Recently in Technology Category

Saw this on Brighthand today:

"Orange has confirmed that the Samsung smartphone running on the Access Linux Platform, originally planned for later this year, has been cancelled... The Samsung i800 was the first and only device announced that would have run the Access Linux Platform since the operating system's release in early 2007."

Let me make sure I have my facts straight.

1. 2002: Palm, Inc. decides to split into two companies , thus creating PalmSource which was the OS side of the Palm PDA. Later that year, PalmSource releases OS 5 aka Garnet.
2. 2004: PalmSource announces a new OS called Cobalt which, over time, no one licenses.
3. 2005: PalmSource is sold to Access who promptly drops Cobalt and instead announces their plans to release a Linux based OS called the ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP). Just rolls of the tongue doesn't it?
4. 2007: ALP is "released" to licensees and developers.
5. 2008: [February] Samsung announces that they will release the i800 on the ALP platform for Orange (UK)
6. 2008: [July] Orange's PR firm announces they've changed their mind

So if I carry my 1 and drop the sarcasm, then that would mean that it's been six YEARS since there has been a major update to Palm OS. FFS! Even Microsoft got out an OS in less time than that.

Of course Palm, Inc., which used to be just the hardware side of things, bought up what they could from Access and has been going their own way with a Linux based OS called Palm OS II which they're planning on releasing in 2009. I'm sure that OS will r0xors on the Treo's circa 2003 design. By the time they get a new device out, it'll be cool again because it'll be retro!

I just have to hang my head in shame as I watch a product that I so dearly loved circle the drain like this.

In my last article, I wrote about how excited I was to see Palm developers moving over to develop for the iPhone. Specifically, I mentioned how pleased I was to see that Stevens Creek Software will be releasing HandyRandy . Well, it seems that I wasn't the only one that took notice of Stevens Creek's work.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball posted a link on his web site to Triplog/1040. For those of you not familiar with Gruber, he's well known for his expertise regarding the Mac OS user interface. His opinion of TripLog was summed up nicely with "Check out the UI on this upcoming iPhone app from Palm OS developer Stevens Creek Software. This is not a joke. (Via Macworld.)", but he also posted a photo on his Flickr page which generated a lot of heated discussion in the comments. This was the snowball that started rolling downhill.

Having come from the Palm OS world a little over a year ago, I wasn't that surprised by the UI of TripLog and the other Stevens Creek applications because they reminded me of my Palm OS days. That being said, once I took a second look, it was clear that TripLog/1040 and Handy Randy don't measure up to the standards of most Mac Software. Mac users are more accustomed to refined interfaces and elegant solutions to complex problems. That's not to say that there aren't plenty of applications out there that are rough around the edges, but for the most part Apple has made it easy for apps to look good. That approach to good design has followed to the iPhone, but if you're not a Mac user some of the nuances may be a bit foreign to you and you might miss them.

Luckily for Steve Pratt, the designer behind TripLog, 37 Signals picked up the thread and used it as an opportunity for positive feedback in their article "Learning from 'bad' UI. I have to applaud 37 Signals for not only seeing the opportunity, but for acting on it and steering the conversation from a bash session to an actual discussion. The article also bore fruit with several redesign ideas from Raphael Campardou, Paul Walker and Paolo Passeri.

Will these have any effect on the TripLog app itself? They already have! Stevens Creek has posted a video showing how to use the application and in it I noticed that the UI is much improved. It's not perfectly polished, but it's very much improved. Unfortunately, MacWorld's TripLog Review focused on the current version and thus Stevens Creek is still having to defend their application, which is a shame.

Stevens Creek makes excellent software and I suppose the take away here is that application design for iPhone has raised the bar from the days of Palm OS. Design options were limited in the Palm space so it was easier to focus on the functionality of the app over the look and feel. With the expanded palette of the iPhone developers are going have to focus more on the side of application development that often gets the least attention -- the user interface. It definitely plays a key role in an application's success and Mac users have a poor tolerance for bad UI.

