Small & Simple Thoughts

This video on ‘Socialnomics’ was an eye opener for me:

YouTube – Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh)

Maybe I should update my Facebook status.

This video on YouTube is an enjoyable interview with Dieter Rams. Watch and learn.

Design should not dominate people. It should help people.

1. Good design is innovative.
2. Good design makes a product useful.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
4. Good design makes a product understandable.
5. Good design is unobtrusive.
6. Good design is honest.
7. Good design is long lasting.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
10 Good design is as little design as possible.

Apple just released Safari 5. Among the exciting enhancements of this version, Apple is now providing a way for developers to extend Safari’s capabilities with plugins, bars and contextual menu items. People have been doing this for years using SIMBL and other black magic that lies beyond my comprehension.

Getting started is a bit tricky but once going it is very easy. You first have to become a Safari Extension Developer. This is a new level of Apple Developer. Registration is free. Once that is completed you have to generate a security certficate for yourself using a combination of Keychain and good luck. The instructions are available to Safari Extension developers once they register. Again, this costs nothing except a little bit of pain to jump through the hoops of getting a security certificate generated for yourself.

Enabling extensions is a bit wonky now too. First you have to enable the ‘Develop’ menu in the advanced tab of Safari preferences. Then from the Develop menu you have to check ‘Enable  Extensions’. Once this is done, the magic ‘Show Extension Builder’ menu item is available.

The best way to go from here is to grab someone else’s extension and use it as your learning point. And despite this being newly available, there are lots of extensions starting to float around. The best way to find what you need is to visit http://safariextensions.tumblr.com. The list is growing quickly.

I grabbed Amazon’s search bar because I knew I was going to be making a search bar too. I opened the file and unzipped it. Using the little ‘+’ at the bottom of the Extension Builder, I added this new directory by clicking on ‘Add Extension’. After that it was just like building and designing a web page. CSS gave me perfect control of the interface. I repurposed code from our site. Done. It took longer to become an Extension Developer than it did to build an extension.

Although Apple is really late to the extension game, I’m glad they made it. By opening up their browser to extension builders, they provide tremendous power to an already prolific community of developers. Let the good times roll.

Just discovered the wonderful textutil command on the Mac OS X command line. I needed to convert a batch of TXT files to RTF. (I am switching to Notational Velocity with SimpleNote.) Instead of opening each one in TextEdit and saving as RTF, I simply put them all in a directory and typed this:

textutil -convert rtf *.*

Done and done.

My employer purchased a couple of the new Apple iPads for testing. I got to use it as my own for the better part of a week. Here are my thoughts on the device.

Overall Experience

Overall, it is really nice. It is really solid to hold, it’s well built. The glossy screen is a pleasure to interact with. My children took to it immediately. Even my Mom, who is a sworn computer atheist and who has never had an email address, sat down and used it for 20 minutes. While I’m not convinced that we’ve seen the future of computing, I think we’re getting a very good peek.

The first day I had it I didn’t have a keyboard to go with it. After experimenting with iPad virtual keyboard I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I’ve owned an iPhone since November 2007 and, after the initial learning curve, I’ve come to love it’s virtual keyboard. I’m not there yet with the iPad. Perhaps with time and patience I could get there, but who knows.

There is one thing I am sure of—I wish the iPad virtual keyboard gave feedback on what you typed. The iPhone’s virtual keyboard pops up an enlarged version of the key you are typing so you can see what you just covered with your finger. The iPad keyboard doesn’t provide that affordance and I miss it. If it did that, maybe it would be easier for me to adopt. Ironically, if you use an iPhone app on an iPad and it requires typing, you get the little iPhone keyboard complete with Pop-up Keys.

The second day I had the iPad, my boss dropped off a docking keyboard to try. Then the fun began! I enjoyed using my fingers to navigate around and then using the keyboard to type. My hand kept trying to find a mouse after I finished typing. I also kept trying to use the keyboard to command+tab my way between open applications. Old habits die hard. The keyboard has some handy iPad specific keys—home, sleep, and slideshow mode (where it shows pictures from your photo albums on screen).

