Some Tweaks to the Blog

Finally got around to making a few changes to the blog that I have wanted to make for a while now.

1. Replaced my headshot with iTimeZone and Tangerine Element
   I wanted to have a permanent place for links to iTimeZone and Tangerine Element using the branding that has been created. I have just been putting it off because the way the HTML, CSS, and header image were structured previously was going to be a few hours worth of work to pull apart and put together again so that the images where clickable. My old headshot was just embedded in the background, the replacement design allows me to replace the header images whenever I want to. Also, this was a little bit of prep work for finishing up work on the next version of iTimeZone since I wanted to have the branding on the blog before the next version launch. Also, I have tweaked the iTimeZone icon slightly to make it more prominent on the iPhone OS since the "plastic" affect is composited over top of the icon.
2. Removed the Wakoopa application list
   This was cleanup from my decision to stop using Wakoopa to track application usage
3. Removed the RSS button on the page
   This may not be news to anyone, but it dawned on me a few weeks ago that with Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2+, and Safari 2+, having an RSS button in the actual content was redundant with browser chrome. Ironically, Google Chrome has no chrome for RSS, or I can't find it, but seems like that was one exclusion that shouldn't have been made.
4. Removed the Tip jar button
   I am not offended, but no one used it :-), so it was an easy deletion. Also, the only money maker on the blog, ads, were pulled up about 15 pixels.

I Quit Using Wakoopa

Back in May I started using Wakoopa. Well 4 months later, and I find the information about what applications I am using mildly entertaining at best, and actually totally unnecessary. I am not a software reviewer, my application set is relatively fixed. The Wakoopa Tracker was running in the background the entire time. Though I didn't notice a performance hit, and I didn't expect one, I must admit that regaining 2:30 in CPU (since my reboot 3 days ago) does please me somewhat.

Could this be where Apple got their inspiration for the name MobileMe?

On page 195 of Thomas L. Friedman's "The World Is Flat" Release 3.0, the following paragraph appears:

The "mobile me" [emphasis mine] revolution will be complete when you can move seamlessly around the town, the country, or the world with whatever device you want. The technology is getting there. When this is fully diffused the "mobile me" will have its flattening effect, by freeing people to truly be able to work and communicate from anywhere to anywhere with anything.

I am not saying that Apple's MobileMe satisfies Friedman's definition, but could this be where Apple, uh, got its inspiration for renaming .Mac?

John Gruber Nails the Apple "Get A Mac" Ads and Microsoft's Response

John Gruber @ Daring Fireball posted ★ Digging Deeper, saying exactly what I have been thinking about Apple's Get A Mac ads and Microsoft's response ad.

There are a ton of people, and I usually see this from people who's career depend entirely on Windows, that believe Apple's ads are in fact making fun of PC users. That's not just wrong, it's a stupid conclusion. I am not saying people that think this are dumb, but they have lost the plot. In addition to Apple's ads telling the viewer that Macs are special PCs, all other PCs are generic, as Gruber says, they are also showing the viewer there is a choice in computers. That is job #1, since for years, most people didn't even know Macs still existed. If you are trying to sell Macs to people, you won't do that by telling them they are dumb. Apple shows how Macs are special in three ways:

1. What Macs have that generic PCs don't (Leopard, Time Machine, iSight camera, etc.)
2. What Macs and PCs have in common (Office, file format compatibility, both run Windows)
3. What PCs have that Macs don't and is bad (viruses, upgrade hassles, hardware and software compatibility problems)

The headline on the Get A Mac site right now is Why your next PC should be a Mac. I don't think the point could be much clearer, the Mac IS a PC, the only one that is different than all the others. Microsoft's ad has attempted to co-opt Apple's "I'm a PC" part of the message by, as Gruber puts it, only emphasizing Apple's ads, because it incorrectly puts the emphasis on PC, and doesn't emphasize what's special about PCs that aren't Macs. It couldn't be more obvious that Microsoft believes PC in the Apple ads is about users than the part of the montage where people are talking about their glasses. Microsoft has only shown the first ad, so it will be interesting to see if they course correct out of this, or continue down this path.

The Javascript Performance Battle of 08

With the announcement of WebKit'sSquirrelFish Extreme, there has predictably been some additional coverage. A sampling:

• Vertigo: Blog posted V8, Meet SquirrelFish Extreme
• SquirrelFish Extreme: Fastest JavaScript Engine Yet via Daring Fireball
• SquirrelFish Extreme has landed! via Daring Fireball

It's amazing to watch the horse race for Javascript performance supremacy between V8, TraceMonkey, and SquirrelFish (Extreme or otherwise). If all Google was after by building there own JS engine was performance, and SquirrelFish delivers that to the WebKit rendering engine, why continue with V8? Why not combine efforts? Or if V8 turns out to be ultimately better than SquirrelFish Extreme, its all WebKit compatible, why not use it in Safari?

Tip: Signing into AIM/.Mac/MobileMe through a firewall

By default, iChat tries to connect to the AIM network for AIM/.Mac/MobileMe accounts using port 5190:

If a firewall you don't control blocks port 5190, then click the SSL checkbox:

Chances are, you can now logon to the AIM network using your AIM/.Mac/MobileMe account through port 443, the SSL port. Your network overlords would have to be blocking access to specific AIM hostnames for this not to work. While entirely possible, far less likely than port blocking. No guarantee that video iChat will work though...

