The Brooks Review

Category: Articles

  • Mac Twitter App Round Up

    I am starting to lose all hope that Tweetie for the Mac will ever be updated. I started a search to find something new, to see if anything out there is better than the rapidly aging Tweetie for Mac. Here is what I found…

    Kiwi 2

    Kiwi 2 is an exercise in letting the user pick a theme, while ripping off only the worst parts of Tweetie. It leaves you with a confusing and ugly interface. I don’t like to say bad things about products that people clearly took time and effort to build, but this needs a ground up redesign. The ‘compose’ window is a rip off of Tweetie, yet it is 18 times uglier, that top bar for instance is on steroids. The navigation bar is confusing, trying to follow a new user is too difficult. The ads are implemented poorly and look like they are from 2002 instead of 2011.

    You get a rule system where you can define actions that Kiwi should take given parameters you set, which is neat. This works as a way of filtering out, say, Instagram tweets. A pretty neat feature but I would rather just unfollow someone instead of filtering tweets that I see.

    The tab system it uses makes absolutely no sense. If I have the Brooks Review tab open and I go to close that tab Kiwi will delete that account from the app. This is not a convenient feature – this is stupid, I can’t fathom why you would want a quick way of deleting an account. Tabs are fine, but honestly why make them closeable if that is not the intended use of tabs? If I want to view the icons across the top in ‘text only’ ((Something I commonly do with apps like Mail)) view to save space and clean up the UI, I can, but the minute I click on one text view goes away. Oops.

    No, thanks. ((The app icon is ugly too, but I feel bad enough about trashing this app already.))

    Tweetdeck

    When I first started using Twitter this is what I used. I went to give it another run through, but you needed Flash to install it, I don’t have Flash installed in Safari. That is the precise point that I remembered it runs on Adobe’s Air platform. So I just looked at the screenshots and decided: no way.

    Ok that is not fair, I installed it using Chrome and updated Air on my machine and added an account. Then I sent a tweet from it, then I deleted it from my MacBook Air.

    Thoroughly tested.

    It really is just ugly and very overwhelming to use, not for me in any way. On the plus side I don’t hate the icon. Tweetdeck has gained new features since I last used it, but it is still the same cluttered Windows inspired app that it was back when I started with Twitter. The sad thing is I know so many people that use it, I wish they knew better.

    Echofon

    Within the first ten-seconds of running this app I started to like it. It was recommended to me by Justin Blanton and I can see why he uses it. Echofon, unlike Kiwi, takes a lot of the good design cues from Tweetie. I really do like Echofon a lot and think that it has some really great things going for it.

    Did you know that Echofon will position sync with the iOS apps, thus keeping you right where you left off on all your devices? That is pretty damn cool. I particularly like the design of the top bar and how you compose a new tweet.

    What I really didn’t like is how you switch between accounts, the inactive account kinda gets forgotten in the UI especially if you don’t look at your dock. There needs to be better indication of the fact that you are running multiple accounts, and it would be nice to get a better more Tweetie like direct message view. That said this app doesn’t lack on keyboard shortcuts and has some nice OS integrations like adding the current Safari pages URL in the compose window.

    If there is one thing I hate about the app it is the you must view Tweets with a username instead of the real name field – people pick stupid Avatars and stupid usernames that confuse the stupid out of me. ((Hat trick))

    Nambu

    Kept breaking and crashing when I tried to switch views… the app is really not usable. At least on my machine.

    Twitterrific

    Free version has only one account supported ((I could not find if the paid version was any different.)) and the app acts more like a desktop widget and not so much an app. That means that by default it sits on top of everything else and yet it feels like something to keep you up to date, not something you should be interacting with. The way the app was designed is very different from all other Twitter apps I tried. I don’t dislike it, but I also don’t like it very much – Twitterrific just does not fit my workflow and how I integrate Twitter on my Mac.

    Having said that it is an interesting option and I urge you to try it out at least once to see if it is something that fits with your workflow.

    Hibari

    I need to start by saying that the icon for Hibari is the worst one of the lot. Hibari is not for me, it is a one Twitter account type of app (meaning you can’t have multiple accounts with it). If you are the type that is not that active on Twitter this would be a fantastic little app for you. I would bet that I would find it very serviceable if I could get some extra accounts going, until then it won’t work for me.

    Like with Kiwi you can ‘mute’ certain tweets. Unlike Kiwi it looks damn nice. After the lack of multiple Twitter accounts my biggest complaint is the ‘new tweet’ area – it isn’t ugly, but it does look like the developer just gave up when it came time to make this.

    This is a nice little minimal app though.

    Verdict

    Tweetie still wins, and do you want to know why? Aside from Tweetdeck and Twitterrific, the others are just crappy knockoffs of Tweetie. Now for me (for now) Tweetie and DMs are still working, when that stops I am all over Echofon, at which point I may also cry. ((Because I miss Tweetie, not because of Echofon.))

    If you are trying to figure out which app to use and you have never used Tweetie then get Echofon because at least then you know it will work. Oh, that and you know that you won’t fall in love with an app that seems forgotten.

    [Updated: 12/1/10 at 6:35 AM]

    I forgot to add Itsy to the list of apps I tried. I don’t have much to say about it other than it is not the type of app I am looking for. It takes up minimal space and gives you minimal options (only one account). It is nice looking, but not great looking.

  • The Human Factor vs. The Machines [TSA Thoughts]

    Over the holiday weekend here in the States I had some lively discussions about the new TSA backscatter machines with family members. As with any political discussion I tend to be mellow and not get to heated with people, it just isn’t worth it to have a shouting match on Thanksgiving. One question that seemed to keep popping up is the notion that lack of privacy is worth overall safety. To which I argued that better trained agents would allow safety and privacy, over what the backscatter machines currently offer.

    The Argument

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) argues that backscatter machines are necessary because they have no other means of checking for concealed weaponry on a person (things that do not set off metal detectors). This is incredibly valid and true, they have no way. Now whether backscatter machines solve this problem and whether or not these machines are health hazards is not important. What is important is that these machines solve a problem using a strict set of rules, that are defined to each traveler.

    Making the rules known and steadfast is the security hole, or loop-hole if you prefer.

    Everybody knows that lie detector machines can be beaten ((Hollywood teaches us so.)) , that is if you train hard enough you can beat a lie detector. The reason you can train to beat a lie detector is because you know how that machine operates – you know what AND how it is looking for lies. That knowledge is incredibly powerful and allows smart and creative people to find a way around those rules, without breaking them. Thus allowing them to ‘beat’ a lie detector.

    All of the checks that TSA and DHS implement at airports work the same way: within a set of rules and procedures readily available to all travelers.

    If a terrorist really wanted to bomb an airplane, nothing will stop him. He knows how to beat the backscatter machines by: avoidance (finding and airport/line without the machines), pat-down (placing the bomb in a body cavity that will not be felt). The only wild card in that process is the TSA agents watching over all the procedures. A TSA agent may see something out of sorts and pull them aside for further screening, they don’t know what the agent may see so the potential for failure is incredibly high – which is why most terrorists have multiple people set to carry out the same thing at the same time, thus TSA would not be able to react quick enough if they caught one of the people.

    Israel

    I posted this link a while back, but as reported by Cathal Kelly of TheStar.com here is how Israel does security: ((This is important because Israel is under a much more imminent security threat than the U.S..))

    Armed guards outside the terminal are trained to observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behaviour. At Ben Gurion’s half-dozen entrances, another layer of security are watching. At this point, some travellers will be randomly taken aside, and their person and their luggage run through a magnometer.

    According to the article the last time Israeli security was breached at an Airport was 2002. 2002. That is absurd. Each guard at the Israeli airport is trained in observation and profiling to help stop potential threats, all without subjecting travelers to undue inspections or wasted time. Basically you are not beating a set of rules (other than the magnometer) you must instead beat a highly trained human. Now you know they are looking for ‘suspicious behavior’ but what that actually looks like to each agent differs.

    The Human Factor

    Israel knows that the greatest threat to a terrorists success is the human factor: the ‘will our guy be caught factor’. Any little slip up of a terrorist in Israel could lead to a search and arrest of the terrorist – the variables for success are so huge that to succeed is astronomical.

    So the question that has been circling the net is whether such a system would work in the U.S. The answer is maybe, maybe not. The U.S. is massive in size compared to Israel and training that many people would be a huge financial cost and time consuming action. Better trained agents would have to be smarter and therefore paid more. Isn’t that what we want as a nation though: smarter and better paid people?

    What if each U.S. airport security check point was required to have four agents on duty all the time watching the passengers, these agents would be trained by FBI/CIA deception experts to weed out potential threats. Perhaps only those identified as threats would be subjected to further screening, the rest of us can go back to bringing on our water and only having to be checked by metal detectors.

    What would that do?

