"Planet Tao of Mac" via Rui
Clinton Duncan on the iTunes 10 icon:
Probably the most compelling argument against it is that most of Apple’s icons are almost photo-realistic representations, of, well, things. But given iTunes current Swiss Army Knife-like functionality, good luck coming up with an object to represent everything it does. Amongst its Apple siblings, the cartoon-like clip art feel is certainly exacerbated, and the result is to cheapen the look of iTunes—almost as if it’s a children’s music learning program, and not the world’s pre-eminent entertainment content application.
Today I turned the switch off for Google Friend Connect (something I turned on in February 2009). There is now no longer a social bar when you visit (though most of you read this site via RSS).
There are a myriad reasons as to why I disabled it, but it generally boiled down to the fact that I never figured out how to fully use it. I thought it might be useful for blog readers to connect with each other, but thats what the comments are really for.
Running YSlow or Page Speed, the thing that slowed my blog down the most, seemed to be the Friend Connect social bar. This is expected, but for not providing anything additional, I decided to zap it.
The Business Times still has their Friend Connect enabled, but its not the social bar – they’ve preferred going to using the members gadget. Currently, they have 1,327 folk who are members, while 7,051 people like their Facebook page more. I’m thinking more sites will find that a Facebook widget will benefit more in terms of user engagement.
I thought about utilizing Friend Connect to email newsletters to my “fans”. And while there is newsletter support, only about 10% of the people on my site have opted in to receive a newsletter (to be fair, I never did encourage anyone to signup for a newsletter – and this feature was not around before, as far as I remember). That’s a pretty poor conversion rate. There does not seem to be any other way to connect to members – no way to email them.
I also tried this on another website, a community for fashionistas in Malaysia. It was removed rather quickly, because chatboxes are still preferred, in comparison to Friend Connect!
And then there was the other thing… When I loaded up the blog on my iPad, the Friend Connect social bar would stick on the screen. Did not seem very UI friendly, and I had no intention of fixing it.
I’ve not seen Google put much effort behind Friend Connect any longer, and they seem to have other foci when it comes to being social on the Web. Even during their recent DevFest’s, the whole Friend Connect topic seems to have gone silent.
Thanks to all of you that joined the community, made comments, etc. Goodbye Google Friend Connect.
Related posts:
- Google Friend Connect and the Social bar
- Google Friend Connect, revisited
- Google Documents, Percipitate
A number of adjustments are ongoing, most of which revolve around work and how to tackle a bunch of new stuff there, although my eldest’s relatively non-traumatic debut in pre-schoold has also been a factor.
Working with an entirely new team (even though I had already met quite a few of them) is stimulating, although a mite frustrating when you’re still at the stage where you’re struggling to match names, faces, Twitter handles and a bunch of e-mail addresses into a coherent whole that is still not a person because you’ve yet to estabish a full rapport with over half the people you’re actually supposed to know and manage.
But hey, it’s fun (the startup-like environment helps a lot) although I could do with a freshly updated build of Tom Insam’s Shelf by now as a sort of e-mail driven flashcards – sadly, I currently lack the time to kick my copy of the source tree around, in much the same way I also lack time to read news or sit down and finish the bunch of drafts I have pending.
Update: I’ve since grabbed the source from github and built a running executable. I think it’s time I started using Git a bit more, too, so I went ahead and forked it so I can fool around with the CSS and a few other doodads.
Part of it is due to my greatly reduced commute time (it now can take me less than 10 minutes to reach the office if I have a lift, and I’ve timed the bus trip on a quiet day at 17 minutes) and the (irregularly unscheduled) time required to mind the kids in the evenings and mornings. Add to that the current lack of a working iPhone (more on what I’m using later) and the need to do miscellaneous chores in the evenings, and the available time windows to either read or write are effectively non-existent.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and do something completely different for a bit. And yeah, the title’s a pun.
☯ (comments allowed)
It seems more and more like I’m the only one with this limitation in the modern world. Most of my friends seem to handle phone calls, podcasts, and TV shows all running at the same time with perfect understanding of all of them. I know some people who read while listening to podcasts or lectures, but the thought of that just makes my brain cry.
Well, that makes two of us. I’m pretty sure that others are more effective at multitasking, but I think part of it is a differing awareness of (or tolerance for) human limitations. A person watching, say, Arrested Development will miss some of the jokes or give less attention to a conversation, but may not mind.
I’ve been a mite busy (making the many small changes implied in changing jobs, as well as minding kids, etc.).
