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July 31, 2007
iPod Silence is Disconcerting
I've got a weird problem with my iPod. It won't play music, podcasts, or anything else I load on it. It's making sound--you can hear the clicks in the head phones. And it thinks it's playing the display shows the song dutifully playing with the progress bar moving along. I can even feel the hard drive spinning up as it starts to play. But no sound comes out.
I've checked the volume and looked through the settings. I've restarted the iPod. I've even restored it to factory defaults and reloaded everything. Nothing works. Given that it makes sounds for the wheel clicks, I have to believe this is a software problem, but I'm at a loss to solve it. Anyone have any ideas?
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Twelve Byzantine Rulers Podcast
 Justinian by Meister von San Vitale (click to enlarge) |
I few weeks ago, I wrote a review of the book Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe. Darryl Rosin left a comment asking if I'd listened to the 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast by Lars Brownworth. I hadn't then, but I went out that day and downloaded it to my iPhone. I've been listening to it over the last few weeks and really enjoyed it. Lars has a great presentation style and makes the material accessible and interesting. If western history in the first eight centuries AD has always been a black hole for you, this will get you up to speed.
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Vote for IT Conversations at Bloggers Choice Awards
If you enjoy IT Conversations, consider voting for IT Conversations as the best podcast at the Blogger's Choice Awards site. Naturally, we'd love to win.
As an aside, you have to go through a registration process to vote. Sorry. This is the perfect kind of application for OpenID--too bad they don't use it.
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Double Your ID Pleasure with TSA
Via Jim Harper, a report on the TSA's ruling that requires some passengers to present two forms of ID.
What's ironic is these are the passengers who signed up for the Registered Traveler program, designed to let frequent fliers escape the inspection line.
The TSA is requiring that these registered travelers present a government issued ID (like any other traveler) in addition to their RT card.
Beginning last fall, TSA suddenly required that RT members using the RT line show a picture ID and their RT card right before entering the line. These are the same RT cards that, when put into the RT kiosk, will use the traveler's fingerprint or iris scan to biometrically match the user to the data embedded in the card. That's right, RT members are the only travelers who must present TWO forms of identification.From TLF: TSA's Embarrassing "Double ID" Rule
Referenced Tue Jul 31 2007 15:04:18 GMT-0600
Only the TSA could take a program designed to make traveling easier and turn it into something even more demanding.
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Using Amazon S3 with Google Earth
One of my Masters students, Sam Curren, posted a great explanation of how he's using Amazon's S3 service with Google maps to make network links just as fast as the layers inside Google Earth. He's the creator of ActiveTrails.com, a site that let's you upload GPS data of your hikes to create trail maps on Google Earth, so he's got some practical experience in this area.
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July 30, 2007
Perl Web Framework Recommendations
Does anyone have recommendations on a Perl Web framework? I've heard of Catalyst and not much else. A few things make me leery: the blog is infrequently updated and the last release of the code was November of 2006. I know there are other frameworks (I vaguely remember attending a talk at OSCON) but I don't know anything about them.
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IT Conversations Moves Back
As Doug Kaye announced, IT Conversations has moved back to the The Conversations Network, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
I'm excited about the move because I think it will result in IT Conversations being able to grow and take advantage of new opportunities. It just hasn't gotten the attention that it needed at GigaVox due to competing interests and changing business models.
Over the next few months there will be some technical changes which will probably affect me more than you, if we're lucky. Still, you should expect a few changes. Still, IT Conversations will remain largely the same. We've got some great presentations in the queue from ETel, MySQL, ETech, Supernova, and others as well as the interviews you enjoy.
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NextPage Document Retention Review
My review of NextPage Document Retention came out a while ago in InfoWorld.
"Compliance" is a word that can make a CIO cringe, especially when it comes to document retention and--just as important--destruction.
Traditional document management products require that knowledge workers use a centralized system to track documents associated with a project. For some organizations, this is just enough of a disruption to established workflows that the systems frequently aren't used at all. The very applications we use to create, edit, and share documents often compound the management problem by hiding multiple copies all over the computer.
