Billibala

New and Noteworthy – Nowbox

Almost a year of work. Booting up, failed, rebooting, taking a different path, changing course, resuming… Numerous interface tweaks, feature change, extra radiation exposures in cross pacific flight, thousands of hours time and life…

Nowbox is now in “New and Noteworthy” category of US iTunes App Store.

Kevin who used to be curator of TEDx Tapiei, once, when we were sharing event after thought, said, “這些都是用生命跟血換的…”

True! It’s great reward of a great journey. 但真的這累…

Let’s move on in 2012.

Jeff Bezos is related to Steve Jobs?

Reading Steve’s biography. Love it. There are 42 chapters in the book. Guess I need some time to work on it.

When I made the purchase in Amazon, the “recommended books to buy” list shows the Amazon book all the time! Is it really the book that people who bought Steve’s biography would most likely buy? Or, it’s just a shameless free-rider act?

Eric Schmidt at Dreamforce 2011

Salesforce.com’s CEO Marc Benioff interviewed Eric Schmidt in Dreamforce 2011.

I like the interview. I personally hate Google betraying Apple to secretly start the Andriod thing. But that doesn’t change the fact that Eric is one of the smartest executives in the Valley.

It is insightful to me in many parts where Marc asked Eric to relate his past experience and look into the future tech landscape. He made some detail analysis to how cloud computing, as a technology, has enabled all sorts of innovation that cannot happen just 10 years ago.

Things like small agile team building very scalable products like 4sq, Angrybirds, etc. And how some companies (like Apple and Google) succeeds and why some (namely, Microsoft) failed. Very intriguing.

In the course of this interview, he showed great respect to companies building simple yet technically complex products. And, in detail, analyzed why Microsoft fails in recent years – “Microsoft was built around the model of control and licensing… They do not organize around the consumers. They organize around the industry structure… And, Apple proves, if you organize around the consumers, the rest will follow…”

There’s more in the interview… his advice to America, what are the characters to exceed Mark Zuckerberg to be the next new star… Check the interview. (But skip the first 3, 5 mins of boring flattery intro crap)

Smile WWDC Party 2011

Thank you so much to Greg, Jean and Philip for inviting me to the Smile WWDC Party. It was great fun.

WWDC has changed a lot since introduction of iPhone and the real uptake in mobile computing. The conference changes from Mac, Server and QuickTime focused to, now, mainly iOS. Mac OS X has become something, I feel, tagging along its mobile counterpart.

The party tonight is different. It is purely a Mac indie party. I met and chatted with loads of people. There were people, for sure, from Smile Software, OmniGroup, Bonix and some indie developers.

It’s great fun chatting with Philip, Ken, Greg and other great developers. Topics like the upcoming changes in Lion, Mac App Store strategy, demo of their apps, dev scenes in Munich, etc. That’s the kind of Mac indie conversation I long for.

They truly reminded me about authenticity and dedication.

Paper, pen and pencil

I grew up in the 90s. I am lucky enough to have the chance to look up information in libraries thumbing through index cards…

Paper, pen and pencil are the essential tool (still today) when I think through the architecture of an app, database schema, interactions, etc. It’s simply impossible for me to focus and think without notebook or, at least, an A4 paper.

In this cloud computing era with tools like dropbox, evernote, box.net… it is still hard for people like me to translate tactile manual script into digital format. Well, there are scanners, digital cameras, iPhones and iPads which can bridge some gaps. When it comes to engineering sketches, I guess scanner or DC is still the best tool to preserve the detail. But scanning pages in flatbed scanner or taking out a quality DSLR to picture every single hand sketches in my notepad is like asking me to fold the stack of clothes pied on the sofa – not mission impossible but you wanna avoid it as much as possible.

I heard about a new product in Briefly Awesome podcast called Noteslate.

It’s a e-ink-like display with 1-bit color. It uses Wifi for internet connectivity. The cool thing about it is… it’s just a blank canvas. Sketch your stuff on it and it will be recorded. They are saying there’s OCR recognition.

The product is still in development. Not sure how well it functions. I’d like to give a try when it’s out. I want something that can bridge my hand sketches and my Mac.

The site says the retail price will be $99. If you are interested in it as well, you can sign up for their newsletter.

The Daily – my comment

I’ve been trying The Daily in the past 20 hours or so. The content is pretty well curated. It’s relatively short (usually, at most, 2 ipad screens fitting totally 4 columns or short video clips). I think that’s the right size for iPad users given that we are so used to consuming snippet of information on iPad screen (emails, tweets, Facebook, Youtube, etc)

The app itself doesn’t impress me much though. It’s somewhat similar to the Project magazine by Virgin. Maybe that’s because they both pose similar usability problems to me.

