interfacelab

Even though it’s a slightly old post, it just recently resurfaced on Hacker News and I feel it’s worthy of a rebuttal.

Full disclosure: I have no apps on the App Store, though I intend to push my first one in the coming months.  I do however do a lot of iPhone and iPad development, mostly for internal use by my company.

In Jonathan’s “brilliant” post, he asks his readers if they really want to give up 30% of their profits, learn Objective-C, endure approval delays and navigate code signing just to put their iPhone/iPad apps on Apple’s App Store.  He further goes on to say that you should instead develop a mobile web application instead, because it’ll work on all mobile devices and gets you around the bullet points (the 30%, the Objective-C, etc).

Great advice, if it were complete.  What he leaves out is how exactly you’d monetize that application, which as we all well know, is the conundrum of Web 2.0.

[Read more]

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

I just downloaded the Wired iPad application, and like most iPad applications (and most magazines for that matter), I found myself bored with it within the first 20 minutes. I’m sure the content is engaging, I’m sure the articles are worth reading – but I am stumped as to why I would chose this over the physical magazine itself, or their website for that matter. In fact, for reasons I’ll get into below, I’m starting to believe that the physical magazine’s “interface” is vastly superior to it’s iPad cousin.

However, what strikes me most about the Wired app is how amazingly similar it is to a multimedia CD-ROM from the 1990′s. This is not a compliment and actually turns out to be a fairly large problem…

[Read more]

(66 votes, average: 4.42 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Since LoC wanking seems to be the rage this week, I decided to take a stab at cloning the hottest new thing to hit the internets since twitter: Blippy!

Yes, believe it! You can now twitter your soul crushing acts of consumerism to your uninterested friends so that they too can be involved in the banal minutiae of your life! The IRS is going to love this one.

<?
// what a stupid f'ing idea
?>

And there you have it. All the functionality in way less code.

(8 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

My mom is totally going to love the shit out of this thing.  Off the top of my head:

• She can read her books in the dark.
• She can use it in the kitchen to look up recipes and watch cooking videos.
• She can use the GPS to help my dad drive their RV around the country.
• She can be better connected to her iPhone wielding grandchildren.
• She can play Words with Friends on a bigger screen.
• She can  browse the web on a readable screen.  While in the RV.
• Watch all of her NFL games while sitting on the porch.

And that’s just to start.  Later down the road, maybe after revision 2, she’ll also be able to:

• Draw her knitting patterns and sync it with her knitting machine via Bonjour over WiFi.
• Have video chats with the kids.
• Augmented reality tour guides for the new places they travel to.
• Telemedical (god forbid) monitoring to save trips to the doctor.
• Control surface for manipulating certain controls of the RV.

The best part?  I won’t have to show her how to do those things, not most of them anyway.  So to do 80% of what she uses her laptop for, she can do all of those things without having to lug the thing out, plug it in, hook up the mouse, etc.  She’ll be able to take the information she is looking for to the place where she needs it to be: the kitchen, the sewing room, the co-pilot’s seat.

So thinking about my mother using it, and loving it, I started to think how I would use it.  My list is almost equally as long.

• Control Boxee.
• Use it as a control surface for Final Cut or Ableton Live or Traktor via Bluetooth or WiFi.
• Home automation.
• The ultimate universal remote (extra hardware required)
• Pornography
• Better in-flight DVD viewing experience

There are so many more integration points the iPad can make with day to day living and day to day information needs.  The key aspect of it all is mobility and portability, having the information you need not only when you need it, but where you need it.

I understand the let down from the perspective of people who were wishing for a multi-touch Mac Book.  But I think they are thinking about it wrong.  People are thinking about it as if it’s a computer, but it isn’t just a computer, it’s a whole new category of device, a whole new definition of what a computer is.

I also agree with most that the lock down to the App Store is a let down, though you don’t have to think too hard about it to understand it’s a necessary evil.  It reduces any potential confusion on how to make the thing do something new.  My Mom and I were playing Words with Friends without me having to walk her through how to install it and get it running.  Now compare that with what it was like to show her how to do something similar on her Windows laptop … yeah no thanks, I’ll take the App Store.  Not to mention not having to run that crappy antivirus and anti-spyware junk – the stuff that sucks the performance out of her laptop and yields endless complaints about how slow everything is.  Perhaps it’s a false sense of security, but I can live with that.

Some of the complaints about usability and related things are complete nonsense and even defy logic.  I’m pretty sure Apple did some usability testing on this thing … but maybe that’s just wild speculation on my part.

I think Apple is definitely onto something, maybe it’s not quite there yet, but they’ve definitely accomplished more than bringing an oversized iPhone to market.  But only time will tell.

And, yes, she does kick my ass in Words with Friends.  She hit me with two 70+ pointers yesterday.

(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

 Loading ...

If you are using JW Player and the HD plugin, you’ll notice the latest version of the plugin does bandwidth detection and automatically flips to the HD version of the file if the player has detected the user’s bandwidth can support it.

This is undesirable for a bunch of different reasons. Here’s a patch to solve the problem, while still keeping that functionality should you need it.

[Read more]

(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

I just want to start out by stating that I, in fact, am a big fan of Slicehost and constantly recommend them to friends setting up anything more serious than blogs. They have a truly great offering and their customer service has only been rivaled, in my experience, by the support team from DataPipe – whom I whole heartedly recommend for any colo or managed hosting.

One thing that is truly great about Slicehost is that they offer an awesome API that allows you to do most everything you can do in their management console, but instead through web services. You can create new slices, reboot them, change and add DNS, as well as rebuild or destroy slices.

The only problem is that the API follows a “standard ActiveResource pattern” that comes straight from the bowels of Rails and is way too convoluted for something this simple.

[Read more]

(5 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

In the following article, I’m going to attempt to describe how one might bootstrap the technical components of their startup as cheaply as humanly possible, while still giving you room to easily scale. A lot of this is based on what I’ve learned in the last 2+ years as the CTO of massify.com, an online networking site for film makers.  Your mileage may vary, of course, and I’m sure there are a variety of alternatives to some of the things I’ll be recommending.  I welcome all commenters to pitch in with their own experiences in hopes that we can grow this post into a useful resource for up and coming entrepreneurs.

[Read more]

(6 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

The following guide will walk you through setting up possibly the fastest way to serve PHP known to man. If there is a faster way, I’ve not yet found it climbing through zillions of blog posts out there on the subject. In this article, we’ll be installing nginx http server, PHP with the PHP-FPM patches, as well as APC. The end result? Pure awesome.
[Read more]

(30 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Filmmakers finding new action online | Web Scout | Los Angeles Times

Got great coverage about Massify in the LA times.  Go Massify!

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Found this awesome toy today.

(3 votes, average: 2.33 out of 5)

 Loading ...