mjichael

iOS 7 Wishes

Sat, 11 May 2013 12:51:47 +1000

More or less identical to my wishlist. Some main points are:

Better inter-app communication
Bring Versons to iOS
Automator for iOS
Improve text selection
Revamp auto-correct and suggestions
Background APIs
Improve Notification Center
Improve the App Store
Let users change default apps
Hide Apple apps

A fairly long list, but realistically, until the majority of these issues are addressed, my iPad will never be close to replacing my laptop for getting serious work done.

By far, my biggest issue with iOS is the poor inter-app communication. Alessandro addresses this:

“Open In”, while user-friendly, comes with a major shortcoming: it creates duplicate files.

It is a nightmare trying to keep track of all your latest documents. Documents by Readdle and GoodReader make steps in the right direction, but iOS should be handling this itself, at this stage of the operating system’s maturity. Here is a further discussion.

I guess we’ll just have to wait for WWDC to see whether Apple will fix these flaws…

Curation

Sat, 04 May 2013 14:20:12 +1000

Ken Freedman:

The internet has really changed everything. Now everybody knows about everything immediately. On the other hand there’s so much more available now that it kind of makes the role of being a curator or being a filter even more important.

I definitely agree. I notice that more and more often I turn to curated content for consumption, rather than finding it myself. Eg:

link-list RSS feeds and Digg for articles to read,
Triple J and Pitchfork for what to listen to,
Good Game TV for what to play,
the Totally Rad Show used to be where I turned what to watch, and I’m yet to find a replacement.

I try and limit the number of curators I turn to for each category otherwise it’s easy to get overwhelmed, thus defeating the purpose.

I find turning directly to curators you like is much more enjoyable than subscribing to everything you’ve ever been interested in, on every social platform there is, and trying to find the good stuff yourself.

The next generation of Instapaper – Marco.org

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:45:20 +1000

The next generation of Instapaper – Marco.org:

I’m happy to announce that I’ve sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. We’ve structured the deal with Instapaper’s health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff, and develop it further.

This is exciting! Betaworks have shown they care about their acquisitions. I love what they did with Digg and I use it more now than ever before. Combine this proof of talent and their RSS reader in the works, and we might have something very special indeed.

Evernote Symbol Hierarchy

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:38:22 +1000

I find it fascinating to see how other people use their computers and apps. One app that I use and take a particular interest in seeing other people use is Evernote. This is because Evernote offers quite a flexible framework so almost anyone can adapt it to their notetaking/ GTD/ file syncing/ bookmarking/ recipe collecting/ handwriting translating needs. With this flexible framework come creative uses, implementations and hacks.

Often times, I find that people use symbol prefixes in order to give notebooks and tags some form of hierarchy, as both those items are displayed alphabetically. I too tag notebooks with symbols to give them priority in my left-hand pane. It’s such a useful hack, but I haven’t seen expanded upon anywhere, so I thought I’d do a little investigation and see which symbols grant the highest priority.

This is the apparent Evernote Symbol Hierarchy in descending ‘alphabetic’ order:

As you can see, ‘!’ holds the highest priority, with ‘-’ the lowest. It appears that ‘-’ doesn’t rank below all letters however, only the letter it is prefixing. (Example: ‘-a’ ranks higher than ‘b’ but lower than ‘a’).

I haven’t done any real testing to see if the hierarchy maintains its integrity in more complex scenarios or even on any platform other than Windows 7.

Even if I don’t end up using this symbolic notebook hierarchy, it has at least taught me that Evernote needs a mass notebook editor!

Why the Mantis Shrimp is my new favourite animal. - The...

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:56:05 +1000

Why the Mantis Shrimp is my new favourite animal.

- The Oatmeal

Photo

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:15:34 +1000

PodGallery.Org: A Podcast Directory

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 21:04:27 +1000

PodGallery.Org: A Podcast Directory:

Integrated with cloud services. This looks very promising!

See Kim Jong Un meme below.

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:41:11 +1000

See Kim Jong Un meme below.

Photo

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:37:24 +1000

Why Google+ is best for 'real-life streaming'

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:53 +1000

Why Google+ is best for 'real-life streaming':

Privacy aside, who can really be bothered to enter all this data into one’s lifestream? Until that sharing process is completely frictionless and the value of a lifestream proven, count me out. The article mentions Google Latitude, which is a cool thought, but I still need convincing on the value of tracking your every move.

Chromebooks Over Macs

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:44:27 +1000

Chromebooks Over Macs:

The Chromebook that we’re deploying is $250. This was a significant factor in what drove the decision. The “standard issue” Apple product we had been purchasing was $1,500. I’m not an accountant but I’m pretty sure that is six times more expensive than the Chromebook. Is the Mac better? Sure. Is it 6 times better? No.