Of course, being able to type without being able to print is a bit of a pain. Especially since the version of Pages on my desktop machine isn’t compatible with the Pages on the iPad—I would have to upgrade my desktop software. Google’s Cloud Printing might solve this one day. Or Apple’s own wi-fi solution could fill the gap. By they way, laying it face down on a copier doesn’t work either—I can’t explain why but the paper just comes out black! In any case, it would be nice to print from the device without having to transfer documents back to the desktop. One good note: there is no save button, it’s always automatically saved!

Applications

Keynote was a little bit different experience. Because Keynote is a landscape only app, I couldn’t use the docking keyboard with it. After going through the built-in tutorial, I was able to make a decent presentation. I didn’t really enjoy it but who likes making presentation slides? The iPad did connect quickly and easily to a projector. Unfortunately, the projected image isn’t mirrored on the iPad screen. Usually a speaker faces the audience but that would be impossible with this arrangement.

iBooks. It works. Bookmarking, last place saved, shelves, store—all very nice. Highlighting is good. Would be nice if you could add notes. My complaint is that I can’t sync the book and last read location with my iPhone or other device. I understand this is coming but Amazon can already do this. I think the iPad beats Amazon’s Kindle but not Amazon’s Kindle software.

Video is incredibly enjoyable. Crisp, bright and fast. Landscape mode feels like the best mobile movie watching device ever. Great for road trips with the kids—if you can get the movie you want. I’m hoping Hulu produces an iPad app. Great opportunity for other film content producers to market their materials.

Like video, the audio experience makes this feel like a media enjoyment device. Flicking through albums is a delight. The audio is good quality. I was unable to connect anything except iPhone headphones to the device. But I don’t know much about audio connectors or audio in general for that matter.

The maps are amazingly fast and responsive. Pinching and zooming moved quickly and naturally. It was very impressive. With GPS this would be the most amazing GPS device ever.

Skype. Flawless. Works as advertised. Apparently Apple in-ear buds that include a mic are compatible with the iPad.

Labyrinth Lite. Really fun game and rich graphics and interaction. Again, this game makes it feel like this device is built for entertainment.

Battery life is incredible! This device really could replace a laptop when traveling—especially with a bluetooth or docking keyboard and Apple case. Much lighter, more flexible.

Conclusions

I believe Steve Jobs has given us a peek at the future of computing. This device leaves some major problems unsolved but opens the door to great possibilities. With improvements to input interaction, book syncing and printing options this device could replace a large percentage of the desktop and laptop machines around the world.

I got an iPhone in November 2007. I’ve nearly reached the end of my two year agreement. And it has been great. It was a little scary commiting to $70/mo. for that long but our budget could sustain it and the phone was paid for by a friend ($400 at the time). So we took the plunge.

I absolutely loved it!

The phone is not just a phone. As my good friend recently put it, “The iPhone is one of man’s great accomplishments.” I tell friends it is my mobile office. I hardly ever get out my laptop at home because I can do so much on my phone. I’m typing this article on my phone!

Speaking of which, the virtual keyboard really seals the deal. And this is where the G1 falls on it’s face. I can type fast on the iPhone. It’s painless. It corrects my mistakes. It predicts what I’m going to type. It learns odd spellings like my last name. It feels like an extension of my brain. The G1feels like An extension of my elbow – useful but not dextrous.

So why am I switching to a G1? Simple economics – work pays for it. At least I was going to switch. I’ve been using the G1 as my primary device for a month. Technically, I can do all the same things on it – email, call, txt, maps, etc. But it is painful – extremely painful. I suppose if I had never had an iPhone that I would think the G1 is great. But I have so I don’t.