My only hope is that this experience doesn't scare away Stevens Creek, or any other Palm OS developers from developing for the iPhone. I think there is a world of opportunities for Palm OS developers to leverage their applications and broaden to a whole new market - both for the mobile and desktop space.

If you're interested in iPhone UI design, here are a couple of other articles I ran across while this story evolved:

• Edward Tufte's iPhone Design Review
• User Interface Design - Taking the Good with the Bad

It's the little things that give me the biggest kick. Today I read where Stevens Creek software is going to make software for the iPhone. Why does that make me smile? Because Stevens Creek was one of the early pioneer's in Palm OS software development.

They were most known for PalmPrint which allowed you to print directly from the Palm Pilot to a printer, but I used HandyRandy for nearly 11 years every time we pulled for door prizes at the local PUG meeting. So you can imagine my delight when I read that HandyRandy for iPhone is one of the three applications that they are releasing the day the App store launches.

They haven't announced pricing yet, but rest assured HandyRandy is going to be the first app I buy on July 11^th. I'm so very happy!

I've been a fan of Twitter for quite some time now. I would love to be able to tell you how long I've been a user, but the archives only go back a week or so and there's no other indication of when I became a Twitter member. Along with it's archives, Twitter has been plagued with >uptime issues, so much so that they've created an entire blog to it's uptime status (or lack there of) at http://status.twitter.com. By the way, if you don't know what Twitter is, I highly recommend the Twitter in Plain English video.

Twitter is a victim of it's own success, that's for sure, but I'm sticking with the service because that's where my friends are. However it dawned on me today that this may not be the case for much longer. Why? Because of the interface I use to interact with Twitter -- Instant Messenger.

One of the coolest things about Twitter is that you can interface with the service from many different avenues. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but here's a quick list of ways you can post to and receive updates from Twitter:

• Directly through the web site
• SMS
• 3rd party applications like Twitterific and Twhirl
• 3rd party web sites like Hahlo (mostly for the iPhone, or site specific browsers like Fluid, Bubbles
• An Instant Messenger (IM)

For me it's the last method that I use the most. I use AdiumX, which is a multi-protocol instant messenger. It allows me to be logged into AIM, GoogleTalk, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger all at the same time. If you're not on a Mac and this interests you, be sure to check out Pidgin, or Trillian. The point is that for me sending "tweets" and receiving updates from my friends have always occurred via IM. I already had a habit of leaving AdiumX open, so adding Twitter as a "buddy" seemed like the natural thing to do. Not only that, but it was one less thing open and running on my desktop, which can get rather cluttered.

Unfortunately when Twitter started scaling back it's services in order to salvage as much uptime as possible, the first thing to go was IM support and a month later it's still unavailable. They've added back updates a few weeks ago, but at best I have a one-way conversation since I'm unable to post via IM. The end result of all the outages is that I'm left wondering if it's even worth the trouble.

When Twitter easily integrated into my established habits, it was easy to submit an update here or there, but now there's an obstacle. I either have to launch a web page, or a special app and there's a better than 50% chance that the service is down all-together. So perhaps my relationship with Twitter is rather shallow, or it's just become more difficult than it's worth, but right now Twitter is becoming less and less relevant for me.

What about you?

I absolutely despise Internet Explorer. It is a complete turd of a program in every conceivable manner. It's insecure, it doesn't follow web standards when displaying web pages, it's integrated into the OS so if it crashes it brings down your entire computer, and the list goes on and on and on, but I won't belabor the point any further. Most of my gripes are with IE 6 and earlier but the latest version of Internet Explorer -- version 7 -- isn't that much better, so it goes out with the bath water too.

From a system administrator perspective, I convert every system I can over to Firefox and go so far as to ban IE on systems that I control. As a web developer, I spend a serious amount of time in the development process dedicated to changing my code to make IE work properly. Every other browser on the planet will display content correctly, but IE always has some oddity that requires a tweak or hack.

