Why App. Store rip-offs don’t work
I’m talking about you Ovi, Nokia’s new app Store.
Early criticisms point out the store’s paltry selection, slow performance and sign-in errors, disappearing apps and a less-than-intuitive UI. Nokia blamed the store’s unresponsiveness on unusually high traffic and did its best to address the problem, but even those efforts by its own admission resulted in only “intermittent performance improvements.”
[Ovi, Nokias New App Store, Off to Rocky Start | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD]
YouTube as checks and balances on Big Brother
Holden Frith of Wired wrote a great article titled Little Brother is Watching You, which covers the importance of using technology (surveillance) in protecting our civil liberties.
An innocent man died after being pushed to the pavement by a police officer and it was caught on civilian camera , a perfect example of crowdsourcing (CCTV, the “Big Brother” surveillance system was experiencing “technical issues” at the time). This horrific sequence of events strangely reminds me of Rodney King.
“Surveillance is still talked of as something done to us by them, but increasingly it’s something done to everyone by everyone else. What that means for the authorities is that they can no longer control the flow of information about their actions.” -Holden Frith, Wired.co.uk Editor
Cory Doctrow’s wrote a book called Little Brother, it’s about a modern-day technologist who proves that individuals can level the playing field against agents of the state by using their own understanding of digital tools to subvert and confront them. It’s available for free, published through a creative commons license, and available here. I can’t wait to pick it up on Amazon.
[Wired Blog: Little Brother Is Watching You]
Crack Excel password protected sheets, no software required
Over time, Microsoft has increased the importance of security in their pecking order, but Microsoft Excel’s password protection is still rather lack-luster. A few days ago, a co-worker had asked me for help in recovering a password she had forgotten for an old Excel spreadsheet. Luckily, this can be done with absolutely no additional software.
This routine provides a password to unprotect your worksheet. However, it may not give you the original password that was used.
Make Windows fonts look as smooth as Mac OS X fonts
Ever wonder why everything just looks a little bit better on a Mac? That’s because Apple OS X uses a different font rendering technology than Windows. That can easily be changed though, and there’s a little program that can do it with ease.
Now before I open up this can of worms, people each have their preference, and we can argue for days about which one is better. Personally, I like the way the OS X looks. GDI++, a Japanese application, does just that. It takes just about 5mb of memory and sits in your task tray, rendering everything on your system in GDI++ instead of ClearType (the typical windows font rendering tool). And when you disable it, it just puts everything back to the way it was. It’s really easy to activate, and gets rid of jaggy fonts.
Taking all the wrong steps to solve all the wrong problems
To remove a defaming page about us on the internet we ask Google to remove it from their search results, and then Yahoo, and then everywhere else. Matt Cutts, SEO expert at Google, discusses this in detail.
Instead, we should be talking to the creator of the page directly and having them remove or modify the content of the page all-together, it will remove the results from not only Google and Yahoo, but everywhere else you haven’t thought of.
We’re signing legislation like the Internet Safety Act that prevents people from accessing the internet anonymously. Supposedly this is going to stop sex offenders and help the police catch them. Instead, it’s going to do more harm than good, completely eradicating available and open WiFi in places like Starbucks and your favorite sports bar.
We also take them off Facebook and Myspace. Instead, we should be figuring out a way to stop them from making sexual advances towards kids all together. Facebook has removed 5,585 sex offenders from their site since May of last year. Great, the only reason we’re doing this is because it’s measurable and easy to enact. This quote made me really think about us concentrating on the things we fear, instead of real problems:
“Why are we so obsessed with the registered sex offender side of the puzzle when the troubled kids are right in front of us? Why are we so obsessed with the Internet side of the puzzle when so many more kids are abused in their own homes? I feel like this whole conversation has turned into a distraction. Money and time is being spent focusing on the things that people fear rather than the very real and known risks that kids face. This breaks my heart.”
[Boing Boing: Internet not full of pedos, the statistical edition]
Last week, I wrote about doctors making patients sign EULAs that disallow them to give feedback on the services they received on review sites like RateMDs.com. Another instance of not concentrating on the real problem, but simply being afraid of losing clients due to poor service. Why doesn’t Apple make people sign EULAs to not review their products? That’s because they try to make great products which customers will review positively. We need to figure out how to make these tools work for us, instead of trying to fight them.
