Aaron Powers

Link Photoshop Files Together With CanLinkIt

2012-01-26T07:49:00.001-05:00

I've worked on several teams of designers, and we've always had the same kinds of problems: Photoshop files are too large, and only one person can edit a file at a time, and so parts of files get out of date.

So I’ve spent some of my spare time to create a solution: http://CanLinkIt.com

This is a Photoshop Plugin that lets you “include” or reference other files. This is similar to the “links” panel in other Adobe products, but somehow they never managed to make one for Photoshop – I don’t know why, it was easy enough for me to write it.

Do any of you use Photoshop? If you do, will you try this out and drop me a line? Let me know if it works, if it looks useful or not, and if it’s missing anything you would like to see.

Synchronization Update

2011-02-12T09:00:00.003-05:00

Two years ago, I blogged about synchronization across multiple computers. The landscape of tools has changed quite a bit, and a few winners (and losers) have emerged.

File Synching
Winner: Dropbox
Losers: PowerFolder, Jungle Disk
Last time I reviewed these, PowerFolder seemed better than the alternatives, but a new competitor has joined the scene: Dropbox. Although a few years ago when I first tried it I couldn't even get it installed, now it is mature and is everything you'd want from a file synchronizer: Simple, minimalist, correct, and the PackRat additional feature automatically backs up every version of every file as long as you pay for it, with instant backup and great cues to let you know whether something is backed up or not. There's also a great free trial. It's got a great GUI design, and it just works... PowerFolder and Jungle Disk corrupted my file structure, gave me many error messages, and had a confusing and complicated setup process. There really is a clear winner now: DropBox.

Bookmark Synching
Current Best: XMarks (with weaknesses)
Loser: Firefox Sync
After I heard XMarks was planning to go under, I started to switch to Firefox Sync. I used it for only a few weeks. During my test, it doubled the number of bookmarks I had, duplicating the same ones and putting them in many different, wrong folders. When I tried to reorganize them, the random synch duplication started again. Firefox sync worked only on Firefox, and it caused me at least 10 hours of manual de-duping and sorting of my 2600+ bookmarks. Then, Firefox got bought and announced it would stay in business, and I can now announce I'm sticking with XMarks. XMarks isn't flawless... It can still give you some strange error messages and occasional bookmark corruption. However, it does have backups of just about every synch version from years in the past, so you can quickly restore to an uncorrupted version. Tip: If one computer is corrupted and another one isn't, you can restore on the corrupted computer but "merge" on the uncorrupted computer, thus allowing you to avoid losing any new bookmarks added on the uncorrupted computer. Tricky, but it works.

Avoid Pingo.com if you don't want to feel like you're reading John Grisham

2011-01-23T17:26:00.003-05:00

At first, my experience seemed great -- good rates, good call. However, I only used it once. The end customer experience is more like the insurance company in John Grisham's the Rainmaker.

6 months later, I discovered they were charging my account $0.98 every month that my account was inactive... I didn't see anything like this in the documentation when I signed up -- and I tried signing up again and still didn't see the note about a inactivity charge. Pingo auto-charged my credit card when it went under $5.00. This is when I wasn't using the account at all.

So I finally called to get my account cancelled. If you call their 1-888-878-8838 number, the machine tells you that for any help other than problems making phone calls, you must email customer service. I emailed customer service, and they told me to call their 1-888 number. So I called again, and after waiting 5 minutes, listening to the prompts repeatedly several times, it finally told me to press 4 to talk to an operator. This is the way they run you around to force you to keep paying their un-announced $0.98 a month forever. I finally reached an operator who apparently has no power -- he just "sent a request" to cancel my account to a different department, their "verification" department. This "verification" department will apparently decide whether to refund my credit card charge or not, and this operator couldn't tell me anything.

At the beginning, I was ready to say "hey, great rates -- I'll keep my account open for a while so I can use it again when I need to" Now, it's "boy, this is nearly a scam to force you to pay $1 every month for the rest of your life even if you are doing nothing." Stay away from their terrible customer service runaround. This was more like the subject of the lawsuit in John Grisham's Rainmaker, with each department pointing at each other and saying the other department will solve the problem -- each giving you instructions to deal with the other, both with instructions not to help you until the other one does.

