6 yrs since the last Boards Of Canada LP
It’s been 6 yrs since the last Boards Of Canada LP. Just heard from a friend that they’ve spent most of that time “digging a tunnel.” What?
John Allison on Twitter
'It's not Pokémon'
‘It’s not Pokémon’ the PR people shout. Of course it isn’t; that would be silly. Combining World of Warcraft and Pokémon is an insane idea that could only end in tears.
Notification Centre Localisation
Whilst checking how Apple spell “centre” in “Notification Centre” for my iOS 5 post I noticed they had localised it for British spelling; a nice surprise.
Notification Centre in the UK.
Notification Center in the US.
I assumed it was just going to be the US spelling, for marketing purposes or just consistency in general.
It’s interesting though that “Game Center” is just the US spelling (UK, US).
On iOS 5
If you hadn’t heard, it’s pretty great. Here are a few points I wanted to talk about.
iCloud
iCloud seems to be holding up pretty well so far. I haven’t heard of any major issues and I haven’t had any, which does bode well. The only minor problem I had was when setting it up on my Mac. Everything seemed to enable except the “Mail & Notes” option in the settings. I would check the box, it would say starting, but then upon leaving the screen and going back in the box was unchecked and mail not set up. Leaving this alone for an hour or so, then trying it again worked fine, so I can only assume that it was just a slight connection issue. However there was no message saying such, it just didn’t do anything.
Notification Centre
Notification Centre seems to be liked by some but not by others. I do like it. The problem some people seem to be having looks like more to do with habit than anything else; not checking Notification Centre. I see it as something that people would actually get used to doing over time. A scenario for this problem is given by Ben Brooks in his article The Annoyment Center:
So here’s a common scenario for me:
- While driving home from work I get notifications from OmniFocus, Twitter, Text Messages.
- At some point during the drive I need to make a phone call, so I unlock the phone and make the call, using voice dial or Dialvetica.
- I get home and use my phone to check Twitter and Email, but now all the notifications that were on the lock screen are gone because I unlocked my phone and made that call.
Therefore: I never see those notifications. I thought this entire system was designed so that I don’t miss notifications any more?
I would argue that the last bullet point should read “I get home and use my phone to check Notification Centre, Twitter and Email…"; so you still see relevant, up to date, notifications that you may have missed but are now gone from the lock screen.
User-Defined Keyboard Shortcuts
I am just coming round to seeing the usefulness of TextExpander on my Mac and these are a good way to get a bit of that functionality built into every text fields in iOS. These can be set in Settings > General > Keyboard.
iPad Gestures
I got round to having a long play on my iPad last night with iOS 5 installed and these new gestures are just awesome. With 4 or 5 fingers they let you swipe left and right to switch apps, swipe up to get the app switched and pinch to go to the home screen. Much less double clicking the home button is great.
Thank You Steve
As is usual now, I was reading Twitter on my iPhone first thing this morning when I read the sad news that Steve Jobs had passed away. He is the first public figure, someone that I have never met, who I am actually sad has died.
I started writing this on my iPhone on a train and have finished it on my iPad at home. When sat with the iPad next to me, every time I look over at it I think about how I am living in the future. He helped make the future now.
Thank you Steve.
If you’re disappointed by the iPhone 4S, you’re nuts
Some great points here from Dan Frommer; especially the first point:
The iPhone 4S is a significantly different device under the hood, including a faster processor, better camera, faster mobile web access, better antenna design, worldphone features, and better battery life. In other words, a much better phone. (These aren’t just “specs,” either — these things matter.)
This new iPhone is nothing to complain about.
The Next iPhone
These rumours about the new iPhone next week are all over the place now.
I can’t remember any mention of this anywhere (but there probably is) but if we have the iPhone 4S in an inventory database and no iPhone 5 (yet), couldn’t this rumoured tear drop iPhone 5 actually just be a new iPod Touch and these cases are just labelled based on these rumours?
Peeking at others’ workspaces
If you’re the kind of person who likes to peek at others’ workspaces (and this is the internet, so you probably are)
The Future According to Films
3000 A.D. - Battlefield Earth - Let’s hope Futurama happens.
WriteRoom 3.0 iOS App
Just seen (only a month late) WriteRoom has been updated on iOS and it looks like a good one.
I’m not sure how long there has been an iPad version/iPad version was added but I don’t remember using it before. It looks great and now has Dropbox support. I have been using Elements for my writing needs on iOS for a while, mostly for it’s Dropbox support, but WriteRoom seems to be doing a great job whilst I am writing this.
This version 3.0 of WriteRoom has also added an extra, customisable row of keys to the iPads keyboard. I have just started to use Markdown for my posts and this will help a lot on the iPad; it just makes getting to the square brackets fast, it also adds a tab key. The only thing that’s missing for Markdown is a Markdown preview which Elements does well.
