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Jacques Mattheij: >What if dropbox would simply replace your local file system. On *all* your digital devices? If the future is ‘always on’ and ‘always connected’ for every device, be it a mobile phone, a desktop computer, laptop, netbook or tablet, then all those devices can synchronize their content using dropbox, without having a local…
Jacques Mattheij:
>What if dropbox would simply replace your local file system. On *all* your digital devices? If the future is ‘always on’ and ‘always connected’ for every device, be it a mobile phone, a desktop computer, laptop, netbook or tablet, then all those devices can synchronize their content using dropbox, without having a local user filesystem at all!
I could see it, Dropbox is more or less where every single file is stored on my computer — well — the ones that I create.
I have never been happy with a single instance of the archive function on a WordPress blog before — after spending hours trying to get the archive to work the way I wanted it to, I decided to hire a professional. I got in contact with [Pat Dryburgh](http://patdryburgh.com/) and asked him if he would take…
I have never been happy with a single instance of the archive function on a WordPress blog before — after spending hours trying to get the archive to work the way I wanted it to, I decided to hire a professional. I got in contact with [Pat Dryburgh](http://patdryburgh.com/) and asked him if he would take a stab at it.
It is now done, and all I can say is wow.
All you get is the Articles and Quotes (no linked list posts) and you get them in a readable and easy to digest way. Click on the month and a fancy bit of javascript magic happens that shows you all the articles from that month. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do — don’t be shy about [hiring](http://patdryburgh.com/contact/) Pat to help you!
Shawn and I discuss the 5 apps we would choose if we were so limited and other random things. Oh, and Shawn’s rule is that the OS counts as one app and nothing comes pre-installed. Thanks to the awesome [Notesy](http://notesy-app.com/) for sponsoring us.
Shawn and I discuss the 5 apps we would choose if we were so limited and other random things. Oh, and Shawn’s rule is that the OS counts as one app and nothing comes pre-installed.
Thanks to the awesome [Notesy](http://notesy-app.com/) for sponsoring us.
Mike Isaac: >And in what seems to be the beginning of a disturbing trend in tablet debuts, the A500 will support Flash eventually, but won’t ship with it. Motorola’s Xoom, which debuted six weeks ago, also launched without Flash, though a beta release is currently available for Honeycomb in the Android Market. Why is the…
Mike Isaac:
>And in what seems to be the beginning of a disturbing trend in tablet debuts, the A500 will support Flash eventually, but won’t ship with it. Motorola’s Xoom, which debuted six weeks ago, also launched without Flash, though a beta release is currently available for Honeycomb in the Android Market.
Why is the name so terrible? The price is great, just below the iPad, but where are the size specs for thickness — what’s the battery life. Lots of questions on this thing. All Best Buy’s pre-order page says is: “Weighs only 1.7 lbs. and measures just 0.5″ thin”
No listing of battery life, which is never a good sign.
Lessien: >However, I do believe that companies focused on beating Apple to market with faster processors, greater quantities of applications, and in general more stuff are bound to find themselves side-swiped by a future in which none of that matters. Spot on.
Lessien:
>However, I do believe that companies focused on beating Apple to market with faster processors, greater quantities of applications, and in general more stuff are bound to find themselves side-swiped by a future in which none of that matters.
Spot on.
You are going to see this article make the rounds today and last night. The imagery is telling, indeed the examples that he pulled the iPhone version looks better than its Android counter part. A lot is going to be said about how this tells of better developers on iPhone, or people caring about the…
You are going to see this article make the rounds today and last night. The imagery is telling, indeed the examples that he pulled the iPhone version looks better than its Android counter part. A lot is going to be said about how this tells of better developers on iPhone, or people caring about the iPhone more, or Apple’s development platform being better suited to design… it’s all crap. Sure parts and pieces may be true, and I am no defender of Android, but truthfully stuff looks different on different platforms.