My advice: find some other pre-paid card instead. The runaround at the end isn't worth the nice rates they offer.

Mini-Review of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

2010-06-14T20:07:00.001-05:00

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: More like the story of bowser's insides. It's a bit wierd, but very interesting. Rated as #2 for 2009 for the DS on Metacritic, it's clearly both creative and entrancing. There are many mini-games and the pace of new and interesting things to do is very quick at the beginning. The use of the two screens is creative -- the top screen controls bowser, and the bottom screen controls Mario & Luigi, and what they do affects the other. They also ask you to turn the DS sideways at one point. The tutorial and beginnings are well written and easy to get into, despite controls that would be confusing if they didn't give you a great tutorial. Overall, it's a game well worth trying.

Mini-Review of Peggle Dual Shot, Nintendo DS

2010-06-05T10:43:00.003-05:00

Metacritic rated as #5 top game of 2009 for the DS, this is a fresh rehash of pinball gaming on the DS. The touchscreen is interesting, the startup and tutorials easy to learn, so it's understandable that it's rated well, since the full game is well balanced. The gaming is addictive, even if there's very little to it.

Mini-Review of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (Nintendo DS)

2010-06-05T10:43:00.001-05:00

Rated on metacritic as the best DS game of 2009, as usual, the series is very creative, both on how they use the touch screen and on how they integrate the mini-games into the real game. As usual, the way they load games automatically is really smooth -- except when you have a rental or used game and can't figure out how to start a new game (maybe it would be nice to add "New Game" to the startup screen). Of course, the morality of the game is highly debatable, as always, but there are also many mini-games that have their own non-morally dubious qualities to make it a fun experience.

Mini-Review of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time, Nintendo DS

2010-06-03T21:02:00.002-05:00

Clearly designed for kids and at about that maturity level. The name "Mystery Dungeon" refers to the developer's choice to make each dungeon random, instead of designing each one to have some interesting puzzles. It could reflect an internal surplus of programmers and shortage of designers, or it could be that they hoped it would be played so many times people would prefer random dungeons to seeing the same thing multiple times -- for me, I'll never see it multiple times because about 2 hours was enough to feel like I'd played as much as I'd ever need. The gamplay lacks creativity, and needs better introduction sequence instead of throwing the player straight into full-fledged battle instantly. I don't recommend it unless you're a kid not looking for a lot in a game.

2010-05-26T20:57:00.001-05:00

Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution, Nintendo DS: The game's introduction usability could use some work, since it's very hard to learn even the basics of this game by guessing. The complexity lends to very interesting and varied strategies, with the game scaled down to the DS -- only a few hours to get, for example, amusing types of victories like having Montezuma's Aztecs arrive at Alpha Centauri in 2084. The UI is simple but not intuitive -- it's easy to accidentally do lots of things, and the touch screen support is very poor -- it's much easier to use the D-Pad than to try to use the touch screen which can cause many accidental commands due to the density of the information on the small screen. If you like strategy, it's an amusing game rental for a week or two.

2010-05-01T09:32:00.001-05:00

Mini-Game review: Children Of Mana (Nintendo DS): It's available used for only $7 at many GameSpots, so why not? But there's a reason it's so cheap on the used game market. You'll find it's just another dungeon crawler like Legend Of Zelda. But, it's 2D where the DS Legend of Zelda games are 3D, and barely uses the touchscreen, where the Legend of Zelda shines in creativity and uses very fun gestures for control. It's less than I expected from SquareSoft, since I saw nothing new to add to the genre.

2010-05-01T09:14:00.001-05:00

Mini-game review: Sol Survivor Demo (PC, demo available on Steam) & Crystal Defenders (iPhone/iPod Touch): Both tower defense games, SquareSoft clearly has a much more polished game. On my computer, Sol Survivor either ran slowly (3 frames per second) or was distorted at the lower resolutions. Crystal Defenders was fun and easy to play -- but tower defense games don't have much plot and you can never really feel satisfied since the levels always seem to go higher and harder until you fail.

