Books as apps, on iPad

Small tip for iPad users: beware when buying ebooks as "apps", because most of them were made for iPhone, and were never updated to the iPad, so the screen/text is either very small or very blurry (if you double-size it).
Looks like this:

Twitter limits bandwidth

I wrote to the maker of my Twitter app (Kiwi) and told them that I have problems posting pictures. They replied that Twitter recently has dramatically reduced the "rate limit" for all twitter apps, and it's creating many problems (like user lookups) which it's hard to do anything about.

For me, it helps to post pictures to my own server (or DropBox), and then just post the link with a tweet. (Only thing is I think those posted on Twitpic is available to more people, but I'm not sure.)
But in the bigger picture, it shows the potential problem with all free services: it attracts millions of people, but 'who you gonna call' when the caca hits the fan? What are you gonna demand, your money back?

DS Styles iPh case

I've gotten a case for my iPhone. First case I've ever gotten for a phone. But since the iPhone is mostly glass, and despite testing showing it to be at least as tough as phones are generally, it felt appropriate.
I quite like this case. It sits well in the hand, works against slipping, feels like it protects the phone, has a nice pattern, and yet you can see the steel and other features, which I feel is important. All the access openings are perfect. It exists in a few other colors too.

I tried Apple's bumper case, and I feel it's a failure compared to this case. The Bumper hides the beautiful steel, and it does not protect the back glass.

CS-Styles have wasted no time in promoting that it helps with Apple's little antenna problem too.       :-)

I like their Chinese-English promotional text:

"Now the world is crazy by the new release iPhone 4. Come on everyone. Keep your pace on and do the complete prepare for it. DS Lattice Silicone Case is a have-must. The lattice pattern is simple but fashion."

It's poetry.

The Targus chick

I can't get over this chick, she does something to me. If she used that face and tone of voice to tell me a shirt she was selling looked nice on me, I'd be helpless.
She sounds like every mundane little feature of the product gives her personal and abundant joy and pleasure. Kool.



What's funny is that she can do it every time. There are several different cases, and her: "Love your new iPad? Want to keep it safe and sound?" sounds the same and exactly as bubbly as the first one. Good performance.

"The Z-case features a fashionable and sophisticated look, designed specifically to suit your personable style."

Well, that assumes that I'm fashionable and sophisticated... which I've not often been accused of. :-)

But if this lovely woman will come round to my house, she can sell me *all* the cases in all the colors.

The one below may be my favorite. The moment where she lovingly rubs the case up and down is not suggestive at all though, no no no, don't get me wrong.

Making a portrait on the iPad

Like I predicted before the iPad came out, there is already lots and lots of good art being made on it. Apart from pressure sensitivity, there's really not a lot you can do with the more expensive Wacom Cintiq that you can't do on an iPad. (And an intriquing area, barely explored yet, is replacing speed for pressure sensitivity, for example making a line thinner when you move your finger or stylus faster.)

Dodocase web page

I haven't gotten my Dodocase yet (they're backordered), but one thing I know: this is an exemplarily beautiful web page.  Beautiful, big photos on a good looking, minimalistic page, neutral background color, gorgeous logo and buttons, and again, wonderfully simple. A lot of web designers might do well to take note.

They have some videos here. Here's a video review.
One thing though: a couple of vids on youboob shows how the pad is no longer held firmly in place after a few weeks. This is unfortunate to say the least, it might fall out onto a hard place. I have mailed Dodo to get a solution to that, should it happen with mine. Update: I got an answer, they'll include some extra corner rubber bumpers.

Modern parking tech

[Thanks to Mark]

High-tech parking technology in Budapest, video. (Note: loud sound, which can't be adjusted.)

This is very cool. One only has to hope that Budapest is not prone to power-outs, or the software prone to Blue Screens Of Death.       :-)

Don Norman at Business of Software 2009

Don Norman at Business of Software 2009, video.
This is a fun video with many good points.
He mentions how he worked once as a consultant for Apple, and he wanted a legacy and decided to try to coordinate just one little simple thing: the power switch. And everybody agreed that it would be great if the power switch was recognizable over their whole product line, division by division. But after half a year of trying, they gave up, it couldn't be done. Big groups of people simply can't agree.

I also like his many fine examples about how complexity is not always bad. Its very true. Many years ago I wrote a poem which included a line about the Beautiful Complexity of the Universe, or something on those lines, and people disagreed with it, because Everybody Knows that simplicity is beautiful, not complexity... well, have you looked at the scoring card of a piece by Bach?

