mobrec

So
Lots of fine work popping up lately regarding responsive design and the growing use of HTML5 to present not only content, but a rich, interactive user experience.

Take for example the new Boston Globe site. To get the full impact of the site, view it on as many different devices and orientations as you can and not how it fluidly adjusts to each of them. A another key aspect of this site is that they took a mobile first stance with the design so things are as lean as possible – a refreshing change from the 'flash just because we can' presentation that is all to common today. ReadWriteWeb has a behind the scenes look at the site design.

SlideShare is another site that has moved to HTML5 to provide a richer, cross-platform experience for sharing slide decks, videos and other business documents. Another advantage of moving to HTML5 is that the site renders 30 percent faster than the previous Flash-based version. TechCrunch has more on the changes at SlideShare:

Boutelle says SlideShare continues to see growing engagement, and expects the HTML5 platform to increase usage as well. He explains that HTML5 made sense because the company wanted a lightweight experience for users and wanted documents, fonts, and more to look the same on various browser types. As we mentioned above, this is SlideShare’s first mobile presence and currently the startup doesn’t have any plans to expand to native apps. “We’re doubling down on HTML5 and making this better and bette so it works for everybody,” says Boutelle.

And, yes, even Facebook has been talking recently about how they are looking to HTML5 to avoid having to develop and maintain four different code bases across their desktop and various mobile platforms.

HTML5 is probably the way that we should have done it. This is the way we get to do it now because HTML5 has changed so much under our feet. The initial attempt at building a hybrid application, there were certain things in HTML5 that weren't ready yet and we said forget it, we are going to keep moving forward. The initial attempt to defer certain things to native rendering and native handling that really could be better handled by something like HTML5 and with in-browser technology – device access, good native frameworks and application and display code.

With all of this movement in the industry, why are corporate developers largely ignoring HTML5? The same changes that exist in the consumer markets are already starting to appear inside the corporate firewall – tablet and mobile interactions with corporate systems. Additionally, customers are going to start expecting, if not demanding, that corporate web sites look and behave in a responsive way regardless of what device they are using to access them. These pressures are going to force a change in development toolkits and approaches for businesses to stay competitive and relevant.

So
Sitting here on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I am trying to collect my thoughts on the event and what followed. In summary, the sentiment seems to be somewhere between disgust and disappointment.

As for the events of the day I'll leave it at vile and pointless. What followed is equally disturbing and even more damaging to America.

Except for the, what was it?, five or seven days after 9/11 when it felt like the entire country changed; people were looking out for each other; palpably kinder and more polite; the pace of things sort of felt like they even slowed down a bit.

Then, before too long, we were in a race to the bottom that continues to this day. The repugnant right wing predictably used the event to drive their agenda to destroy America. Fueled by their own 24 hour propaganda TV channel and countless shout radio outlets, they began to get the dim witted 'educated' on their agenda. A sickening 8 years was spent watching a budget surplus turned into a huge deficit. Several trillion dollar wars, hundreds of billions of dollars unaccounted for in the process, hundreds of billions more dollars wasted on 'security theater', Abu Graib, Black Water running rough shod over what was once a sovereign country, the overt racism of the Katrina response, tax cuts for the ultra wealthy while the middle class and poor shoulder more of the tax burden, deregulation turning Wall Street into a casino leading to another bout of corporate welfare, the religious-right's war on science and education, the right openly advocating assassinating political figures simply because they have a different point of view (and nearly succeeding in the case of Gabby Giffords) and the list goes on and on.

Now we are at the point that the Tea Baggers, backed by the aforementioned propaganda machine, leap from one canard to another to try to disassemble the social security net, collective bargaining and medical reforms. The latest misdirection swirling around a suddenly urgent need to cut the deficit. No one calls them out for being in favor for all of the Bush regime policies that created the deficit – such is the state of 'journalism' in this country.

So instead of continuing with that post-9/11 sentiment of caring about and for each other and trying to make the best of every situation, America has chosen instead to become a banana republic where the ultra wealthy become more rich and the rest of us can just fend for ourselves. You don't have to squint too hard to see that the Tea Baggers are nothing but the stooges of the likes of the Koch brothers, with the stooges willfully acting against their own best interests, screwing the middle class and the poor – the very people who account for 70% of the US economy; that is, the people who actually spend their money.

And what about those wars? I saw a bumper sticker recently that read “My country invaded Iraq and all I got was this expensive gasoline”. Indeed. And with the changes coming from the 'Arab Spring' they seem to be making the changes for themselves fairly successfully. One might even wonder if those Arab countries value Democracy more than right-wing America does?

If you have read this far and lean to the right (hard to imagine), I can almost hear you shouting 'you hate America!', 'communist!', 'socialist!' or whatever is in vogue on shout radio these days. No, it is more like watching a good friend become addicted to drink or drugs – you recognize the good person they were before while watching them slip further and further down. It is painful and unsettling.