NextPage 2 Document Retention changes all that. The beauty of Document Retention is that it increases compliance with your organization's document retention policy without requiring significant changes to an employee's normal work habits. Once installed, it functions as an interested observer, watching actions taken by the user and keeping track of document flow and versioning. What's more, Document Retention requires minimal information from the user to accomplish this task.
Document Retention injects modest amounts of workflow into the user's normal routine, but does so at appropriate spots. The user creates, edits, saves, and shares Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents as usual; Document Retention watches these actions and creates a document tracking database in the background, based on the distributed information from each user.
As I worked through my test scenarios with Document Retention, it was very easy to envision how a group could effectively use the tools to manage documents without significantly impacting their workflow. I suspect that after a few weeks, no one would even notice it was there.
From NextPage manages documents with a light touch | InfoWorld
Referenced Mon Jul 30 2007 15:27:50 GMT-0600
One of the fun parts of doing this review was using Parallels to create multiple machines so that I could pretend I was multiple users. Amazing how easy that was and what a pain this review would have been to do without it.
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July 27, 2007
The Yin and Yang of Software Development
This ACM Queuecast by Mike Vizard interviews Sergei Sokolov, Solutions Manager, for C++ at Parasoft about how putting in the right infrastructure elements allows an innovative development process to exist despite the structure the project wants to impose on the process. You can also listen to the interview if you'd rather.
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July 25, 2007
IT Conversations on Facebook
Lately Facebook has been all the rage. We've taken note of that at IT Conversations and we've created some Facebook groups for your favorite shows. First, there's the IT Conversations group on Facebook. There's also one for my personal podcast, Technometria. And Jon Udell's Interviews with Innovators also has a Facebook group. I'm not sure how we'll be using these, but I'd encourage you to join these groups and help us make them into something that will be useful to all of us. Also, if you're an IT Conversations listener, feel free to add me as a friend as well.
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July 24, 2007
Reading Books on the iPhone
Tim O'Reilly points to a review of the iPhone for book reading by Peter Meyers. The conclusion:
I took a look at three different kinds of content: a book from O'Reilly's Safari online reading library, a Web site whose layout appeared especially readable on the iPhone, and a PDF. The verdict? iPhone-friendly Web sites are the clear winner. Safari books take second place and are readable for about 10 pages or so at time. PDFs are as lame as ever on the small screen. Pictures, comments, and some suggestions after the jump.From Missing Manual Gadgets
Referenced Fri Jul 20 2007 18:07:30 GMT-0600
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July 23, 2007
Conquering Gotham
Last month, I heard an interview on the Diane Rehm Show with Jill Jonnes about her book Conquering Gotham. The book tells the story of the Pennsylvania Railroads effort to bring rail service into Manhattan. The effort combined financial, engineering, and political challenges. The ultimate result was the construction of tunnels under the Hudson and East rivers as well as the monumental Pennsylvania Station.
I enjoyed this book on several levels. First, I enjoy reading about railroads. Another great book I'd recommend is the Nothing Like it in the World by Stephen Ambrose about the building of the transcontinental railroad. Its hard to imagine how powerful and important railroads, and their management, were at the turn of the century. The Pennsylvania Railroad was one of the largest corporations in the US at the turn of the century.
I also enjoy reading about the history of New York. I'm not sure why--I have no personal connection to New York and I've never lived there. Another book I enjoyed about New York history was The Island at the Center of the World. I also love reading Colonial American history and New York figures prominently that as well
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July 20, 2007
Parallels Scares Me Sometimes
Tonight someone sent me an email with a spreadsheet in it. The extension was .xlsx, not something Office for the Mac understands. I clicked on it anyway to see what would happen. Here's what happened:
- Parallels fired up Excel in Windows in "coherence" mode so that my Windows version of Excel was running in it's own window--just like a regular application.
- Excel in Windows tried to open the file, but realized it was for Office 2007.
- Safari on Windows (apparently now my default browser) fired up and offered to download the compatibility pack.
- I did that and installed it, but couldn't figure out how to use it from there.
So, I still couldn't read the file, but I was amazed at the experience anyway. I'm sure if I'd tried, I could have figured it out, but I'm too tired.
