8degrees of vaughan rowsell

I Phone on an iPhone

I predicted the announcement of the iPhone would be prior to Christmas, and I was kind of right, just got the company wrong.
http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=2754

But the REAL announcement was less than a month behind with Apple announcing their iPhone. Its using the same name as Cisco’s phone on the pretense that Apples is a cellphone and Cisco’s is an IP phone that can only be used on a private IP network. Whether or not this is enough of a difference not to conflict and talk on who has the rights to the name has sent the press worldwide into a spin. However Steve and co over at Apple are not fools and this has been a fantastic piece of media coverage for both Cisco and Apple, the kind of coverage you can’t buy. Apple and Cisco will sort it out.

Some responces to the release of the iPhone have been mixed and everyone seems to have a barrow to push when it comes to this new device. I am not surprised to detect anti-Apple sentiment in your more traditional PC/Windows media arenas, knocking such a revolutionary new thing and coming up with expert opinion on why it wont fly. For example PC Mag unsurprisingly is bagging it.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2081108,00.asp

Is that is probably because it is PC Mag. In his review Sascha Segan has already predicted the iPhone’s failure because of the cost of this “ultimate high end” device and the fact that Apple have an exclusive contract with Cingular. The power of brand and the force of consumerism seems to be lost on PC Mag. Just like the iPod has become the human perifieral of choice, it is a short leap to take the iPhone there. It is after all the iPod reborn, which is another point missed by most. This is the video-phone-camera-internet iPod – it’s just called iPhone now. So considering the iPod owns over 60% of the portable music device market and Apple now have an upgrade path to a new device, that is a huge captive audience.

Secondly by all looks the iPhone is revolutionary in it’s approach to user interface and features. I have been frustrated with phone OSs since the advent of the color lcd screen in phones. Apple do interfaces better than anyone, and I am thrilled at the market debue of the multi-touch screen. I have seen functional demos of this screen last year which were just absolutely amazing.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6379146923853181774

The mouse is dead, long live the mouse. I am pleased that someone has finally realised that making calls is only a small part of being a phone and the OS is the key to it’s success. This all hinges on the openness of the Mini OSX used, however Java and Flash are no brainers and from what I understand the developer tools are fairly comprehensive for custom apps. I am excited to see what widgets will pop up with interesting uses of the multi-touch interface.
I do agree with some of the criticism floating around on the link to Cinglular is an interesting alliance considering it will restrict the market audience somewhat, however Cinglular is the largest cellular network in the US. It is GSM based which is essential for moving the iPhone into the global market. The rest of the world uses GSM networks because they are just better (don’t ask). The iPhone does demonstrate some features that would rely on what appear to be new features of their network developed by Cingular. Primarily the visual voicemail. This I am guessing this is an internet app that looks into your cellular voicemail box over IP and presents them as audio files tagged with dates, sender and so on. I would be interested to know who owns the IP on this feature, I am guessing Cingular, but that said voice mail over IP has been around for 10 years or more. I know this because I developed and demonstrated the first implementation of IP voicemail for a carrier here in NZ 7 years ago (they didn’t think it would fly).

What will be interesting here in NZ is the Yahoo7 partnership with Telecom. Telecom is non-GSM so will not be able to use the iPhone on it’s network so the push mail on Yahoo will probably rendered useless. It will also be interesting to see how Vodafone react.
Generally things I like about the phone:

Google Maps – Finally someone is being sensible out there in the mobile arena and have finally integrated maps on the the phone (not via a web page). It looks as tho the google maps app is a stand alone app native for the iPhone, and this would suggest that Google Earth will not be too far away for the iPhone, in fact I predict its release shortly after the official release of the iPhone to market in July.

Widgets – Although I have not been an avid user of desktop widgets on OS X (hitting F12 is too hard for me and my hot corners are all used up) I admit I can see where Apple are going with the concept. Write your own applet on the iPhone as easy as abc.

The Scroller that everyone is wetting their pants about. Nice. However expect more cool things from the interface using multi-touch.

Form factor – Small, okay what else do you want to know. It is sexy too but that is a given really considering its and Apple.

Now the things I don’t like:

No user facing camera – No video calling on this puppy without having to turn the screen away from you it would seem. This will disappoint Vodafone.

No 3G – Yet! But don’t count it out just yet, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t go 3.5G.

No GPS – A built in GPS and compass would turn the iPhone into the ultimate mobile tool, with integrated Google Maps showing you what is available wherever you go. In the demo Jobs had to enter a location name to search, as opposed to the phone knowing where it was. I predict its coming, bumped perhaps to get the price tag down on launch.

All in all I am down-right excited about this new toy. It’s a shame I will have to wait at least a year to get my hands on one tho, but it will be worth the wait.