But what to do? If an event as world shaking as 9/11 can't move Americans to turn away from greed, thugishness and carelessness, what can? I hope that, as a nation, we can find that thing. And soon.

So
According to this post there is going to be a 13 part update to the original Cosmos TV show that featured Carl Sagan. And, in my opinion, they picked the perfect host: Neil deGrasse Tyson. Mr Tyson is extremely intelligent, articulate and engaging when speaking about science (or most anything, come to think of it). I am sure they will do a much better job with the CGI than what was possible with the tech available in the early days of blue screens and video.

I thoroughly enjoyed the original when I was growing up and snagged the series when it because available on DVD. My daughter is even a bit of a fan.

The only downside to this is having to wait until 2013 to see the new show.

So
With all the predictability of a rocket launch, the Apple fanboys were a-bloggin' when the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was released in mid-June. It was pretty evident from the posts that they had not even bothered to checkout the device first hand – they just 'knew' that the iPad was better. It was also amusing to note that the things that Apple touts for its own products 'don't matter' when a competitor has a more favorable stat.

Take, for example, the fact that the Tab is thinner – 'doesn't matter, doesn't matter' goes the fan boy chorus. Hmm, I think back to the most recent releases of the iPod, iPhone and iPad – one of the first things that Apple touted about each was that it 'only x millimeters thick' or 'x millimeters smaller than y'. In reality, is someone going to make a buying decision solely on a few millimeters of size difference? Probably not.

Another difference that was shouted down was the true widescreen format of the device. The upside of this is that when you watch video on the Tab it doesn't get clipped like it does on the iPad. This was attacked as being 'weird', 'awkward', and even 'unusable' by the fan boys. Personally, I find it quite convenient and easy to use. The device feels well balanced and easy to hold in all orientations.

Next the plastic back plate on the Tab was declared 'cheap' and 'shoddy' by the Apple fans because the back of the iPad is metal. My experience with the Tab vs iPad on this is that the subtle give of the plastic backing makes me feel like I have a good grip on the Tab versus the sometimes slippery feeling of the iPad's metallic back. Also the plastic is not quite the fingerprint/smudge magnet that the iPad is.

Now that we have discussed some of the superficial bits, let's talk about the things that really set the two apart and that is the OS and the software.

One of the things that absolutely drove me nuts every time I tried to use my wife's iPad was how modal it is. Reminded me of the 'good ole days' of DOS. Need to write a doc? Open a word processor. Need to crunch some numbers? Close the word processor and open a spreadsheet. Yuck. It is sort of amazing to me that with all of the work that Apple has done with widgets in Dashboard that the concept hasn't carried over to the iPad. Well, it has with the Galaxy Tab, and I am loving it. I can drop widgets on the screen and in one view I can see gMail, Twitter, Facebook and the current weather without having to cycle through apps to get the latest updates. That is a huge win for the Tab.

Notifications are subtle and convenient on Android versus annoying and in-your-face on the iPad. Notifications appear on the bottom right of the screen where I can get the details on them (and dismiss them) when I want. The iPad notifications remind me of the Windows “Abort, Retry, Cancel” dialog boxes of years past that break the flow of what you are trying to accomplish at the moment.

The Android Market is much less painful than it's Apple counterpart. I never understood why it was important to hurl me out of the Apple app store every single time I selected an app to install. This just meant that I had to swipe my way back to the app store, open it back up and find the next app I wanted to try out so I could again be hurled out to some random screen. With Android, I select an app, it installs in the background and I can continue browsing for additional apps or close out of the Market when I want.

The browsing experience on the Galaxy Tab is fast, clean and overall more productive. One of my favorite features is real tabbed browsing on the Tab, not the modal screen-swap browsing on the iPad. Having Flash available is nice to have, but not essential for my needs. Still, it is better to have it and not need it than otherwise.

Another huge win is the inherent openness of the Android operating system. When I am on the web I am attending to multiple channels (Twitter, browsing, RSS, Evernote, blogs) so I am constantly shifting and saving things from one channel to another or saving things for later review. This is dead simple on the Galaxy Tab because most every application has a 'Share' menu option in it. So if I see an interesting link on Twitter I can easily view the full page (without having to leave Plume no less!) and then 'Share' it with Evernote or gMail or whatever I want without awkward copy and paste and opening and closing of applications. Android 3.1 on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 just works and works the way that I want to not the way some engineer in Cupertino thinks I should work.

So
So the answer to the Faux News-esque Has Apple's iPad finally killed the Netbook? question is a firm NO. It is right there in paragraph four:

But the real reason Netbooks have fallen by the wayside is that they failed to evolve. After the first couple of generations, Netbooks settled into a comfortable niche of a 10.1-inch display, 1GB to 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and Windows (first XP, then Windows 7 Starter or Home Premium). You could get this basic combo for as little as $299, but some companies would charge more for upgrades such as nicer designs, rugged bodies, 3G antennas, or occasionally a higher-resolution display. But performance-wise, you'd usually be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a $299 Netbook and a $450 one.