    Maybe, just maybe, Bruce Schneier said it best:

    It’s not even a fair game. It’s not that the terrorist picks an attack and we pick a defense, and we see who wins. It’s that we pick a defense, and then the terrorists look at our defense and pick an attack designed to get around it. Our security measures only work if we happen to guess the plot correctly. If we get it wrong, we’ve wasted our money. This isn’t security; it’s security theater.

    and later:

    Airport security is the last line of defense, and it’s not a very good one. What works is investigation and intelligence: security that works regardless of the terrorist tactic or target. Yes, the target matters too; all this airport security is only effective if the terrorists target airports. If they decide to bomb crowded shopping malls instead, we’ve wasted our money.

    I vote for better trained TSA, and a diversion of backscatter funds to help shore up ‘the human factor’.

  • Random Tweets That Amuse

    Ben Kuchera:

    God I love comments. It’s like your drunken uncle yelling at the TV, but in front of everyone.

    Ryan Block:

    One must be aware that loving Photoshop – and most other Adobe products – is actually more akin to software Stockholm syndrome.

    Mike Monteiro (link NSFW):

    It must be weird for TSA agents to go to strip clubs and not be able to touch.

    Anil Dash:

    There’s no rule saying we can’t thoroughly soak our crotches in lukewarm water right before going through security at the airport, right?

    Neven Mrgan:

    Wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Apple had a CDMA iPhone all along and they spent 4 years convincing Verizon not to put their logo on it.

  • What Does Steve Jobs Think of Email?

    In the recently released 1985 interview with Playboy, Steve Jobs had this to say about the telegraph in comparison to the telephone:

    It [the telephone] performed basically the same function as the telegraph, but people already knew how to use it. Also, the neatest thing about it was that besides allowing you to communicate with just words, it allowed you to sing.

    He elaborates:

    It allowed you to intone your words with meaning beyond the simple linguistics. And we’re in the same situation today. Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in America to improve productivity. It won’t work. The special incantations you have to learn this time are “slash q-zs” and things like that. The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel–one that reads like a mystery to most people. They’re not going to learn slash q-z any more than they’re going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about. It’s the first “telephone” of our industry. And, besides that, the neatest thing about it, to me, is that the Macintosh lets you sing the way the telephone did. You don’t simply communicate words, you have special print styles and the ability to draw and add pictures to express yourself.

    I can’t help but think that Jobs looks at email and thinks that email is very similar to the Telegraph, in fact a great deal of our online communication these days lacks that intonation that is heavily relied on in speech.

    Still to this day there is a lot of miscommunication happening due to the lack of intonation in communication mediums such as text messages and emails. People think I am ‘mad’ all the time because I send brief emails, or they think I am joking when I am anything but joking. Is that why Apple decided that FaceTime needs to be an “open” protocol?

    I can tell you one thing, communication is never clear unless it is done face to face. Even video conferencing does not solve this. When you stand and talk to another person you take note of every movement they make, you know if they like what you are saying or not based on more than just words and facial expressions, the way they stand, shake your hand, shift their weight – all important things.

    There really is no point to this other than to throw the thought out there to everyone – how do you digitally convey all these non-verbal cues?

    [This part of an ongoing series on dealing with email, to see more posts look here.]

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab Properly Reviewed

    Note: This is a review unit loaned to me by Verizon Wireless, the device and internet access was no cost to me while I had it.

    How do you review something that doesn’t fit any predefined category for a device?

    Samsung Galaxy Tab 1

    This is the problem that the Samsung Galaxy Tab presents: it is a tablet, but not in the same way that the iPad is. In fact these two devices are so very different that I don’t think they really ‘compete’ with one another in terms of how you use them. With that in mind it is rather easy to see why so many others failed at doing a proper review of the Tab – it turns out the device is quite the enigma.

    The Difference

    There are two major reasons that the Tab and iPad are not direct competitors: size and app stores. This may seem like it should not be that big of a difference, what’s three inches after all – additionally the Android Market is a pretty robust app store right? Well no, not really. There may be a lot of apps in the Android Market, but there are not many good apps. Oh, and three inches turns out to be a huge difference for a tablet.

    The iPad is a companion device, but a companion device that is both large enough and powerful enough to serve as a primary computer for many people. Just take a look around the web and you will see a good number of Geeks like myself who have left behind their laptops on recent travels, preferring instead to take along their iPad only.

    The Tab is not that type of device, it is not able to span the category of both companion and possibly a primary computer. As I see it the Tab isn’t even a secondary computer. That does not make it a bad device, I actually rather like it under the right circumstances.

    Sizing Up

    If you own an iPad and you pick up the Tab you are probably going to get a grin on your face – I know I did. The size just feels very natural to hold in your hand. It is almost the same thickness of the iPad, yet its surface area is just a fraction of the size. From day one the iPad has always felt like a device that required two hands, a stand, table, or lap to use properly. The Tab though is a handheld computer in the truest sense, it looks down right absurd to try and rest on your lap while you use it. I certainly grinned the first time I picked up an iPad too, but something about the Tab feels right from a size standpoint. The size though is more troublesome then it is good.

    There have been a ton of arguments between Apple and seemingly every other tablet maker about 7” screens, with Apple (and I) both arguing that 7-inches is just not a practical size for a tablet – it is too in between to work. I still feel that such an assessment is accurate, but I would add that, as with everything, there is a time and place for each.

    I just plopped the Tab on top of my iPad and the first thing that came to my mind was MacBook Airs. If you go to the store and look at the difference between the 13” MacBook Air and the 11” MacBook Air then I think you will get a good understanding about the difference between these two tablets. The Tab is the 11” Air, that by itself would be silly to own, but for the right people makes and excellent computer, so too then does the Tab make an excellent tablet for the right user.

    If you are on the go all day and rarely create any content (more on this in a bit) then I think the Tab would suit you well. I can picture political aides running around with these things, emailing on their Blackberries and then grabbing the Tab to gulp down some news and policies while going from meeting to meeting.

    To me the Tab makes the iPad feel like the type of device that you grab when you want to ‘settle in’ with something, whereas the Tab is the device you grab when you are ‘go, go, go’. If that makes any sense. Let me try explaining it another way, if I am going on vacation to a city I have never been to here is how I would use the iPad versus the Tab:

    • The iPad would be the device I would want for lounging around the hotel, or going to Café to catch up on the world.
    • The Tab is the device I would want while running around the city and exploring it.

    The iPad would be too big to take with me, especially if I don’t want to be a mugging target. The Tab though could slip in a purse, or large pocket while stilling being every bit as useful – perhaps even more useful given the ease of carry. I am not talking about sticking it in your back pocket either, it fits in a few of my jackets pockets.

    App Stores

    The Android Market is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the entire Tab experience for me. I did not find one single suitable replacement for any of the third-party apps that I use on the iPad. Angry Birds is the same, save for that really ugly add that sits atop while you play. Twitter (official app) is similar, except that it never remembered my position correctly, nor does it allow for multiple accounts. Turning to other options in the Market was of little help to me, and I think John Gruber summarized why best on Daring Fireball when he said:

    In fact, the Android Market, as a whole, bears a lot more resemblance to the Cydia app store than it does to Apple’s official App Store. This is both in terms of content (system hacks, geek utilities, lower-quality UI design) and audience (the sort of users who put “task killers” and home screen replacements at the top of their favorite app lists). Browse the Android Market apps listed at sites like DoubleTwist and AppBrain, particularly the most popular lists. Then browse the listings in the Cydia app store, and tell me there isn’t a strong similarity.

    That is a dead on accurate look at what the Android Market feels like. There are a few scattered good apps, but most of the apps felt like things that only real nerds would want to use, not the average users. Perhaps the best example was when I was trying to figure out how to take a screenshot on the Tab. After googling for some answers it became clear that you needed a third party app to take a screenshot. I hopped into the Market and did a quick search (which to Android’s credit is far faster than Apple’s iOS App Store search mechanism) and up popped a lot of screen shot apps. Not one of which worked – I tried about 12 or so of them, only the free ones. Most every screen shot app said that I would have to gain Root access to the device before I could use the tool – something I was not willing to attempt on a review unit.

    There are very few apps that have been optimized for the Tabs larger interface, so most of the time you are looking at a scaled version of an Android phone app. In fact the Market is lacking the universal apps that Apple has. I did a quick search to find out what the best Tab apps were and among the ones listed I was told to download the New York Times app. So I did, and it was a small rectangle on the screen – which I found odd. I searched again and found that there are two version, one for tablets and one for phones – yet these two version were separated by 5 other apps in the search results. Confusing and annoying me at the same time.

    What I am saying is this: you don’t buy the Tab to use apps, you buy the Tab for what it has built-in and the web. The apps that are available are serviceable, but lack compelling design or features (such as send to Instapaper which seems to be quite the enigma in the Android Market). There is a very good reason that Apple has commercials only displaying third party apps for iPad and Samsung does not advertise the same thing, I have yet to find a single compelling Android app for the Tab that was made by a third party developer.