Doctors don’t want to be rated online, afraid to lose business
Doctors are making patients sign EULAs that make sure they can’t make any comments about them online (on websites like RateMDs). I think this is total garbage, and if your doctor is looking for you to sign something similar, get a new one. Wouldn’t it be funny if professors made you sign a paper that said you cant rate them at RateMyProfessor.com? What about having to sign something so you don’t rate products on Amazon or Epinions, that would be funny too.
“They’re basically forcing the patients to choose between health care and their First Amendment rights, and I really find that repulsive,” Swapceinski said.
[Docs seek gag orders to stop patients' reviews (AP)]
Luckily they will never be able to stop posting on the Internet and put “out of court settlement” into extinction. This is simply silly legislature, and the doctors that are complaining are clearly the bad ones. How about this suggestion: improve your practice so the reviews you get on the sites and blogs are good, then use that to sell yourself.
What do Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Palm Pre, Apple iPhone, and T-Mobile G1 have in common?
WebKit, the fastest open source web browser engine.
There are a lot of reasons why WebKit is used in so many applications. From Apple’s Safari—the default browser on the Mac and iPhone), Google’s Chrome—their flagship browser on both Windows and Android mobile platform, and Palm Pre’s Web OS operating system, WebKit has proven to be widely accepted amongst the giants of the industry. Even KDE and Nokia’s S60 use WebKit and this is one of the biggest reasons why:
Performance is a top priority for WebKit. We adhere to a simple directive for all work we do on WebKit.
Prioritize simplicity; if your mom can’t use it, try making it more usable
As I went over to my TV to turn it on, I noticed that I was surrounded by five seperate remotes, each of which has an infinite amount of buttons. Which of these do I even use? I just want to watch TV!
To do that, I have to first turn on the TV using one remote, then the cable box with another, then the sound system with the third. Eventually when all my devices come on and I can hear that screachy kid on American Idol loud and clear, I’ve forgotten how to switch the channel. I look down only to see about 50 tiny buttons, none of which point me in the right direction.
That reminded me of a post I saw on Gizmodo today. I think that manufacturers need to pay a bit more attention to simplicity. If I only use 10 buttons on a remote frequently, make them large and easy to use, the rest you can hide behind a bezel or put them in a less-convenient place.
Value the importance of using less to accomplish more. If you can combine the play, pause, and select buttons into just one, do so. Why do we still have seperate buttons for fast forwarding and skipping to the next chapter? Press the button to go to the next chapter, and hold it to fast forward. For example, here’s the remote for an Apple TV:
Netbooks are great because “most of the time, we do almost nothing”
A netbook is essentially a small laptop. It’s often characterized by having a tiny solid-state hard drive, a processor that’s very efficient at conserving energy, and a screen just big enough to read on. Below is Clive Thompson on Netbooks:
But here’s the catch: Most of the time, we do almost nothing. Our most common tasks—email, Web surfing, watching streamed videos—require very little processing power. Only a few people, like graphic designers and hardcore gamers, actually need heavy-duty hardware. For years now, without anyone really noticing, the PC industry has functioned like a car company selling SUVs: It pushed absurdly powerful machines because the profit margins were high, while customers lapped up the fantasy that they could go off-roading, even though they never did. So coders took advantage of that surplus power to write ever-bulkier applications and operating systems.
[The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time]
Over is the time of “bigger is better”, welcome to the era of efficiency. I love how the author relates fast laptops to SUVs, and I think it makes sense. When fuel prices in the United States were on the rise, people started buying more efficient vehicles that better suited their real-world uses. With the recession in full swing, we’re seeing the same idea trickle down to consumer goods. This is a large leap in understanding the beauty of small and simple.
New year, new layout, new content
I got bored with the layout I previously had and I figured, it’s time for a little change. The new one is still getting tweaked, so bear with me. I added links on the side to all my social “homes”. From there, you can get to my LinkedIn profile, my Facebook page, or follow me on Twitter.
I would also like to transition this blog into a different direction. I intend on posting a little less on the things happening in my life and a little more on technology, design, and simplicity. I figure I can use Facebook and Twitter to post personal things, and this blog to talk about the things I think about on a daily basis.
Lastly, head on over to the about page, I added a feed that’s constantly updated with what I’m bookmarking on Delicious, what pictures I’m adding over at flickr, what news I’m sharing on Google Reader, and even what I recently posted on Twitter.
Update: And with the change of pace comes the slightly different name. When I thought of daily parsimony I must have been kidding myself, I may not be able to do this daily. So, I unveil to you, digital parsimony. At least it’ll keep me on topic.
