April 25, 2009 — 12:06 PM
The Value of Context
I'm thinking a lot about the context of writing these days, in as much as context drives the writer's intent, and drives the audience's expectations. I've been doing a lot of writing lately, most of it organized around The Wildly Popular We Love DC, as that's where my energies are often spent these days. But, I've been wanting to add more short form works somewhere, somewhere that I can slap up a big picture, or a couple of links, and make them work. Thus, I introduce, The Bit Bucket, a Tumblr-based blog.
I've been watching Tumblr evolve and do interesting things for the last year or so, and I'm intrigued by all of the different buckets that it has for different kinds of content. I respect and like that a lot, as it seems to go deeper than the one-size-fits-all box that WordPress and Typepad and other blogging systems use as paradigm.
Much as Twitter has made me a better writer (brevity being the soul of wit), I am hoping that Tumblr will make me a better blogger. I'm not abandoning this blog by any means. I am working on the results of a recent survey of Twitter users as to how we use the short form in social media, and how it affects our social circles. That's perfect for the long form. I've also got a copy of the new Cisco Routers for the Desperate that needs to get reviewed, and I probably need to do long-form reviews for the Jetta (just passed 60,000 miles) and the 5D Mark II (6 months next month!) that are percolating up. So, for now, expect the following contexts for writing:
Twitter: 140 characters of vapidity and/or awesomeness.
Tumblr: From 141 characters up to 750 words.
Typepad: 750 words or more.
And of course, if you're not reading We Love DC, you're missing some of my best photography and local beat writing.
September 6, 2007 — 5:44 PM
Getting Burned
So, yeah, I'm an early adopter. I latch on to new technology like a remora on a passing shark. Good technologies, I recognize, often have costs associated with them. In the case of the original MacBook Pro, that price was a few repairs, and not an insignificant deep tissue burn on my left leg, and in the case of the iPhone, a price drop that came very quickly, and cut very deep.
Some folks have said some pretty unkind things in the last twenty-four hours about those of us who've objected publicly to Apple's price cut. I've had folks refer to those of us who did object as "whiners", be told to "Grow. Up. Now.", or all manner of other analogies that contended that we were entirely insecure about how cool the phone made us for just a brief manner of weeks. I'm sure there are kernels of truth in their remarks, but I think their conclusions are entirely false.
To these people, I have no words except, "I think you're wrong." My real issue with all of this was that this giant of a price drop felt entirely un-Apple-like. It felt like something I might have had happen with those feckless jerks at Comcast or AT&T, or maybe even Sony or Dell. It was something done in such a bald-faced, bottom-line fashion that it felt entirely foreign to me.
Yes, price drops are common in the tech industry. Apple's even done one on a new product recently, with Aperture dropping in price by a significant margin. But even when that happened, Apple immediately, and with some fanfare, offered a rebate to all customers who'd paid the original price. Yesterday, not so much. The relationship between your average early adopter and the company whose tech they adopt is a unique one, and in many cases one that is predicated on many conditions, chief among them the trust that the company is really doing some good, interesting, worthwhile and valuable. That several hundred thousand people were interested in the iPhone at $599 is testament to how cool, good and interesting the iPhone is. It's really an awesome piece of handheld technology. As many have said, it's as if it was sent back from the future. And it's not that I don't think it's great that it's $399 now, it's that I'm amazed Apple would turn so quickly to reduce the price by 25% if their sales weren't meeting their projections. Sure, $399 is a great price point, but why change it from $599 unless they weren't selling fast enough?
While we all realize Apple is a business, and not a philanthropy, seeing such a clearly business-motivated concept at the forefront of the Apple nimbus of events is unusual. Usually, it's all about the cool new iPod, or the sweet new service at the iTMS or as part of .Mac (okay, so that last one is a dream, still.) or a new feature in the OS. We see Apple's business side so very rarely that when we do see something that's motivated mostly by the need to sell widgets, it's like we're back in the bad old days of Gil Amelio again, and it reminds us of the time that Apple was on life-support.
So Steve, in the future, remind us always why we hang out with you. It's because you make cool products that make our lives better, not because doing so can be an expensive proposition that is volatile. It's because of things like the new iTunes Wi-Fi Store, not because we'd set back six pictures of Franklin to have it. It's because of Final Cut and iPhoto and the new iMac, not because we're so dedicated to spending our hard-earned cash. Defuse the money issue if you're going to drop the price on a new product quickly and without outcry.
