"Got an image enhancer that can bitmap?"

Standard Hollywood plot device #17b: The infinite image enhancer.

via pharyngula

Reading 2.0

The iPad and a couple of additional tools (not 100% related to it) changed my online reading habits a lot.

Here's my "Reading 2.0" or rather: as of December 2010, it will probably evolve further:

1. I have Google Reader as the central management point for the RSS feeds (blogs, news, ...)
2. about 30% of those articles I read online while I'm in front of a PC.
3. the rest I scan on my iPad using Reeder.
4. Most of the interesting articles and postings I save for later reading with Read it later, also on the iPad with their app.
5. Item with more "eternal" value might then get save to delicious, but that's only one or two a week.

So basically I separated the consumption phase (step 4) above from the discovery phase (step 3 above).

Samsung did well

So, only 5 weeks after its "unbranded" arrival, the Android 2.2 update for the Samsung Galaxy S (i9000) is finally available for the A1 branded version. Quite frankly, not too bad, considering how long it takes Nokia to get the branded versions out.

Then again, the Samsung Kies software is the worst PC Suite type of software I have ever encountered.

Update went well without any errors; just that the home screen was reset to whatever A1 thinks it should be is not really nice, and that all apps/icons are now sorted alphabetically... hmpf... apart from that... fine.

ATM design flaw

I just noticed at a local ATM that there was a sign right next to the slot for the cash reading:

Don't forget your money!

Though it never happened to me personally, I do know some friends who actually forgot either their bank card or the money in the ATM. So the warning does make sense.

However, isn't there a fundamental design flow in the user interface or process of an ATM when you have to remind the users of the very one thing they came here for in the first place ??

Quite frankly, I'm not sure how to fix this, maybe glue the card to the money?

Singleton

Oh, yes, faux singletons... haven't we all had them.

via Geek&Poke

The Case for Social Search

An interesting and well written article in the NY Times about the owner of the online shop decormyeyes caught everyone's attention: the owner actually admits to willfully create negative ratings for his shop by actually giving crappy customer service... because this actually pushes him up in Google search results, due to the nature of the page rank algorithm. And thus the bad reputation actually brings him additional business.

Why?
Because everytime someone has a problem with him and posts this to a blog or a consumer feedback site like getsatisfaction.com there is a link to his site (with a mention of the product they purchased), and each of those links counts in the PageRank alogrithm, which is primarily based on the number of incoming links to a site. The more links point to your page, the more relevant this page is considered.
Due to the large number of complaints, he actually made #1 for many of the goods he sold on his site.
And shoppers searching for the item were likely to shop there, because it was #1 search result. Organic search result - that is - not a paid ad.

No-one saw all the negative feedback, because Google does not show it (or actually know about it).
However, if you do a search on the site's name you will also see a lot of complaints about decormyeyes on the first results page. So searching for the site/shop does work as expected.

Odd that it took about 10 years for anyone to notice this flaw...

The problem there is, that Google search results are not recursive... i.e. you do not see the results of a result.
(Maybe this would actually fix the problem).

Google is not to blame for this, and the PageRank algorithm is still fine. If Google were to implement some semantic magic in their algorithm that would treat a positive reference different from a negative reference, it would create an altogether different problem: for all the controversial topics (or persons) out in the world, you simply will always find negative and positive references, and in many cases the negative will outnumber the positive. The system would be gamed with as easily as the current.

That's what Google said in reaction to this story:

As it turns out, Google has a world-class sentiment analysis system (Large-Scale Sentiment Analysis for News and Blogs). But if we demoted web pages that have negative comments against them, you might not be able to find information about many elected officials, not to mention a lot of important but controversial concepts. So far we have not found an effective way to significantly improve search using sentiment analysis. Of course, we will continue trying.
[...]
Instead, in the last few days we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience. The algorithm we incorporated into our search rankings represents an initial solution to this issue, and Google users are now getting a better experience as a result.

In other words, for the time being, Google will - on a very high level - curate the search results.


What worries me (if only slightly) here is that Google will use "their opinion" to determine which merchants (in this case) to filter.

