Categories
Apple Google

Is Apple Big Brother?

Alex Levinson: “I don’t think that’s a legal battle Apple wants to face considering the sale of over 100 million iDevices worldwide. That raises the question – how is this data used? It’s used all the time by software running on the phone. Built-In applications such as Maps and Camera use this geolocational data to operate. Apple provides an API for access to location awareness called Core Location.”

No, Apple isn’t “Big Brother”, that’s the government’s job. Go read the article, it’s very good, and gives you the truth about how the data is used, including this nice little nugget.

“Apple is not harvesting this data from your device. This is data on the device that you as the customer purchased and unless they can show concrete evidence supporting this claim – network traffic analysis of connections to Apple servers – I rebut this claim in full.”

Oh, and yes, Android devices do something similar.

If you have an iPhone and would like to create a map of the places you’ve been, there’s an app for that.

Categories
Cloud

SmugMug’s use of The Mythical Cloud (A.K.A. network)

Don MacAskill: “Which brings us to fourth, we aren’t 100% cloud yet. We’re working as quickly as possible to get there, but the lack of a performant, predictable cloud database at our scale has kept us from going there 100%. As a result, the exact types of data that would have potentially been disabled by the EBS meltdown don’t actually live at AWS at all – it all still lives in our own datacenters, where we can provide predictable performance. This has its own downsides – we had two major outages ourselves this week (we lost a core router and its redundancy earlier, and a core master database server later). I wish I didn’t have to deal with routers or database hardware failures anymore, which is why we’re still marching towards the cloud.”

Something to remember when you put your data in the hands of someone else, they don’t care about it as much as you do.

Case in point, an ECG monitoring company had a life and death situation because of the failure. They should’ve been a bit better prepared, but I’m sure they thought “The Mythical Cloud” would never fail.

Bottom line: It’s still a network, they’re still just computers, they’re over used, humans are in charge, and you should have a backup plan.

Categories
Life Social

Do you Facebook?

Gizmodo: “I will grant you this: Facebook, much like Twitter, has a lot that sucks about it. A tremendous amount. You’re exposed to inane human behavior on a scope and volume unprecedented in the history of mankind. And yes, there are privacy eyebrow-raises that are warranted—it’s a little weird that people I barely know anymore see where I work, where I live, and who I’m talking to. And there’s plenty of crap. Pokes from creepy people. Photos of idiots. Moronic comments. Racism. All the worst parts about our species, sandwiched between poorly-targeted banner ads.”

I have Facebook for one reason. My family is on Facebook. I’ve taken to posting links to political commentary, that should chase a few folks off, but by and large I use it to push links to with weblog. My weblog is where my real online identity lies and it’s where I write. Facebook is just another distribution mechanism for me.

Categories
Business Design Development

Fresno Co-Working; @Hashtag_Fresno

HASHTAG Fresno: “A new collaborative co-work, hackerspace in the crazy Tower District. Caffeine, internet, and people like you. 24 hour access. Pizza across the street. Coffee next door.”

Makes me wish I were an Indie Developer! For $29.00/month you get a space to work with other creative people. Absolutely brilliant idea! Sure, I know it’s not new, but it’s needed in Fresno. There are a lot of creatives and developers there, they’re just hiding. Hopefully this brings them out into the open.

I know I’ve called Fresno a Technology Black Hole, but that one post made me realize Fresno has a large collective of great designers and developers, and probably generated more great reader commentary than any other post on my weblog.

I ♥ HASHTAG Fresno, just for taking the leap of faith and giving this a go.

Be sure to follow them on Twitter and Facebook, and don’t miss the 59 Days of Code kickoff tonight, 10PM at HASHTAG Fresno.

Categories
Mobile

Dave Winer on his Nexus S

Dave Winer: “And the Nexus has a light, cheap plastic feel to it. For a $600 piece of hardware that has to compete with the iPhone, it should have some heft, some gravitas. It has none. Seriously. It feels a bit like a McDonald’s happy meal toy, compared to the iPhone 4 which has a unique feel to it, not like anything else, and seriously interesting. You just like to hold it. It sounds so flakey, but it’s true.”

Dave chose an unlocked Nexus S for his trip to Europe. These are his initial, out-of-the-box impressions. He’s been an iPhone/Droid user for quite while. The Nexus S will grow on him, I’m sure.

Categories
Indie Social UX

Why I prefer Twitterrific

I’ve wanted to post why I prefer Twitterrific as my Twitter client of choice for quite a while now. Here it is, in all its glory. No, I don’t work for Iconfactory, and I wasn’t paid to write this. I’m just a fan of The Iconfactory and their work.