Reading

I mentioned how I've read at least a couple of books, or the equivalent, per week all my life. I don't really "get" people who don't read, even though there are many, many of them. For me it's like not breathing.

I remember having a discussion at nine or ten with a playmate. He insisted Batman could fly. He proved it by pointing to a drawing in a comic where Batman was hovering under the ceiling in a room. He had not read the text, which said that a big magnet was pulling up Bats by the metal things in his gadget belt. It was a shock to me that he did not read the text in his comic books.


Update:
ganesha games said...
I broke up with a girlfriend when I realized that having her around all the time was preventing me from reading. 'Nuff said.

eolake said...
ROTFL!!
Exactly. If that had really been the case, I would have done the same thing. And I think *very* few people have their priorities that way around. Most people will change *everything* for their lover.

A field of tablets

It seems from various reports that there are some quite interesting smart-phones out there running the Android system. Well,  I'm not interested in getting another phone, but a thought occurred to me: somebody might attempt to compete with the iPad. Well, actually that's pretty much a given; the "might" comes in here: some of these products might actually be good!

Perhaps using the Android system (which I've not tried), but that's less important (this article does not make me optimistic). I would like to see a field of choices of interesting tablet devices, both from Apple and other makers. For example a small and light one like a Kindle, but faster and with a better screen. Or a larger one than the iPad, for more complex tasks and productivity and connectivity. Or whatever, I'm sure there are thousands of options and functions we haven't dreamed of yet. It could become interesting.

I hope it does. I hope they won't all be like the Zune, brown in reality and in spirit. (Brown?? Who wants a brown gadget?)

Update: Alex mentions Cisco's interesting Cius. (I'm not sure what it does, I got too distracted by the buzz words and the beautiful vicepresident.)

Crossing from Free to Paid options

I've made a new kind of promotional page on Domai: a full thumbnail page in the free section, but just a few of the thumbnails (clearly highlighted) links to big images.

This kind of page was an attempt to replicate something I heard in a podcast.
Marco Arment, the maker of the excellent software Instapaper, talked about how people, surely partly out of sheer inertia, will keep using the free version of a thing forever, unless missing something becomes too uncomfortable. In his case, he limits the free version of Instapaper to save ten articles*, which helps a lot of people over the mental hurdle to sign up for the Pro version for five bucks.

It's an issue for a very big number of internet businesses: how to get more people to cross over from the free content to paid content.

So I'm experimenting on how to get a larger percentage of the huge number of free-bee visitors to feel that they are missing out until they actually get their membership. Showing thumbnails of the pictures they aren't getting for free is one idea, I don't yet have data on whether it works.

---

*Marco says he added the 10-article limit last summer (2009). Clearly he changed his mind, in this 2008 blog post, he strongly denied a rumor that this limit existed then:

"There’s no limit of how many articles you can store with Instapaper Free [...]. There has never been such a limit. As I have previously discussed in depth, I never want to impose artificial, frustrating restrictions on Free that make it a bad product."

So I'm guessing he changed his mind at some point about whether such a limit would make the free version a Bad Product.  I'm not saying this is bad, it's a reasonable limit, it's his product, and he's free to change his mind however he wants.

I'm just wondering whether it's ten articles total, ten per day, or ten unread at any one time. I'm guessing the last one. 
(BTW, I don't have experience with the free version, because when I heard of Instapaper, I got so enthusiastic that I bought the Pro version right away (and haven't regretted it one second).)
Update: Marco informs me:

It's 10 unread articles stored on the iPhone at once. As people read and Archive them, it downloads more until it has 10.

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Live in the Now?

I'd heard it all the time, 'Live in the moment.' But if I did that, I'd weigh more than a dump truck. Losing weight wasn't about the moment at all; it was about having faith in the future. It was about knowing there would be another meal in a few hours.
           -- Stephanie Klein


Yes, "live in the Now" was a hugely popular mental and spiritual admonishment in the noughties. But I never really understood why it was.
For one thing, "Now" is just another part of Time. You're still validating the falsehood of time.
For another thing, how do you do it? It's all very easy to say "stop worrying about the past and future, just live in the Now", but how do you do it? I find it hard to believe that many people have been able to go from gut-wrenching worry to peaceful relaxation by simply remembering to "live in the Now".