted, the top and side Unity panels were gone, which left me with precious little functionality. Basically, I was stuck; even with the Terminal, I couldn’t get Unity restarted.
Now, I’m really hosed.
My choices were pretty limited, since Ubuntu doesn’t have a graceful downgrade option. I tried a fresh upgrade of 11.10, then a new install of 11.10 and finally a new install of 11.04.
None really worked that well. The 11.10 installs had the same issue with no Unity panels; 11.04 worked fine until I installed Compiz and tried to resize the ridiculous 48×48 icons Unity uses. It froze, and I was back in the no panels oblivion.
So yeah, maybe it’s Compiz, but at this point, I’m pretty annoyed with Ubuntu, having lost essentially two days to messing with it.
Luckily, thanks to Unetbootin, it was easy to create bootable USB images so I could fail over and over.
As usual, I complained on Twitter, and luckily, Bill Taroli (@btaroli) had a suggestion: Fedora.
At this point, I was already pondering Fedora or Mint as an option. Fedora is my first RPM-based distro in a decade, but so far, it’s been fine. I’m only through the install and the updates, and even so, there have been issues.
So, I’m kind of stuck. I can start over with a new distro, or try again with 11.04 (or maybe 11.10) minus Compiz. I’ve pondered running Gnome 3 instead of Unity, but that opens up even more upgrade questions.
The problem is that Linux is, and will continue to be, a chore to run for every day for regular people. I’m not a regular user, and I constantly run into issues that require time investment to resolve. I can’t imagine how any distro could pass the Mom test, and yet most of the development work seems to go into making Linux easier to use by emulating features from OS X and iOS, e.g. the move to Unity is a direct result of OS X features.
That’s not to say there aren’t active distros for power users out there. Projects like Gentoo and Slackware carry the flag for hardcore Linux power users.
So why do I still run Linux given the effort? Fundamentally, I believe in open source and support it, and I (mostly) enjoy the challenge. It keeps me sharp.
Still, I wonder how any distro can hope to gain widespread adoption, given how difficult it is to run Linux as a primary OS.
Thoughts or suggestions for my problem?
Find the comments.
Interesting Take on Smartphones
As I read this tantalizingly titled post, I found myself nodding like an idiot. I work from home, so at least no one saw me silently agreeing with what I was reading.
The main point is highly applicable to me and to many of you and is pretty much the same one I made about my tablet, touchscreens suck for content creation.
Yeah, they’re awesome for entertainment, quick communication and consuming content, but I avoid any tasks that require more than a few sentences of keyboard poking. I’m betting you do too.
It’s just too much of a pain to do real work.
Some people even apologize for their brevity (and typos) in their smartphone email signatures.
So, if you write code (even assuming you could on a smartphone or tablet), documents, blog posts, anything, you’re likely in the same boat; you don’t on a smartphone because of the enormous effort required.
Similar problem if you design anything; you’ll quickly find the finger is a terrible pointing device for pixel-perfection. Sure, this is more a tablet use case, but I’m sure there are people out there who’ve tried it on a phone.
The inputs aren’t good enough; it’s that simple.
This makes smartphones substandard computing devices really, but I’d argue they make up for that by providing convenience.
And that alone is worth the investment and annoyance. The ability to tap into the intertubes while you’re on the go is something magical, like Knight Rider’s operations trailer. Having information at your command like that is incredibly useful.
So, while the limitations of smartphones are a bit maddening at times, they make up for it with convenience. I’m not in love with my phone anymore, but I definitely wouldn’t want to be without it.
What do you think? Do love or hate your smartphone?
Find the comments.
Do We Need More Multitouch Options?
From the same guy who created OmniTouch, which allows any surface to be used as a touchscreen, comes TapSense, which can tell what is touching its display, e.g. fingernail, finger pad, knuckle, fingertip.
While this is really cool from a technology perspective, it further complicates the usability issues wrapped up with the diversity of multitouch environments.
Here’s to hoping all this innovation gets distilled into something useful for users that works with their existing knowledge of multitouch and not against it.
Details of Android 4.0 and Galaxy Nexus New Features
TechCrunch has a long walkthrough of the cool stuff in Android 4.0 and the hardware features of the Galaxy Nexus. I didn’t really expect to have device envy, since the Nexus S is a really nice device, but when I saw “zero shutter lag” and immediately wanted a bump.