    Stephen Hackett may have said it best:

    The biggest thing Android has going for it is its integration with Google’s cloud services.

    That is very true.

    Samsung Galaxy Tab 4

    Typing

    The meta thing to do would have been to type this entire section on the Tab – so I tried to do just that to keep my ‘geek cred’ high. I decided though that the attempt was futile and I should stop before I pulled out all of my hair. Typing anything longer than a sentence (if even that) on the Tab is a frustrating experience – no matter which orientation you are using the device in.

    In setting up the device I noticed that there is an option to turn ‘haptic feedback’ on and off, this is the little buzz the device does in response to you typing or hitting the menu keys. To be honest with you, I really like the haptic feedback. It is a really nice reassurance that you are actually pressing something. The haptic feedback was also very helpful in letting me know when I hit a button that I didn’t want, or mean, to press.

    Haptic feedback is where the pleasantness of typing on the Tab ends. This is not just a matter of getting used to the keyboard. The device is simply too small to house a practical and functional landscape keyboard. I have typed many 1000+ word documents on my iPad onscreen keyboard in landscape mode with only minimal frustration. Trying to type even a paragraph though on the Tab was irritating for me – to the point where I had to go do something else for a bit. If you want to know what it is like to type on the Tab’s landscape keyboard and you own an iPad, you are in luck – flip your iPad into portrait view and pop up the keyboard, what you are looking at is faster to type on than the Tab’s landscape keyboard. This has to do with both the size and layout of the Tab keyboard. The layout should be a non-issue after using the device for a while, however the size will always be an issue.

    The portrait mode is better though, in fact I am convinced that one should only use the Tab in portrait mode as landscape offers little to no benefit. So let’s talk about the portrait keyboard on the Tab – it is much better than the portrait keyboard on the iPad. It is a thumb typing keyboard that looks and feels like a jumbo version of the iPhone keyboard. It will be a bit to big for those with small hands, and troublesome for those with fat thumbs. That said I would guess that most people could get up to reasonable speed on it with practice. It is far easier for people with big thumbs to use than something you would encounter on a smartphone.

    The Tab has Swype installed on it, and when I first started using it I found Swype to be in the way. Once I turned it off my typing speed substantially increased as the keyboard layout more closely mimicked iOS’s keyboard layout. The Tab’s keyboard is simply too large to use Swype with if you want to use it for speed. However, if you just want to use it because you don’t like lifting your finger, well by all means…

    The last bit about typing, perhaps the most important, is the auto-correct mechanism. iOS utilizes a dual auto-correct method. The first line of defense on iOS is that the target areas for the predicted next letter increase in virtual size (meaning you don’t see the increase). So if you are typing fast and you meant to hit ‘a’ instead of ’s’, if the iOS device thinks there is a larger chance you meant to hit ‘a’ than ’s’, the letter that will appear will actually be ‘a’. ((Usually)) This leads to a lot fewer typos and a lot quicker typing. The second line of defense that iOS has is a very aggressive spell check engine that suggests and word and inputs that suggestion if you don’t actively tell it not to.

    The Tab must be utilizing a similar method as iOS, but the auto-correct suggestions work in a vastly different way. In fact the suggestions appear below where you are typing, just above the keyboard. The problem with that is you must take your eyes off of the sentence you are typing to watch the suggestions – they are just as aggressive as iOS’s are. This slowed my typing speed significantly, having to look away from your sentence is very annoying. The nice part about Android is that you can tweak a lot of these settings to your liking.

    Overall I have had great success tapping out most words – with a bit more practice, shooting out one to two sentence emails should be a breeze. That said there is one last annoyance with the keyboard – lag. I mentioned above that I like to keep haptic feedback on, the reason being that if you are typing fast (which I try to do) the keyboard illumination (glows blue around keys when you ‘press’ them) will lag behind my fingers – haptic feedback has yet to lag behind so I get a better sense that the Tab is keeping up with me. That said I find the portrait keyboard to be very serviceable, but the landscape keyboard to be abysmal.

    Usage

    Everything that I have been talking about so far has led us up to the most unique, interesting and troubling aspect of the Samsung Galaxy Tab. How, where and when do you use the Tab?

    That is not an easy question to answer. As a Kindle reader it works great, the smaller footprint and lighter weight of the chassis makes for a very enjoyable experience. The lack of a quality RSS reader and Instapaper app though will certainly limit the usage of this device.

    Samsung Galaxy Tab 5

    Web Browsing

    One huge downfall of the device is how the browser reports itself to websites – most websites will automatically kick you to a mobile version that is truly formatted for small phone screens. This usually is not a problem as you can click the full site buttons, but some sites lack those (why people, why?). Facebook was particularly troublesome for my Wife as it kept forcing her back to the mobile site with each page on the site she moved to. This seems to be much less of a problem for the iPad as many people have checks to see if you are using an iPad these days.

    I am not entirely sure if it is possible for web developers to set rules for Android Tablets as I am not sure how they report to sites, or if they even report differently than other Android devices. What is clear is that something needs to be done to improve web browsing experiences on the Tab – my guess is that both Google and web developers need to work on this. Of course web developers will need to have a compelling reason to do more work (though 600,000 opening month sales is a good start).

    Scrolling seems to be somewhat of a contentious topic for Tab reviewers as people are all over the board about it. Here is the bottom line on scrolling: if you use iOS devices the scrolling will disappoint you to the point of frustration, however if you are not coming from an iOS device you should be fine. That said there are significant problems with scrolling on graphics heavy pages, Engadget.com is one such site that is particularly laughable to navigate. ((Full site, not the mobile version.)) Even this site was problematic when I scrolled by images. I should note that scrolling on the mobile versions of sites is very pleasant.

    One last thing about scrolling: the ‘inertia’ scrolling on the Tab (the scrolling that keeps moving after you stopped moving your finger, allowing for ‘momentum’ to stop it) is much different from iOS. It seemed a lot less “real” if that makes sense. It scrolled much to fast when I flicked it, often just sprinting down to the bottom of the page. Oh, and that remind me, there is no shortcut I can find for quickly moving back up to the navigation bar at the top, which is a bit annoying. Actually it was really annoying come to think of it.

    Samsung Galaxy Tab 2

    Purpose

    In my usage of this device, which has been very extensive at this point, I can see why many reviewers either seem to love it or hate it. There is a lot to like about this device, and I do think that it is a very good device. The problem though is that the iPad re-defined the tablet landscape when it was launched and the Samsung Galaxy Tab does not fit within that definition, which is not a bad thing. Samsung could simply be trying to re-define the market once again.

    The Tab is more mobile than the iPad, while being easier to use than mobile phones – in the sense that it has a larger screen that is much easier to see. If you want to know where you would use the Tab over the iPad the best way to think about it is like this:

    The iPad requires a bag for the most part, otherwise you will have to carry it in your hands. The Tab though could fit in most jacket pockets and thus does not require a bag for traveling. Now think about all the times you have been out and about, think about the times when you had wished you had the iPad with you to look something up. That is a Tab situation. Think about the times you had the iPad with you and you wished you had somewhere out of the way to put it – the Tab again eliminates the frustration ten fold.

    That is why the Tab stands to have a nice size market, and I would guess why they sold 600,000 on opening weekend.

    General Thoughts

    One really interesting thing that I noticed in using the Tab is that unlike in iOS everything seems to be buried under at least one layer of menus. Be it the main App view, the menus and settings. Everything is one more click away than I am with iOS. It is a little annoyance, something like trying to get to the settings on Twitter’s app for iPhone and having to back out to the account screen first, a minor annoyance because you have to think about where you need to go.

    The ON/OFF button is in the wrong spot. It sits just above the volume rocker along the right side of the device. It might be because I am so used to ON/OFF being on the top – I still have yet to get used to the side ON/OFF and it drives me crazy. I constantly hit the top edge of the device to try and turn it off, and then I would hit volume up trying to do the same on the side. Annoying.

    Unlike the iPad the Tab is not really a device that you use in any orientation, the bottom row of home keys really spells out how the device is to be held: in portrait view. This is a not really a bad thing I found this view to be the best with just about everything I did on the Tab.

    There is no hardware switch for mute or orientation lock – Samsung though has made it very easy to get to these settings and more. On the lock screen you can slide to unlock, or slide to Mute/Un-Mute the device which is a very nice touch. The volume switch if held mutes the device incredibly quick or drag down the top bar with your finger and you can silence the device. This is also where orientation lock is stowed away.

    I want to talk a little about the four buttons along the bottom of the Android standard: Menu, Home, Back/up, Search. At first I thought these buttons were stupid, but Android does a great job utilizing them (as well as Android app developers). I found the menu button to be OK, but menus in general seemed silly and overly large. The home button was a home button (surprise!). The search button is a great addition and after getting used to the fact that it was there I really found that I liked having it. The back button though, I hate that back button. In iOS developers use a little button usually at the top that is in an arrow shape pointing left, and all iOS transitions lead you to feel that you advance to the right ((Which must really screw with the heads of countries that read right to left, like Japan)) in Android that little button is replaced by a hardware button. In all the hours I spent with the Tab I never once got used to that, nor the behavior that button had. Like how if you keep hitting it you eventually return to the home screen. Why not just stop working when you get back to the first screen for the app, I will press the home button when that is where I want to go. Odd.

