I’d like to suggest Apple license ‘Frustration Free Packaging’ from Amazon. Just like they did w/ 1-Click Checkout.
Apple iPad – First Impressions
My iPad arrived on Saturday, and as I mentioned in my iPad Prediction post – the Apple iPad does feel like the third attempt at Apple TV. And like all third installments of sequels – it continually risks becoming a parody of itself.
Since the iPad is a member of the iPod family of products (including iPhone & Apple TV) it is tethered to iTunes. The first thing my iPad asked for was to be connected to iTunes. This means the iPad will always be a peripheral – never a first-class, stand-alone computing citizen. This inherently makes a very powerful technology suddenly less useful than any laptop, Amazon’s Kindle, or a portable DVD player. It also provides a clear path for competitive devices. Even in the universe of the computing peripherals – the iPad’s intended use is closer to a wireless printer than a Wacom Tablet.
When I pre-ordered the iPad, I hypothesized that the Hackintosh‘s days were numbered. As soon as I saw Jen importing and uploading photos from the digital camera to Facebook, I knew I was wrong. While a tablet computer would be great for that – I just listed 3 things the iPad doesn’t do.
The iPad-as-Kindle-killer is complete nonsense. The Amazon Kindle still owns the physical ebook reader niche. The iPad is twice as heavy as the Kindle (24 oz vs. 10 oz) and more than 2 inches wider (7.5 vs 5.3). These differences mean the iPad can’t be comfortably held and used with the same hand 1.
The iPad’s screen is worthless in the sun. Hell – the iBooks application isn’t even installed by default. Once installed the iBooks’ wooden-bookshelf-as-UI is a hint that reading an ebook won’t be at enhanced by the iPad’s computing power and digital capabilities.
Just a book.
With pages.
The iBooks app doesn’t even support annotation – unlike the Kindle for iPad app.
I don’t get the sense that Amazon is concerned – their acquisition of Lexcycle gave them eBook readers on 5 platforms and they seem more interested in providing access to digital libraries than worrying about the merits of specific devices.
Personally, I’m much more interested to see web-native offerings like the ibis reader and Monocle take off. This is partly because the majority my eBook library (like my mp3 library) isn’t sold in stores – so it’s not accessible in the Kindle app nor iBooks app and partly because I think there’s lots of interesting things that can be done with ebooks & ebook readers that I’m not seeing yet.
Like the eBooks app, the UIs of the Calendar app, Contacts app, and Notes app all contain the lamest, and most useless aspects of their real-world counterparts (Calendar is a book, Contacts has bookbinding stitching down the middle of the screen, and Notes has torn pages in fake leather folio with side pocket).
It’d be one thing if these apps didn’t have digital buttons throughout the faux physical UI – but they do. Reminds me of a time when TVs were covered in wood paneling. It reminds me of a paper I wrote in college on how plastics were first used to emulate other materials because the fabricators didn’t know anything else. It remind me of Microsoft Bob. God, it reminds me that the iPad, like the iPod Invisa is a parody of the iPod.
That’s all before anything is clicked to cause a giant digital keyboard to slide up and cover half the screen.
Also like the eBooks app – I expected iWork-for-the-iPad to be installed default – or at least heavily promoted in the setup and experience – not at all. It makes me think Apple doesn’t believe this is anything more than a really big iPod Touch – with a slightly more usable keyboard and better web experience.
Yes, the normal web in Safari looks fantastic in the iPad. So much better than the iPhone. Highlighting my position that – generally speaking – web apps provide a much better experience on the iPad (and iPhone) than native apps. Even without @font-face support, the iPad highlights how typographically poor most websites are – a noisy jumble of tiny type and randomly arranged imagery, not optimized for reading on any device. Even so – the Web is a more consist and fulfilling experience than the iPad app store. Which feels not unlike an Apple retail store – if you don’t know why you’re there, you won’t find anything and you’ll be surprised at the price.
While I’ve already said the iPad won’t replace the Kindle – what do I see the iPad replacing?
The DVD entertainment systems inside minivans, the desktops & handhelds & paper forms around the neighborhood clinic. If ‘genetic technicians’ still drive between farms in rural America inseminating cattle – I can see the iPad replacing the pinhole-ridden plat map riding shot gun. With the right app, I can see the iPad replacing point-of-sale systems in boutique retail shops (like sales/service oriented ones like salons and auto sales). Less eBooks – more ePaperwork.