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CTO Breakfast Report
The first item of discussion at today's CTO Breakfast was iPhone features and unfeatures. A few of us had one. I passed mine around for people to play with. We also discussed some other devices, like the Blackberry Curve. Apparently the voice recognition on the Curve is very good.
Scott Lemon brought up openmoko, a hardware device for building open phones. Looks cool.
The discussion of the iPhone's lack of GPS led to a great discussion of why GPS is cool. Someone brought up location reminders: "Next time I'm at Home Depot, remind me to pick up..." We talked about the fact that most state traffic data is closed so that the state can sell it and the ability of GPS-enabled cell phones to gather traffic data from everyone's phones.
A discussion of how GPS enhances out natural abilities (and causes some directional skills to atrophy) ensued. I brought up Natural Born Cyborgs, a great book about this phenomenon.
I started a discussion of Facebook. We talked about Facebook as a poor man's aggregator. Lots of people who don't use aggregators use Facebook or MySpace as a way to keep up with friends in the same way that bloggers use aggregators. Personally, I don't spend a lot of time on my Facebook page continually updating it, but people do.
We also talked about Facebook as a convoluted email replacement. Steve brought up that some people will leave him a Facebook message, which sends him and email so he can click out to Facebook and read it. Facebook is serving as a mediator for contact and interaction. It's a whitelist-based communication center. I mentioned Scoble's new broadcast network based on Facebook.
Scott Lemon said something that I found very funny: "the local news is a way of highlighting statistical anomalies." In other words, it does a great disservice to the community by making people worry about things they don't need to worry about.
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July 19, 2007
Addicted to Blogging
I'm 84% addicted to blogging. I got knocked down from 100% because I don't read enough blogs or post more than 1-2 times per day. Ah well...
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Scott Berkun: Myths of Innovation
This week on the Technometria Podcast Scott, Ben, and I talked to Scott Berkun, author of the book The Myths of Innovation. We had a great conversation and Scott sold a couple of books right on the phone: both Ben and Scott went to Amazon while we were talking and picked up a copy. If you feel like buying the book after listening to Scott speak, but sure to buy it through IT Conversations, so we get the referral fee.
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Pittsburgh's Diaspora: Coming Home to the Motherland
Last week's Interviews with Innovators has Jon Udell talking with Jim Russell about the way the Web can be used to create social contexts among far-flung people who share some connection--in this case the fact that they all came from Pittsburgh.
I found this interesting because of a personal connection: my wife's from Pittsburgh--she's part of this diaspora. I lived in Pittsburgh for six months in 1983 (West Mifflin) and have been back many times. Scott Lemon, my co-host on the Technometria podcast is also from Pittsburgh.
Beyond the personal ties, I find the whole concept of regional diasporas fascinating. When I was building a company here in Utah and hiring was tight we specifically targeted the Utah diaspora. We'd tell our recruiter "find us someone with these skills living in the Bay area who wants to come home to the motherland." It worked surprisingly well.
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A Simple Solution to Form Spam
A few weeks ago, Britt Blaser sent me a link to a technique for using CSS to fight form spam.
The idea is simple, you add an extra input field to your form and use the CSS visibility property to hide it. The input field won't be visible to humans, but will appear normal to a spambot crawling the Web filling in forms. On the back end, you look for values in that field. If the form returns a value for that field you assume that a bot filled it in and discard the session. If the field is empty, then likely a human filled in the form.
I've implemented this on a form on my site that used to generate 10-12 spam responses a day and haven't had a single spam message come through since. The solution is easy and doesn't inconvenience users in the least. Perfect.
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July 18, 2007
Flying to Richfield
 Little Bryce Canyon (click to enlarge) |
Last Saturday, Steve Fulling and I flew down to Richfield with my youngest son. The flight was all about breakfast and enjoying what turned out to be a beautiful summer morning. I was a little concerned that we'd run into smoke from the Milford Flat Fire (the largest wildfire in Utah recorded history), but it wasn't an issue. In fact I was disappointed that there weren't any cool firefighting planes at the Richfield airport.