    Samsung Galaxy Tab 3

    Hardware

    To be honest I set my expectations for the hardware pretty low from the outset. I have been using Apple products so long that it is very rare that other consumer electronics impress me when it comes to hardware. Having said that the build of the Tab is solid. Like the iPad it is not a device that feels fragile in your hands, in fact the Tab feels quit cozy in your hands. ((Having a plastic back helps.))

    There is a gradual curve along the back of the device and a slight texture as well (see the dots in the pictures). The Tab is not ‘grippy’, but at the same time it does not feel ready to slip out of your grasp. As with most Android devices the Tab has four ‘physical’ buttons along the bottom – these are actually touch sensitive buttons and do not depress. They act as the menu, home, back, and search buttons for the device. Along the right side you have a volume rocker and the power button.

    The most interesting thing about the Tab though is the bezel around the device. It is about a quarter of an inch smaller on each side than the iPad. That quarter of an inch though makes for a dramatic difference. I measure my thumb when it is resting on a ruler with the normal pressure I would use to hold the iPad or Tab, my thumb is almost 7/8” wide. The iPad has a 3/4” bezel, while the Tab has a 1/2” bezel. That means that on the Tab my thumbs get in the way a bit more than on the iPad. This is not a nit-picky thing, it has caused some unexpected results when browsing the web. I find that I often accidentally click on ads when I am browsing because one of my thumbs is actually on the touch screen. This is something that you most certainly would learn not to do in time as you use the device. I strongly feel though that you should never have to learn how to hold something in order to use it. ((Just to save myself some emails yes I use an iPhone 4 and no I have had no antenna problems no matter how I hold it.))

    Of note the Tab uses a dock like interface, the connector is almost identical in size and shape to an Apple dock connector (no they are not the same that I could tell). This has no bearing on usage of the device, but I was very curious to see this and thought it was rather interesting.

    Overall the hardware is very well done. The Tab is not a beautiful piece of art, it is a black rectangle. It does however win where it counts, the Tab feels right in your hand, feels solid, looks solid, and seems very well made.

    Miscellany

    • I found setting up email accounts a bear, as I am sure it is on iOS but the lack of being able to sync over all your email accounts like you can in iTunes was a really annoying problem. Setup is a bear if the Tab cannot auto configure the account for you.
    • The camera is more or less a joke on the device and without a FaceTime app I was not able to test the front facing camera. You can see some example shots here, here, here and here that I took with the rear facing camera.
    • I am not sure if this is a hardware or software issue, so I am tossing it here, but the backlight sensor is overly…sensitive for lack of a better word. My hand moving in the wrong spot always makes the screen dim in situations where it needs to be bright, this is not a major problem, but it is a tad bit annoying. Especially given that the Tab dims faster than it brightens back up.
    • As I mentioned on Twitter this device was incredibly frustrating for my wife – she hated the Haptic Feedback and found the web browsing on Facebook less than stellar.
    • Being able to attach things to emails from within the email composition screen is amazing. I can’t tell you how many times I start an email in iOS and then realize I want to attach a picture, which means starting all over again. [Updated: 11/26/10 at 9:52 AM] A reader writes in to say that you can do this in iOS if you just use copy and paste after you start an email.
    • The send button, it is right above the keyboard and that is perfect, love that.
    • Mobile hotspot, this thing can be a MiFi, so can many other Android devices. Why this isn’t the case on iOS I don’t know, but it really should be.
    • I loved not having to worry about Internet access, my next tablet will have 3G it is way too convenient.

    Bottom Line

    The biggest deciding factors for whether you should buy the Tab need to come down to two things: what is your intended use and why do you want a tablet. A person that hates bags should probably go with the Tab, a person that is indifferent or loves bags should go with the iPad. If you carry a laptop anyways, perhaps a Tab instead of a larger iPad to save room. If you are all about Apple then why are you reading this?

    Do not be confused however, I think the tab is an awesome device – much more impressive than I had initially thought it would be. That does not mean it is better than, or even as good as the iPad – it is not. The iPad is still the ‘bees knees’ if you will, that though is due to the superior app store. iOS has an excellent app store, and you might as well forget about Android’s as it is rather pathetic right now. If you want a tablet to get cool apps the Tab is the absolute wrong choice for you.

    The Tab truly is a large smartphone and most everything it does reminds you of that fact, though a very good large smart phone. The Tab for me doesn’t come close to fitting in my workflow, I think it’s good, but the app store is pathetic and typing is too poor to make it any better than using my iPhone. Again this is a device for specific people not for the masses.

    [Updated: 11/26/10 at 9:46 AM]

    I didn’t mention anything about Flash, sorry about that I had meant to. Flash is irrelevant, when it worked it worked. When it didn’t work it crashed the browser or ran like crap. Flash on a tablet is like a website that uses a lot of the ‘:hover’ attribute in CSS, just doesn’t work all that great for touch interfaces, but most of the time you can get by without noticing the pitfalls.

  • Thanksgiving

    Today in the U.S. is Thanksgiving, forget the history of the holiday – I say we make our own geek history. Let us take today and say thanks for all those hard working, underpaid developers. Those guys that make great products and then give them away for free. Dropbox, Instapaper – these guys deserve a huge thanks.

    Earlier this week I sent Marco Arment the creator of Instapaper a thank you note to the email he posts: instapaper@marco.org – if you use Instapaper I suggest you do the same, and I suggest you subscribe as well.

    Dropbox, I love you too.

  • TSA and Constitutional Rights

    Just as I thought might be the case I did this search in the MyTSA iPhone app and TSA had no clue what I was going on about. Don’t worry I submitted that TSA add this.

  • Thoughts on Diaspora

    It is no secret that I loathe Facebook, long time readers should know that I have been keeping a close eye on the Diaspora project, they seek to create a more open Facebook experience. I have been very excited for them to get this project going, right up and until this morning. This morning I had a revelation: Diaspora is already irrelevant. Sad because they haven’t even publicly launched.

    No, I have no insider info saying that these guys are giving up, nor do I think that is the case – I do think they probably should stop and rethink though. What occurred to me is that Diaspora is creating a service that likely will only be used by really geeky types (like me) and few others. That limits the success the service can have, because news flash: not all geeks are friends with each other. Social networks that rely on people ‘friending’ each other need to be pretty main stream offerings, just ask MySpace. ((I am not going to write My__, that’s just dumb.))

    No matter what Diaspora does they will not be more main stream than Facebook. Plain and simple.

    Unless

    I don’t think that all hope is lost though, I think that Diaspora needs to focus a bit on innovations that people will truly care about. Did anybody else see last week’s episode of ‘The Office (U.S.)”? One of the characters created a new web service called WUPHF which, though fake and amusing, solves a real problem that people have: too many inboxes. If you are a very social geek then you likely are using: Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Formspring, LinkedIn, Instagram, Gowalla, Foursquare, BrightKite, Flickr, and others. Plus you have email, maybe Basecamp, text messages, voice messages, Things/OmniFocus/Task Manager. You might even have multiple accounts at more than one of those services. In other words you got a lot of inboxes to stay on top of.

    With that in mind what I think we don’t need is another inbox and the more and more I think about it Diaspora seems like just that, another inbox. Perhaps what we really need is something to help aggregate some of our data. I think Diaspora has an opportunity to help with that for both the person using the service and others that want to check in with that person.

    When I left Facebook I worked on revamping my Profile page so that friends who visited it would be presented data in a similar fashion as Facebook does. The goal was to setup a site that never needed me to touch it, but was always up to date. I hard coded a few things which I hope don’t change (like my Wife’s name) and the rest I built with dynamic content. The end result is a site where I own all the data and where my friends and strangers can go to learn more about me – all without compromising my privacy. It pulls my tweets, photos, and RSS feeds from my blogs into one stream that is easy to skim.

    Since I built that page I have maybe touched the code once or twice to tweak a few things – that’s it.

    Diaspora with the brian power that they have could build something easily more robust. One thing that I never figured out how to implement is my Gowalla feed so that people could see where I am. Imagine if instead of just being another Facebook, Diaspora instead had the options to show this data to either ‘friends’ or the ‘public’ at your discretion:

    • Tweets
    • Blog Posts
    • Flickr Photos
    • Instagram
    • Check-ins
    • Relationships linked to other peoples pages

    Then on the admin side it would somehow magically integrate all your inboxes for the services I talked about above. You could check @replies, DMs, comments, likes, blog comments, and so on.

