Handful of Nothing

So, the hype actually made sense. Copying pogue : it has everything people are saying, but looking at Pogue’s video and reading his words the device is worth having for those that really enjoy a good experience with products.

Back to the main matter : the UI (this blog is more about this than anything else) is really incredible. after reading Pogues comments on the fact that you can easily use you thumb for one hand operations, that the scrolling is really effective and that the sensibility is great I really don’t have a doubt that even with all the problems will be a blast. Of course it will not ruin anybody, bring down any giant’s leadership on the market, but this will give Apple fuel. Fuel to run a second GP on making a even greater iphone in the second generation, and then evolving to a real more compeling device just like they did with the iPod.

So is history repeating itselft? Maybe. Has apple managed to create one of the most impressive user experiences ever? Yes. Not only the UI, but the fact that you don’t even need to go to the carrier’s store to activate the phone along with great convergence makes this little device a milestone.

The much nicer big keyboard. Unfortunately only on the browser :/

It does lack a lot of features, and is really really less feature powered then most phones out there (sorry but that’s true) but the care for the user experience is so much that makes this a small detail.

The question now must be on the other CEO’s mouth ? How to beat that? If there was an easy way every single manufacturer would be doing it. The point is : I really don’t think any big manufacturer needs to beat Apple. They need only to learn from them the respect to the user centered product design, more than the engineer’s centered product design. They need to think how to really please the user, and to really give value to things that they for sure believed was not that important. Icons, transitions, non-window based metaphor.

So, good luck for those who will buy one tomorrow, and I know that I will delight myself in a lot of reviews, videos, complains but also a lot of “omg this is incredible”s.

For us here in Brazil (and also other continents) even the iPod features a locked without activation, so even buying to bring one to Brazil is useless, at least for now, of course hackers will try to hack this device as fast as it hit’s the market. But until then no iphone for the rest of us.

If the iPhone really stands up to it’s challenge in the US (even with AT&T) there’s no doubt a lot of carriers around the world will fight to have it. Today I imagine that most of the carriers are felling mad about Apple’s requests about the iPhone, but if the thing really sells like it promises, Apple could even demand more freedom.

So, one carrier gave a manufacturer power to do a lot with the service. They came up for now only with visual voice mail (truly nice) and with home-itunes-based activation (incredible) but for sure they must have a lot of ideas, and with operator support + itunes based updates (easier than any other phone’s syn / update) they really have a long and not so tortuous road ahead on improving even more the device. A new era for mobile phone is arriving, and after setting a lot of critics agains the phone lack of features, I must recognized that they did a revolutionary product because of these things. They will make carriers kneel, they will force leaders to re-think they User centered design values, and they will force the WHOLE market to evolve.

Good for us consumers. Lot’s of incredible products to come in a near future.

UPDATE: 2 last things :
Link to pogue’s answers to iPhone FAQ.
And the important to notice from the UI point of view is the fact that it can take up to 6 touches to start dialing someone. This is somehow disappointing, maybe holding the home button on the home could activate the dialpad. : p

Well, admit it : you are sick of iPhone related stuff but the damn thing has the most incredible hype of all time, and there’s a lot of subject to talk about it.
But, if you gather my posts + my chat with team members one thing becomes clear and Bruce tog now made it in the perfect way:

“I could go down through the other “innovations” in iPhone and slowly knock them off. Yes, it’s the first cell phone with a visual display of voicemail messages, so you can randomly move among voicemails, etc., etc. However, such lists have been displayed, in an identical fashion, on enterprise-level voicemail systems and, of course, such lists have been a standard feature in email for decades.

The origins of these bits and pieces, however, is not what’s important about the iPhone. What’s important is that, for the first time, so many great ideas and processes have been assembled in one device, iterated until they squeak, and made accessible to normal human beings. That’s the genius of Steve Jobs; that’s the genius of Apple.”

I couldn’t agree more. If you have dig the welcome video, you probably have seen a lot of things and though to yourself “damn, that’s nice”. Just like the call conference :

“Then, Apple has made an effort to make normally abstract features, such as Call Waiting and Conferencing, not only attractive, but dead simple.”

And that follows in other complicated features that became quite simple. I hope it really goes like that. Because in real life, loading times are bigger, crashes happen and all those beautiful things about software become reality.

Let’s wait until friday now. Does anyone want to help me buy one? I would easily pay the 59 bucks even without using the plan =)
*of course not me, but the company I work for.

This video shows one of the evil sides of manhood. You simply do not expect what is going to happen. The guy almost exhales humbleness and modesty and gives you a incredible chill with his talent.