Make them slightly wrong to annoy people
There have been accusations in the past that I look things up then deliberately make them slightly wrong to annoy people
Edinburgh Fringe 2011 Part 1 (of more than 1 (maybe))
Fun times were had by all this weekend at some Edinburgh Fringe shows!
Here a few brief comments on the shows we went to see in order of viewing:
The Gentlemen of Leisure Present: The Death of the Novel:
Their show this year explores the novel and it’s possible demise. It’s a great show, really enjoyed it, go see it.
Alun Cochrane: Moments of Alun:
It was a good show, he is very funny, but not one of my favourites.
A fun way to start a day; a funny take on Macbeth, coffee and a croissant, what’s not to like.
Humphrey Ker is Dymock Watson: Nazi Smasher!:
This was an awesome show, go see this one. It’s a great and hilarious World War II story (which is apparently “true(ish)” according to the fringe site).
Hopefully I will get to see a few more shows this year.
Funding the Scott Pilgrim movie
still can’t believe we raised 60 million dollars on kickstarter to fund the Scott Pilgrim movie
Bryan Lee O’Malley on Twitter
Google+ iOS App
So the Google+ iOS app got released, I think it’s pretty nice. They did a good job overall with the mobile site but it’s just not quite as good as a native app.
The main “home” screen has 5 icons at the moment, big enough targets, gets you to the place you want. This is nearly identical to the Facebook app when navigating between functions; I am not a big fan of this; one place where I think a tab controller would be better suited; faster to use too.
The rest of the functions like photos and circles are pretty standard and work well. The Huddle feature is a good idea, data based group messaging, would save sending out lots of SMS messages, but it didn’t work very quickly when I tried it and there seems to be no way to view these on the website. The Stream view has probably the most different from other apps. I will let John Gruber explain better than I would:
this Google+ app uses left-right swiping to change views in your “Stream”. I see three: Incoming, Circles, and Nearby. The idiomatic iOS design for this would be a tab controller at the bottom with three tabs, one for each view.
I do agree that it’s not standard but I don’t think it’s a bad choice, seems quite quick and a good alternative, especially for only 3 separate views; if there were more then I dont think it would be as good. What I don’t like about this setup is you can only swipe, there is no tapping the header of the left/right views; it just tells you to swipe. It’s one of those things that should be perfect alternative that users can find out. I think Loren Brichter actually explained this very well in this interview from 2009 about Tweetie 2:
Now, I think you can split gestures into two categories. One is of the pull-down-to-refresh kind. These are gestures that are discoverable and explanatory. The other kind of gestures are like tapping-the-status-bar-to-scroll-to-the-top, or swipe-to-delete (or swipe-to-reply in Tweetie). These gestures you won’t discover on your own except by accident. These are not discoverable, and they are not explanatory.
This second class of gestures can exist (in my opinion) because they are not the only way to accomplish a goal. In the case of tapping the status bar, users already know how to scroll to the top manually. It’s slower, but it’s possible. In the case of swipe to delete, users already know they can tap on a message and then tap the trash button. So knowing the gesture isn’t necessary.
So when you’re inventing new gestures, it’s important to think about whether the gesture is required to use the app. If it’s the only way to accomplish a goal, you better be sure it’s discoverable and explanatory without needing to read a manual. If it’s the other kind of gesture, go nuts!
I would class tapping the header left/right text as the second type; you would probably only discover it by accident, but it would be a perfectly acceptable way to navigate. What I don’t like at the moment is the big popup that appears telling you to scroll instead; it’s an iOS app, we probably would swipe automatically anyway (plus I have a recollection that it gave you a message at on the first launch that you should swipe anyway).
I can see no reason to use the web app over this native one, it’s a good start.
Telegraph: "End of the road: no more fares for Malta's vintage buses"
I did enjoy my trip on Malta’s buses; sure the one I went on didn’t have a door and it was loud, so I can very much understand the need for the upgrade, but it was a good experience. Hopefully they can keep a few running, or at least give the new ones the same colour scheme.
Telegraph: “End of the road: no more fares for Malta’s vintage buses”
Clouds
WWDC 2011 Keynote
I think that was a great WWDC keynote, content-wise at least, it's hard to tell much else from just text and photos (although the video is now up apparently).
Now to wait...
“thinnest-plus”
Maybe they should call it “thinnest-plus”.
3 Dreams of Black
This is an interactive video to the track ‘Black’ from Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi’s new album ‘Rome’.
Einstein was right. Again.
The four gyroscopes in GP-B are “the most perfect spheres ever made by humans…”