2010-05-01T09:10:00.001-05:00

Mini-game review: Supreme Commander 2 Demo (free demo available on SteamPowered.com): Great graphics, good gameplay, engrossing plot in the first few levels, but you probably want a big graphics card. It's interesting that their zoomed-out view is based on military standard icons. It clearly builds well on Supreme Commander 1, and I'm probably going to get the full game after I can upgrade my computer's graphics card

Multiple Computers? Synchronize them!

2009-01-08T19:14:00.003-05:00

Many of us now have a computer at work and a computer or two at home, and a cell phone or a PDA, and we want our schedule and files to be available on all of them. Over the last year, many new file synchronizers have been released by companies, most prominently Apple's release of Mobile Me – they say they got it right this time. Did they? How does it compare?

I've tried to find a way to synchronize my files, my calendar, and my bookmarks across three computers, a cell phone, and a PDA. I have a Mac, a work PC, a home PC, a Palm Treo, and a iPod Touch. The quest is to see if we can get all or most of them synchronized – without risking loss of privacy (for example, if you want to make sure your personal calendar is stored somewhere your boss can't see it).

Bookmarks
Compared: MobileMe, Foxmarks
MobileMe only works if you use only Safari on your mac. On Windows it supports only Safari or Internet Explorer. For me, Safari was almost good enough but Firefox has a more refined bookmark manager and I found it easier to deal with my 2200+ bookmarks on Firefox – Safari with that number of bookmarks is very clunky. Firefox is not an option with MobileMe. Safari is not an option for Foxmarks.
Winner: No overall winer. Use Foxmarks if you only use Firefox, and use MobileMe if you only use Safari and an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Calendar
Compared: MobileMe, Plaxo, CompanionLink, Google Calendar Sync
MobileMe is the easiest to set up, but can be too easy – it treats all information the same way, which can be a problem for privacy if you want to keep some calendars off your work machine. I want to get my work calendar on my cell phone, but I don't want to put my personal private appointments on my company's public Microsoft Exchange server – I don't want the IT guy to know I went on a date with my girlfriend last night and that I have an eye doctor appointment on Thursday. For this, MobileMe would not work, and neither would Google's Calendar sync (which also doesn't support mac). CompanionLink almost works – it syncs with Google Calendar and it'll sync only with the Calendars you want to sync, but it is buggy (it kept putting duplicates of events up on Google Calendar which I'd need to keep deleting) and you need to buy a new copy for each computer you get – that can get pricy fast. And, it doesn't work on a mac – Windows only. So, CompanionLink is out. Next, I tried Plaxo – a little harder to find, but free across computers, and it syncs whatever calendars you want with any other calendars on iCal, Outlook, Plaxo, Google Calendar, and more. I was quite surprised! I ran into a few bugs, but less bugs than other systems and I managed to fix it and clean up my calendar. So I can accept an event at work in Outlook, a personal event in Gmail (though sometimes it fails to sync with Google calendar for an unknown reason), and they both show up on my Palm Treo – exactly what I was looking for.
One thing to remember – if you start synching your calendar with multiple computers, you start having to worry about whether your computers had time to sync with each other while they were online – if they didn't get time to synch up, one calendar can still be out of date behind other calendars, and the longer the chain of computers, the more likely something will be out of sync.
Winner: Plaxo

Files
Compared: MobileMe, Windows Live FolderShare, Unison, PowerFolder
MobileMe almost worked. It was easy to set up, but I had trouble getting mounting the files under it to work under Windows – this is probably a Windows problem. Also, it seemed to think that there were sync errors when there were none – sometimes when I turn on my Mac it makes me go through a list of a hundred items to tell it that none of them have changed.
Windows Live FolderShare was easier to set up than Mobile Me on both my Mac and Windows machine. The strength and weakness of it is that it doesn't store your files on a server, it just sends them back and forth between the two machines.
Unison is an oldie. If you're a technical user and willing to spend hours writing config files and setting everythng up, it might work. But if you have machines behind firewalls or routers, you might never get it working. Plus, the UI is depressingly simple comand line system.
PowerFolder was fairly quick to set up, although it has a fairly complicated front end (my girlfriend needed help setting it up for her and had trouble understanding when it was working and when it wasn't working). PowerFolder does a mediocre job of abstracting away the need to understand your network. However, it uses an online backup solution – Windows Live FolderShare does not have an online backup. The online backup solution worked from all of the computers I tried, and after configuration I had few problems with it.
Winner: PowerFolder

Summary
So, there is no one solution that will solve all of your multiple computer woes with no fuss – at least not yet. However, you can put together a series of tools to get the magic to happen in the background – once you put them all together and configure them all, the magic will happen in the background.