Although I consider this is the right solution for now, it has two flaws:

1. It can only work a posteriori,
   i.e. only after you find the next merchant (or content provider, or ...) who games the system like this, you can remove him from search results, but this means that they already did damage.
2. This is the by-far #1 search engine - let's call them a monopoly for the sake of this argument - applying their opinion/judgement....worrisome, isn't it ?

The solution:

Take the opinion out of Google's hands. Crowd-source the opinion.

Let the wisdom of crowds or rather the opinion of crowds do the work.

Which crowd? My crowd of course. For me.
Your crowd for you.

In other words: Social Search

So the decormyeyes incident - apart from being disgusting from a customer care perspective - can finally help make the case for social search.


---
Did you notice that in this entire post I never linked to the actual site, just to avoid contributing to the problem ;-)

Blogging from the iPad

I just installed BlogPress in my iPad and will test blogging from the iPad with it. Expect even more typos and strange autocompletion errors from now on.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Updated my iPad to iOS 4.2

Finally, yesterday the 4.2 update for the iPad arrived. Well for other devices as well, but the iPad I cared most for.
I had to install it immediately... well when I say immediately, the 500MB download took 5 attempts to finally get through (networking problems, not Apple's fault I guess).

First impression: multi-tasking and app-switching is awesome :-)
I wonder how long it will take me to get used to the screen rotation lock being software only now.

Folders, AirPrint and AirPlay I have to digg into a bit more, I'm not sure I even have a demand for it ... yet.

Attachmate to buy Novell

That Novell is up for grabs (or rather was) is not the news here.

The actual surprise is, that Attachmate - who bought them - is still around. Most of my colleagues don't even remember them. Last time, I had to deal with them was with their 3270 Emulation... not really a 2010 kind-of-business model.
Well, find your niche and hide there ... :-)

How to sync photos FROM the iPad...

This is a bit embarrassing, but I still post it here... so you others don't have to admit you didn't know this... of course you knew... everyone knew... except for me.

So for a while I was wondering why a sync of my iPad through iTunes did not store the images generated on the iPad to the specified folder on my PC. Here's why:

In iTunes select your iPad, then click on the "Photos" tab and select a folder there.
This will then (everytime you sync) copy all the images from this folder on the PC to your iPad.

OK.

However, for the other way round it does not work through iTunes, but rather like this:

One thing that bugged me about my iOS devices is that everytime I hook them up to my PC, Windows prompts me to select an action or application for this device... Quite annoyed me because... hey... you're supposed to connect to iTunes... duuh.

So iOS devices register themselves to your PC as a camera as well. Still I thought: How stupid, my iPad does not have a camera. And neither does my iPod touch.

Well, in some weird way it is a digtial camera: from a Windows / interface perspective the iPad is a device that creates and (more importantly) stores images. Just like a digital camera.

So images you create on your iPad (e.g. as a screen shot, or email attachment, ...) can easily be sync'd to your PC through this interface then. Windows (or the program of your choice) will do the transfer for you.

Odd, though, that Apple suddenly relies on Windows features...

So, this is how you sync photos from your iPad to your PC... but of course, everyone knew that.

App Store Quality ?

So this is the rigid quality control on the Apple App Store ??

How could that pass?

So, Samsung...

... now you can prove that/if you are any better than Nokia :)

The Android 2.2 update for (my wife's) Galaxy S finally arrived. But of course not yet for the operator branded version she own (A1).
This is/was to be expected, because the operator will have to test and approve the official/final update and then apply their branding on it again

Last time on my Nokia E71 it lasted until forever and it was Nokias fault.
I sure hope that A1 and Samsung can get this done in 2-3 weeks.

RPN

Oh yes.
Sooooo true.

via Geek&Poke

Are there Fictitious IP addresses?

A recent rant from a friend of mine about the utterly wrong representation of IP addresses in a science/tech show on Austria public TV (ORF) made me think.

What worries Martin, is that they use internet addresses like 156.284.632.715, which are obviously fake, because the are not made of 4 8bit values (octets).

I really like to defend the ORF in this case[1]: as with car license plates or telephone numbers, it could be considered a breach of privacy to pick one that exists for real. So you have to revert to numbers that do not exist in reality.

The US, for example, have reserved the part of exchange code 555 for such fictitious telephone numbers, meaning that you can pick any 555-xxxx number without running the risk of bothering anyone or being sued over it[2].