Apple acknowledges MobileMe migration issues, gives 30-day extension to subscribers

The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was, and I don't know a better way to describe this, a catastrophe. Today Apple sent out the mail below, which admits to the problems, and does right by customers by giving them a 30-day extension to their subscription for essentially a 4-6 day outage. The last service I subscribed to, World of WarCraft, provided day for day subscription extensions, even in the worst of times that were the launch period, so this feels pretty generous.

MobileMe services are now available. We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped. Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running. Another snag we have run into is our use of the word "push" in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe "cloud," changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word "push" until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too. We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks. We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC. Thank you, The MobileMe Team

On the issue of "push", I do find it amusing that my iPhone notifies me I have mail far quicker than Mail.app.

Introducing iTimeZone and Tangerine Element, Inc.

Today I am announcing the launch of my new company Tangerine Element, Inc. and its flagship iPhone and iPod Touch application iTimeZone. Technically, the application launched on Thursday July 10th when the iTunes App Store went live, but for a variety of reasons (which I will perhaps detail when I have more time) I wasn't able to blog about it until now. The real site for Tangerine Element, or Tg for short, was launched late Friday or early Saturday, I can't remember when we finally got it out, the last few days have been a real blur.

iTimeZone - The world clock where you control the time
It took me a while to come up with that succinct summary, I was going with See the future, any time for a while. It finally hit me sometime this past Saturday that The world clock where you control the time was the shortest possible way to explain the core functionality, and my first "elevator pitch" wasn't going to help explain the application to anyone. For more detail, please look at the Tangerine Element iTimeZone product page or the iTunes App Store product page.

Tangerine Element - What's in a name?
Back in April when I bought my new car, I never dreamed it would become the basis for the name of my new company. I was pretty settled on Murlon, Inc, but it never sat right with my business partner (who also happens to be my wife). I invented the name because we love Battlestar Galactica, and it seemed like mashing up the part of our last name and Cylon had the Sci-Fi angle we always thought we wanted, no needed, to launch a company. Then something unexpected happened. Over the 4th of July weekend, I spent most of the car ride up to Vermont from NJ and back down debugging (and *cough* adding features to) iTimeZone. My wife said we should name the company after the "roving office". She, a consultant (OK, a good friend), and I brainstormed out possible combinations of orange or tangerine and element. Finally, like a lot of things, domain availability dictated the selection of Tangerine Element, and that as they say is history.

The big reason that I gave up on Murlon as a brand was because I couldn't think of good branding that was within my graphic design skill level. Tangerine Element had obvious branding potential that I could bang out pretty easily, in fact the large logo above was done in about 20 minutes in Acorn. Then I started scaling it down for use in a number of places and the text would never come through, so I created the miniature version on the left. I of course wanted to use Te as the compact brand, but that is a real periodic table element, Tellurium, so I used the next best thing.

What's next?
We are going to get to work on iTimeZone 1.1 and then 2.0, which is as far as the roadmap extends right now. We haven't really decided how open or closed, or somewhere in between, we are going to be with future product plans yet. I'll just say that expanding the list of searchable places you might want to see the date and time for are top priorities, as are UI niceties like adding more animation.

My Windows UX Taskforce Contributions

I posted a few days ago about the Windows UI UX Taskforce (in true Microsoftian fashion, the name has already changed) and I made a few contributions. At the time of this writing there are 416 entries, my two contributions rank #6 and #7 on the all time list:

• #6 - Unsigned driver security warning doesn't give you any evidence to make a decision on - This might be familiar to some of you, it was my Vista Annoyance #003: What driver was that please? back in December 2006
• #7 - Performance options dialog has available space for list, doesn't use it, isn't resizable - I couldn't believe this dialog made it intact to Vista

I don't know if this effort is going to do any good, but it sure felt good reporting those issues and hoping that someone at Microsoft sees the mountain of UI/UX complaints and does something about them.

Windows UI Taskforce: your help wanted

Ed Bott links to Long Zheng at istartedsomething.com for creating the Windows UI Taskforce. Long's idea is to document all the crap UI in Windows Vista, so that there is a chance those issues get escalated to someone on the product team and land in Windows 7 before it ships. You have to give it up for Long, a really ambitious project. Anyone that has to work with Windows on a regular basis would benefit from this work because it would reduce the cognitive dissonance when working in Windows, which has to be a good thing. Here's what I mean. "The Aero UI looks decent, but oh wait what is the Windows 3.1 font dialog still doing there?!?" I think it's the equivalent of urban blight, where you see a new building next to an old building with broken windows or graffiti, you think the whole neighborhood is suspect. Long is cataloging the UI Decay of Windows over time, and it obviously needs renewal.

Update Talk about serendipity. As I posted this entry, Jeff Atwood, who I just posted about here, bemoans the lose of Windows UI consistency and links to his own post on the broken windows (no pun intended, like in a neighborhood) phenomena. He also makes the point Apple cares a lot more about UI consistency for their OS than Microsoft does about theirs. That was only true again in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. OS X 10.2-10.4 had, not so much UI decay, as lots of new architects building brand new buildings in the same neighborhood without coordinating (e.g. Safari Brushed Metal, iTunes, and the Finder). Leopard largely fixed that, every app had their veneer replaced with a unified theme. Microsoft needs to go through the same cleanup, to whatever Windows 7 will look like, and those need to be high priority issues. I am sure Microsoft is going to add a ton of new features to Windows 7, but seriously guys follow Apple's lead here, fix and improve what you have here and add less totally new features to Windows 7.