Comparing different phones?

2007-10-14T10:31:00.000-05:00

This isn't usability centered -- but they do try quantitative evaluations of various phone features, mostly comparing them by amount of time to do an action if you know how to use it. It's the most thorough phone comparison site I've ever seen:

http://www.wirelessinfo.com/ratings.php

iPhone: Don't buy one yet (Part II)

2007-07-03T23:35:00.000-05:00

Quick Review
iPhone Style: 10/10. Customer Service: 1/10 (phone still doesn't work). Touch Screen: 10/10. Bluetooth: 1/10 (no music). iPod: 9/10 (because of no bluetooth music). Compatibility with existing iPod addons like Nike Plus: 1/10 (reportedly none work yet). Web on Wi-Fi: 10/10 (compared to existing phones). Keyboard: 6/10 (incredible for a touchscreen, poor compared to mini keyboards). Photo browsing: 10/10 (great screen and touch controls). Cost: 4/10 (more expensive than comparable phones and 2G data plans). Watching video & YouTube: 8/10. Text editing: 2/10 (no copy, paste, nor undo). Calendar: 5/10 (nothing new, missing some features). Todo List: 1/10 (no Todo list like Palm or Windows Mobile).

Overall: 6/10 -- Yes it's revolutionary, and it's stunning, but I'm returning mine -- read the rest for why.

Full Review
I bought an iPhone because I thought I'd be able to listen wirelessly to music and podcasts through my bluetooth headset, or wired through my regular wired headphones -- I can't (no A2DP, and a custom headphone plug).

I bought an iPhone because I thought I'd be able to get phone calls with my existing number -- I can't (they say they can't transfer a number across mailing zip codes).

I bought an iPhone to take notes on -- I can't figure out how to copy and paste (the word "paste" isn't in the manual).

I bought an iPhone so that I'd be up and running in "minutes" -- after 9 days of waiting and many hours on hold, my phone still isn't on AT&T and they only finally told me why. By the way, you have to call at least 3 different phone numbers depending upon your iPhone problem -- if you call the wrong one they'll just tell you to call the next number. (Other reviewers had even more problems than me).

I bought an iPhone so I could look at the pretty graphics and great multi-touch UI -- and I can. But that's not enough.

Now, the iPhone does look superb. I love the UI, the graphics, and the style. Competitors will need to move quick to catch up. As Apple smooths out their bugs the iPhone could really come to dominate a niche of the SmartPhone market just like the iPod did -- the iPhone really is revolutionary, but as with most revolutions, they don't happen in a day.

Touch Screen
The multi-touch interface is the first touch screen I've ever played with that does it right. Fingers aren't too big to type because it knows where the whole finger is -- and it does the right thing. Normally your finger blocks what you are doing so you can't see it -- but when you use the keyboard a little letter pops up so you can see what you're tying (and if you hit the wrong key, just drag your finger a little to get the correct key before letting go). If your finger would block your cursor when trying to place the cursor, a little magnifying glass pops up so you can see where the cursor is really going. The flick to scroll and the pinch to zoom are finally here -- despite being in research touch-screen systems since the 1970's. So you can drop that annoying stylus! You really don't need it. (Actually, stylus's don't work on the touchscreen -- it has to be a finger to activate the sensor, which may be a benefit).

Summary
So, my recommendation? Don't buy an iPhone yet -- wait a year or two while Apple and AT&T iron out their issues and the platform matures a little -- and then buy it! You'll like it. Until then, borrow someone else's iPhone to play with it for a little while -- you'll be more happy just playing with it, not owning it -- yet. As for me, I'm repacking mine and returning it to the store -- and will try to buy it again when they release iPhone version 2.

iPhone: Don't buy one yet (Part I)

2007-07-02T08:01:00.000-05:00

At 7pm Friday, after an hour and a half in line, I became a proud owner of a brand new iPhone. Well, I own one at least.