This kind of thing happens with big companies. While the past post said something about not being enthusiastic about touch screen, Nokia’s VP of Technology said the opposite.

That’s quite good news to hear. But I want to put my word here also (not that I’m worth to speak after Nokia’s VP but…)

Touch screens are nice. Very nice indeed. But remember this : People are lazy. Sorry if sounds too strong or even if it hits you in the head, but people are lazy. Looking at the nice videos from previous post you’re going to realize something when touch screens goes into big screens : It’s just too much physical effort to use it. And while immersion has already some work on tactile feedback is going to take a little bit longer to see physical keyboard disappearing. They are just too convenient, and give you a very nice cost x benefit.

So I believe a lot in touchscreen, specially when materials that do not get dirt appears, and when tactile feedback reaches the fiction standards. But for now, it can be nice to have it but it will not kill the old and god fellows keyboard and mouse in the big devices.

Well, surface came out and a lot of people seem to have forgot or didn’t know about this video :

This is actually the technology behind surface, of course, they made a “product” out of it, used some kind of proprietary tag (RFID-like) in devices to interact with it (you didn’t think it was working with any device like in the videos right?). The video is great to show you WHY there’s a annoying delay between the interaction and the actual answer from the system.

Not satisfied with Surface (thank god) Microsoft is also doing the same thing in a more portable way :

This video shows more or less the same concept applied behind a regular screen, allowing the researchers to make multi point on the laptop. Again notice the huge lag.

Of course is an under-heavy development technology but the need processing so much data to create the input is really a drag compared to apple’s and other companies approach like the famous guy from those famous videos (http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirsense/)

So while we are seeing a wave of gossips about the future of computing, multi-touch everywhere, I think the future reserves more surprises in the touchscreen space then multi-touch. Minority report-esque computers? Forget about it. People are lazy, and like my work mate Patricia says “You are crazy about having to wave my hands and arms that much to operate my computer. It’s too much”

This is perfect. For the pentagon, brainstorm meetings, and a lot of other things, but not for daily use as our benevolent mouse-operated pcs.

additional links : the Surface patent?

Hello Apple Fan boys! Please Repeat with me… Apple did not invent the Multi touch. Or the Touchscreen, or the UI, or the Accelerometer, or the proximity sensor, or the illumination sensor, or the T9.

It kill’s me to see some people looking at the iPhone and praising thinking that is the first time that a touchscreen is used, or a multi-touch technology is brought to the market or any other of the features on the Iphone. To be honest there’s a plenty of history behind most of this technology and again Apple is giving one lesson to all the companies out there : Marketing and Design are so powerful that they can actually make people think Apple invented most of the stuff they use on their products.

Just as examples I will list plenty of sites/articles/patent that shows some of the tecnology used by apple, and some they are actually trying to get patented again!

Multi touch : Nintendo DS, the Lemur from JazzMutants, The famous guy or even the city wall in helsinki and please read about the really old stuff with multi-touch in this website. In his website you will find it all, including Bruce Tog’s starfire movie and the first citations of multitouch from 1982. I was 2 years old when multitouch was on the spot.

Gestures : please look for more info on the work of Myron Krueger from 1983, where he described a lot of gestures, for one finger, multi finger and multi person interactions.

Accelerometers : They are available in digital cameras, and the LG gaming phone from 2005. I’ve played with that (tilting the phone) 2 years ago. So nothing new ok Apple? again your goal here is to do it with eye-candy, not to invent it.

Proximity Sensor I don’t know if this is a Nokia patent, but my first S60 phone ( the 7650) deactivated the Loudspeaker when you put the phone next to your face, and activated it when far. It’s exactly the same kind of sensor. So again, not a surprise or innovation on that. How they did to patent it?

Please, take a (long) time to watch the guided tour to the iPhone to realize 3 things (2 were already pretty clear):

1. Multitouch is a great technology, but not special in small device. Why? there’s simple not much that you can do on such small screens. You gonna realize that in the video

2. The UI has a long, long list of very very nice screens and well solved interaction issues. As an interaction designer it’s a delight to see it.

this picture shows the very nice “edit” mode for the bottom screen menu. Simple and effective. I will write a full review on how iPhone solved some of the most annoying things on the iPod.

3. It’s Apple, so of course they won’t give you a toe to step on, so while demonstrating the browser they show ” how to open a new browser window” but they don’t show how to move between windows. My tip on that : It works just like the Webkit based browser on s60 devices. =)

These days I was browsing the korean site of IRiver and I was amazed by how gorgeous some of the devices looked. The company has set this website with what appears to be a collection of new concepts/devices that are just amazing design pieces. This is one of my favorites :

P10 is a new prototype using Irivers known UI on the device’s frame. Instead of using the screen. It’s a great idea for such small devices. Funny that apple has a full ui using the frame patented.