Normal service (such as it is) will resume promptly.
☯ (comments allowed)
Brent Simmons has created a new Cocoa mailing list for those frustrated by Apple’s Cocoa-Dev list not allowing discussion of certain interface design and engineering issues (via Mike Ash).
Last year when I purchased my MacBook Pro, it was about three weeks before Snow Leopard was to come out. Essentially the upgrade DVD was free and has been sitting on my desk for the better part of the year.
So I finally bit the bullet and upgraded. A few things of note:
- The upgrade took quite some time. It was in excess of an hour, and I noticed it stalled from time to time. I whipped out the log file and realised that it was repairing the disk quite a bit. Had I not noticed this, I would have assumed something had gone wrong and rebooted the computer. Command+L gives you the log.
- iTunes got a library update (it takes quite some time).
- Evernote got a database upgrade.
- My git went missing, so I had to reinstall it. Bazaar was however still gainfully installed.
- MenuMeters disappeared. I had to get a more modern version online to ensure it continued working.
- There was a huge combo update waiting for me, to take me from OS X 10.6 to 10.6.4. It nearly weighed in at a gigabyte.
- Mail, which has been handling my mail since I ditched Thunderbird, went through a rather lengthy database upgrade. While it upgraded, I could not use mail. This process was about one hour long as well, which I felt took too long.
After over two hours, all I can say is my laptop is a lot snappier than it was before. Everything works as expected. I guess its time to start rolling it out on the iMac, and probably clean installing the MacBook Air for travel use.
Related posts:
- Snow Leopard to have ZFS
- dist-upgrade time
- wordpress 2.3 – wordpress.wp_post2cat error is Sitemap plugins fault
Only hours ago the 1.0 release of Names hit the App Store. Names is an iPhone app that helps teachers quickly learn student names. I wrote this app because I'm great at remembering faces, but terrible at remembering names.
For the last 7 semesters I taught a non-accredited iPhone dev class at BYU Idaho. We never had more than 25 students, which made it even worse when I would forget a name. I remember one semester a student walked in, named Brandon, but for some reason, to my brain he was named Joe. I would constantly call him Joe, and he eventually stopped coming. I felt terrible. I knew I needed to find a better way. That was the genesis of Names.
How It Works
On the first day of class, as the students leave the classroom, you stand by the door and using your iPhone or iPod touch snap a picture of each smiling face. Add the pictures to Names and practice until you've got them all down. It's that simple.
Here are my favorite parts of this app:
Clean Design
I know this is biased, but I really like the look and feel of the app. I'm not doing anything visually stunning, but with basic controls and simple views I think I've distilled this application down to its essence. This is hard work! Maybe some day I'll show all the iterations and ideas that lead to this, but even though the visual flair could be improved, this app doesn't get in the way and I'm very happy with that.
Casual Review
The review screen comes from talking to and watching teachers trying to learn student names. Frequently they would simply arrange student photos with names on the table. Others would use computer printouts and quickly scan the photos with names right before class. This screen allows for quick review and editing of photos. You'd be surprised how different students look from the student record photo taken years before. The subtle edges of each photo before and after hint when there's more to see.
Practice
When you enter the practice portion of the app, you have a stack of faces and need to select the correct name from three nameplates. While this might seem obvious, it's really a rare solution. First, it's fast. Tapping is all that is needed and you can move through a huge class super quick. Flip transitions that simulate actual pictures or flashcards are slow and lose the connection between the two sides of the card. Second, it mimics real life. In the classroom, a teacher is looking at a face, and then trying to recall a name. That's the scenario and this arrangement helps you perform in the scenario in which you will need the recall. And third, the smooth animations reinforce correct and incorrect guesses without taking too much time. The animations draw the eye to the connection between the name and the face and reinforce the learning.
Focus
One could say that this is simply a flashcard app and in a way, that's right. On the other hand, I'd recommend that any college professor try to use any other flashcard app out there, on the iPhone, iPad, Mac or Windows and see how the experience compares. You see, it's the focus that makes this app great. Sure, you could use Names to memorize anything that has a picture and a name, and I don't go out of my way to make that hard. However, this app is about learning people's names fast. Making a general purpose flashcard app makes it hard to nail that core scenario because you have to add other clutter to support the general use. With a focus on the core scenario, the UI that doesn't matter just disappears. Simple focused solutions. That's what I love about building iPhone applications and Names is no exception.
I'll write more about Names later, but for now check it out for yourself!