My daughter is the reason. She’s always moving, so getting a decent shot is challenging at best. To capture her cuteness, I have to take 20-30 shots and hope for the best. Zero shutter lag and rapid-fire shots, both shown in the video, would be awesome.
I guess one small consolation is that the Nexus S will get 4.0 soon, although it doesn’t look like the camera stuff is software. I’ll get the other enhancements soon.
Yet Another Update: One key bit I glossed over is that the Galaxy Nexus (I’m seeing it called GNex a few places) looks like a Verizon exclusive, at least initially. So, upgrading is right out for me, since I had to get into a new contract when I got the Nexus S. Those early termination fees will get you every time.
Big bummer too, since my testing on the MiFi showed LTE speeds were smokin’ fast.
Update: Can’t get the right no script version, will update if I find it. For now, hit the link to watch the 15 minute video.
Another Update: Finally, enjoy.
There’s other cool stuff in there too, and I’m sifting through the coverage now. From what I’ve seen, this is a nice update, bringing a lot of the features from Honeycomb to the phone. Even so, it’s incremental and not mind-blowingly innovative. Sometimes incremental is enough.
Stay tuned for more thoughts.
Final update: Looks like the camera features might be software (not hardware) enhancements, given that the camera seems pretty similar in specs to the one on other recent Samsung models. Also, the Nexus S will be getting Ice Cream Sandwich goodness soon. W00t!
Face unlock looks cool (favoring convenience over security), as does the NFC-Beam feature. The latter may expand the range and capabilities of inter-phone collaboration and sharing apps a la Bump and its ilk.
Also, if you want the full story, you can watch a recording of the entire announcement.
How Google’s Self-Driving Cars Work
Ever since they were outed, I’ve been fascinated by Google’s self-driving cars. They are a combination of awesome potential and scary future vision.
Here’s some interesting information on how they actually work, very cool as expected.
How Google’s Self-Driving Car Works – IEEE Spectrum
As with any algorithm, there are some interesting tweaks:
Sometimes, however, the car has to be more “aggressive.” When going through a four-way intersection, for example, it yields to other vehicles based on road rules; but if other cars don’t reciprocate, it advances a bit to show to the other drivers its intention. Without programming that kind of behavior, Urmson said, it would be impossible for the robot car to drive in the real world.
I also wonder what’s in this for Google. Sure, you could say it’s not being evil, but down the road (pun), Google could diversify its business and license this technology. They must have some vision, given the immense uphill battle they face with liability and legal issues. Not to mention general acceptance of machine-operated cars.
Find the comments.
Divide Your Work and Personal Smartphone Usage
Interesting and seemingly simple approach to separating your work and personal lives on your smartphone, h/t Fast Company Design.
More to the point, do tools like this even matter anymore? Yes, IT and IS will always want division and security to protect digital assets, but have we moved into an era where people know enough intuitively to avoid doing dumb things? It depends.
To make the discussion more interesting, what if the device in question is personally owned?
BYOD opens up a nasty Pandora’s box of problems for IT/IS.
Discuss in comments.
Turn Any Surface into a Touchscreen? Yes, Please.
Last week, I was complaining about how boring smartphones have become.
Check out OmniTouch, which allows pretty much any surface to become a multitouch input, including body parts, walls and notepads.
There’s a longer video over on TechCrunch.
Now this is cool. The shoulder-mounted unit is a bit clunky, but I can see definite potential in the portable projector/input device idea. I can see this type of analog working well to disrupt the display market, especially for portable displays.
Thoughts?
Privacy in the Age of Facebook
This is part generational study and part truth.
The short version: two kids meet, don’t hit it off, one starts taking secret shots of the other in public and posts them to a fake stalker blog, the other finds out, isn’t pissed and interviews him for a school assignment.
That’s as short as I could make it.
Stalking in the age of Facebook
If you’re like me, you’ll read this with morbid fascination or something similar. It’s kind of like watching the social habits of another culture. I was struck most by the apathy; neither seems to care much about the incident. It feels very routine, which is creepy to me, an old fart.
The key takeaway:
You know when Mark Zuckerberg says stuff like privacy doesn’t matter and Facebook makes formerly private information public without notice and all the tech pundits (most of whom are older than Zuck) go bananas tearing out their hair about how stupid and crazy that is? Now you know where Zuck and Facebook are coming from.
Too bad Facebook isn’t only for a single generation.