Simplicity

It all comes down to simplicity. You can tell the Designers and Developers at The Iconfactory spent a lot of time keeping Twitterrific simple. It has a thoughtful, very simple, yet very powerful interface. First off they chose a different navigation method than most Twitter clients. They use nested table views to get guide you to your Twitter Timeline. At first blush some may think it’s too many steps, but it’s not at all. Sure the first time to move through it it takes a few taps but once you’re to your timeline you don’t go back much, at least I don’t.


Figure #1: Tap on the account name to begin navigating.

Figure #2: Tap on the Timeline you’d like to view

The Timeline

One you arrive at your timeline in Twitterrific there are a few really nice features. First, since they used a different navigation scheme you’re not presented with an ugly tab bar at the bottom that takes you between timeline views. Yes, I consider that a feature. It’s a simple refresh button and a button to launch the post editor. Simple, right?


Figure #3 Light and Dark Timelines

The other thing I’d like to point out is the color coding of tweets. I have a couple of images above for you to consider. The one on the left is using the Light Theme, the one on the right is using the Dark Theme.

Notice the different colors? Replies, to and from, are a different color than standard tweets in your timeline. Colors are also different if you’re mentioned in a tweet but not being replied to directly. You can see that in the dark timeline on the right, the bottom tweet. It’s a lighter brown color than a direct reply in the dark theme. I really like this. If I’m trying to catch up with tweets I scan scroll through them quickly and stop right on replies. I don’t show it here but Direct Replies are also shown in a different color making them super easy to find in your timeline.

Inline Images

Another really nice feature is Inline Images. When you tap on a tweet you’re taken to a view of it that isolates it and if it contains a link to an image, it supports lots of services, you’ll see the image show up right below the tweet. This is another really nice touch and more proof Iconfactory paid close attention to the Design and UX.


Figure #4: Dark and Light Tweet Details with Inline Images.

The Post Editor

The Twitterrific post editor has a nice little touch I haven’t seen in other Twitter clients, at least not presented like this. When you go to reply to a tweet you can see the person’s tweet right below the editor, and it shows you the name of the person you’re replying to. This is really nice just in case you want to refer back to the tweet while replying. It keeps you in the editor, no need to cancel back to your timeline. I also really like seeing my avatar right in the editor, just in case I’ve replied to someone from the wrong account. Hey, it could happen!


Figure #5: Reply Editor with tweet preview.

Overall Twitterrific fits my use of Twitter perfectly. That may not be the case for everyone, but I certainly like it.

Categories
Business Development iOS Mac

Craig Hockenberry on Chameleon

AHHHHHH!Craig Hockenberry: “In summary, we’re very disappointed with how things have turned out. Not because of the funding, but because there’s some potential here that will never be realized. We’ll continue to add things we need for our own products, but don’t expect to see any documentation or bug fixes that don’t affect our own code. Any changes or fixes will get pushed out to the community on a schedule that suits us best: probably at the end of minor release cycles (every few months.)”

If you’re an iOS developer you probably know who Craig Hockenberry is, he’s the guy that created Twitterrific. Anywho, he’s also a Principal at Iconfactory. I guess my point is the guy has been developing software for a very long time and is well respected. I do find it odd that he’s a bit disappointed in the response to Chameleon. I’m not sure what was expected? Open Source is by nature fickle. What I see is this; people will download it, use it, gripe about bugs, but do nothing beyond that. Sure, there will be diehards that get behind it and contribute, but mostly people will just pull the source down, build, and use it. That’s the way it goes in the Open Source community. I have a couple of Open Source things, granted they’re nothing special, and I doubt anyone has used them, but I never expected anyone to contribute to them, or give me money to support them. I don’t want to sound like an ungrateful person, but I don’t think you should expect to receive any money for an Open Source project. It’s icing on the cake if you could raise money to support it, but I wouldn’t expect it.

Anyway, if you’re an iOS or Mac developer you should take a look at Chameleon, and support it in any way you can, the fine folks at the Iconfactory put a lot of time and money into it.

You can donate to the effort right from the homepage.

Categories
MLOTW

Movie line of the week answer

Our big winner is long timer movie liner Steven Vore, congratulations Steven!

The correct answer was…

Wayne’s World

See you next week, and thanks for playing.

Categories
MLOTW

Movie line of the week

Hollywood!Good morning and good luck.

If she were a president she would be Baberaham Lincoln.

Ok, quick, what movie! Send your guesses here.

Categories
Business

Manufacturing on a small scale

New York Times: “Plenty of people want to build a popular Web site and become the next Mark Zuckerberg. But some technology entrepreneurs have a more old-fashioned goal: they want to make something you can hold in your hand.”

This is the American entrepreneurial spirit at work, Coffee Joulies.