A Mac might be less than 6 times better if you’re only using the Google web suit; however they’re more than 6 times more versatile (and so is any laptop running a ‘full’ OS). Sure, you don’t need to pay for features you don’t need but that is a fairly broad statement to be making.

Breaking Free From iTunes

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 17:47:22 +1000

iTunes has blighted my daily routine for years now. See, I love my video podcast subscriptions but for whatever reason they don’t play well in iTunes at all. They stutter, lag, play audio only or a combination of all three.

However I’ve persevered with iTunes up until now because it has been the easiest way to automatically download the podcasts. My workaround for the laggy video playback has been to right click on a podcast and ‘Show in Windows Explorer’, where I could then open the file in VLC and watch it back smoothly. Unfortunately, even the automatic downloading has been a pain lately. See, I only realized today, that I had only been downloading the most recent podcast, each time there is an update. So if I miss a few, I’ll only get the most recent, with the others never to be downloaded or watched. I’m kind of obsessive about consuming content, so this bugs me to no end. I need to watch all the episodes! Consequently, I changed the default behaviour to ‘Download All’ ([new podcasts] - I assumed), which then prompted iTunes to actually download all episodes from all my 11 podcast feeds! Enough is enough.

My temporary solution is to subscribe to the feeds in Google Reader and manually download new episodes. This way I can be sure I won’t miss any, and won’t have to deal with the sluggish beast that is iTunes on a Windows laptop. I did try Juice, gPodder, jPodder, firenze and the like, but none of them really appealed to me. Too confusing. It should be simple: new episode -> download! If anyone has a suggestion for something lightweight to download podcasts from feeds I’d be keen to have a look! It doesn’t need to play them or anything fancy; VLC can do that just fine.

The only other reason I open up iTunes is to listen to my personal music collection - which is becoming quite infrequent now I am using Spotify. I know Spotify can play local files but for some reason my MP3 files won’t play; only M4A, etc, and I didn’t know how to fix this until today. I found a link to an MP3 codec on the Spotify forums that solved this problem finally!

Now I have no reason to open iTunes! My iPhone and iPad backup to iCloud and sync their data from the cloud with either Dropbox for most files and Spotify for music. I don’t consume a whole lot of video on either device so syncing video with them from my laptop isn’t really an issue.

I want to like iTunes. It has a nice interface. It integrates tightly with my iPhone and iPad. It just happens to suck on my Windows laptop. So until it gets better, goodbye iTunes.

Photo

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 07:13:08 +1000

Video

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 13:25:52 +1000

Gallery of War Photos: “Smoke is used to call in a...

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 11:12:00 +1000

Gallery of War Photos: “Smoke is used to call in a Helicopter for extraction from an operation”.

If you say so…

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:55:56 +1000

If you say so…

Top Grossing Apps It appears as though the freemium model is...

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:26:00 +1000

Top Grossing Apps

It appears as though the freemium model is quite lucrative. 2 of the Top 25 Grossing Apps are paid apps!

The iPhone 5 is Boring and Amazing

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 13:45:00 +1000

The iPhone 5 is Boring and Amazing:

I agree with this article. I woke up this morning full of anticipation and excitement, then was disappointed when everything was just as the leaks suggested. Still undecided as to whether I’m going to upgrade from the 3GS…

Apple defeats Samsung

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 03:18:22 +1000

Apple defeats Samsung:

Wow! This is big news and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

I’m particularly uncomfortable about the software patents getting cleared as valid. I mean, bounce back scrolling, touch to zoom… These features, while minute, help make the touch UI paradigm work.

I wonder if this decision was made based on the current patent law system? There’s been calls to overhaul software patenting to be more relevant but if a jury has deemed Apple’s patents to be valid, will there still be momentum for this?

I don’t have enough understanding of US patent law to make any real predictions but the idea that tiny little things like these can be patented is worrying. I’ve come to expect these features from touch UI’s and if Apple is the only company to have the rights to implement them, then it looks like I’ll be an iOS user for some while to come.

Homescreen 12/08/12 People’s homescreen’s have...

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 11:11:00 +1000

Homescreen 12/08/12

People’s homescreen’s have always fascinated me. They provide some insight into people’s lives - their interests, business & personality. So here’s mine.

Been more or less like this for ages now. The G+ app is where Flipboard used to be. I’ve been trying to cut out reading/ viewing junk online in favor of more meaningful pieces. Facebook is now my primary source of this kind of junk… thanks friends!

Don’t really use G+, twitter, pocket, evernote, camera awesome or Dropbox all that often… More often than most other apps though I suppose.