I used the flight as an opportunity to see how well my iPhone would do with pictures. Here's some pictures I took from the air with the iPhone. Not stellar, but OK. The best thing about the iPhone camera in my opinion, is that iPhoto recognizes it as a camera and starts up and transfers any pictures to my computer whenever I sync. That's the behavior I want.
iPhoto's treatment of iPhone photos, on the other hand, is abysmal. The "enhance" button does a pretty good job on pictures from my Canon, but always makes the iPhone pictures look grainy and unnatural. Your best bet, I've found, is to take pictures with the iPhone with plenty of light.
 I'm not sure what the
horizontal lines are. (click to enlarge) |
Can someone explain this picture to me? The picture is taken through the propeller. Most cameras ignore the prop or it turns out looking like a slight smudge in the picture. The iPhone created these horizontal lines. I'm sure there's some physics explanation of the interference pattern or something at work here, but I don't know what it is. Leave a comment if you've got an idea.
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July 16, 2007
CTO Breakfast This Friday
Our monthly CTO Breakfast will be held on Friday, July 20 from 8:00 am until about 10:00 in the Novell Cafeteria (Building G). We'll be discussing recent technology developments, so bring your favorite ideas from the last month.
You don't need to be a CTO to come--just aspire to be one or be interested in high-tech products.
Be sure to mark future CTO breakfasts on your calendar:
- Aug 23 (Thursday)
- Sep 27 (Thursday)
- Oct 30 (Tuesday)
For directions, please visit the CTO Breakfast page. See you there.
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July 14, 2007
Optimizing iTunes for IT Conversations
A number of people use iTunes as their podcatcher--the software that automatically downloads a podcast and puts it on their iPod. If that's you, please take a minute to change your preferences so that you don't miss any IT Conversations podcasts.
By default iTunes only downloads the most recent podcast from a given site each day. For most sites, which publish less than once per day, that works fine. For sites like IT Conversations, however, that means you might be missing some shows you'd rather have downloaded.
I try to just publish one show per day to avoid this problem, but on occasion I need to publish two or even three shows on a given day and that means that people who are using iTunes miss out. For example, on Thursdays I almost always publish more than one show for TechNation--usually two and sometimes three. Here's a screenshot of the iTunes preference you need to update:
Just change it to say "download all" and then you'll get all of the podcasts in the RSS feed, even if we publish more than one per day. There's a lot of great presentations coming up from O'Reilly's MySQL conference, ETel, and ETech. Plus Supernova and another round of Adaptive Path's User Experience Week later this summer. I may be publishing 7 or 8 shows per week before long. You won't want to miss any of them.
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July 12, 2007
Fixing Safari Crashes on the iPhone
Yesterday I reported that Safari reset on my iPhone frequently. Darcy left a comment that suggested that a hard reset would solve the problem. Sure enough, one simple hard reset later and the problem was solved.
To perform a hard reset hold down the top button and home button simultaneously and about 10 seconds. Note that this is also how you power the phone off. When the "Slide to power off" slider appears, just keep holding the buttons down and pretty soon you'll see the Apple that indicates the iPhone is reseting.
I didn't lose any data--a hard reset doesn't reset the Flash memory.
So, like most problems in computers, rebooting does wonders.
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Social Networks, eGovernment, and the iPhone
This weeks' Technometria podcast is a little unusual. Due to a scheduling problem on my part, it started out with Scott and I discussing his recent explorations on Ning. At one point we start talking about how social networks might work in government. I happened to notice that Dave Fletcher, the Chief Technology Officer for Utah, was online and so I asked him if he could join us. He dialed in and we had a good conversations. Naturally, we also discussed the iPhone since it was just days after I'd gotten mine.
Also, be sure to check out the IEEE Spectrum Radio podcast I posted Wednesday. In addition to some interesting discussions about advances in battery technology, there's a short segment on Utopia, the largest municipal fiber project in the US, and, lucky for me, its available in my neighborhood.
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July 11, 2007
Adding Summaries to the Top Ten
Some folks have been asking for more information about the top ten shows list I publish each month for IT Conversations. I modified my script to print out that information and republished the list for June. I like doing this since it gives me an excuse to code--something I don't get to do enough of lately. So, if you have suggestion, feel free to make them.