    This would be some serious API wizardry, but wouldn’t that offer us all a compelling reason to use the service? More compelling than Facebook?

    Still not convinced?

    Imagine being able to go to a persons Diaspora page and sending them a message, a message that then shows up for that person on a number of services they appoint: email, Facebook, Twitter, Text message, and so forth. Imagine the power of only having to tell someone your Diaspora name and not all your other Social ‘handles’ – that would be killer. Instead of telling people my email address and them hoping I check my email on Sundays when they really want to talk to me, I tell them Diaspora, perhaps Diaspora knows that on weekends I don’t check email, but I do check DMs so they DM the message. I am not saying this is WUPHF, rather than it allows you to sort messages based on what you prefer. Power to the user, ease for the sender.

    Don’t think for a second though that this is not the path that Facebook is pursuing, creating an email service is just a baby step in that direction. Facebook though wants to own the data and not rely on another company. I don’t know where Diaspora will end up, but I do think that if they are only a more ‘private’ or ‘secure’ version of Facebook, then outside of us geeks they won’t get much of a following. Here’s hoping they give us a compelling reason to use Diaspora, otherwise I don’t think it will be anything more than a proof of concept.

  • TBR Goodies for Your iPhone

    I was a little bored yesterday with the snow slowing down western Washington, so I decided to finally make a new homescreen wallpaper for my iPhone. I made a TBR themed homescreen for my iPad a while back and really like it (not really ready to share that yet, needs a bit more tuning), but I really like the way the iPhone one came out – they are sized for the iPhone 4’s retina display.

    The light version looks like this (click the photo to download the background image):

    photo 1.PNG

    I am clever enough to know that not everyone loves me as much as I do – so if you just fill your homescreen with icons you don’t have to see the TBR logo.

    Now I really like the light version, but for those who like things dark I made this one also (click the photo to download the background image):

    photo 2.PNG

    Enjoy.

  • Welcome Back Old Friend

    A hand written post for you today, click here to read it.

  • What to Expect: iOS 4.2 on the iPad

    Now that iOS 4.2 is available to the public I thought it pertinent to fill you in on an iPad running iOS 4.2 (I have been using the betas since they came out). This is a rather quick look at some of the things I like, for an in depth look I recommend looking here.

    There are two immediate things that most every one should take note of and one major annoyance that will surely give you some troubles.
    What you will love:

    • Multi-tasking.
    • Folders
    • Unified Inbox

    What will drive you crazy:

    • The lack of an orientation lock switch.

    Multi-Tasking

    This is what most people are going to care about – I have some bad news, unless the App is already setup for multi-tasking it will be painfully obvious that it isn’t. During the beta period the only apps that worked properly for multi-tasking were the ones that were universal and had an iPhone counterpart that was already multi-tasking ready. Except for Twitter’s app – that was a horrendous problem.

    Other than that multi-tasking works as expected, double tap the home button to switch apps. Though exiting the app and launching another works the same as a double tap, it just adds a few steps.

    I have found that I use my iPad for a lot more ‘switching’ than I do my iPhone so multi-tasking is a welcome addition. We will have to wait for some iOS devs to get their apps updated, but my guess is that most will be done before Thanksgiving (U.S.).

    Folders

    Ah yes, folders are in my opinion the best addition that iOS 4.2 brings. The larger screen size that the iPad holds over the iPhone makes flipping through pages of apps tedious. Folders help reduce the number of pages, and in my case I went from 5 to 2 pages. I love folders, all you need to do is drag an app icon on top of another and iOS will create the folder.

    Better yet, use iTunes to organize all your apps as you can do it much quicker there.

    Unified Inbox

    Still to this day I do not understand why a unified inbox was not a part of iOS from the beginning. That said it is finally a part of the iPad in iOS 4.2 and it is a very welcome addition to the OS. Basically you get to see all of your emails in one inbox at the same time – yay.

    One thing that I would like to see disappear is the fact that you have the options for ‘all inboxes’ and a single inbox for each account, in addition to another list for each account, where you can click and then see the inbox for that account yet again. The listing of just the individual account inbox tabs seems a little cumbersome and cluttering to me.

    Orientation Lock

    What used to be the orientation lock switch is now a mute switch just like on the iPhone. This is extremely annoying and should not have happened. You will see why soon enough.

    You can still lock the screen orientation you just need to double tap the home button and swipe your finger to the right to reveal the software switch. Really cumbersome. The iPad is less an audio device that it is a reading device, orientation is greater than audio on the iPad. Add to that the volume rocker which already quickly mutes the device if you just hold it down.

    Overall

    iOS 4.2 is yet another great upgrade – don’t hesitate to do it. In fact go upgrade now. Apple also announced that find my iOS device is now free, set it up and use it. What a great feature to make free.

  • Is Google Dying a Slow Death?

    Note: This post is a collection of thoughts that is in no way complete, I invite you to join the conversation via posting your thoughts on your blog – you are always welcome to shoot me the link via email if you want.

    Comments were made the other week by a well respected venture capitalist about the health of Google as a company. The comments centered around the fact that Fred Wilson thinks Google has stopped innovating, instead choosing to get new ideas and products via acquisitions. Wilson makes an incredible compelling case, one that I am inclined to agree with:

    Mr Wilson […], author of the  popular A VC blog and a managing partner at Union Square Ventures, said Google had not come up with anything truly transformative that was a home-grown product since Gmail, introduced in 2004. It had relied on acquisitions instead to develop new services.

    One quote cannot do this blog post justice, click over and read the whole thing, it is very short.

    Is Google wrong though? Wilson’s argument seems to be that the company that only acquires ideas is one that is short lived. If you ask my Wife she will confirm that I have long been saying that come 2015 Google won’t be around anymore (with the occasional proclamation that it they will be dead by 2012 – though that is not realistic). I have no concrete reasons why, it just seems to me that they have yet to figure out what will keep them alive. Android could have been a great source of money for them, but then they decided that the Android platform would not be a direct profit center, instead they would profit off of mobile search and in-app advertising – using Android to help drive those revenue sources.

    Ok…

    There also exists this long held belief among business people that ideas are not nearly as important as execution. You often hear this from venture capitalists in the form of statements like “an idea is worthless until someone executes on it.” Which naturally implies that not every person can execute, or better still, execute well enough to be successful.

    Both innovation and execution matter. They matter a lot.

    Let’s look at innovation for a second, if you have a wildly innovative company, does that naturally mean that your company will also be a wild success? The obvious answer is no.

    Think about it like this, if I have a great idea for a blog post that I just think will knock the socks off of anyone who reads it – does that make the blog post a hit? Of course not because I still have to write the post, meaning that unless I execute on my idea I really have nothing but a dime-a-dozen idea.

    Now take execution, it is more like a 100 yard sprinter than anything else. If you have no really great ideas, but you can execute you most certainly can make some money, but it will be very short lived. Business is a marathon, and execution is only a sprinter, innovation is what you need to keep pace in the marathon.

    Two examples of execution without innovation:

    The Pet Rock

    The idea was lousy, terrible really, but he executed very well:

    The pet rock sold for $3.95 and estimates state Dahl sold over 5 million of his pet rocks in a six month period. Even more, each pet rock was purchased for a few pennies and Dahl estimated that the packaging and accompanying manual cost him under 30 cents per rock in bulk to produce. Therefore, assuming incidentals and delivery cost Dahl another 65 cents per rock, then Dahl was profiting 3 dollars per rock. With these totals Dahl earned over 15 million dollars during a six month period in 1975 which would be estimated at $56,166,419.02 today.

    That was over a six month period now it is largely a cult classic – he had no innovative ideas and thus as every sprinter does he eventually ran out of breath and that was that. Though you must give him massive credit on executing extremely well on a very mundane idea.

    The I am Rich App

    Who remembers the I am Rich App when the iOS App store originally launched? It was an app that only had a glowing red gem in it, when pressed it would boost your already huge ego. Do you know why I know that the purchasers of this app had a huge ego? Because it costed $999.99 in the app store – not a typo.

    According to Wikipedia the creator sold 8 copies before it was pulled by Apple. Again this is not a great idea, it was a poor idea that was executed very well. He made some good money with little effort put forth, yet again though it was very short lived (if Apple had not have killed it I am certain it would not have been a sustained success).

    Success

    Long-term sustainable success – the success that puts your company in the Fortune 500 – is only done two ways: being innovative while executing well, or by having something that few others have (rare goods). The latter consists of oil companies, diamond companies and so on – companies that have goods that for one reason or another the general population desires. The rest are in the former category: innovative and executing well.

    There are some obvious points of arguments here, such as how can I argue that Wal-Mart and Kroger are both innovative and executing things well? That is: they don’t sell rare goods, so they must fall in to the other category as defined by me. If you really look at those two companies their innovation exists in supply chain management and business management, both of which they execute very well. Innovation is not just done by creating new products, an idea is an idea.