I find several problems in The Daily app which bugs me a lot:

• Don’t like pages where I can scroll both horizontally and vertically. I just don’t think it’s a good interface pattern. Sometimes, when I wanna scroll horizontally, the app interprets it as vertical scroll. (and vice versa) Don’t like that.
• I think they should keep the status bar on top. I need to know the time. Don’t make reader misses an appointment because s/he enjoys an article too much.
• Seems like they have disabled the spring bounce feedback in scroll views. The spring bouncing feedback is actually quite an important interaction to me letting me know the end of an article.
• The app should show progress when downloading images and buffering video. The waiting time is a little too long as well. I don’t understand why the app has to download new “issue” from time to time but, still, I have to wait for content loading.
• The carousel in the front page is slow and not honoring my touch that well. I need butter smooth scrolling.
• The app doesn’t seem to show clearly my information path. I need something like a breadcrumb or some indication to tell me which section I am in.

Goodbye, MobileMe – Replace Apple’s MobileMe with Google services

I have enough MobileMe.

• iDisk? It’s slow and fails from time to time. It can never compare to Box.net or Dropbox.
• Photo Gallery?  It can’t replace my Flickr Pro account in any ways.
• @me.com? Who doesn’t use Gmail as their main email?
• Find my iPhone? It’s free to all iPhone user.

This brings down to only 2 features which keep me subscribing the service – contact sync and calendar sync.

Both can be replaced with Google services. Here are some useful references:

• Set Up Your Apple Device for Google Sync : Mail, Calendar, & Contacts – Google Mobile Help
• Sync your contacts and calendar with your phone
• Google Sync for your phone
• How To: MobileMe Sync Replacement for iPhone Contacts

So… Goodbye Mobile Me! I don’t think I will ever miss you.

Bill Gates on The Daily Show

Bill Gates on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. Let’s geek up! The interview is mainly about his foundation and charity work though.

Project magazine for iPad == FAIL

Don’t wanna be naysayer. But I honestly don’t think Richard Branson’s new “Project” magazine for iPad works.

I did not follow the launch event and all the press related to it. I knew about it in podcast (Buzz Out Loud). It sounds like a big thing. I mean it’s like the only big digital magazine trial after the Wired Magazine iPad edition.

The whole thing… it’s just another magazine on the iPad.

Here’s why I think it doesn’t work:

Contents

Content is great but not anything better than others – it’s like tech x lifestyle x urban living magazine. It’s a bit of Wallpaper, a bit of Monocle, a bit of Wired, a bit of CG…

Reading Experience

I don’t like reading magazine in a self-contained iPad app at all. Why don’t I just read from a browser?

The cool thing of iPad is… the Internet is in your hand. You read the Macbook Air review in Wired. Then, maybe, you wanna open a new browser page in Safari and browse Apple’s site for the spec and stuff. The beauty is the free interactions of information. This kind of interaction is very personal and unpredictable.

In a digital magazine, I have to follow the contents in order. This is not a modern digital experience.

So, what experience the magazine offer besides missing the interaction with information?

You get a bunch of videos, photos with a “X” button signaling where you tap to reveal a label, interview recordings, columned text, flicking the screen frustratingly.

Maybe I am too old. I found that noisy. What is the focus? The articles? The photos? Buttons in the photo?

User Interaction

Bonnie made a wonderful quote, “It’s like wizard book in Harry Potter”.

In Harry Potter movie, the books the characters read… The illustrations in book can animate and people in photo can speak…

This is a great insight! This kind of digital magazine only works in fiction. It’s good demo but not good interaction.

To me, I feel like the whole magazine is very much like those flash web sites features in theFWA. You know… those fucking full browser screen flash web site that chokes your whole Mac!

A large part of the magazine (namely, intro page of featured articles) is a full screen video in the background with static text laid out in front. It’s just visually too much. Background moving, text fading in, sometimes, there’s sound… Should I pay attention to the video in the background? Or, read the text? Or what?

The user interaction is the most frustrating part. It makes me feel I am stupid!

Check the page below:

Do you notice the black band saying “Tap the covers to see inside”?

Tap on the images and they will pop more stuff!

Now, count how many buttons are there?

You would guess every element around the edges are buttons. That’s smart. But it’s actually only the red cross on the bottom right and the black circle dot in the middle right are buttons.

The cross at the bottom left corner signals more stuff below (scroll down).

There are so match things I think touchable yet not touchable. When touch something, it be response to you with a hugh callout.

Can I just sit, relax and enjoy the contents in a paper magazine effortless flicking pages?

User Interface

One big problem in user interface: the “links” or “buttons” do not feedback on touch. There’s no highlight when you touch links or buttons. You don’t know if a bold header is just a header or it serves as link as well.