The same app on Windows looks different than it does on the Mac ((Exception to Safari and iTunes, even though they are a little different, they are very similar.)) developers do this so that the UI matches the native UI. Safari on Windows doesn’t look very much like Windows — this can be both good and bad, but it is the reason things are made like this. Can you imagine how pissed a diehard Android user would be if the Facebook app was a direct port of the iPhone version?
[Updated: 4.8.11 at 7:09 AM]
Let me clarify what I am saying here. I am not saying that Android is pretty, or that these apps are ugly. I am simply saying that they are designed this way for a reason. Please also remember there are some hideous iPhone apps out there too and there are some nice looking Android apps. On a whole, yes iPhone apps generally look better, but that doesn’t mean that Android apps *can’t* look better.
“Good design isn’t about making decisions for your users, it’s about making those decisions irrelevant.” — Michael Lopp *Note: My apologies to Mr. Lopp as this quote was not attributed to him from the start, it appears that my quote logs in Yojimbo are not always 100% accurate. Thanks to @mbadger for pointing this out.*
*Note: My apologies to Mr. Lopp as this quote was not attributed to him from the start, it appears that my quote logs in Yojimbo are not always 100% accurate. Thanks to @mbadger for pointing this out.*
Nothing special, just a bunch of things that have been bugging me lately. 1. Blue makes for a great icon color and everyone else uses it — be the exception, not the rule. 2. Make the name of your app/service something that a normal person can pronounce, on first try, without help. 3. Spell the…
Nothing special, just a bunch of things that have been bugging me lately.
1. Blue makes for a great icon color and everyone else uses it — be the exception, not the rule.
2. Make the name of your app/service something that a normal person can pronounce, on first try, without help.
3. Spell the name like a normal person. Twitter works because it makes logical sense, spelled as it sounds. Tumblr is hard to explain to a non-tech user — tell your Mom to go to Tumblr.com and see what she types in. I don’t want to remember which consonant you doubled or which vowel you dropped. Things like Digg work because you can tell people: “it has a double g” — stray from the basics too far and your service/app will confuse people.
4. Ditto for your URL. 37signals couldn’t get basecamp.com, so they chose basecamphq.com — I can remember that and so can most people, more importantly I can *say* that: basecamp “H-Q” dot com. Don’t make it hard on the user.
5. If you are going to change a standard UI behavior, you better have good reason for it — looking cool doesn’t count.
6. People look for save buttons, if you don’t need your users to worry about saving — tell them that.
7. In fact if you change anything that a user would normally press button to do, best to tell the users that you don’t have the button and why.
7. If I am putting data into your app/service I damned well better be able to get it back out with a click — in some sort of useable format.
8. If you can’t come up with an innovative user interface — stick with generally accepted standards. ‘Unique’ is never a good word when a person is referring to your UI.
9. Beta testing is free, users understand this — but please charge for your product once you launch, that is, unless you have another reliable income stream setup already (e.g. a trust fund).
10. No one has a perfect version 1.0 product, just make it stable.
11. Look at what other apps do wrong, more than you look at what they do right — fill the voids, don’t clutter the market.
12. If you are replicating a stand alone product (e.g. Calculators) try to think about how it is best implemented on the particular interface you are building for — don’t focus on directly copying the device. (e.g. Soulver’s reinvention of the calculator UI)
This is a very neat looking and sounding machine, the Samsung Series 9 is thinner than the MacBook Air at the thickest point and thicker than the MacBook Air at the thinnest point. It costs a touch more and has a few hours less battery life. It is faster on paper and the screen is…
This is a very neat looking and sounding machine, the Samsung Series 9 is thinner than the MacBook Air at the thickest point and thicker than the MacBook Air at the thinnest point. It costs a touch more and has a few hours less battery life. It is faster on paper and the screen is much brighter. Windows slows it back down to being slow than the MacBook Air.
What intrigues me about this machine is that for a first rev ultra-portable is seems to have done very well. The speed tests are based on Windows performance and thus are likely to remain poor. If they get the resolution bumped up to match the 13″ MacBook Air, Samsung has a great option for frequent Windows travelers.