    In fact, lets take a look at the top 15 companies to better illustrate my point:

    1. Wal-Mart: the employee management, supply-chain management and operational efficiency has lead the way. They have executed some very ruthless business ideas in order to make their company into a powerhouse.
    2. Exxon Mobil: Oil, rare goods sales.
    3. Chevron: Oil, rare goods sales.
    4. General Electric: These guys have invented some of the great things out there. 4D ultra sounds, portable air conditioners, programmable clock radios. You may think that GE is a dinosaur, but then you would be wrong. (( Source.))
    5. Bank of America: services and financial strategy. Innovation is not just about creating new things, utilizing new theories and practices can be just as innovative. And hey they survived the financial meltdown when just about every other bank didn’t, something that required more than just dumb luck.
    6. ConocoPhillips: Oil, rare goods sales.
    7. AT&T: this will be touchy for readers but you have to remember that AT&T has its hands in a lot of other businesses besides your iPhone’s data plan. They average 2 patents every day. Think about that. ((Source.))
    8. Ford Motor: Uh, the assembly line and more recently the Ford Fusion Hybrid which features a SmartGauge that shows a plant with leaves that grow on it, the more efficient the driver drives the more vines and leaves the plant grows on the screen – clever.
    9. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.: Same deal as Bank of America with a strong focus on investment strategies.
    10. Hewlett-Packard: faltering recently in innovation and execution, but still has many, many innovations under its belt – this I would guess is just a dry spell.
    11. Berkshire Hathaway: Warren Buffet.
    12. Citigroup: See Bank of America and J.P. Mogan Chase.
    13. Verizon Communications: LTE, Fiber Optic Internet to the home…
    14. McKesson: these guys are the big boys of medical consulting (i.e. they try to make the medical industry work better). Their innovations are about applying modern ideas and concepts to the medical world.
      15;. General Motors: heavily invested and testing/working on fuel cells and biofuels.

    I knew every answer to those 15 companies by memory with exception to McKesson, I had to research about them. Now look at Google, their greatest innovation to date is Search. Most everything else was acquired, that is why people like me are concerned about Google.

    This is not to say that Google does not have smart people, or even that they do not profit every year – they do. I am simply saying, or rather asking: where is the innovation and execution? Where are all the ideas that these very smart people spend 1 day a week working on? Where? Perhaps Google is innovating all day long, but unless they start executing they are nothing more than a mashup of once innovative companies – companies that at one point executed on something. Same can be said for Facebook, though instead of acquisitions they just execute ideas that others have already executed.

  • Additional Thoughts on My Microsoft Store Visit

    One thing that I forgot to mention earlier when I posted about the new Microsoft store in Bellevue is the interesting problem that the location poses to Microsoft. As I said the store is about 3-4 spaces down from the Apple store, which I can only assume was intentional on Microsofts part.

    On the other side of the Apple store (the non-Microsoft side) is two doors and then Nordstrom. I can tell you from first hand experience just what that means on an iPhone launch day – it means the iPhone line snakes down and will go directly in front of the Microsoft store.

    How awkward is that?

    Not for the people waiting for the iPhone, but for everyone in the Microsoft store including the employees. Think about it, to my knowledge there has been no line where people have waited hours and hours in 300+ people lines to get a Windows Phone 7.

    So that means come another iPhone/iPad launch everyone in the Microsoft store will have to stare at the droves of people lining up to buy one thing from their competition. I don’t know if this is bad or good, Microsoft could use it to their advantage and try to woo people with their competing products (walking through the line showing off a slate or Windows Phone 7 perhaps) or it could prove to be completely demoralizing for Microsoft.

    Either way it should be interesting to see.

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab

    I just got a review unit of the Samsung Galaxy Tab from Verizon, I will be working on a review of it over the next week. Please email me if there is a specific something you want me to address in my review and I will do my best.

  • Impressions from the Bellevue Microsoft Store

    photo 1.jpg

    I just returned from my first trip to the newly opened Microsoft Store at Bellevue Square – the store itself sits just a few doors down from the Apple Store, but is vastly different. I have read in many places that the store is much like an Apple store and yadda yadda yadda – this could not be further from the truth.

    The only way this store is like the Apple store is in how the employees dress, how nice they are, that it sells consumer electronics and that it offers similar services as the Apple Store. Everything else is vastly different.

    photo 2.JPG

    What I Liked

    • The sign for the store is great, just a Windows/ Microsoft logo and nothing else, very un-Microsoft like.
    • The size of the store is huge, it is 5,374 square feet and makes the nearby Apple store seem tiny.
    • The vast range of products that were one display and up and running.
    • Not a BSOD in sight.

    What I Did Not Like

    • The wood floors were off putting – is this a tech store, or a lodge?
    • The products were separated in some organized fashion, but there was no central phone table, instead the phones were scattered between the computers. This is just terrible and should not be done.
    • There was a line, it had 3 people in it. They were waiting to play with a Kinect, yet the gates for the line were large enough to handle 60 people. (Note you did not have to wait in this line to get into the store)
    • There was some random press conference thing going on in the back and it was so crowded I could neither hear no see much (and I am 6’3”). It was also odd because they were sitting behind a table of microphones, just seemed like the end of a sporting event, not a technology centered event.

      • photo 3.JPG

    • The products in the store felt like the vendors picked them with little curation from Microsoft. They really should focus better on showing a better range of products and better looking products.
    • There were only two tablets that I found – the store was busy and confusing so I may have missed some.
    • Also I only saw one Surface to play with, and from what I saw it was laggy as all hell when you made movements on it.

    photo 4.JPG

    Windows Phone 7

    I was really happy that I got to spend some time with two models of Windows Phone 7 devices. Some HTC jobber and a Samsung Focus. Overall Windows Phone 7 impressed the hell out of me, it may be the best piece of software I have seen Microsoft make in the last decade. The UI was impressive and responsive. The keyboard was comfortable, but both devices had a large screen than the iPhone so typing was hard for me – though I guess with a short amount of time you would have no problems typing on the device.

    The browser was slow to load this site, but I don’t know if that was the network (the store was packed with people using the Internet) or the browser itself. I liked everything about the phone except the home screen. That home screen is nothing but ADD, I couldn’t find any logic to how it was laid out. What a joke.

    Overall though I really was impressed with my short time playing with the phone, more impressed than I ever have been with an Android phone.

    Sorry for the crap pictures BTW – I had not planned on taking any and apparently there was a lot less light in the store than I previously thought.

  • TSA Touched ‘My Vagina Through My Pants’ & More Daily Doses of TSA Outrage

    I would be remiss not to reuse such a compelling headline, Kiro TV in Seattle reports:

    “I didn’t really expect her to touch my vagina through my pants,” said Kaya McLaren, an elementary schoolteacher, of an airport screener.

    Come on already.

    In other news:

    Erick Erickson (what a name) of Red State reports:

    This is probably another good time to remind you all that all of us were carrying actual assault rifles, and some of us were also carrying pistols.

    So we’re in line, going through one at a time. One of our Soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the Soldier that they’re going to confiscate his nail clippers.

    And Gruber linked to this gem from Molly Grantham reporting for WBTV:

    “She put her full hand on my breast and said, ‘What is this?’. And I said, ‘It’s my prosthesis because I’ve had breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘Well, you’ll need to show me that’.”

    Cathy was asked to show her prosthetic breast, removing it from her bra.

    It appears that the TSA wants you to be safe and humiliated before you fly – ass wipes.

    My TSA Story

    Lastly here is something interesting that happened to my Wife when she got to TSA yesterday in SEATAC. She got in line a noticed that she was in the porno-scanner line. She lane jumped to a metal detector and did so a couple of times to make sure she got through TSA fast enough to not be re-routed to the short porno-scanner line. Upon clearing the metal detector an agent that had been watching her pulled her aside and search her stuff, telling her that she had too many liquids.

    This ass of a TSA agent claimed that she could only have 3oz of liquids TOTAL in her bag. WTF. Here is TSA’s official policy:

    311_header.jpg

    What my Wife was told was clearly a lie, eventually they let her through. I have no doubt that this was in response to her jumping lines and probably looking freaked out that she may have to be groped instead of being given cancer with the porno-scanner. If that was the case though TSA should have asked her about it instead of passive aggressively making shit up.

  • SSD: External Storage

    Today I spent the morning updating all of my external backups and making sure everything was in good order. Next week is Thanksgiving here in the U.S. which means a short work week and loads of travel. I love it, but it is also a peak time for data loss so I wanted to make sure everything was properly backed up. The annoyance though quickly set in as external USB HDs are slow, and I began to wonder what it would be like to have external SSDs instead.

    Here are the options that I have found, none of which I have tried.

    Drobo + SSDs

    It appears that you could put SSDs in a Drobo, you would just have to find a way to mount them in the 3.5” bay that Drobos use. If you were to buy the base model Drobo that has 4 bays that would cost you $399 and it appears that for only a twenty dollars for each drive you could get the needed adapter, though I have never seen the inside of a Drobo so I can’t say for sure that this adapter would work.

