Cool, Google’s new UI only shows 39 characters on the screen, including logo, TM and spaces. And I probably counted that wrong. Until you roll your mouse and then the regular UI reappears all Harry Potter and the Invisible Map style. Credit Veruus for pointing it out.
Popularity: 4% [?]
From the site Androgeek on how to install a new Android theme:
“Instructions for Installing Themes on Your Android
1. Rename the theme to update.zip
2. To the root of your SD card, copy update.zip.
3. Reboot the phone in recovery mode…”
It goes on for another thousand words and seven or so more steps.
If you have to tell your users to rename, unpack, reboot…IN RECOVERY MODE, then we’re a little too close to Windows ’95. These days I expect my computers to do all that geekery for me. If they can’t then their UI is just not quite up to par.
Popularity: 6% [?]
I know, never post something that has been retweeted 500 times or more. But this thread is too funny. And I kind of want to bookmark it for myself because it will make me laugh just as hard a year from now.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Image doesn’t relate to the article…I just knew this guy back in the day and Zemanta thinks that “O’Reilly” and “Reilly” are somehow related in its really cool suggest an image tool. Oops. Whaddup Tony?
An O’Reilly reader asked the question, “should I dump my iPhone for an Android?” and it seems to be a question that is being asked more and more. The simple answer is no, unless you are a very early adopter with a massive tolerance for behaviors like your phone crashing. There is much criticism of AT&Ts network and the occasional dropped call. I, being a pathetic dork, carry both phones at the moment. I lose one or two calls a week due to AT&Ts shoddy network. And my iPhone crashes maybe once a month…maybe less. And that’s the thing with my phone, it’s like a light switch or a car, you want it to work every single time you turn the key or flip the switch.
A crashed OS and a bad network leave you with the same result…no phone. That’s not okay. AT&Ts network seems to be improving faster than the next version of the Droid will arrive.
And the Android crashes constantly. They use nice words like “forced restart of search application” or some such thing, but the truth is I have to sit and wait for my basically beta version phone to settle down and begin working again. I am confident that by version 3.0 things will be rock stable. But right now the Droid is the crash-o-matic.
The question is kind of a, “should I buy an Acura or a Maserati?” thing. One of them is cool and works beautifully all the time and the other one doesn’t look nearly as cool ’cause it’s in the shop several days a month. But Maserati’s are cool in their own way. If you want a second phone, Droid it up.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Did all y’all catch this? Park City based POWDR Corp bought Copper Mountain from Intrawest. According to CBC news and Bloomberg, Intrawest has lost 71% of its value. Uh, one more time for the back row, 71%. I’m not a finance guy but that sounds bad to me. On the plus side maybe there will be a yard sale on ski resorts…and truth be told I’ve always had a hankering for Whistler/Blackcomb. If that thing drops below the jumbo mortgage limit I’m making a bid.
Oh, and just a quick FYI to POWDR Corp…you misspelled powder. Awkward at this point but the way you’re snapping up resorts you might want to fix that before somebody notices. You don’t see people struggling to spell all of our other synonyms for snow: ice, graupel, sleet, knee-cracking glacial death crust, etc. And really Powder is the best variety, no matter what the corn snow advocates would claim. So, y’know, kick down another “E”; we won’t confuse you with the magazine.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Phonegap is a new open source multi-environment development tool. One of my biggest fears around the incredible race between Apple and Android has been about the cost of doing dual application development. Mobile feels a scary enough jungle when you are looking at Apple development, but add in the multi-verse of Android phone builders with a myriad of screen sizes and other strangeness and it looks like a massive amount of friction. Thankfully the software world is filled with the smartest people in the world who perceive problems beyond the horizon time and again and rush to fill the coming void.
My guess is that the Apple Tablet will be an overwhelming hit which will change personal computing once again…but add yet another layer to development. And my guess is that Phonegap will be there quickly as well. So thanks Phonegap. Read about it on CNET
Popularity: 4% [?]
At Backcountry.com the Gearheads have great latitude in resolving problems and doing whatever they can to make the customer happy. But this example is like no other I’ve ever seen. Follow the link to see the customers full post on her blog FoolsandSages.com. Here’s a small excerpt.
“After I placed my order, I sent their customer service folks a mail telling them how much we loved their site and asking for the shipping to be adjusted to reflect our original wish to combine shipping. I fully expected for them do graciously do so, but was absolutely not expecting the response I received:
‘Hi Andrea,
Thanks for contacting us at Steepandcheap.com. We love you, too. We would marry you if you weren’t already married. And we weren’t a company, but rather a young shy boy lost in the throes of love, yea, a misty-eyed dreamer looking towards the future, still unscathed and unpolluted by the hardships of mid-adulthood. We would ask your housemaid to deliver white flowers to you, with an anonymous note that read “Heaven nor hell could provide me the joy and pain your approval or lack thereof might impose upon me.” Then, that very night at midnight we’d stand outside your window playing a love sonnet on the violin–a heartfelt ribbon of swaying notes and flittering string plucks. You could get out of bed and come to the balcony to listen. Instead of saying anything, you might drop a single white handkerchief slightly soaked with your tears.