Navigation is not web done either. You can flick left/right to switch between articles, flick up/down to scroll. But, very often, it’s hard to get the app response to the flick you intended to. That’s mainly because the page has a big element which response to touch. The touch is being registered to that element in the page. You can that element responds to your touch while you actually want to flick the page.

It took me quite some effort to flick through this page. I kept smudging the “dirt”!

Web Experience

There’s no web counterpart. When I first heard the magazine’s name, I googled it for official site for more info. I’ve got only other web sites mentioning about it. There’s no official “Project” mag site. WTF?

Try some key words yourself: project mag ipad, project virgin

Wrap up

This thing is done so wrong… The photos look great, illustrations are beautiful, articles are well written. Adding them up results in a crappy reading experience.

Is it because it’s just me who fail to appreciate snippets of textual, video, audio, interactivity and graphical experience all put in one screen?

Or, it’s just like multimedia CD-ROM in the 90s? Remember Microsoft Encarta CD-ROM and Human Body CD-ROM?

I think people don’t need an app for magazine. This has been proven in the 90s with the automatic death of multimedia CD-ROM as the Internet became popular. Or, well, iPad magazine is just not for people who read….

6 recommendations to Macworld Mobile

My last post on Macworld Mobile sounds like trolling. To rescue my image, here’s my suggestion for better conference experience.

Disclaimer: I am one of the production team members of the previous 2 TEDx Taipei events and the BQ Conference (pre-TEDx Taipei event). My suggestions should mean something.

Break in every session

people need time to mingle. They may have questions for the speakers which they may not raise in front of all audience.

Make people flow during the break. That’s when interactions happen.

Don’t fly in all speakers

It’s simply not cheap to fly people from the States to Hong Kong. It’s half the globe, man. Flight, accommodations and other expenses… Just fly, maybe, 1 or 2 star speakers. If you can get Craig Hockenberry, Wil Shipley, Cabel Sasser, Marco Arment, or, I mean, just a few respected indies. You can secure 50% of tickets sales!

Paul Kent was in the event. (what a waste I didn’t connect with him!) He, himself, is a legend. Why doesn’t he have a session on his story curating the first Macworld without Apple? It’s probably the worst thing on the planet that Steve Jobs pointed you saying he doesn’t need you. (Flash, Macworld, floppy, netbook, e-reader)

I wanna hear his story way more than anyone of the speakers. How did he and his team get through all the negative press and doom predictions and turned that into an enjoyable Macworld experience?

Local and regional heroes

If we are not filling seats with only overseas speakers, what can we do?

Find local and regional heroes! There are many interesting and successful stories. Talk to the hosts of developer communities in Asia. I am sure they can recommend some good stories.

Satellite events

I enjoy going Macworld and WWDC cause there are loads of independent satellite events. CocoaHeads WWDC special, Delicious Generation party, MacSB meetup, etc. Many companies host their own party too – Plasq, Omnigroup, Smile Software… So, what are the Mac/iOS developer events organized by independent developers? Well… you’ve got one – CocoaHeads Hong Kong Nov Meetup.

Regional Communities

Hong Kong is at the heart of Asia. You can reach, I guess, over 20 major metropolitan cities in Asia if you draw a circle of places covered by 5-hour flight path. There are developer community within this range… Singapore, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, etc. Make them come to Hong Kong for Macworld Mobile!

Position yourself, target the geeks

There is no need for technical conference other than WWDC. I don’t need anyone to repeat the documentation for me. You may argue the conference is for starter. But I can say for sure that no starter is willing to pay money for conference. You can tell from the attendance this time.

It’s only fans paying to go to concert of their favorite touring band. I paid $1000 in total for GreenDay last concert in Hong Kong. Same applies to conference. It’s always passionated geeks who dominate the demographic.

Do you think those who’s been coding iOS stuff day and night would wanna listen to introductory topic? Give me the meat!

Conclusion

Hope you won’t find this post written solely for trolling. I really appreciate having overseas speakers coming over to spend time with us. That’s why I do the CocoaHeads meetup in November specifically after Macworld Mobile and invite the speakers to come.

Given all these great speakers, the contents that are presented do appear below my expectation. I see that happens to many events in Hong Kong where people organize but not curate.

Conference is being democratized in the internet age just like media, music, games, etc. Conference models are marginalizing to their own niches – mega scale event (Comdex, E3, ComicConf, etc), Company event (Google I/O, WWDC), TED + TEDx and independent/bootstrap (SXSW, ROFLCon, SecondConf, NSConference, etc). Each one of them has its own niche.

Just like newspaper, those in mid levels of the ecosystem (like San Francisco Chronicle and South China Morning Post) will face huge challenge and, possibly, extinction if they continue failing to find their own niche.