But this beauty is actually a pocket dictionary! : / such a shame =)

See more on the website, by clicking here or more shots after the jump
Continue reading…

imagine yourself in a room with your VC investors trying to convincing them that your product is great:

“It’s just like second life, but with email!”

I know it maybe too hard for me to say but that sounds so dumb. Why?

Well, I understand the fact that with the success of second life it wouldn’t take long for other competitors to appear (in fact with the success of Habo, didn’t take long for second life to appear) but when you are competing to a champion, a leader, you must have something “else”. That “plus” that makes people die to use your service. Ok not die but you got the point. But now, we face this product that just sounds as funny as it’s ad video:

“one name spells excitement , one name entertainment, one name spells email, and that name is 3d-mail-box, have the adventure of your life, go where no email has gone before”

So, your difference with second life is that email are actually avatars? Thank you, but that’s just too much for a application UI. I can actually imagine myself having my laptop heating, and turning on the fans just reading email with actual 3D acceleration. No thanks again.

Well, ideas are like air, they are everywhere and of course this simple idea maybe have been published or patented by someone else but here goes anyways :

Transparent keys. Yes.

The first one is based on RIM’s draw, and illustrate the same mechanism but the keyboard is the idea : transparent. Second one is a regular Flip over cover, but again : there’s a transparent keyboard on that cover.
Silly ideas? Maybe.. but there’s so much other keyboard patents around that this actually looks serious =)

Everyone talks about touchscreen keyboards enabling dynamic reconfiguration, but people complain about the lack of “physical” touch to it. Keyboards, are solid, and have the label often on that, and softkeys are just below theirs labels and could not have icons for example. So to solve both problems my idea (from 2005 to be more precise) is to have a (just like the published patent by RIM) curtain keyboard. that can be hidden beneath the device (like a garage door). The different here is that the Keyboard is actually a very transparent silicon + acrylic build that can display images on the screen below, creating the illusion that keys are reconfigured, like an advanced, cost effective version of that “russian” OLED keyboard. (optimus)

Later, in my house I will draw this baby =) and apart from the challenges behind it I would still love to make it =)

*after drawing the thing, and analyzing RIM’s apply to that sliding keyboard, my design would have 2 options :
1) being made of flexible (like silicon) material, that demanded a smaller rolling mechanism or..
2) being a complete flip cover with the keyboard on it (like some old motorola’s phones had but with the transparent buttons)

The optimus keyboard, old fellow that uses one OLED screen for each key. What if we use just transparent keys?

Resume: the same old ideas, but mixed with each other can have nice side effects =)

Just got it on Arstechnica :

“Apple also announced this morning that the iPhone will have YouTube support as well. The company says that a new, Apple-designed app (wow, thanks for specifying that, Apple) will allow users to stream YouTube content to the device through WiFi or EDGE.”

And I fully agree with their comments on the fact that although there’s already a universal mobile version (that I posted about 2 days ago):

“This announcement only comes a few days after YouTube launched its own, “universal” version of YouTube Mobile. Apple just isn’t content to let other people do the work, I guess.”

For my point of view there’s good and bad things about that. If they break compatibility at any point is a bad thing, but looking at a product’s perspective it’s much better to make sure your client application “integrates” with the host device other than forcing people to use something that is just made to the less capable device. That’s what you get in the AppleTV version of youtube. It’s you tube, but inside the AppleTV user experience. Not a browser window.

So I was reading apple’s news and saw this nice table comparing the Iphone with the other phones :

with the suggestive name of “Competitive data chart” The last thing I could see there as a fair competition. Apple of course is not dumb and choose only the features where it beat the others. Very nice of you. So I will make you a favor and put the rest of the chart here. So you can really see how much the iphone beats the others

Yeah, looks pretty fair for me now =)

So you tube released a mobile web site. Looks pretty simple and works quite nice, more then I expected. But of course I found a little bit of problems while using it.

Follow with me, and tell me if it’s not a little bit confusing :

I started my web browser. Tried my GPRS service (Claro) and it didn’t worked. Claro sucks here in Recife. Not a problem, The cellphone have Wifi and we have wifi network available. What I do? Use the “search for wifi” in the access point dialog.

