2010
March Man, I wish Wordpress was around when I started this
Not to be overly crabby, but I just did the equivalent of adding a second story to my house - data wise - in about an hour. Which is to say - create a blog containing all my tweets (@michaeldain). Its avalable at http://directwitory.com/ and is all thanks to the mighty Bowman @stop who described how to do it. And do it I did. So over 1000 tweets are now categorized, sorted and searchable. When I started this blog in 2007 or so I was most concerned that CMS or blogging programs tended to really cruft up the markup, and make design just a crapshoot. So I wrote it by hand, and am now typing this in code view.
While it gets the job done, I'm more than pleased that such attention to detail is now not necessary for most authors, and indeed technology is best when fairly transparent. Its nice to delete something or add a bold bit here or there, but content is king, and Content Management Systems (sorry for the abbreviation earlier) are there to make people feel empowered and make it easy to share. With Facebooks amazing work, threaded discussion boards now look like they have always looked... crummy. Wordpress has really made it possbile, if not drop dead simple, to think of content in terms of a relation of topics, keywords, tag clouds, date boxes, all those things that people can gravitate towards if lost or bored with the current article.
So anyone know of an easy way to scrape a bunch of well formed HTML into a form wordpress could love? Tweet me at @michaeldain if you do! Oh and stil let me copy the look and feel of the mighty kottke.org, thanks for the Myriad!
February Google is evil, Adobe is lazy and Apple is...
"No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.
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I was struck by this quote, supposedly coming from the the Steve during a private pep talk about Apple's relationships with Adobe and Google. Within my industry, rich interaction goes hand in hand with Flash. It has been a personal crusade of mine and many on our team to reintroduce the advantages of HTML to accomplish similar effects. This is made possible through technologies like jquery/mootools/prototype, and thousands of creative programmers. Being someone who only prototypes, not a developer, HTML 5 offers the best of all possible worlds.
I like the strict separation between presentation, markup and behavior that HTML enforces, and flash makes tough. This rigor really adds to being able to iterate quickly as changes occur. Since great interaction is based on 'getting it right' in terms of timing, effort, and cognitive load on the user. Still, there are headaches; mainly transparency, PNG support, and of course the ever present IE 6 hacks that keeps flash in business.
So with the introduction of the iPad, I believe Apple will influence things toward the better, if not toward the profitable for companies such as Adobe. For the most part, the <video> tag may take a while to get to speed, but eventually will win out, adding layers of functionality to that tag may.. ouch, late breaking, but Vanessa wrote a much better post on this topic than I was going to. Take it away Vanessa.
My predictions on iPad:
1. The store is the message, this is a razor blade ploy, get the device at a loss and sell software. So Steve becomes a bit Microsoft-y in his old age.
2. All programs will begin with previews of the files you just created in them. Why didn't anyone do this right, screw the file system, or in the iPad's case, what file system?
3. Who cares about USB or any physical connection, just beam, sync, email stuff if you want it. The first cloud file system for iPad will be mobileMe, so renew or get your subscription if you don't have one.
Do I have time for late predictions on the end of Lost?
January Only on the iPhone... uh iTouch/iPad..
Its been about two years since Apple opened up the API and allowed people to write programs directly with the interface elements available within the hardware and software of the iPod device. This has been an unprecedented success, more people have picked up Objective C, even more sales have taken place since the heydays of the Palm. Now with the iPad, we're likely to see some new interface ideas, hopefully more adventurous than the pointy dropdown I noticed in the keynote. Probably something new will come from outside of Apple, since even the lauded 'augmented reality' is not an experience from an Apple branded product.
Till the iPad gets its groove on, I do want to showcase a couple of apps on the iPhone/iTouch that I think have really used the capabilities of the device in novel ways and made something brand new. And as a bonus, they are all games. Even though game machines are known to push the envelope graphically, only the Wii really thought through a new way of playing. The iPhone made it avalable, but developers have figured out new ways to use a device to have fun. So here are a few experiences you can only do on the iPhone.
1. Labyrinth - This game was one of the first out of the gate, and a true natural to use the orientation sensors in the device. Navigating a ball through a maze was actually one of my favorite wooden puzzles as a kid, twisting the little knobs and ever so delicately keeping the steel ball from being sucked into the base. This recreates and improves on the experience (the ball doesn't 'stick'!). So this gaming experience is impossible on any other device.
2. Unblock me - Sometimes a mouse doesn't cut it. Some master puzzle maker derived this new puzzle type where blocks need to be shifted to allow one to pass through. Sort of like 'sudoku' - this puzzle has a fairly infinite amount of variety and options, the only thing it lacks is the ability to physically 'slide' the pieces. So touch sensitive screens and voila, another game experience only for the touch screen.
3. Flight Control - Being able to trace a course on a touch screen makes possible this experience where you try to keep planes from crashing into each other. Without the ability to quickly reroute and redraw, this would be a crashing bore.
4. Levers - ok, so you can play this game with a mouse, but something about picking up things, moving them back and forth with your finger seems more pleasurable and fun.
5. Doodle Jump - Without a doubt, the big winner. This kind of gameplay would be not only no fun, but somewhat impossible on any other device. The brilliance of having the platformer jump automatically and using the tilting to steer, very clever.
I wish there were more examples, but my point is that those that see the entirety of the experience, and use the abilities of the device can think up something delightful.
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