Informal Brain

I took this screen shot from one of the youtube demos posted by Google demoing the Google Android OS.

A couple of take awys I thought were important:

• The OS allows both multi touch input and traditional navigation using keyboards and rollerballs (like the blackberry).
• The OS has many of the features the iPhone introduced to us and in some ways has managed to improve on the iPhone’s design in a few key places. For example, street view allows you to rotate the device using the accelerometer / compass. Very cool.
• The home screen is a better design in my mind. It is like Google took a page from Apple’s spaces and brought it to the mobile device.
• Notifications are better managed in my mind. A big problem on the iPhone is the notifications pop up above anything else that is happening. How often have you received an SMS message while talking on the phone. Try hanging up the call… oh oh. Additionally, the notifications are in a list which allows you to work through them. Maybe a bit email’ish but at least you won’t clear that important txt message and then forget about it.

The big questions:

• Will Google find a device partner that can deliver a piece of hardware which is ergonomic and matches the great functionality of the OS with the device. Apple really gets this right.
• When will we see this kind of device in stores?
• And finally, how many phone companies will shut down their own OS development to compete. We have seen motorola struggle. Could this save them?

This will most definitely be an interesting area to watch.

A new Google Reader AIR application emerged today:

This application provides the traditional river of news approach to RSS reading in a very cool desktop package.

However, in a world of short timeframes and quick news consumptions would you not rather have this kind of view into your RSS news feeds:

Here you see a number of RSS feeds overlaid into a single pane of information. The graphics added by the bloggers give the stories texture and allow you eye to float over the entire subject space. You can quickly pick out articles which interest you, save them (if desired) and quickly move on to other topic spaces. In my mind the river of news style is obsoleted.

Turns out the iPhone passcode is not very secure at all. Jonathan Zdziarski notes:

As discovered by Jonathan Zdziarski, who has established himself as something of an iPhone forensics expert, the iPhone’s passcode mechanism should leave you feeling neither smug nor secure, and represents little more than a mild deterrent for would-be viewers of your private data.

[From iPhone passcode can be easily bypassed - iPhone Atlas]

In the referenced article are steps to hack into the device and replace files by manipulating the disk directly. What this proves to me is that Apple should look seriously at using some kind of on disk encryption for the iPhone which can be optionally enabled and then secured with a user password. This would avoid the issue we see here because the device itself would no longer be a target of a direct disk attack. I have previously written about how I believe Apple has missed a primary feature related to data encryption on the iPhone. Apple should really bring their FileVault technology to the iPhone and enable it for true enterprise level security.

Have you seen these new renderings of the XO2? Again it appears that the iPhone continues to create a revolution in multi-touch devices and screen based input paradigms. This is a natural progression for the XO laptop program. Why? Well, the XO program is targeted to multiple countries, and I can imagine it is costly to build many customized versions of fixed keyboards for the current device. Additionally, a screen based keyboard allows complex input types of traditional chinese and japanese character sets which are difficult to express on a fixed keyboard.

Pixel QI (founded by original OLPC team member Mary Lou Jepsen) noted the following on their web site after the OLPC announcement:

Pixel Qi has a new take on the future of the computing - it’s not about the CPU or the OS - It is about the screen.

We contend that new displays, with integrated touchscreens, and wireless capability are the future. They are essentially motherboad-less and don’t need much an operating system at all. We are currently in a world of $10 CPUs, next year they will be less expensive. We see the future of the portable electronics as simply the display with embedded electronics eventually right in the display glass itself. This is the future laptop, the future cell phone and the future PDA. Instead of focusing on more and more Megahertz and Gigabytes, we focus on displays that we can read, as easy as paper - indoors and out - with battery life measured in days not hours. We are talking about displays that can also display HDTV quality movies.

Sounds ambitious, but then again some would have said this about the iPhone before it arrived and took the world of mobile devices by storm. Jobs was right when he said that the most important piece of iPhone technology was the screen. The multi-touch capability, high density / pixel count and on screen keyboards allow for much greater flexibility over traditional devices with fixed keyboards and standard low density displays.

