Apple and Google: Strange Bedfellows?

Love him or hate him, but there's no denying that he writes very interesting stuff. "Robert X. Cringely" on the Google - Apple collaboration.

I wrote many years ago that the best start-ups are composed of symbiotic combinations of hippies and nerds. Hippies have the grand vision while nerds mind the details. Each is less without the other. Think of Jobs and Woz in 1976 and now Jobs and Schmidt (or, more properly, Apple and Google) in 2007. Apple is driven by design, which is entirely subjective, even emotional, while Google is driven by the almighty algorithm, which is only following orders

Simple Man

One of the best movie opening songs I've heard. From the Movie Reign Over Me

Google in Black - Lights out SF

I just finished installing Gutsy and was configuring Compiz when I saw my google homepage turned into this:


Click for the full screenshot

It almost threw me off because I was actually having a hard time getting compiz right down to the pixel and I knew that an inverted display (affecting just my browser) means another compiz trouble to look into.

I didn't notice at first that it's actually an awareness campaign promoting Lights Out SF, a San Francisco CA - wide, conservation event encouraging people to turn their lights off for an hour (among other things). Honestly, what really caught my eye is the black Google home page, but hey, if like what it did to me, it makes billions people aware of environmental events like Lights Out SF, then it's a good effort. :)

The black google really looks neat, and I'm sure the people behind Blackle will be very happy. ;)

OMG SDK!

The other night Sir Ariel and I went down to Figaro (for the wifi) from the office to install some apps on his iPod Touch. I't's unbelievable to see the progress the iPhone / iPod Touch hackers has made in taking advantage of the Apple super-device as a development platform. But a day before that, we first had "jailbreak" the Touch before we were able to install the apps.

Come next year though, the jailbreak part will be unnecessary. Steve Jobs just announced that Apple will be releasing the iPhone / iPod Touch SDK in February.

Also, check out the updated Leopard page in Apple.com they put in a lot of cool stuff, and the 300+ new Leopard features is a good place to mine information about the upcoming OS X release.

On the other news, I almost wet my pants.

First Hand Encounter with the iPod Touch

(I mistaken referred to Jonathan Ives, Apple's Senior VP of Industrial Design as John. Updated to correct this error)

My Boss finally gave in after years of putting off his iPod purchase, but he pretty well made up for it in kick-ass-ness. Last Tuesday he got his kick-ass iPod Touch and showed it to our team as soon as he came in to the office (Yup, he still came.hehe. Peace Sir! )

Anyway, just some thoughts. When it comes to user interfaces, Apple is know for two things: something simple, and something flashy (and yet still simple). The success of the original, or should I say classic iPod, can be attributed to the first: Apple was able to make an interface so simple that almost anyone can use it without difficulties.

In fact, the classic iPod line's UI simplicity somehow masks the enormous talents of Apple's engineering, UI and industrial designers (hail to the king Jon Ives) in creating it.

As you would have probably guessed already, for this post, the second attribute of being flashy (and yet still simple) attribute will be all about the iPod Touch (and the iPhone).

The iPod Touch (and its iPhone sibling) has the slickest UI available in any device available in the market today, bar none. It's so easy to use because its really simple that things behave as you expect them to behave, and it's so fun to use because Apple has made it flashy enough that you actually see visual feedback on what you're doing with the interface in the classic apple taste. Okay, I will just stop trying to describe it here because as the cliche goes, words doesn't do justice.

Mutating Pictures

A population of 1,000 random pictures each, created in October 2007. You allow the fittest pictures to survive. The higher your rating for a pic the more mutated offspring it produces.

My Feed

Here's the thing. I may hardly find time nowadays to sit down and write for this blog, but I'm mostly active in other things online, specially in del.icio.us. If you have tried "stalking" someone either thru his / her twitter updates, delicious bookmarks, 30boxes calendar, google calendar, or any other service that offers feeds for subscription for that matter (who doesn't, at this point in Internet time?) you'll realize that it actually gives you more idea about what someone is currently up to. :) Believe me when I say that this not just a lame excuse for my blog drought. As I said, I'd really like to give more time for this blog. :) (hopefully sooner than later)

I recently joined friendfeed, the new startup of Paul Bunchheit (creator of gmail, and the google "don't be evil" motto) that basically lets you subscribe to other people's feeds. You add services (e.g. flickr, twitter, google reader, blog) to your own friendfeed feed, and people subscribed to that friendfeed gets updates about your services feeds.

Still with me? Okay, so here's my friendfeed url: http://friendfeed.com/markg, and heres' the atom feed. Technically anyone can do this using readily available tools such as google reader, yahoo pipes, or feedburner, but since i got lucky to snag an invite for friendfeed, i don't have to do the dirty work anymore.

So, at the risk of sounding like an egotistical bastard, if you want to get updates about me or what I do online (hah, no pr0n, since i would never dare share my google web history) or sometimes, even offline, and if you're already subscribe to this blog's feed anyway, Add my friend feed to your favorite reader.