But none of that could ever happen, so instead I just gave you a full refund on your shipping costs. I think it was like 8 bucks. Thanks for the love.’”
Wow…how unusual. Here’s her full post. http://www.foolsandsages.com/2009/12/03/making-customer-service-fun-what-a-concept/
Popularity: 4% [?]
“National Geographic Adventure will cease operations, it was announced today, a victim of the down economy and systemic changes in publishing. The final issue is December/January.”
Bummer. That about covers that. No need for me to do any clever editorializing. I’m sad to see it go; it’s been a solid bastion of true adventure journalism amongst the thick weeds of men’s magazine‘s that offer editorial breadth of a weightlifters glutes: Endless teasers which claim they can make any desired body part either grow or shrink, depending on the need.
Steve Casimiro was the west coast editor…a title that seemed odd for an adventure magazine that covered the globe. It didn’t seem the title stopped him from taking a bevy of hot models to Ibiza to test “30,40,50 SPF – We Tell You the Truth.” Steve has lined up the finest jobs in the magazine world as the most well known editor of Powder magazine and the co-creator and first editor (with Rob Story) of Bike magazine. Casimiro is a man who knows the soul of adventure. I’m hoping his next beat will be another great step in the life of one of the finest adventure writers and editors in the world. He’s also handy with the Cannon Snappy.
Popularity: 4% [?]
The iPhone is the most beautiful design and business exercise I’ve ever seen. I am happily humbled by Apple for their vision and incredible operational excellence. They saw and created a future of which I hadn’t even dreamed. The iPhone set me free.
And yet…so did Compuserve in its day. Compuserve and the Mosaic browser let me run about the web as fast as my 14.4k modem would allow, from one Star Trek fan site to another. And it became both my vocation and avocation. The iPhone, ten years after I first started working on the mobile web finally delivered on the promise of the richness of the web combined with dynamic community and localization. Thank you Apple.
When we take our first timid steps in a new technology we seek safety, familiarity and comfort; and the iPhone delivers. It lets us safely download apps that have been approved and search around the well lit corners of the nice part of Internet town…but it’s a bit like a cruise ship. You can’t ever really get in trouble. It’s kinda fun for a while, but the captain never invites you up to steer it or do donuts with the thing. And eventually you want to see the whole ocean.
And the Droid…well, it’s like Netscape 1.0. It crashes more than I did in high school, which is to say, a lot. And it lets you get the full unfettered internet, location and community access. Want to download an app that steals your private data…go ahead. Want to download an app that instantly violates federal wiretapping statutes…it’s one click. Seeking something really unsavory, it exists or is in development right now. I don’t even dare to imagine the things that are to come.
The world of Adult entertainment has often been the north star of the internet, showing us where web business is going. Take a look at the origins of most video streaming software or even internet traffic tracking companies.
And trust me, the iPhone’s bevy of bikini girl apps is really not going to satisfy the seemingly insatiable cultural appetite for prurient content. And in that part of the world the Droid wins hands down. The porn world has gotten a seat back in the game.
In the 90s Yahoo failed when it couldn’t keep up with the endless requests for sites to be added to its directory. It was excruciating to wait and see if your site would get accepted and practically business death if you weren’t. And Yahoo was unblinking as they ignored every request for information on how or whether you would get in. Even when they started charging $300 to get guaranteed placement it still didn’t really satisfy a webmasters desire for instant inclusion. Which is why DMOZ came about and eventually things like Wikipedia. The community does a better job policing massive amounts of content then a small group of censors with unclear by-rules.
And the four week wait for a developer to see if their efforts to fly in the Apple world just isn’t going to work. In the Web3.0 world we are being trained to expect real time in absolutely everything.
Android delivers the vicious one-two punch of instant inclusion and boundless content. And that is too mighty for Apple to beat. In the late 90s we ran as fast as we could from AOL into the arms of Earthlink and Comcast so that we could get the full web and not the pre-chewed variety. In 24 months or less the iPhone will be the choice of fussy Meerschaum pipe smoking ascot wearing professors and the rest of the world will be carrying Android 4.o phones that allow us full unfettered access to the world of content and applications.
It seems likely that a wikipedia of applications will come to fruition with a community of trusted testers and a standards body run by the community will come about. And when we see that BBB of mobile web, we will find trust. Until then, buyer beware.
But it’s going to be a cool winding road getting there…filled with missteps, crashes and eventually government intervention.
And Google will become a bevy of little Googlets, split up by the privacy fear mongers. This is the coolest movie I’ve ever not seen and I can’t wait.
Popularity: 1% [?]