Here is another stunning insight:

Tablets, on the other hand, have been growing in reader interest since the iPad launch (with a few ups and downs along the way), and is 56 percent higher in April 2011 than it was one year before.

So, interest in tablets has been growing since the first viable one was introduced. Shocked, shocked I am that there wasn't more interest in tablets before they were actually being sold. I bet there was a similar uptick in iPods after they were introduced!

So
This is a great story about a guy in Copenhagen who had his bike stolen and through the power of social media and the interwebs he got it back. And what a great reward for the guy who found it for him!

So
This post titled Don't Mimic Real-World Interfaces really resonated with me and reminded me of a post that I had done a while ago titled Evolution Of The Mobile Experience.

There have always been those few apps that insist on looking like their physical, real world, equivalent. Calculator apps, date books, calendars, note taking apps, “stickies” — you know what I am talking about. Despite there being better options out there, better ways of displaying the data, designers stick with the known representation of the tool.

Now, though, Apple is taking it too far.

If you have seen any of the screenshots linked across the web about the new iCal interface you know what I am talking about. If you haven’t seen those, iCal is looking a lot like it does on the iPad right now in Lion’s developer preview. It’s ugly, and we should be way past this style by now.

Ugly and harder to use than it should be. Designers need to focus on how to allow the user to fluidly access and manipulate their data not slavishly stick to the limitations of physical items.

Another dimension of this is how poorly developers/designers have approached the touch interface. The industry seems to be mired in button-driven-pull-a-menu-to-do-anything paradigm. Interfaces really need to take better advantage of long-tap context options and gestures to make the interactions more fluid. This is one of the things that drives me bonkers about the iPad – it is so modal; I have to close one app to do something in another. I guess I have gotten used to how easy it is in Android to just share data between apps without having to change apps.

Speaking of Android apps, I think that Feedly is the first really usable news reader that I have encountered on Android. I subscribe to a lot of feeds and that seems to be the death of most readers on mobile devices because the developers thought it would be a good idea to download all your feed updates at once. This typically results in the app going away for a long time. Feedly does it more on demand. And they are clever about using gestures in the app – swipe down and to the left and I have marked that page of articles read and moved on to the next. Brilliant. Much better than 'pull menu, select mark read, select next page, close menu' annoyance of other apps.

So
I spent a little time this morning browsing the blogs of people who live in downtown Cincinnati. After about 10 minutes I had to stop. Why do they all seem so bitter and angry? On one hand, they spent a fair amount of time talking about how great it is to live downtown, then turn and belittle people who come down from the (evil) suburbs to partake of the urban greatness. Leaves me wondering why I should hang out downtown with such cliquish bitter crowd.

They also seem to love to hate on people who have chosen to live in the 'burbs (apparently all they we do is drive SUVs and go to the mall). We have nothing entertaining to do, nothing interesting to eat and nothing worthy to see. Look, downtown folks, it is all about choices; I made mine and you made yours – it doesn't make either one of us right or wrong.

Does the anger and bitterness come from a perceived lack of awe at the downtown living decision? Should there be weekly articles in the local press about how wonderful the people who live downtown are? Do they not feel vindicated by their decision, don't feel revered enough that they chose to live downtown? And where is the line? I am sure it exists. That is, the line beyond which you are no longer 'downtown' enough to be part of the in-crowd. Yikes, now I am doing it to. Downtown folks, here is what I have for you: respect. Care to share?

Don't get me wrong, I would love to live downtown; especially if I worked downtown. But I don't. I work in the evil suburbs (Blue Ash) and live in the even more evil exurbs (Union Township). I enjoy being able to commute to work on my Vespa. I enjoy being a few miles from the fantastic Little Miami Bike trail; my wife and I love to cycle down to Loveland for brunch on sunny Sundays. I am sure I enjoy a pint at the Brazenhead just as much as I would at the Lackman. I like that my daughter has a fantastic school system to attend. I enjoy having the largest YMCA in the country a few mile from my home. I enjoy not being able to see my neighbor's houses. I enjoy having a large vegetable garden that feeds us through part of the year. Besides, looking at what condos are going for downtown I would pay about twice as much for what amounts to a two bedroom apartment as I paid for my three bedroom house on five acres of land here in the heart of evil-dom.

Technorati Tags: cincinnati, dubious, ideas, local

So
I was a little surprised to see Cincinnati ranked so high as it is in some ways such a backwater in other regards. Still, it is good to see the city get even an occasional positive mention. I have certainly been doing my small part in the last 10 years to contribute to Cincy online presence.

Technorati Tags: cincinnati, online, rankings, socialmedia

So
Twitter recently turned 5. Here is the history of Twitter, told in a Ken Burns style.

Sadly, this is an accurate depiction of the depth and thoughtfulness of journalism today.

Technorati Tags: fun, history, humor, twitter, video