I've been dying to post here

But this is all that I came up with.

Gnome 2.20 Released

Improvements are nowhere near revolutionary, but I like how Gnome consistently improves the desktop experience and simplicity. Two particular "minor" improvements caught my attention:

1. Tomboy notes synchronization - I swear by this cool app to manage all the "stuff" and information that needs to be handy when I'm in the computer, and making it available across all the computers I use through synchronization is a big PLUS. I am definitely looking forward to this in Gutsy...
2. This is a personal pet peeve. Gnome's window list (or the task bar in the Windows world) has this annoying "bug" that resizes the width of its buttons (corresponding to open applications) when the length of the window title resizes. It's much easier to see, so I'll try to post a screencast of this later, but the most important thing is that IT'S FIXED NOW! Sa wakas...

For a complete low-down on what's coming, go to their (tasty) release notes: But then again, if you're a gnome fan then you've probably read that already, and if you're not, you probably don't kare at all. :p peace.

A live cd to try the new features out is coming! I heard someone's got a good Internet connection at their office ... nuninuninu

Google Presentation App

It just keeps getting better. Google Docs (formerly docs and spreadsheets) has now a presentation web app. See official blog post here and see initial review here.`

Prince Caspian

Desktop Brag...errr Share

(Updated Screenshot)

Of course, this is not my working settings, (who can work with transparent desktops*?) But this is just a glimpse of the things you can do with a 3D linux desktop (well... besides putting off the other things that you need to do)

*notice the back view of the movie player on the right desktop and firefox on the back desktop.

New iPods Released: Shuffle, Nano, Classic and Touch

New iPods. I know some of you just want to go right in to the juicy details: head right to Apple.com.

Here's a quick review of what transpired at 1:00 am today.

• Lots of new colors for the iPod Shuffle, including (red); same form factor, same memory sizes. As always, excellent entry point to the iPod line.
• iPod Nano major upgrade: all-metal, new colors, now plays videos and games, features cover flow. Fatty nano! (that has to be said)
• Original iPod form factor is now called iPod Classic. New all-metal enclosure, two colors: ash gray and black; thinner than ever, and still the iPod with the largest storage: 80Gig and a whopping 160GB
• iPod Touch. Four words: iPhone without the Phone. Thinner than the iPhone, runs OS X, uses multi-touch interface; has wifi, safari browser, youtube, and other applications. Killer feature: iTunes Wireless Music Store
• $100 $200 price cut on the iPhone 8GB model (they're probably dropping the 4GB one).
  
• iTunes Wireless Music Store: buy music from the iPod touch or iPhone (will be added later through a software upgrade), through your wifi connection. Probably one of the least interesting things for those in countries where Apple Music Store is not operational to start with, but this is one of the biggest (probably bigger than the touch, since it was expected) of all the announcements. This further catapults the iTunes Music Store ahead of its struggling competitors. This is going to be big.
• Very interesting deal with Starbucks: free wifi access for the Wireless iTunes Music store: the app automatically adds a starbucks button to the Music Store that allows you to purchase the song that's currently playing in Starbucks, as well as the 10 most recent tracks.

A "6-pixel" Post

on User interfaces...
I didn't notice when this feature landed on Google Reader, but I like that they added it:

The option to hide the feeds list in Google Reader just got a lot more discoverable. There's now an arrow in the splitter to do that. (before it was just a keyboard shortcut: "U"). This allows you to see more of your feeds when you're reading stuff.

On that note, I remember something I read in Signal vs Noise:

Will Shipley (of Delicious Monster) said:

This is all your app is: a collection of tiny details

As long as you don't forget about the big picture, I couldn't agree more.

(Minor edits on construction and some typographical errors)

The CAPTCHA Thing

CAPTCHA was invented in an effort to fight the war against spamming, and other shady activities that involves bots pretending to be humans. So when this feature was added to blogger's comments, i immediately added it to my blog. I remember getting one or two spam comments before that, so I reasoned that it was perfectly reasonable. Everybody else seemed to have done the same.

But then blogger's captcha started to act up. I haven't really identified the problem, but nowadays when I'm commenting on a blog with CAPTCHA, it's almost always the case that my first attempt to enter the challenge code will fail and I will have to re-enter a new one. It can get really frustrating sometime.

I realized that a CAPTCHA challenge, though trivial to use, (for a human, that is. ;p) poses an irritating usability barrier to a feature that's used very often, such as the blogger comment form. It is perfectly necessary in sign-up pages and other sensitive pages that a user will use once or a few times while using the web service, but beyond that, I think we have to find of a perfect balance between being spam-proof, and being user-friendly. Now in the case of this blog, which is low-traffic, the serious problem of spam is yet to really show up. And frankly I think I can get away without having CAPTCHA in the comments.