Picasa vs Flickr

Here is my first play with Picasa to see how easy it is to use vs Flickr. So far Picasa is impressing me…

My First Picasa Album

My First Flickr Set

What is Picasa? I first stumbled across Picasa yonks ago on my search for a nice tool to organise pics. I was on a PC at that stage (okay, so I am a reformed PC user) and it was a brilliant program to sort your pics, tweak them, tag them, mix and match them. I could yank my pics from my digital camera and find all sorts of hidden jpgs around my hard drive and consolidated them all. It was great, and it still is, well I assume Google haven’t made it worse. However I am on a mac now (hallelujah) and have iPhoto, which is much much better. However Google now has Picasa Web Albums, which to all extents is Google’s version of Flickr. They have just release some mac tools, I was intrigued so I took a look.

Picasa Web Albums

In true Google style, Picasa Web Albums is lightweight and simple. You can upload, tag and group your pics with ease. It is really very very simple. You can add video too which is the first step on the way towards the obvious merge of Picasa and YouTube. I was very pleased to easily find the mac Picasa tools, and to find they worked really well. Although there is no Picasa photo management software for the mac as such, there is a export plugin for iPhoto and a Picasa Web Uploader app which makes it easy for you to click and drag your pics up to your Picasa Web Albums account. Super simple and super easy.

Flickr

What is Flickr? Where have you been? Flickr is definitely the incumbent in the whole web photo sharing space, and if you were not aware it is now owned by Yahoo! Flickr is reported to be by far is the most popular, (however see graph below) but does it make it better or does that give it baggage? Due to one reason and another, but generally due to living under a rock for the last 12 months while I slogged my guts out working, I haven’t had the chance to play and explore the world of Flickr. So you could say I have an open mind to photo sharing. So I went and signed up and got terribly confused. Probably because I setup my Picasa Web Album first, which was pretty straight forward, but I just struggled with the Yahoo! style interface which at best baffles. There is no consistency with the navigation or links and Yahoo!’s interface design is something I have griped about in the past. I just can’t use it. I had Picasa set up in minutes, and had even found the downloads of the mac tools for Picasa, but yahoo had more options, more links and terminology that just conflicted with what seemed natural to me. As you move from one tool to another, the navigation can completely change leaving the user lost.

On the positive side, I found there was more features oriented to sharing pics through the online community. However after investing half an hour in Flickr, I found myself frustrated. I had to use a third party tool to get the pics out of iPhoto and up to Flickr. the tool was payware and limited you to 5 uploads. It also failed to authenticate with Flickr from time to time and refused to reconnect.
The Slideshows

Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/63814767@N00/sets/72157594431788518/show/

Picasa – http://picasaweb.google.com/vaughan.rowsell/MyFirstPicasaAlbumOn8degrees/photo#s5011039879104216066

The slideshows on both are good. Flickr uses flash and Picasa, following Googles strategy to use JavaScript tools wherever they can, uses some pretty nifty xhtml and JavaScript. Flickr’s player looked a little dated and Picasa had a much cleaner interface. Flickr’s Flash player had nice transitions between the pics, but the Picasa player did not, which was odd considering they used fade effects on the navigation (perhaps a mac Firefox thing). Flickr’s one didn’t resize with my browser and Picasa’s did. Picasa’s won me over in the end because it was simple, flexible and I like to know what its code is doing (geek!).
So where does that leave us? There were so many more things I wanted to cover but this post is already 12 paragraphs longer than I expected. So in quick summary, I have found that I am leaning more towards Picasa. Now is it because I have my web 2.0 tent pitched firmly in the Google camp? Is it because I don’t have the patience for Yahoo!s infuriating interfaces? Is it because Picasa plugged into my iPhoto nice and simple? Well, yes! It is because of all of this I am backing Picasa as the web photo album of choice, and not only because of these fickle reasons but also because I know that Google will make it something better. Simple.

And the winner is…

And the winner for new news website revamp is… www.stuff.co.nz

The herald revamp looks nice and shiny but stuff have obviously gone the extra distance and have clear navigation and use of colour to make it easy to find your favourite haunts easy. Everything is just colour coded and soooo damn friendly, I love my green and blue sections oh so much.

By why doesn’t the Herald really get my vote? We I got the feeling there was more adds than content as I found my self reading a short article (2 paragraphs) and found the copy was overwhelmed by all banner add, the skyscraper, the inset, the adds from Google, and the rest… and to think the web was once pure and clean, and to think also (if you can manage two thoughts) that it wasn’t too long ago that the media themselves used to whinge and moan about how no one will ever make any money out of the web. Today our web looks like a newspaper… hmmm. Anyway… one thing the Herald does do well is the use of space. On stuff you can go to a major section, like business, and have oodles of empty space as you scroll down the page, whereas the Herald seems to fill up the pages more (although usually with more ads). Okay so adds grind my gears! But in general I can find my way around stuff with more ease than the Herald, and that’s at the end of the day what I care about. Just the facts ma’am.
Anyway, good stuff… ah Stuff.