The AppsLab

Now that Google+ pages are open to anyone, I had to create one for us. Find it here. This blog and my Google Reader shares are the center of my universe, and I use dlvr.it to push content to Twitter (@theappslab) and our Facebook page. The only reason I do this is because unlike years ago,… Read More

I’ve been missing for a while, spending some quality time away from this space, but now, I’m back and better than ever. Or something. Anyway, a few weeks ago, this post about how Jack Dorsey spends eight hours every day working at both Twitter and Square revealed something interesting that everyone can use. Not the… Read More

I don’t recall how I discovered You Are Not So Smart, but it’s definitely worth reading. Today’s posts were about inattentional blindness and change blindness. I’m tempted to include the visual material here, but then you wouldn’t click through and the link love might be lost and my admiration of the blog would be useless.… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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.… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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. I Hate My Smartphone The main point is highly applicable to me and to many of you and is pretty much the same one I… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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,… Read More