So a month ago I removed CAPTCHA from Wandering Geek to make commenting easier and faster. I realize that I'm monitoring my comments anyway (both thru blogger's comments feed, and the comments email notification) so in case any spam gets through, I can easily delete it. Honestly, if it makes things easier for readers, I don't mind doing that.

This is a lesson in designing a user interface: sometimes we think too much about solving an "expected" problem that in doing so we alienate the very people that we are designing the user interface for.

To Some "US Americans"*, P2P Hurts Corn Farmers

The few times that I feel good about what's happening in the Philippines is when I see much much more absurdities happening in other countries.

Take for example the recent scuffle between iTunes and NBC: NBC asked Apple to raise the per-episode price of its tv contents in the iTunes Store. Apple stood firm against it, and NBC went home with the ball, announcing that they're not renewing their contract with Apple.

Discussions on this happenings promted John Gruber to point to a document from NBC in its filing to the US Federal Communications Commission back in June, calling for more regulation of the internet:

Because of our nation’s interlocking economy, two-thirds of the lost earnings and lost jobs are in industries other than motion picture production. For example, in the absence of movie piracy, video retailers would sell and rent more titles. Movie theaters would sell more tickets and popcorn. Corn growers would earn greater profits and buy more farm equipment...

As funny as the argument is, Mr Art Brodsky still dilligently refuted this claim in his post in public knowledge.

On a the same note, Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter research came up with probably the best description of some old-school movie and television executives:

Sometimes I think God put video content guys on the planet to make the music guys look progressive and visionary.

That really made my morning. :)

*Words borrowed from Miss South Carolina.

Introducing the Google Phone

A bold headline by The Boston Globe. But they have a pretty good reason for that.

Cambridge has a chocolate factory, and a Willy Wonka. The chocolate factory is Google's local research lab, located on the seventh floor of a Kendall Square office tower, and the resident Wonka is Rich Miner, a Google executive sometimes described as the company's vice president of wireless but officially a "technical staff member," according to a Google spokesman.

The golden ticket is a chance to see a prototype of Google's new mobile phone, which Miner has shown to a handful of Boston entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, some of whom have signed nondisclosure agreements and some of whom haven't.

Now I'm torn.

Bill Gates Doll

Learned about this site (via Matt Cutts) that lets you "dress up" a variety of dolls. There are a few business personalities there, including Bill gates, which i played around for a while. Anyway, see what I came up with (click on the picture for thecomplete version). :)

Create your own

I know, i know. I should just start working...

Cloud-based Anything

I'm spoiled. My google web history is turned on, my google talk chat history is turned on, and right now i'm really frustrated because i was trying to remember the site of a book fair that connet ( i can use your name here, right? oops, too late. :p ) mentioned but I'm not sure if Yahoo messenger is saving your chat history (in the cloud) so I can't find it right now (I was using pidgin at work when I chatted with her). My google calendar, though lately has been ignored, is still my main calendar. I can't live without del.icio.us (i have learned not to trust my memory too much) to annotate my web browsing, and I can't live without my foxmarks. The list goes on.

The thing is I'm one of those who are really sold out to the idea of putting things (well all that makes sense to put there anyway) in the cloud. Yeah, privacy be damned - frankly I don't worry much about privacy concerns, because 1) I either put things that are private in services whose security I trust, or not put them up at all, and 2) the convenience of easily accessible information very much outweighs the privacy paranoia that seems to plague the mindset of most users and naysayers.

I remember when I was on my way to a job interview more than a month ago. On my way there (around 45 minutes before the appointment), I suddenly realized that I left the index card with address to the building where I'm going and I'm not really sure about its exact location. Knowing that I probably won't have much time left to look around, I was faced with dilemma. I contacted my friends and tried to request them to google the building for me, but almost all of them were either offline or got my message too late. Salvation came from Jason, a good friend at work whom I had to call. I gave him my google password because I'm quite sure that I added the address as a note to my calendar event of the said interview (this was also the first time that he learned that I was moving to another company) . I was in MRT the whole time, and as I look at my trusty (well, used to be anyway) Nokia 1100, i couldn't help but wonder then how things would have been different if my phone was more capable (read: has a web browser).

Anyway I did get to the place on time, but the punch line came at exactly 15 minutes before the interview: my phone (which i was bashing moments before) buzzed with a new SMS message: a notification from my Google calendar giving me every bit of information that I was frantically looking for just minutes ago. I setup my SMS alerts in GooCal and i forgot about it. This is one of the best things about information in the cloud: they can be made accessible through devices other than your internet-connected desktop computer. It may have not worked in the most ideal way (i should've trusted my system more), but in the end, at least for that moment, it paid to have things in the cloud. :)

Pisay Homecoming 2007 on Ustream

Batch 82 has setup a Ustream channel for the upcoming Pisay reunion. Cool... Another reason not to feel too bad about not going. hehe.