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Safari Resetting (Crashing) on iPhone
Has any one else experienced Safari resetting or crashing on their iPhone. Just the last few days this has happened to me several times. I'm trying to figure out if it's a Web site I go to, how I'm using Safari (quite a few pages open at once), the network I'm on (don't think so), or something else. I hope Apple's getting the crash reports from me and others.
Meanwhile, Marc Hedlund has some praise and scorn for the iPhone.
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July 10, 2007
Blending the iPhone
If you've ever wanted to see the inside of an iPhone, then this video of an iPhone in a blender is for you. Or...maybe not.
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Watching Bad Sinatra
 Steve Gillmor on Bad Sinatra (click to enlarge) |
I'm watching the first edition of Bad Sinatra, Steve Gillmor's new video show.
The show starts with Steve walking into Marc Benioff's office.
There are a few segments with Dan Farber. I love watching Steve and Dan argue. They're like an old married couple. At one point Dan's walking away and Steve says "Nice man. It's amazing how someone so nice can be so wrong."
He talked to ;a href="http://scobleizer.com/">Scoble for a while at the Web 2.0 Expo when Scoble was doing his "Dork TV" bit.
He spends some time with Doc Searls just riffing. He ends by asking Marc Benioff about the iPhone.
I chuckled for 30 minutes. The only disappointment was that the links Steve added for iPhone and Apple TV didn't work for me. I'd love to have watched it relaxing in the bedroom instead of in my office. Next time maybe...
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My Media Consumption Diet
Ian Forrester tagged me on a meme to share my media consumption diet. So here's my diet:
Web: I'm on the Web all the time. Even more now that I've got an iPhone. I typically have a dozen tabs open on my browser from various things I'm looking at on any given day. I used to have over 100 feeds on my news reader (NetNewsWire or Google Reader depending on my mood), but I've whittled that down to around 40 by getting rid of things I hardly ever read in detail.
I used to use Firefox exclusively, but swung back to Safari when version 3 came out. I miss some things about Firefox (especially Sxipper), but find Safari to be fast and reliable. It also has the advantage of syncing bookmarks with my iPhone.
Communication: I have an iPhone. I like it, but I don't actually like talking on any phone very much.
I use IM a lot--I like it because it less disruptive to me and the person I want to talk to than a phone. iChat is my IM client. I use Skype more as an IM service than a VoIP service to reach people not on AIM.
I get too much email--even after the Spam is thrown out. Email is becoming less reliable and thus less important to me. Reliability is hurt by Spam filters all throughout the system. Many times important messages to me or from me end up undelivered.
Podcasts: As Executive Producer, I listen to everything on IT Conversations. As a consequence, I don't have the time to listen to much else.
Music: I listen to a lot of music from the 60's and 70's. Sometimes my 18 year old son will introduce me to something newer that I like (like Guster). I also like classical music and buy a fair amount of that. I buy music from Amazon and iTunes, the latter less than the former.
TV: I watch (usually mediated by Tivo) the evening news, NOVA, New Yankee Workshop, and not much else. I used to enjoy The Apprentice, but not so much anymore. My wife and I are big Lost fans, but we watch it on DVD. I haven't gotten into the habit of buying any other TV shows yet.
Movies: I'll watch anything from Pixar. :-) I subscribe to Netflix and we watch a movie every couple of weeks. We go out to the theater once in a while--when we need the break.
Magazines: Wired, Bicycling, National Geographic, Macworld, and Communications of the ACM.
Newspapers: Never in print--always online.
Books: I read a lot of books. One or more per week. I love fiction--usually spy or legal thrillers. I also have a healthy diet of non-fiction books. My interests run to history, biography, and business. I buy and use a fair number of technical books without really reading them.
Games: Occasionally I play Sudoku on my tablet while I'm waiting for something. I like chess and board games more than video games.
My turn to tag some folks:
Dave Fletcher, Scott Lemon, Jeff Barr, Doug Kaye, and Paul Allen.