For me, I’ve had this vision of a device just outside my peripheral vision that would cycle through my favorite photos & images from iPhoto, provide an at-a-glance view of what my daily schedule looks like, something I can watch PeepCode screencasts on while writing code, watch Netflix or TED in the backyard, etc. This notion of a glorified digital picture frame is how I imagine the iPad will fit into my world – I’ll know once the dock arrives.
Lastly, the iPad started me on a re-work of my home network to make everything (files, media, ebooks, etc) accessible in the wherever I am and whatever device I’m using.
Update 28 April 2010:
The 2 year old points at the iPad sitting next to the iPod Touch and declares, “Mama. Baby.” Seems like the most obvious declaration that the iPad isn’t anything new or different. Just supersized.
Update 1 May 2010:
Continuing on both the iPad-as-Apple-TV-v3 and iPad-as-Periphal frames, the iPad has replaced my laptop when I’m watching the TiVo. That feels very comfortable – in a way the Kindle does not. Putting the iPad down to watch the ‘big’ screen is easier (and more satisfying) than putting the laptop down.
Update 4 May 2010
I’ve been reaching for my iPad more than the iPod Touch primarily because of Fitts’s Law. Makes me wonder if Apple had started w/ the iPad and scaled down to accommodate the price of the touchscreen components.
1. The tagline for the iPad on Apple’s is ‘The best way to experience the web, email, photos, and video. Hands down.’ The second sentence implies you’re going to get tired of holding it.
I’m Garrick and I’ve Been Twitter Free for 30 Days.
At some point in late February – after 7,367 posts – I stopped visiting Twitter and deleted all the Twitter apps from my machines.
My world suddenly became more calm, more quiet, and I had more focus.
I’ve posted a handful of direct messages during that time – but nothing public.
In the past couple days, I’ve been visiting Twitter.com again and have found it as satisfying as a fifth Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut.
The @-replies, the retweets, the opaque URLs, the echo chamber-ness, and the cute passive-aggressive-ness all taste like the sugary frosting around 140 characters of emptiness.
Based on this graph from Compete.com, I wasn’t the only one visiting less.
Have I missed things that are important?
Maybe. Google’s ‘latest’ search captures most of the things I’m actively tracking (and if there’s a good way to see how empty 140 characters feels – compare it against other search results). For the rest – given how quickly the Twitter stream flows – quello che sarà, sarà.
Has it changed how I communicate?
Most definitely. I’m emailing and IM’ing more and I like that. More thoughtfulness, more conversational, more intimate, focused topics, far less twitchiness.
What happened on my Twitter account during that time?
My follower count remained static. I received a small number of direct messages and an even smaller number of @-replies. It left me with the distinct sense that maintaining engagement on Twitter is like pushing on a string – once direct pressure is no longer applied, movement stops.
Yes, this post is primarily to put a bookend on my my archive of Twitter-related archive.
Want to discuss this further? Drop me an email or IM.
Hat tip to Jamie for the intro quote.
Update 24 March 2010:
I just received this message from Klout.com
“Our analysis shows that your influence on Twitter has dropped from 30 to 8. There are a lot of reasons this could have happened but don’t worry, we are going to help you become more influential!..”
Update 2 April 2010:
It occurs to me that Retweeting is Email-forwarding’s lazier cousin.
Update 21 April 2010:
I finally found a line I wrote in June 22, 2009:
Elsewhere:
NASDAQ Reaches Sept 2008 Levels
I’ve got a couple target thresholds for the markets. I see these thresholds as milestones of forward looking confidence and stability in the economy – signs the markets have recovered and are getting back to work.
For the DJIA – my threshold is 12k.
For the NASDAQ – it’s 2400. Which was passed today.
Simultaneously, the dollar is hovering around .74 Euros.
Download Source
‘View Source’ was responsible for the hockey-stick growth of past 10 years of the web.
‘Download Source’ will be responsible for it’s hockey-stick growth in the next 15 years.
Let’s not confuse a project with a company.
Towards Seed Tuition, Not Seed Investment for Startups
Back in college, I asked a friend why – even though they didn’t like the professor – they didn’t drop their painting class. Their reply – it gave them a space and a time to focus on painting, and their disagreements with the professor helped them better articulate the goals of the work.