And thanks for the $100 back. I appreciate it. I was just going to spend it on iTunes anyway....
August 28, 2007 — 1:13 PM
Litany of Offenses: FirstClass
Bad design bothers me. It's not quite Cayce-Pollard bad, where I would get physically ill when design doesn't work, but it does get on my nerves when things don't work the way they should. Today's annoyance surrounds an email program that time forgot: FirstClass. It began its life as a BBS, so perhaps that's part of the problem, but in its current incarnation, it's a fairly capable groupware platform. It's capable of doing some things (like document sharing) in ways that other mail platforms just can't do it. So, it's a good operational platform for organizations that have significant institutional memory requirements. It also does cool things with Phone Switches, but when it comes down to human interaction, it's like the design team was asleep for some things.
For one, like all previous releases, the Apple-M combination is ignored by the application. There's no way to hide the application via keystroke, which is one of those "Why do you hate me?!" kind of things that IT guys fixate over. I like being able to send away an application with Apple-M, it's a de facto standard in the OS that Apple-M will send an application to the Dock and away. But, that shortcut is in use for "Format Selection", which makes oh-so-much-sense.
Secondly, the new Filter search option (think Spotlight, only less useful.) is entirely modal. You have to have the Mailbox option (not a message inside) selected in order to search using the Filter button. That means that there are now three different search options. There's a "search inside this message" option, a "search the whole system" option, or now the new Filtrated Search. It's entirely unindexed, so don't expect Spotlight-like speed, here, either. What's aggravating is that if you're a mac user, and you see a field like that, you're accustomed to having it do what it does regardless of mode. In Mail.app, it searches. In Safari, it googles. In Finder, it searches. But in FirstClass, it's not clickable until the Mailbox is highlighted. Why? That doesn't make sense to me. Putting the Filter option on the menu bar sets an expectation, and failure to deliver on that expectation will disappoint and frustrate users.
There's also a broken mechanism for changing the toolbar. In regular OS X applications, changing the toolbar to match your preference is straightforward. Right-click the toolbar, click Custom, and then drag and drop new icons onto the bar, or remove icons the same way you do on the dock. Not so, in FirstClass. Check out their methodology:
Entirely different interaction. You have to take things off the bar and replace them in the tool panel to get rid of them. No drag-and-poof, you have to put them back into the drawer where you found them. Metaphorically, I understand that you want users to be less like six-year-olds with errant toys, but in this particular environment, there's no consequence to not putting them back. It's not like that lego block you forgot to put away, then Dad found with his bare foot at 3am on his way to the bathroom. Don't force your users to exist within your paradigm. Let them set their own paradigm when the consequences for not conforming are non-existent.
And, lastly, for God's sake, please start handling HTML email. I know it sucks, I know it's a pain and a potential vector for infection, but everyone else does it meaning you need to, too. I get so much mail that entirely unreadable in your HTML parser. Please, pick up a manual on WebKit and use it. And, while you're doing it, please go check out things like Spotlight. Apple does things right a lot of the time with regard to UI. Sure, there are duds like iMovie 2, but overall, they do the right thing for the user, something you should learn to do.
Fix these, and I will thank you.
March 23, 2006 — 10:52 PM
Vee Dub on the Engineering tip, Jaaaa
I have said before that I want a stereo in my car that allows me to jack in my iPod like an old fashioned 8-track. Turns out VW's already working on it.
Want. Definitely, Want.
February 23, 2006 — 9:39 PM
SF Tech Session: A Running Blog
I'm here at the very first SF Tech Session featuring Joyent, Zimbra and Kerio: three large scalable groupware solutions for businesses. Things are just getting warmed up, I'd guess there are 50-60 people here already, and the room is buzzing with activity. I'll be live blogging this as we go through the session, so feel free to refresh as we go through the evening.
Please click through to check out all the details.
I'm adding Section Links for Kerio, Zimbra and Joyent.
Technorati Tags: Joyent, Kerio, SF Tech Sessions, Zimbra
February 21, 2006 — 8:55 AM
Foreign SIMs?
Does anyone out there have experience in getting SIM cards for GSM phones that might work in India? I have a few clients bound for India, and I really don't know how to advise them on this one. Help, oh powerful intarweb?
January 18, 2006 — 2:34 PM
OS X, OS 9, and Making the Transition
Scott Johnson has a post today about someone who didn't like the transition to OS X, and as a result ended up a windows person. I sympathize with these folks because the OS they'd known and loved got taken out back and put down, like Old Yeller. However, there's a lot you can do to a stock OS X install that makes it a lot less...bouncy.