    You could then fill the drive with Intel X25-M Gen2 80GB SSDs at a price of $250 a pop – not cheap. But in the end you would have a 320GB Drobo that is all SSDs for an everyday low price of $1,479.00.

    Which is massively expensive for what you get.

    [Updated: 11/19/10 at 10:21 AM] Drobo says it does not support SSDs – that saves me 1,479 dollars.

    [Hat tip to Graham Wetzler on Twitter]

    Other Options

    Since the Drobo is out of my price range here are some other options that I found:

    • For $215 you can get a bus powered USB/Firewire SSD that is 60GB – which is pathetically small, but would make for a great backup drive for traveling photographers.
    • Or for $590 you can get the same setup only with 240GB of storage. That brings you within striking distance of the Drobo storage amount above, but for 1/3 the price.
    • For $1,280 you can get a 400GB external Raid solution that has eSATA/Firewire/USB. Or just get the 800GB model for a measly $3,300.

    Ok so far I am striking out to find anything useful. I would need to replace 1 mobile 250GB HD, 2 1TB desktop HDs, and 2 500GB desktop HDs so that my backups would remain solid. None of the above options do that in a way that I could remotely afford.

    More Options

    • Iomega offers an external USB 3.0 SSD in the 256GB flavor for a not so cheap $619.00.
    • Not to be outdone OCZ offers the Enyo line with similar stats for $715.

    Sad Reality

    It appears that in order to get all external drives to SSD you need to be rich, very rich. I am not, so for now I will stick with my lovely 7200rpm records. I would suspect though that we are very close to seeing these drives at affordable prices.

    What really intrigues me is what form factor SSD external drives may take – they wouldn’t need the same cooling fans, the same power requirements, nor would they need to be in a box shape.

  • To Minimalist Computer Geeks (Like Me)

    I, like so many others, was inspired by Patrick Rhone when he started Minimal Mac – I wanted to make my Mac experience less cluttered and more focused. As it turns out Patrick and I are not alone, judging by the popularity of his site there exists quite a large group of Mac users who feel this way. This essay is for those people.

    Ian Hines recently launched a new interview blog, and one of the first interviews was with Patrick Rhone, in this interview he stated:

    Sometimes I use TextEdit. If it requires a lot of formatting (which I do with Markdown), I use TextMate.

    This statement seemed innocent enough, and I do believe it is, but it got me to thinking: what does minimalistic computing really mean? Does it mean that we use as few applications as possible, or mean that we use our computers as little as possible? Then again does minimalistic computing mean that we have a lot of apps that are themselves very minimal in what they do?

    So many questions, none of which I know the answer to. Thinking about it another way:

    If everything Patrick does in TextEdit can be done in TextMate, but not the other way around, would the minimal thing not be, to use only TextMate? I am guessing he uses TextMate (like I do) to convert Markdown formatted text into HTML markup for posting. ((Using the great MultiMarkdown Bundle.)) If that is the case then why use TextEdit?

    Ah yes, but TextEdit can do somethings that TextMate can’t – like say, open a Word document. So would the minimalist approach to computing then be: that you use many single focused (do one thing well) apps, such as Patrick is doing, or be to have one app that can do all of these things?

    That is an honest question, what is the answer? Better yet, does the answer even matter?

    I don’t mean to pick on Patrick, so let’s look at my computing setup instead. I use two web browsers every day. Every day. Two browsers.

    I use Safari and Chrome. I use Safari as my primary browser and Chrome as a backup when I need to get some Flash going. I could easily accomplish everything in one or the other, but I choose not to have Flash installed in Safari to speed up my web browsing and increase battery life – the downside being that I have one more app I must run. Right or wrong it is a choice that I have consciously made, does it go against minimalistic computing though? On the one hand I eliminate Flash, however in doing so I created a need for a second web browser. I could easily have just one web browser, but that would mean having to keep Flash installed…and so on. Which solution is more minimal?

    Same can be said with Photoshop and Pixelmator. Photoshop is more powerful, but Pixelmator is my go to, and then I inevitably make the switch back to Photoshop because I can’t easily do something I want to do in Pixelmator. Look at this tracking chart of my Photoshop vs Pixelmator usage for 2010 (thanks to Daytum):

    Screen shot 2010-11-17 at 1.40.56 PM.png

    As you can see I use Photoshop overwhelmingly more than Pixelmator, and the fact is that I can do everything in Photoshop that I could in Pixelmator, but not the other way around. So why keep Pixelmator?

    For starters it is faster and lighter to use on my Mac, so it makes good sense when I want to run a bunch of apps at once. It is also much, much, cheaper to purchase. It is more stable. However, wouldn’t the minimal thing be to get rid of Pixelmator and go all Photoshop? Or would it be to stick with the more minimal Pixelmator and ditch Photoshop? Or keep them both using them for different things – as I currently do?

    Does any of this matter?

    Isn’t what really matters the things that work for us the best? If I want to keep using multiple photo editing apps and that workflow makes sense for me then would that not be the best workflow solution for me? I think so.

    There are more questions here than answers and I think most are rhetorical to be honest. I do think though that there is a difference between these three concepts:

    • Minimal Computing
    • Productive Computing
    • Best Solutions

    That is, minimal computing seems to be a concept around which a certain group of us strive towards – minimizing and simplifying certain aspects of our computing lives. Productive computing is another facet – something that we all want to obtain, so that we can stop wasting time. This concept is centered on focus based tools like: OmniFocus, alarms, WriteRoom. Best solutions though are the things that work best for us and only us – like Patrick using both TextEdit and TextMate, or how I use two web browsers.

    I think a lot of times we get these concepts confused because they so closely relate to one another. All to often I tend to blur the line between the three and it usually results in a compromise to the most important of the three: best solutions.

    For instance let’s look at our menubars shall we…

    There are nine icons in my menubar right now: Transmit, Dropbox, Bluetooth, Battery, Keychain, AirPort, Clock, Sound, Spotlight. A minimal approach would be to get rid of as many of these icons as possible. A productive approach might be to add as many as possible, to get the most information you can, or to get rid of as many as possible in order to decrease distractions. The best solution though is more vague, the best solution for me is to have nine.

    I used to pride myself on the fact that I only had a handful of icons in the menubar, I removed the clock, sound, battery, wifi, bluetooth and Transmit. All to what end though? I ended up adding most back in Dashboard in one form or another and just ended up hitting F4 a lot more during the day. Likewise I used to have the icons stretch until they hit the other side with all sorts of things that monitored: temperature, fan speed, RAM usage and so on – that just resulted in ugliness. So I did a minimal and practical thing, I removed everything and added back what I missed. That’s how I ended up with nine – that’s how I found my best solution to the problem.

    I know that sometimes I get caught up on trying to make my computer as productive as possible, or as minimal as can be – it occurred to me though that while that is all well and good, the best thing I could do would be to setup up my computer so that it works best for me, and only me.

    I encourage you to do the same. ((That does not mean that you should stop reading sites like Minimal Mac, just that you don’t have to do everything posted on the site, or use every tool talked about – not that anyone said you ever did.))

    [Updated: 11/19/10 at 8:03 AM] Patrick Rhone on Twitter reminds me that he too feels the same way, and that we really should read the About page on Minimal Mac (which I did read before posting this) where Patrick states:

    I believe the most minimal computer is the one that is optimized for you. How you work. The menubar items you need. The dock items you need. The applications you need. The system you need. The peripherals you need. The tools you need to get the job done.

    I believe most of us do not take the time to evaluate what that need is. The entire mission of this site is to help you ask those questions and find the answer that is right. The only answer that is right. The one that constitutes what is enough for you and only you.

    Again I didn’t mean to sound like I was attacking Patrick Rhone, what he has done for my computing life and for the Mac community at large is wonderful. I was simply meaning to pose some questions that had been rattling around in my head, and some things that I see others not paying attention too.

    It seems that I was not clear in my writing here today and for that I apologize. At the end of the quote from the Minimal Mac about page Patrick states the sites mission, which is to get people to think and ask questions about what they need. I had wanted to ask the specific questions that were in my head out loud and try to offer a look at how I answer those questions.

    I was also pointed to these great posts on Minimal Mac: Computing Simplicity and Minimalism: More Than Just a Desktop ‘Theme’.

  • Hi, My Name is iTunes and I am a Hoarder

    I had to wait until after the epically over-hyped Beatles announcement was made to make sure that iTunes wasn’t suddenly dead – since iTunes remains I thought we should talk about why I think it is the biggest piece of crap software that Apple ships. More accurately iTunes is what I call ‘bloatware’ – a piece of software that has taken on the characteristics of a hoarder and a ball hog all at once, software that wants to be everything to everyone.