I challenged myself a few weeks back to completely switch my RSS reading habits over to the Acrylic Times RSS reader.  I have noted in a couple of my previous posts here and here that I had found some some immediate benefits to the amount of time I was spending with RSS feeds.

I am happy to announce that weeks later I continue to find benefit in this new style of reading.  For example, I spend less time leafing through feeds in google reader.  I noticed a number of other people who have tried Times felt that they were suddenly unburdened by unread count syndrome.  Like most people who needs another email like reminder that we are falling behind.  I also switched my reading style on my iPhone to subscribe to a few safari based RSS feeds.  The list is very small and only includes those sites with immediate to the point news, with a small number of daily articles.

So what is the next step?  Well, I would suggest that the Acrylic folks think about building a version of Times for the iphone as a native application.  It would be very interesting to see the same style of RSS overview on the iPhone.  Perhaps some kind of zoom into and out of article with a double tap to show the details like the current Times page curl effect.

This is HUGE news. For the organizations who have not yet rolled out Office 2009 to their companies this is a HUGE deal. I think this is a game changer because it means you could have a dual strategy of rolling out free star office to the vast majority of the enterprise who are just consumers of content while the “power” users stick with Office 2007. For example, we saw a feature in the latest version of IBM’s Lotus Notes software last week which showed an embedded set of ODF viewers built into the client which in my mind eliminates even then need for Office on most end user’s workstations.

Microsoft was set to announce Thursday that it would make the interchangeable document format of a competitor available in its own market-leading Office 2007 software during the first half of 2009.

The company, under pressure from European regulators, national standards organizations and its own government clients, said it planned to give customers the ability to open, edit and save documents in Open Document Format — the main competitor to the Microsoft Word format — through a free update.

[From Open-Source File Format Is to Be a Part of Microsoft Office - New York Times]

I have noticed a disturbing trend at work lately. We all have the same 5-10 short sleeve shirts in our closet! This week I had the embarrassing experience of showing up for a lunch appointment with a co-worker and we were wearing exactly the same shirt.

We thought this might make for the perfect Facebook application. One where you can enter in the shirt selection of the day and it will tell you if any of your friends have chosen the same one as you.

Build away if you think it is a good idea. I for one could be your first customer!

Does it annoy any other Apple TV owners that there isn’t some kind of alert when something you add a favorites list (podcast, or TV show) has a new entry. I swear it is like Christmas each time I bust open the PBS frontline favorite I have and find out a new show has been added. It sure would be nice if there was some kind of “new” items menu option where it would show you a full screen list of new items added to things in your favorites list.

Loved this quote from the NYT today.

Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots.
[From Gas Prices Send Surge of Riders to Mass Transit - New York Times]

Seems like folks are finally discovering that taking mass transit really does pay off. Portland, has been a leader in developing its mass transit system and I sure hope that the TriMet planners are pleased with the foresight they had to build such a great mass transit system. My unscientific analysis of daily ridership shows that it is increasing. Lots of new faces and the morning express buses are more crowded then usual.

One week later we have seen two major updates to the new Times RSS browser from Acrylic software.  I was reading through the comments on Acrylic’s post about having a number of issues during the initial launch.  Lots of folks commenting on crashes and lost data. 

I am happy to report that as of version 1.0.3 (509) that the software is now very stable.  My copy has been running for days without any kind of crash.

I still love the UI.  It is a major productivity saver.  I still see people commenting that they want to have better notification of what is new, or what they have read vs. what they have not read.  Those people should head back to their traditional “river of news” readers.  To use Times you have to embrace the “glance” at news model and trust that news you need will be on the page when you open the software.  Finding the right feed mix on each page is key.  I have been focusing on sites that do a good job of summarizing a topic rather then focusing on a very narrow niche area.  Makes for better coverage… like a news paper!

I have been sticking with my practice of only using Times and a couple of RSS feeds on my iPhone.  Still seeing much less time surfing Google Reader and I feel liberated.