BuddyPress uses Fontin

I’m at WordCamp Utah today – thoroughly enjoying it. Matt introduced me to BuddyPress. I noticed they’re using Fontin by Jos Buivenga. Good choice:)

Entourage on the iPhone

I have an iCal calendar on my laptop that I use to manage my personal life – home, volunteer service, etc. It works great to have the calendar on my phone and laptop, be able to edit, add and delete items in either place and have them update each other.

I also access my gmail account from Mail on my laptop and iPhone via IMAP. This works seamlessly. I send and receive emails from either location and they are always in sync with each other. It’s flawless.

With this functionality in place my iPhone fulfills the function of mobile office – allowing me to take calls, schedule meetings and access information wherever I am.

Since the iPhone OS 2.0 upgrade I’ve known that I could use my phone with my Exchange account at work. I set up the Exchange account to work with email earlier this week. I only set it up to work with email as a starting point. Once I was comfortable with that I would move on to calendars and/or contacts – that was my plan.

Email was working fine. It was a little tricky for me to figure out the right server/username settings (my Exchange account has always been a little quirky), but once that was done it just worked.

Yesterday, for the first time, I wished that I had my work calendar on my phone also. I brought up my settings and slid the calendar option from no to yes – immediately a dialogue warned me that all of my other calendar items would be deleted and asked if I wanted to proceed. “No. I want my personal calendar and my work calendar side by side.”, I thought. “Isn’t that possible?”

It turns out it is possible but not this way. If you turn on Exchange for your phone, forget having any other calendar sync to your phone. For some reason, iCal calendars and Exchange calendars cannot co-exist on the iPhone.

Actually they can but you have to pipe the calendar through iCal – and that require having Entourage installed. Fortunately, I do have Entourage installed. I turned on syncing in the Entourage preferences and the Entourage calendar appeared in iCal. Then I when I sync my phone the Entourage calendar is included. Even better, I can edit the Entourage items on my phone and then sync them back to iCal which automatically syncs back to Entourage which automatically syncs back to Exchange. It is not a seamless ‘push’ solution but I don’t really need that. This suits my occasional need to view my Exchange calendar on my phone. Hooray!

Silverback - Guerrilla Usability Testing

Right on the heels of the release of Silverback to the public, comes a poignant article from Jakob Nielsen regarding rapid fire usability testing.

To be honest, this is the first Nielsen article that I’ve actually read all the way through. And it’s because of Silverback. Usually, I read the summary at the top of the article, delete and immediately forget. But Silverback may just be the Holy Grail enabling this sort of usability testing.

The tool itself is not impressive. The interface is amazingly sparse. The functionality consists of thee things:

First: It groups usability sessions into projects. Organization is good.

Second: It sets a video of the user inside the video of the screen capture – thus greatly reducing the hardware requirements for usability testing (assuming you already own an iSight equipped MacBook). Also good.

Third: It adds small circles that emanate from the position of user clicks. (These only appear on the video afterwards, not during the session.) Useful for determining when the user actually clicks instead of just mousing over. Good, thank you.

So what would make me pay $50 to buy this app? The attribute that may make this tool successful as a product and as an industry altering meme is that it targets the designer/developer as usability researcher. These are the people that directly control the functionality and design of the site and therefore have the greatest influence over it’s success. As a designer, I want my work to resonate with the people that use it – this tool can help me do that.

That is, if a I can bring myself to get out of the cube and into the people space. Silverback’s failing is that it doesn’t come with a plugin to upgrade my personality from ‘hopeless recluse’ to ‘dynamic extrovert’. The hard work still sits squarely on my shoulders to motivate myself to do better, to be great.

So I’m interested in this little app. I will spin it’s wheels. I will try it out on our redesigned site. But most of all, I’ll work a little harder at reaching out to my users and applying my craft to meet their needs.

I just returned from the Apple store. My replacement iPhone had a bad battery. They replaced it as quickly as they had before. I am very fortunate and am grateful to a company that has taken such good care of this customer. I hope I am equally concientious of my customers.