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July 9, 2007
Reading News on the iPhone
Before the iPhone was released last week, news of an RSS reader for the iPhone started showing up. If you go to http://reader.mac.com/ with a browser, you see the message "This application can only be viewed using the iPhone." Visting it with an iPhone just shows the message "type an RSS URL into your browser" or something like that.
I thought "that's lame--they built a whole Web site to tell me to type a URL into by toolbar?" But when you do, the browser automatically redirects to reader.mac.com and displays the RSS as a nice iPhone formated screen. It's not a real news reader--no "mark as read," no aggregate views, an so on, but it's a convenient way to view an RSS feed.
At first, I thought that the news reader was downloading some Javascript that persistently monitored the return messages for every HTTP request and intercepted any responses with a specific content type to redirect to reader.mac.com. That was hurting my head.
Today I got my hands on an iPhone that had never been to reader.mac.com and it exhibited the same behavior--meaning that the intercept and redirect it built into Safari on the iPhone.
I'm disappointed that I have no control over the behavior. Apple's reader it limited. What if someone comes out with a better one? I'm stuck with Apple because they control Safari.
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I'll Be at Utah Open Source Conference 2007
I've received word that my proposal to give a tutorial on user-centric identity technologies at this year's Utah Open Source Conference has been accepted. I'm excited to be able to participate. I don't know what day I'll be presenting yet.
As an aside, I know that conference is still still looking for sponsors, so if your company would like to tap into the open source community in Utah, check it out.
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Michael Yon On Iraq
A friend emailed me a link to Michael Yon's Online Magazine, a singularly unimaginative name that belies the real reporting that's contained in his dispatches and photos from the front lines in Iraq. He sees things many journalists seem to miss because he sticks around after things have gone boom and the TV crews have packed up and moved on to the next flash point.
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Being Extraordinary
One of my favorite morning rituals in the summer is to take my laptop and breakfast out on the patio in the mornings and sit in the shade, while it's still cool, while I eat and catch up on the news.
This morning, when I saw that Britt had posted a long essay on flying, fighter pilots, and being extraordinary, I knew I had my morning reading.
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July 6, 2007
Speaking With Simon Phipps
This week, I posted the Technometria podcast with Simon Phipps. Simon is the Chief Open Source Officer at Sun. I've followed Simon's blog for years. He's one of the people I look to when I want to understand the subtleties of happenings in the open source world. I enjoyed the discussion very much and hope you enjoy it too.
Be sure to listen to the end for the discussion of Lego ice cube trays.
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Top Ten IT Conversations Shows for June 2007
Note: Several people asked (in comments) for summaries of the programs. I've modified the program I use to generate this list to add summaries. So, here's the same list with summaries).
Here are the top ten most downloaded shows from IT Conversations for June 2007 along with their ratings. You'll note that an interview with Dave Weinberger is the first and eighth entries--he's doubly popular! Moira and I both interviewed him--you'll probably enjoy both as their very different interviews.
- David Weinberger - Tech Nation (Rating: 3.47)
David Weinberger, author of the "Cluetrain Manifesto" speaks with Dr. Moira Gunn about the emerging Internet. His message? "Everything is Miscellaneous ... The Power of the Digital Disorder."
- Dr. Karoly Nikolich - BioTech Nation (Rating: 3.12)
As part of the Tech Nation series on neuroscience, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Karoly Nikolich, the Executive Director of the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford. They talk about what DNA tells us about our brains.
- Chet Haase - Technometria: What's New in Java (Rating: 3.50)
In his work with Sun Microsystems, Chet Haase is in a unique position to discuss the current status of Java. Co-author of an upcoming book on developing desktop Java effects, he joins Phil, Scott, and Ben to talk about how Sun is working on improvements to the consumer Java client. He also reviews the company's applet strategy. The group evaluates the status of JavaFX scripting as well. The conversation is technical in nature, but interesting in its review of an important tool in online technology.
- Greg Ness - Technometria: Virtualization and Security (Rating: 3.40)
In a previous episode of Technometria, Bogamil Bolgansky of VMWare gave a great overview of the concept of virtualization and how it is becoming more popular in enterprises. Now, Greg Ness of Blue Lane Technologies joins Phil and Scott to discuss the special security issues that virtualization creates. Ness makes it clear that IT professionals must quickly re-learn old habits and reviews the theoretical and technical differences.