Then, I choose our network, enter the passphrase, and bam! start browsing. Full speed. But something was missing. I was really expecting to see a dialog asking me “Do you want to save this as an access point?”(like in Maemo) or even better do no ask me just create it at least for this session.

No. It didn’t happen, and I felt something was wrong, but ok maybe it’s just me. I kept browsing youtube, picked up a video and clicked “watch”. Real player opened, and even thought I’m connected he asks permission to connect to the network. Funny. Accept the request and got to the following message :
“No access point defined. Please define a default …”
What???? Ok ok ok. Let’s set the access point, click options, network, list access point…Not even a sign of the current connection I’m using. Damn!

Back to s60 main menu, open there’s a connectivity menu, I click on it, found a “Connection manager”. Nice should solve my problem. Active connection list my connection! Wait… there’s no way to save as an access point. Oh my god.

Click the menu key, now I will try the “settings” options. Enter the connection section, create an access point, define that I want to use lan and then… oh no… I need to enter the enormous password again. God damn it! I’m connected to the network!!! Ok, no problem I’m using a e61 full keyboard should not be a problem to type my 24 characters phrase. I enter the password, save the access point, close the settings, hold the menu key to go back to real player (thank you for multi tasking) and set the default access point.

Nice! Everything should work now! Press and hold menu key again, back to browser click on watch, authorize real player to connect and BAM! Youtube on my mobile! Finally.

Now please think with me :
Does it need to be so complicated? I’m all about giving user power to define for example a specific access point for such a service, but why not allow me to use my WIFI connection? There’s no charge on that! why to bother?

I see no reason to make the user experience so complicated. Of course there may be some obscure use case specification that forces that to happen but I believe there should be a much more simple way to do it, without compromising the power users.

Veredict
You tube rocks hard on the E61, the video quality is nice, compared to the web version, and it has a good audio. I just suffered a little bit with Real settings, but I hight recommend a S60 device to use with youtube mobile. Need to check a little bit more in other brands…

Talking to my buddy Marco gomes again, he complained about the iphoto tagging style (keywords) things that could take him too much time to use. So I did a simple googling, went to some of my favorite mac sites, and found this on the comments on all forces :
Keyword Assistant

Very nice freeware for improving your tag skills! Rocks.

*that’s what makes me really admire programmers who love to program. Sorry I’m not talking about those guys who learn the trendy language (eg: Java or .Net) just to get a job and earn some cash. Actually there’s nothing wrong with that besides the fact that those guys are creating dumb software and most of the time they are doing it in such a bureaucratic way that the software sucks like them.

This is loving to program. You find a problem, you solve. Your learn a new language, you improve your skills in the OS, whatever takes to solve the problem. That’s the hacker spirit. Solving problems with coding skills, really twisting the limits imposed.

By the way, if you are one of these guys that love to code, love python, linux, c, and would be dying to work on some cool things for embedded devices, drop me a line =)

Marco Gomes (boo-box) sent me a message a couple minutes ago about an ingenious time tracking application, that maybe can solve the worst problem about most of the time tracking application : People just forget about using it =)

The concept used by timmyontime is simple and uses something people are always using : their msn or jabber client( google talk).

You add the timmy “user” to your contact list and bam! You can start using it by sending simple controls to it as simple messages ( I can already see a Adium plugin for it):

“create project canola”
“set project canola”
“create task redesign specification” - and you can start your work! When you leave for lunch… just type :
“stop”

Pretty simple huh? Can sound complicated for some, but for most of people I know and work with, not at all =)

So as all the project, it can receive some feedback here goes mine:

1. Privacy / cryptography I know it’s a complicated subject by most of companies need some “privacy” - this should not be a problem for most teams though.
2. If possible, license to run the application on intranet. I know this is kind of stupid, but sometimes we are just not allowed to use great tools because they are services. We would pay a lot of money for some good solutions, but the only “way” they exists are in the services-based world, making impossible for a lot of people to use it.

This are just simple ideas from someone with a couple of projects going on with small team workings that would just love to be able to convince my TI guy to allow this use. But you guys had a great idea and deserve to be able to explore that! Rock on!

Ok, I was not supposed to be reading a globo’s company website but I like to read the biggest Brazilian portal everyday. When I’m reading some of the news have quite nice photographs, or informative graphics etc and there’s a small icon on the corner saying “click to enlarge”. Everyday is the same history : I click on the link and bam! a Javascript start that “fake- fullscreen” dimes my background everything to show me the picture in a bigger size, but I get the SAME picture. Yes the S.A.M.E picture.

Some chief Editor should really bothers some content professional to only put the link with “zoom in” when this is Really going to happen.

:p