Not sure how it is done with license plates, but since they tend to be centrally registered, I guess there is a range of numbers that can freely be used in fiction.

However, with IPv4 addresses being on short supply anyway, one would have to revert to IP addresses that 100% cannot by owned by anyone (else), like 127.0.0.1 oder 192.168.x.y.

You would be kind of safe from a legal perspective, but nor from Martin's rants.

Had the ORF shown 127.0.0.1  or 192.168.1.1 to actually be resolved through DNS, Martin would still have ranted about it. Not because the IP address is wrong, but rather because the name used would never be resolved to this address.

So, Martin, this is an OK use of "wrong" or rather "fictitious" internet addresses, not an "Epic Fail" as you say.

--
[1] I very rarely do so.
[2] at least in the US

4G - Which is it?

I'm a bit confused now; both LTE and WiMAX seem to be labelling themselves 4G...
But which one is it really?
Any idea?

Facebook Phone ?

So the last 10 days or so saw a lot of rumors, denials, half-hearted confirmations and semantics about a Facebook phone.

Current state: they are obviously not manufacturing the hardware (what a surprise) but teaming up with INQ mobile to integrate facebook into (or rather:onto) the software stack.

Does it make sense to have a Facebook feature phone?
Not to me.
The Facebook apps for the various smart phones are powerful enough. Just to have your (phone) contacts synced with facebook[1], does not require or justify a Facebook feature phone. Much less the crappy Facebook chat.

Does it make sense for Facebook ?
Sure  - Three words:

mobile.
ad.
revenue.

As I'm saying, the are a (only) marketing platform...

I rest my case, your honor.

--
[1] if you want that at all - I don't.

Moleskine Covers for iPhone and iPad

I don't know... to me this is a cultural clash:

Moleskine introduces two new hybrid tools designed for making it easier the simultaneous use of paper, phone and internet utilities: a Smartphone Cover compatible with iPhone 3G and 3GS, and a Tablet Cover, iPad compatible. Both Covers are combined with blank notebook pages. They are conceived as analog-digital ultra-portable workstations for the contemporary nomads.

The analog darling embracing the digital darling...
How strange.

Enabling Multiple Google Calendars for iOS

Found the following tip recently:
iPad Quick Tip: Enabling Multiple Google Calendars: Apple:

quick version: if you go to http://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect you can select which of your Google calendars will be visible on your iXxxx (iPad, iPhone, iPod, ...)

Previously I had to manually copy/paste the various caldav URLs from Google to the iXxxx, which is quite cumbersome.

This here is a lot easier.

Feeding the iPad

The top use of my iPad is reading the tech news - through RSS feeds.
There is an excellent RSS reader for the iPad called Reeder.
Here are my favourite bullets about Reeder:

1. makes full use of iPad geometry
2. uses Google Reader as the feed list;
   not only import, but actually works with it; so everything I read on my iPad is automatically marked as read in Google Reader; perfect way to stay in sync
3. easy to step through articles.
   there are scroll buttons on at the left edge in the middle of the screen; I first wondered, why they had been position there, but once you get used to holding the iPad in landscape mode, this is exactly the position where your left thumb is... tricky,ey ?
   Scrolling is a lot more convenient this way, then with the mouse or the J / K buttons in Google Reader
4. it's a lean back experience.
   This - to me - is new for news consumption via feeds and I really prefer it over the laptop / desktop experience.
5. You can easily (one click) save/share articles to Delcious, Twitter, email, ...

Quick summary: perfect feed reader on the perfect news device.

Got my iPad

So I got my iPad yesterday...

No - actually I got it Tuesday, but I managed to hold back until yesterday evening to unbox and activate it.

Cool device... great form factor. Super fast (compared to an iPod touch or Galaxy S)
A weird mixture of lean-back browsing (like TV) and lean-forward browsing (like PC).

Still amazing how many apps are only available in the iPhone/iPod compatability mode... and not yet optimized for the iPad.

But those who are (optimized for the iPad), like the internal Mail app, or the excellent imdb app, really make great use of the touch interface on the "big" screen...
Keyboard is a lot better and more easy to type on than on the iPhone/iPod...

Can't wait for the iOS 4.2 Update.
 
Stay tuned for more.