Excelerate Labs in Chicago is now taking applications for their ~12-week mentorship program for early stage startup founders. Like the legendary YCombinator program, Excelerate provides a small amount of capital (< $20k) in exchange for a percentage of the company. It seems to me, the goal for the startup founders in either the Excelerate or YCombinator program, is to use the introductions, connections, and 3 months of focussing on their project's value proposition to transform that <$20k investment into much more through pitches to larger investors. The professional introductions, mentorship, and focus these programs offer are hugely valuable for any professionals on-going success. Though - at the <$20k level - the success of the specific project is mostly irrelevant. In fact, I'm guessing these mentorship programs make their money back for the entire program in 1 successful company. My 4.5 years of formal education was financed through a combination of loans, credit cards, friends & family, and part time jobs. During that time, my primary job was to focus on developing salable skills that I loved. My tuition payments purchased the time & space to do so. I left college with <$20k in loan debt and a monthly reminder to get a return on my investment as quickly a possible. Unlike Excelerate or YCombinator, my loan providers didn't ask for a percentage of my future earnings (which could be possible through an income contingent loan). Instead they opted for a fixed monthly payment – arguably a decreasing percentage of my future earnings.
Late last year, I figured building a prototype for a custom web-based software takes 12 weeks. If you’ve estimated the duration for building a website, I’m sure this is a familiar timeframe. I’m also sure it’s no coincidence both the startup mentorship programs mentioned above use this timeframe.
It’s extremely difficult to do anything new & meaningful in less time.
And <$20k is a relatively easy amount to raise for the time and space to focus on building a revenue-generating project. What if, rather than providing startup founders with this money in exchange for a percentage of their project - mentorship programs charged the startup $5k/month and took no percentage. Seed tuition rather than seed investment. The mentorship programs could still offer the same connections, introductions, workshops, and focus - but the founders' incentives would be different as would the stakes for the mentorship program. The thing that feels closest to is a Masters of Fine Arts program where the students enter with a project idea and spend 2 years executing it. Maybe that's just my BFA talking.
4 Startup Principles from Dave Winer
First off:
“Just do it — develop the products, and sell them and evolve them, and compete.” – Dave Winer
- People come back to places that send them away.
- Choose the best people to compete with.
- Make products for geniuses.
- Only steal from the best, and consider theft of your ideas the most sincere form of respect.
Read the whole thing, it’s easily one of Winer’s most inspiring and important essays.
My Proposal for an Open-Source Community News Platform
I wrote this up earlier this year and thought – maybe you know of a similar project that could get this idea off the drawing board….
This community news platform is designed to collect and disseminate information in the public interest for communities too small to be effectively served by a traditional daily news source and makes real-time community-based news reporting as familiar as picking up the phone.?
- Messages are published and delivered via voice, email, web browsers, web feeds, and mobile applications.
- These messages could communicate a real estate transaction, car accident, block party, garage sale, the current status of a major infrastructure project, show photos of recent storm damage, or document vandalism.
- Each message published is automatically categorized by content and geographic location within the community.
- Community members retrieve messages by location, content, or contributor.
- Community members sign up to receive notification of a specific location’s messages in their preferred medium (voice, email, web browser, etc).
How is this different than something like Twitter, Facebook, or Yammer?
Like those services, it’s best when applied to a distinct community. Unlike those services – this system is open source (NEA) and a platform-agnostic (it receives input from and outputs to multiple mediums).
Rails’ Page Caching with Multiple Formats in respond_to
One of the apps I’m working on was using Rails’ caches_page to speed up performance and reduce server load.
It worked great until we added new formats via within the respond_to block. If there wasn’t a format specified in the request – the caches would get all messed up. Well sometimes. Making it a difficult issue isolate.
I found lots of articles on caching 1 format and not another – even Rails’ documentation illustrates how to do that.
But I wanted to cache all the formats.
The most reliably way I’ve been able to accomplish this is by explicitly declaring the format-specific location for the caches. Like this:
respond_to do |format|
format.html {
render :layout => 'application', :content_type => "text/html"
cache_page(@response, "/index.html")
}
format.rss {
render :layout => false, :content_type => "application/rss+xml"
cache_page(@response, "/index.rss")
}
format.iphone {
render :layout => 'iphone', :content_type => "text/html"
cache_page(@response, "/index.iphone")
}
end
Note the render lines, they seem to be required for the @response to properly populate.
This solves the correct creation of the format-specific page caching, there’s still the issue of the web server (Nginx, Apache) knowing which cached file to serve.
Whatever checks Rails’ is doing (i.e. Are you an iPhone?, etc) to generate the correct cache need to be duplicated in the web server and mapped to the corresponding cache file.
Personally, this seems like a overly-complex solution for an issue I hadn’t assumed would exist. What am I missing?