As much as I and the millions of other geeks like me hate IE, it simply won't go away. So it was with great interest that I read an older article by Kevin Hale on Particle Tree entitle On the Tenacity of Internet Explorer 6. When I read that adoption rates were flatlining and his question of "Have we basically converted everyone that had a problem with Internet Explorer 6?" I thought perhaps we were finally done with IE6. Unfortunately, after reading the entire article, it's clear that IE6 is here to stay and it's something we're going to have to live with for a long time.

And why is that? Well, it boils down to the fact that the main reasons people were switching was due to the fact of popups, spyware and the like. Now that toolbars have fixed many of those glaring issues, people aren't motivated to switch.

Now, you may think IE6 obviously makes browsing the Internet suck because it doesn’t have tabs and tends to implement CSS and JavaScript poorly. But that’s because if you’re reading this site, you’re probably a designer or developer. Remember: ugly, buggy and slow aren’t enough to make users think it sucks enough to switch (think MySpace and Windows). In hindsight, the best thing to happen to Firefox was probably the rise of file sharing networks, spyware and pop-ups. Basically, everything that made the web suck. Everything that made the web a safer place to browse, made Firefox less relevant and quelled the urgency that made an alternative to IE6 a necessity.

It disappointments me to now end to have to agree with his conclusion. I'll still push Firefox, Opera and other alternative browsers every chance I get, but it sucks that the reason that there are so many Zombie Computers is due to ignorance and lethargy. I know that I'm a geek and that this falls into my domain expertise, so you might chalk this up to the ramblings of a nerd, but we're not talking small numbers here - botnets number in the hundreds of thousands. Their impact can be felt everyday in the billions of SPAM messages that are sent from them every day.

All gloom and doom aside, Hale's article did leave me laughing in the end. It may not end positive, but it does end on a funny note.

Just goes to show that it has to be in your face popups of wangs and cooters to make you download something different.

Since switching to Mac OS over a year and a half ago, I have been in hog heaven. Truly. Almost every day I'm reminded of just how elegant and, dare I say, FUN it is to actually work. I'm not kidding, it's a true joy and I'm reminded of this nearly daily because I also work in Windows every day and I'm reminded of just how painful computing can be on the other side.

A good portion of my day involves network management and I use a wonderful little tool called Remote Desktop to manage the many Windows servers I'm responsible for. RDP is primarily a Windows program, but, thankfully, Microsoft has Mac Version as well. I've been using the beta version of RDP 2.0 for quite awhile now and it's performed quite well. I use it on a daily basis and can report no real problems with it. Well, that was until recently.

About a week ago, I was prompted with the following dialog box when I launched RDP:

Updating software on the Mac is a fairly common experience and it's rather quick and easy so there was no reason for alarm. I selected the button "Download Latest Version" and was directed to the Mactopia site, which is Microsoft's Apple Software section, and it was with this one click that the "Microsoft Experience" kicked in.

1. Instead of taking me to a page dedicated to Remote Desktop, or even directly to the download file itself, I was taken to the Mactopia home page. "Hmm... oooook."
2. Left to my own devices, I had to search for what I was looking for until I found the link in the navigation for the Remote Desktop page.
3. Once on that page, I then had to find the link to download the latest version and select it.
4. That link sent me to the bottom of a new page which showed me another link to actually download the file. Of course that was after I figured out what the heck I was looking at.
5. After waiting for the download to start for about 30 seconds with nothing happening, I click the link again... and again...
6. I refresh the page and it's then that I see that there's a "Details" window that's changing. So I click the link again, see that this small window in the bottom right corner of the page is providing me with details on the download.
7. I scroll several pages of details until I find the actual download link at the bottom of the iframe window and click that bastard.
8. The file finally downloads

But Wait... There's More
After all that hullaballo, the file is finally on my hard drive and I go through the install routine to update the program. I relaunch RDP and I'm surprised to find that the same dialog pops up. "What the?!" Starting the process AGAIN I read the RDP page more closely and see in the sidebar the following:

I had to read that sidebar a couple of times to make sure that I understood it, but what I read was correct. After a convoluted 8-step process just to download the program and then go through the install routine, I learn that there was no need to do all that. Microsoft HASN'T actually released an update and not only that, they have no real indication when it will be ready. Just sometime in the next two months. And just to add insult to injury, instead of releasing an interim program with a revised expiration date, you'd prefer that I see this damn nuisance screen 800 times a day until you get around to releasing a new version.