- Andrew Keen - Tech Nation (Rating: 3.47)
Despite the hype of social interaction and community as a result of the emerging internet, otherwise known as Web 2.0, there are those who have a contrarian view of how today's internet is killing our culture. Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with author Andrew Keen, who reflects on this trend and his latest book "The Cult of the Amateur."
- Gordon Chang - Tech Nation (Rating: 3.50)
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Asia expert Gordon Chang, about the status of nuclear weapons in Asia - from South Korea to Iran & Pakistan, and even to Afghanistan.
- Jim Greenwood - BioTech Nation (No rating yet)
Dr. Moira Gunn and David Ewing Duncan report from the international BIO conference. There, they speak with a Parkinson's patient who's undergone an innovative new procedure, and do a conference wrap-up with BIO president, Jim Greenwood.
- David Weinberger - Technometria: Everything is Miscellaneous (Rating: 3.88)
In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. He joins Phil, Scott, and Ben to discuss the book and how new methods of organization are changing how information is used. He shows how by "going miscellaneous," anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life.
- Leonard Richardson, Sam Ruby - Jon Udell's Interviews with Innovators (Rating: 3.06)
Although Roy Fielding's now-infamous Ph.D. thesis popularized the term REST - otherwise known as Representational State Transfer - and defined its principles, there hasn't been a practical guide to the application of those principles. A new book by Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby, "RESTful Web Services," meets that need. In this Conversation with Innovators, the authors discuss what those principles are, and how to apply then in ways that make the programmable Web better - that is, "more uniform, better structured, and using the features of HTTP to greatest advantage."
- Sara Ulius-Sabel - Useful, Usable and Desirable (Rating: 3.67)
Whirlpool Corporation is a global manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances. Sara Ulius-Sabel, Metrics Manager for the company, presents a glimpse into Whirlpool's product development process through the lens of designing "Useful, Usable, and Desirable" products. She presents examples of how the company creates their appliances and describes design metrics as one of the tools that Whirlpool uses to drive their multi-brand portfolio.
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July 3, 2007
Mobile Blogging
A blog post from the iPhone. Just to prove I can. Doing a lot of HTML this way would be tough.
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July 2, 2007
iPhone First Impressions
 Waiting for the iPhone in SLC at the Apple store (click to enlarge) |
A little less than a year ago, I asked "what mobile device should I buy?" I received a lot of good advice on different phones, but in the end decided that nothing was quite right. I've had my iPhone for about 60 hours now. For the most part, I've been pretty amazed. Apple set a very high bar and they delivered. Count me as an unabashed fan.
When I was waiting in line on Friday, Paul Beebe from the SL Tribune was wandering around talking to people. I chatted with him for a while and ended up getting quoted:
High temperatures didn't dissuade, Phil Windley, a Brigham Young University computer science professor and former chief information officer for the state of Utah.
"I think it's kind of fun to do this," Windley said. "I could have waited until Monday, but it seemed like something fun to do."
Though Windley thinks the iPhone is the first handheld computer done completely right, he won't be surprised if it has a few bugs that need to be worked out.
"It will probably disappoint me in some way. But that will give [Apple] an opportunity to sell me another one later," he said.From Salt Lake Tribune - The wait is over -- Apple's iPhone is here
Referenced Mon Jul 02 2007 10:06:47 GMT-0600 (MDT)
I didn't actually say I thought was done "completely right." I said that from what I'd seen, it behaved like you'd expect an integrated mobile device to behave--unlike everything that's come before. Of course, that's not a very easy quote to deal with.
So, what do I think after 60 hours? Here, in no particular order, are some of me thoughts so far:
The screen is big, bright, and beautiful. Even in bright sunlight it was usable.
The integration of various applications is a breath of fresh air.
Syncing works fine. The iTunes based syncing system works flawlessly and got all my data on the iPhone without any problems. Lots of choices on what gets synced and how. I like that the phone starts up iPhoto to transfer my pictures from the phone to my computer.