Zach Epstein: >So here we have a tablet that’s not even a month and a half old… doing somewhere north of $70 million in sales… in a market that is barely a year old and currently dominated by a single device… and it’s a flop. An interesting take, but I still am going to say that this…
Zach Epstein:
>So here we have a tablet that’s not even a month and a half old… doing somewhere north of $70 million in sales… in a market that is barely a year old and currently dominated by a single device… and it’s a flop.
An interesting take, but I still am going to say that this device will be forgotten in 6 months.
Peter Cohen: >Analysts with Deutsche Bank estimate that Motorola has shipped about 100,000 Xoom tablets since the device went on sale in February. Ouch. That $800 price point (w/o contract) sure makes this something only a few would care to buy it seems.
Peter Cohen:
>Analysts with Deutsche Bank estimate that Motorola has shipped about 100,000 Xoom tablets since the device went on sale in February.
Ouch. That $800 price point (w/o contract) sure makes this something only a few would care to buy it seems.
Tyler Galpin with an incredibly detailed look at how one goes about installing an SSD in their 2010 27″ iMac, while maintaining the stock HD: >First of all, I did this and it was a hugely ridiculous process. I learned a lot of things the hard way as I went along with the install, so…
Tyler Galpin with an incredibly detailed look at how one goes about installing an SSD in their 2010 27″ iMac, while maintaining the stock HD:
>First of all, I did this and it was a hugely ridiculous process. I learned a lot of things the hard way as I went along with the install, so hopefully this guide will help some of you through the process. Details: I have a mid-2010 27” iMac and installed this SSD to work alongside my HDD which was already factory installed in the iMac.
Great source of information if you want to make this upgrade.
“A perfectionist is someone who finishes the backside of a drawer, which I consider completely unnecessary.” — Helmut Krone (link to Wikipedia, not quote.) ((I had this quote in Yojimbo, don’t know where I found it.))
An awesome look at a lot of computer interfaces used in movies — no analysis, just a boat load of screenshots. [via Coudal]
An awesome look at a lot of computer interfaces used in movies — no analysis, just a boat load of screenshots.
MrGQ in the Apple discussion board on the FaceTime bug: >I am experiencing the exact same issue recently. Most notably just minutes ago when i called my GF and i saw a “picture” of myself from today when i was at the office. I know it was from today because i had the exact same…
MrGQ in the Apple discussion board on the FaceTime bug:
>I am experiencing the exact same issue recently. Most notably just minutes ago when i called my GF and i saw a “picture” of myself from today when i was at the office. I know it was from today because i had the exact same shirt. The weirdest thing is that picture is not stored on my iphone.
You may be thinking that, while this is weird, it isn’t that creepy. Nasetron adds the creepy though:
>Some of the images that have been coming up on mine are from times and places when I know without a doubt that I haven’t been using facetime.
Luckily it seems the images are not being shown to any one but the iPhone owner — but still, why is it taking these pictures at all?
MG Siegler reporting the tagline for Apple’s new app that let’s you see a gallery of ads: >Great ads. On-demand. In your pocket. That’s messed up, what’s even more messed up is how many of us will download this.
MG Siegler reporting the tagline for Apple’s new app that let’s you see a gallery of ads:
>Great ads. On-demand. In your pocket.
That’s messed up, what’s even more messed up is how many of us will download this.
Chris Foresman on an iPhone survey about customer satisfaction: >That doesn’t mean users on Verizon don’t see at least one significant benefit: fewer dropped calls. Verizon iPhone 4 users reported a dropped call rate of 1.8 percent. AT&T iPhone 4 users, in contrast, had a dropped call rate of 4.8 percent—more than double that of…
Chris Foresman on an iPhone survey about customer satisfaction:
>That doesn’t mean users on Verizon don’t see at least one significant benefit: fewer dropped calls. Verizon iPhone 4 users reported a dropped call rate of 1.8 percent. AT&T iPhone 4 users, in contrast, had a dropped call rate of 4.8 percent—more than double that of Verizon iPhone 4 users.