W o w .

This is yet another example of where the user experience leaves me wondering "I'm I the first person to do this?" So much of what I do with Microsoft products leaves me feeling like I'm the first person to even try a product, much less run into a problem. This one thing may seem small from your side of the fence, but since switching to Mac OS, I have less and less of this kind of problem. When the "Microsoft Experience" rears its ugly head, it's now it's pulling from a deep, deep well of past pain and suffering.

I guess I'll just have to wait until Microsoft releases an update in a month or two and just do what Microsoft suggests and dismiss the update button. Question is, how will know that there's been an update if I'm ignoring Microsoft's own update notifier?

Bunch of ass-hats.

I read on the Google Docs Blog today that Google Gears has been enabled for Google Docs. Given that I've become quite enamored with Google's software products, like Docs Calendar and of course Gmail, I was eager to try being able to edit documents offline with Google Gears.

What's Google Gears?
Google Gears is a browser plugin that allows you to take certain Google Products "offline" and edit/read the data when you're not connected to the Internet. It's currently in Beta and as of this entry, is only available for the Firefox browser on Mac OS. Windows users can use Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Once installed, "Gears Enabled" applications have new offline features that users can take advantage of. Currently this is only limited to Google Reader -- although some 3rd party applications support Gears, such as Remember The Milk -- so Docs support was the tipping point for me to give it a try.

Sorry Charlie
I installed the plugin for Firefox and validated that it was indeed enabled and fuctioning properly. I went to Google Reader and Remember The Milk and both immediately provided me with the popup image. Unfortunately, Google Docs does not. I tried repeatedly to reload the page and even went as far as logging out and then logging back in, but alas no love.

Then I went back and read the article more clearly.

...and I'm happy to tell you we'll be rolling it out over the next few weeks, starting today with a small percentage of users.

Guess I'm not in that small percentage. Poo. :(

I put up two new photosets on Flickr today.

1. Un-boxing Holly's New iMac
For the past few months, we've slowly been working on converting the spare bedroom into an office/project studio for Holly. With the room completed, the first major purchase was a new 17" iMac. This series shows the un-boxing of her long awaited iMac.

2. iPhone Unboxing
Photos of my new iPhone, which I purchased the first week of it's release. :-)

Hope you like them!

I'm looking forward to seeing Apple's iPhone is going to look like when it finally ships in June. There are days where I think I'm going to be the first one in line to try and buy one and then there's other days where I think I'll wait for the next version to come out.

Then the other day, I was clicking on links from the Engadget web site and a came across THIS (third image). Do my eyes deceive me, or is that a c l e a r iPhone? :O

I like Sunbelt Software and I have been a fan of their products for years. Additionally, I've been a reader of their blog SunbeltBLOG since it's inception. If you're interested in Windows security, I highly recommend adding it to your RSS reader.

That being said, I came across an article on their blog entitled "Are the Open Sourcerers Selling You a Bill of Goods?" by Deb Shinder, which frustrated me after reading it. The article irked me because it's clear that Ms. Shinder is some what ignorant of exactly what Open Source software is, or isn't, and yet felt compelled to write something on it. She doesn't bash Open Source per se, but she does take issue with it, so I decided to write a response.

That response ended up taking a good bit of time to write, so as a result, I decided to post it here as well. Feel free to "read Shinder's article then refer back to my response. Otherwise it might not make sense being out of context.