As reported you have to activate the phone. When you start it up is says "activate me" and won't do anything until that is done. Right now, I'm not sure that's such a big deal since I can't imagine too many people will pay $600 for what's essentially a fancy iPod with a Wi-Fi browser without service. But as they age, I think a lot of people might want that feature.
My activation went very smoothly. There've been reports of significant problems with activation by lots of people. I didn't have any--in a few minutes I was up and running. I couldn't transfer the number from my old phone since it's on a corporate account. I'm still trying to get that straightened out.
PDFs work--as long as they're small and you won't want them later. The PDF browser works find, but lacks controls for skipping pages, viewing thumbnails, and so on. So, if you get a PDF with a few pages as an attachment, it works great, but if you want to view a document with dozens of pages, navigating is a real pain. Also, there's no please to store it but as an attachment to an email, so getting to it later might not be very convenient.
Typing was surprisingly easy. Let's be clear: a screen-based keyboard with no tactile feedback won't ever be as good as a real keyboard. That said, I'll gladly make the tradeoff of a screen-based keyboard for a larger screen as long as it works reasonably well and the iPhone keyboard exceeded my expectations. I've been practicing a little, but I can type with two thumbs without too many errors. The auto correction works very well.
Wi-Fi hotspots work great. The iPhone finds Wi-Fi hotspots and attaches to one's you've signed into before without fanfare. When I'm home, the iPhone uses Wi-Fi instead of EDGE and when I step outside, it switches to EDGE seamlessly. Just want you'd want.
Speaking of EDGE, it is slow, but it's usable. For the most part, I didn't feel hampered by EDGE's speed. The one notable exception was trying to show off the YouTube feature when you're not in a hotspot.
Browsing works surprisingly given the relatively small screen. The iPhone zooms in on individual sections of the page by intelligently looking at the HTML structure. Pages that have narrow columns fare better, but dragging most pages around to get to what you want isn't a big deal. The one exception: fixed width formatted text that's too wide is very difficult to deal with on an iPhone.
My charge lasted all day and then some. The battery life seems to be more than good enough for the kind of use I made of the phone. I used the browser and SMS a lot. I talked more than usual.
I like the "vibrate switch." This is a small thing, but I love phones with a dedicated switch to put the phone in vibrate mode. Much nicer than dealing with 15 menus when you go into a meeting.
Bluetooth is a disappointment. Using the Bluetooth to connect to my headset worked fine. The lack of A2DP support for wireless stereo headphones is a real let down. What's more the phone shows no services. You can pair it with your Macbook, but there's nothing you can do with it. If Apple is going to make computers and phones, I expect some major CTI (computer-telephone integration) as a result. I've been a huge fan of BluePhoneElite and Salling Clicker since I got my first TiBook. I don't really want to take a step backward with the iPhone.
ATT is the weak link in this partnership. I've mentioned the activation problems that many had. Beyond that, going to the ATT account site over the weekend to set up auto pay and other features on my account was a jarring disconnect from the smooth, integrated experience of the iPhone.
Lots of iPod accessories don't work. Don't expect your iPod accessories to work with your new iPhone. My Shure EC2 earbuds don't fit in the recessed hole where the plug is. (Shure's promising an iPhone accessory that includes a mic in August.) My Monster FM modulator that I use to play my iPod in the car will charge the iPhone, but it won't play music.
No cut and paste. There's been a few times I wanted to cut and paste some text. As far as I can tell, there's no way to do that.
My biggest concern was something that kept nagging at me all weekend. Being a geek, I was constantly thinking of cool things to do with an iPhone that it doesn't do right now. Without developer access, will it be expandable enough? I'm on record saying that browser apps could be good enough. Maybe they will. I use GooToDo, for example as my ToDo list and it works fine on the iPhone (although some tweaking of sizes would make it much better). The biggest problem I've come across so far is using the bookmarks interface as the way I browse applications.
Until it's programmable, it's a very nice, very slick, extremely fun Web appliance. But, it's not a computer.
There's still lots to play with. I haven't opened Word or Excel docs on it yet. I want to play with Google Reader and Google Docs. I'll be sure to post anything that surprises me. The iPhone is not the perfect device. Still, it's "insanely cool."