What’s interesting about this is not that it is telling us what we already knew about AT&T, but that dropped calls don’t seem to have anything to do with the iPhone 4 antenna position. 1.8% for Verizon is nothing — nothing.
Every reader should know this already, but in case you don’t: I can be wrong and often am wrong. Whenever you put an opinion out there on the web, or state something as fact — you run the risk of someone smarter than you reading it. Often they correct you and you try to correct…
Every reader should know this already, but in case you don’t: I can be wrong and often am wrong. Whenever you put an opinion out there on the web, or state something as fact — you run the risk of someone smarter than you reading it. Often they correct you and you try to correct things where you can.
Personally, both on this blog and in real life, I try to correct myself immediately upon learning that I am wrong. It’s a mark of a strong man to be able to admit when they are wrong, or to acknowledge an excellent competing argument.
I think I may have been wrong about [Mr. Reader](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mr-reader/id412874834?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4) — an RSS client for the iPad that [I wrote a short quip](https://brooksreview.net/2011/04/quick-takes-on-five-apps-7/) about in my weekly Quick Takes series. I basically said the app sucks and made a very inaccurate statement about scrolling through news items. I apologize for that.
What I meant to say (though I did very unclearly) is that you can’t thumb through a full view of the RSS item using arrow keys like you can in Reeder. Yet, that is not the case at all — via DM on Twitter Justin Blanton pointed out to me that not only can you do that — you can also change the position of that bar.
While I still don’t care for the app, my original assessment of: “I think it sucks.” Is dead wrong.
I think it is crashy as all hell and not ready to be a primary news reader for most all users — that can be fixed with a quick update and we are comparing it to apps that have been around for quite some time. ((Meaning they have had time to work out these kinks, I remember Reeder being crashy at one point.))
My main problem with Mr. Reader remains that it just doesn’t feel and look as good as the rest of the iOS interface. ((Though the ‘New York’ theme is best.)) That leads to a disconnect, which in turn leads to a degraded user experience. Fortunately these are all things that can be changed with an updated theme, as my major usability problems all seem to be unfounded (aside from crashing).
The coloring isn’t the only problem that I see — there is too much clutter going one, and too much UI chrome. This app needs a toning down before it is an app for me, I do think there are a good chunk of users that will enjoy it, especially after the crashes get fixed.
To those of you that like Mr. Reader, those that considered not buying on my original advice, and especially to the [developer](http://www.curioustimes.de/mrreader/index.html) — I am sorry.
Melinda Beck: >Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night,…
Melinda Beck:
>Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
I am no short sleeper and am very much a morning person. Yet, I see the same thing that the WSJ is reporting here — many people thinking they do need less sleep than what they truly need. Funny thing is this last bit in the article:
>Nowadays, some short sleepers gravitate to fields like blogging, videogame design and social media, where their sleep habits come in handy.
Some people, in an already tiny group, gravitate towards these professions — just found that irrelevant and funny to include.
Justin Blanton: >On balance, I think it’s a solid release, especially for this category of app, which inevitably generates a lot of criticism from us ‘power’ users, because it’s something we use all day, every day. The developer appears to be rather responsive, so I’m expecting great things in the future, and am sure that…
Justin Blanton:
>On balance, I think it’s a solid release, especially for this category of app, which inevitably generates a lot of criticism from us ‘power’ users, because it’s something we use all day, every day. The developer appears to be rather responsive, so I’m expecting great things in the future, and am sure that most of the app’s larger issues (most notably, instability) will be attended to in short order.
It is a very solid release — but it doesn’t feel as elegant as the iPad itself does, thus a mismatch that I hate. Also Justin pointed out that I was wrong about a scrolling point in my quip about the app, I have since updated the [original post](https://brooksreview.net/2011/04/quick-takes-on-five-apps-7/) to reflect my wrongness. ((Thanks for that Justin.))