    In the beginning iTunes was great, but that was back when all it did was allow you to deal with music only – now days it tries to be so much more. Certainly you can still handle music in iTunes, but iTunes feels lost to me – like it has forgotten its roots. For instance have you ever tried to manage duplicated songs in iTunes? Holy crap is that a pain in the ass. I recently merged my library with my Wife’s, and with our media center. I have over 4,800 duplicate tracks in iTunes and the only way to get rid of duplicates is to manually select which one I want. It is 2010 and I have to make over 2,400 clicks to get rid of duplicates? Give me a break.

    We haven’t even gotten to the fact that iTunes is now: a video store, app store, bookstore, social network, syncing engine, and more. I am not saying that each of these should be their own apps, but certainly some of them should be. Ping should be browser based and stay out of iTunes aside from being integrated with the playlist so a user can ‘like’ something without leaving the app. Video can stay. Apps and books should be in their own app, I don’t know about you but when I think iTunes I don’t think: games.

    Why was syncing ever made apart of iTunes – for the longest time Apple had been using iSync to handle this, but iPods slowly killed it off (though it is still alive on Macs). Interestingly it is where you control these options for MobileMe:

    Screen shot 2010-11-16 at 3.41.02 PM.png

    The whole thing makes no sense, my iPhone and iPad are not media devices they are computers, so why should I sync them with iTunes?

    There is only one culprit to blame: Windows. ((IMHO))

    Think about it, Apple must ship iTunes to Windows users in order to keep iPod/iPhone/iPad customers happy. Apple needs to ship all the features and additives in iTunes to Windows users as well to support these devices. So what is easier for Apple? Creating separate apps for both Windows and Mac users for each of these services and then having to tie them together on Windows? Or just cramming all the crap they can into iTunes?

    Obviously putting it all in iTunes is the most economical solution – but good God y’all it is the most un-Apple solution possible.

    Think about it another way, if we take the iLife suite and iTunes-ify it you get one app that does: Video editing, photo editing and management, music studio creation software, web development, DVD authoring. Perhaps iWeb gets left out to be fair, but the rest would all be one app aptly named iLife and it would suck a lot. That is how I feel about iTunes.

    Again you can do this with iWork: word processing, page layout, presentation, spreadsheets all in one app. Wouldn’t that be a real gem to use?

    Nobody wants the iWork and iLife suite to become one app – not even Apple. We don’t want that to happen because we all know that it will just look and feel like iTunes, introducing a completely new level of suckage that would only rival Microsoft Office.

    I am of course leaving out all the strange UI conventions that Apple uses in iTunes, but no where else. Never mind this for now.

    Every time I spend more than a few minutes in iTunes I have to cringe – the way that it handles most everything is painful.

    For example:

    • The iTunes store could not load slower – internet connections do not matter, that thing is slow.
    • App updates are a joke – seriously have you ever tried updating your apps in iTunes, then get the error, that the updates iTunes just listed are out of date and need to be refreshed? Then you go through the same cycle 15 times before you can download one update? Yeah happens every time.
    • When you add a new video file you can’t specify Movie or TV Show when you add it. So then you have to edit the metadata after you add it to get your TV Shows to appear in the TV Show section.
    • Additionally if you add a home video you will notice that there is no home video tabs – I mean really?
    • It’s 2010 ((Pronounced Twenty-Ten get with it.)) and iTunes still doesn’t automatically remove the track numbers from titles that I import? Really? I mean that seems easy enough for software to do.
    • Ping makes me cry.
    • Why is their separate ‘Purchased’ lists for each of my devices, yes you can delete them, but why make them to begin with?
    • Why can’t genius work with every song?
    • Why does genius take two years to deliver me information?
    • Why waste so much space keeping all those backups from my iPhone and iPad?
    • Why are you still called iTunes?

    I could keep going, but I started to get too depressed about the whole thing.

    Dear Apple, you can do better and we both know it. Please do better.

  • Faceboooo

    It seems that every time I post about Facebook I can’t help but be condescending about them. I loathe Facebook more than any other technology company out there today – more than Microsoft. It is then only natural that every time I post about Facebook I get a message in one form or another asking why I hate them so. A fair question, and one that I shall now seek to answer in a more reasoned way than I have in the past.

    Privacy

    First and foremost I think the lack of privacy that Facebook promotes is egregious. Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said on numerous occasions that he believes, well here are his words:

    I’m trying to make the world a more open place.

    Which would be great except that instead of having well founded reasons why he is trying to do this he simply tries to force it on his users. Of course he absolutely has a right to do so, Facebook is a free service and if you don’t like what they are doing you can and should, leave. Anybody who has been a long time Facebook user can attest to the fact that with each passing ‘new feature’ users get less and less control over their privacy. In that very same interview where that quote was taken the interviewer states just how PRIVATE Zuckerberg is himself…

    Many people have told me that if that is the way I feel I should not blog or use Twitter – except that with both of those services I have no expectation of privacy. I know that unless I password protect my blog, and turn my Twitter feed into ‘Private’ – everything I say will be public facing. My problem with Facebook is that it is supposed to be a closed network that values privacy of the users, except that they don’t.

    What are friends of friends and why the hell should I let them see my private photos and status messages? Why the hell does Facebook get to do whatever they want with my photos when I upload them? Why aren’t more people pissed off about this?

    If I am perfectly honest what pisses me off the most about privacy settings and Facebook is how little they seem to care about it all. I am fine with changes in privacy, but if you are going to do that you need to make it clear why you are changing it, if there is a way to keep that data private, and if not allow the user time to delete that data before the changes take affect.

    Friend Status

    Nothing used to annoy me more than ‘friend requests’. I am fine with anybody reading my blog or following me on Twitter, because again I have no expectation of privacy there. What I am not fine with is the assumption that most Facebook users have, which is: If I send you a friend request and you deny it, then you are an asshole.

    That is total crap. We use the word ‘friend’ because there are such things as people that are not our ‘friends’. Since when did it become OK to demand someones friendship and brand them a pretentious asshole if they denied such friendship. There are people in this world that I genuinely hate and never want to be ‘friends’ with. Further than are a lot more people in this world that I simply do not know – by virtue of what being a friend means we are not friends if I don’t know you.

    Every time I hang out with people younger than myself I am reminded just how screwed up this concept of Facebook friends truly is. There have been many a fights over relationship statuses and friend ship requests. I just do not understand the mentality that Facebook has created, where every person feels entitled to be friends with every other person. I will not be a part of that.

    Lack of Respect for Others

    Facebook has the same problem that plagues most blog commenting systems – people feel like they can be real assholes when they get to hide behind a computer screen. Have you seen some of the stuff that is posted on peoples walls and as comments to things others have posted? It can be rude and nasty at times.

    What it all boils down to is a sheer lack of respect for each other. There has been a culture derived on Facebook where it seems like ‘anything goes’ and that is really a sad thing. Facebook used to be so neat and a great tool, then is slowly started to erode away to nasty comments on photos and the like.

    Facebook feels like high school all over again – I did that once and I won’t volunteer to do it again.

    Distrust

    To put it simply: I, in no way, trust Mark Zuckerberg. The guy is shady, and is not the person I want in control of any of my data. I have never met him, but I have read a ton about him, interviews and the like, and even before The Social Network came out I didn’t trust him.

    I am not saying that he should never be trusted. What I am saying is that if Zuckerberg is given the choice between going bankrupt and shuttering Facebook, or selling all of your data to marketing firms and keeping Facebook alive…well which do you think he would choose?

    Unnecessary

    I quit Facebook back in mid-May of 2010, it has not been a year yet, but it has been a significant amount of time. What I can tell you is that not a single relationship/friendship that I have has suffered because of it. There has yet to be a single instance where I regretted quitting Facebook.

    I have regained a couple of hours each week not having to visit that site. Drama stemming from stupid comments on Facebook have gone to nil in my personal relationships. I have come to realize that Facebook is irrelevant for me.

    Everyone

    Everyone and their Mom ((My mom to my knowledge has not yet joined.)) is on Facebook. Which sounds like it would really make any social network shine, and then you realize that the older generations still don’t quite “get” social networking… which brings me to:

    I Respect People More

    Given that practically everyone is on Facebook, that meant that most people I know and interact with were my ‘friends’ on Facebook. That meant that people that I had previously respected started doing stupid crap like:

    • Hiding easter eggs on my wall.
    • Posting / Playing FarmVille
    • Posting/ Playing all the other crap games.
    • Poking me.
    • Showing off pictures of them wasted.
    • Posting about being wasted.

    Every time I saw one of those posts I lost a little bit of respect for that person. I am not joking here, I simply cannot respect someone that spends 20+ hours a week playing FarmVille.

    That’s All Folks

    Being on Facebook is your decision, not mine. If you are on Facebook and enjoy it, great – good for you. I however loathe it and nothing is going to change that. I don’t think any less of people that still use and sign up for Facebook – just so long as they don’t complain about it. If you complain about Facebook man up and delete it – don’t deactivate, delete.