System Preferences is a great place to start, because there's a lot you can do there to make things better.
1. Turn the bouncing icons OFF. In System Prefs, click on the Dock, then uncheck the box that animates the opening applications. Turn off Dock magnification, too, because really that's a pretty thing to have and it shows off the killer quartz graphics in OS X, but it's kinda lame. Shut it off. Also switch from the Genie effect to the Scale effect. It's simple, and clean.
2. In the Appearance Pref Pane, switch from the Blue Appearance to the Graphite Appearance. It's very smooth, no more candy buttons, just grey smooth buttons. Also, set the scroll arrows to Top and Bottom, much like OS 9.
3. Install the Unsanity Haxie Window Shade. It's a $10 install that gives you back the “title bar” minimization effect from OS 9. While you're at it, if you were an Apple Menu person in OS 9, and you installed all your stuff there, get Fruit Menu as well. For $20, you get back a good portion of OS 9 without having to do an awful lot. Handy, indeed.
Beyond that, I guess I'm not sure exactly what folks are missing from OS 9, but it's been easily five years since I've spent any serious time in it. What more are you looking for? I can always try to help.
Technorati Tags: Macs, windows
January 10, 2006 — 2:54 PM
Post Keynote-gasm
Your protagonist lights a cigarette, rocks back in his chair, and relaxes, triumphant
Well, here we are, post Keynote. The Mac Book Pro is out, now. iLife '06 and iWork '06 are out as well. My brand new iMac is already obsolete, less than a month after I bought it. My needs for a laptop are sated in the new Mac Book, and my order for a low-end one is already in. I'm excited by the MagSafe feature in the new Mac Book Pro, as I've destroyed a few power adapter in my days. The lack of FireWire 800 is odd, but the addition of SPDIF in and out is quite nice as well. One nice add is the new ExpressCard/34 slot, which is designed to supplant PCMCIA.
What concerns me is a lack of listed Battery Life in the stats. The new Mac Book Pro packs a 60WHr battery, as opposed to the G4's 50WHr battery, and the new charger is 85W instead of the 65W adapters we currently have. What's the battery life going to be like, I wonder?
Take a look, though, at the test data. Twice as fast? Sign me up.
iLife '06 seems much more .Mac centric than ever before and I'm sure that'll ruffle some feathers. I'm a subscriber, but I can understand why people might be irked at a purchase price that has a hidden cost in it.
iWork '06 seems to be a bit of a sleeper, but we'll see about that, long term.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Keynote, MWSF
June 4, 2005 — 10:09 AM
Apple On Intel?
I'm sure a lot of my friends are going to ask me what I think about the newest batch of Apple/Intel Rumors that are making the rounds this morning. I figured I'd preempt that by writing about it elsewhere. Your comments are welcome here, or there. Your call.
March 29, 2005 — 2:16 PM
Bigger Comments from TypePad
Don't get me wrong, I love TypePad. I have been a TypePad user since it went into Beta, and for the most part I have been incredibly happy with the service. They have fairly good customer service, including not bending me over a couch when a gallery of photos I took got slashdotted sapping my bandwidth supply and sending me over my monthly allotment. However, their new comments notifications are a bit bloated, as Jeff Harrell points out. He's right. Adding 6k to each comment message can stack up. I've got about 2200 comment emails in my stored comments folder, but if you increase their size by a factor of three...that's going to choke up some more much needed disk-space on my laptop.
I've opened a ticket with TypePad. Here's hoping they're listening.
Update: They are indeed listening. I'm now corresponding with Kristine and with Anil Dashes with regard to this issue. Updates when there's details.
Update 2: Hell, they're not just listening, they're acting. Jeff Harrell has more details. They've fixed the issue he complained about initially. I do, however, still have concerns about the amount of html in the emails itself, plus the little graphics file that accompany each message, while we're talking a difference of, say, 10k, across 2000 comments that's a couple meg. Now, escalate that to a corporate level across all their customers and you're looking at bandwidth savings, even if only half or a quarter of their customers opt out of HTML.
Instead, they're hoping that we'll do it on our end, but they won't give us instructions to handle that. At least, not yet. Anil, Byrne, and Kristine have done a good job so far handling this, but we're not done yet. Please give me the choice to receive text only email. Almost every company I deal with has the option receive text or html email. Please, Six Apart, give me that choice.