Activation Woes
On the third day, I have still not been able to activate my phone. There is a rumor that online activation can take only a few minutes. But for me, it's been two days and the phone doesn't do anything yet -- it still just says "Activate using iTunes". Apple won't return my phone calls, won't answer the phone, and hasn't sent me an error message saying why yet. (I have been constantly plugging my phone into iTunes to see if it was activated, to no avail).

The most descriptive error message has been a late email saying "AT&T has identified a problem with the information you provided". But ut didn't tell me that -- the error message was constantly "needs more time" (it only sent me an email, never gave a good error message).

My recommendation? If you're still in line, jump out of line and don't buy one yet -- wait a few months until Apple and AT&T have worked out the bugs in their system and gotten over the initial rush and issues. For me, the next blog update may either have a full review, or it might say how hard it was to get a refund on my phone.

Parsing Piles of Plain Text Pretty Simple

2007-04-05T21:21:00.000-05:00

This is a very interesting research project -- on Monday it saved me hours of writing parsing code or days of copying and pasting by hand. It's a little tricky to learn the first time, but it designs your parsing expression for you!

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/lapis/

Say you have a list of text names and phone numbers and comments:

Aaron Powers 555-123-1234 (he's a wierd one)
John Cleese 01-331-109-091 (he's even wierder)
Bill Clinton 081-101-1010 (no comment)

But they're in this plain text format, without commas or any good delimiters and you want to get them into a spreadsheet. You could try to remember RegExp. Or you could highlight the phone number in Lapis and it'll highlight all the phone numbers. If it gets it wrong, you just tell it which one was wrong and it'll highlight it, and it'll figure out traits of the text that match your needs.
It does much more complicated parsing than this example.

Thanks, Lapis. I just wish it was integrated into more editors.

TicketMaster is easy? Says who?

2007-04-05T21:05:00.000-05:00

Ticketmaster has a site that looks like they tried to make it easy to use -- but when you count up the time wasted mostly from timeouts, it weighs back in the other direction. I'm going back to ordering tickets over the phone.

Ticketmaster, along with several other ticketing sites, have put in so many security features to prevent people from holding tickets that it's really hard to buy tickets. So much for being user friendly. I bet it's a vicious cycle -- the more you make it hard for people to buy tickets, the more tickets will be on hold that won't get bought, the more that you need to add security features to make it harder.

This is a pretty funny review: http://www.frogreview.com/m/05/11/ticketmaster/

My Research In The News

2007-03-22T21:22:00.000-05:00

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19325966.500-if-youre-happy-the-robot-knows-it.html
http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?story=ZS2235369M&news_headline=scientists_develop_r2d2_computer

I have even been granted an honorary degree by the 2nd article, I'm now "Dr Aaron Powers". (They didn't get all the facts right on the paper, though. You can read the real thing if you care.)

There's also a good article by the same author on a friend's paper at HRI too:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn11434-robots-with-rhythm-could-rock-your-world.html

HRI 2007

2007-03-14T21:35:00.000-05:00

The Human-Robot Interaction 2007 conference was in DC a week ago. Apparently, two robots talking to each other is better at attracting attention than one robot talking to itself -- more socially interesting (best paper by ATR/Osaka), and the Roomba gets whole families involved in cleaning more than standard vacuums (runner up for best paper by Jodi Forlizzi). Of course, my talk was great too :) It may be reported in "New Scientist" within the next few days...

Office 2007: Radical... Improvement?

2007-02-23T21:56:00.000-05:00

Office 2007 makes some radical departures from traditional office suites, and from traditional software GUIs. The changes are at first intimidating -- at second, surprising and maybe, just maybe, pleasing... Are they real improvements?

There are certainly a few improvements. In my first few test drives, I noticed some pretty significant improvements to many common tasks. For example, it's a lot easier to make and maintain a chart in Excel 2007. There are a lot of little things -- the charts look better, and they're simpler to handle.

I wonder what'll I'll think at the end of the 60 day trial...

PowerPoint: Does it encourage a style?

2007-02-20T22:12:00.000-05:00

Tufte's essay on PowerPoint is a melodious rant about how software changes style. Does PowerPoint encourage a simplified, marketing-like presentation style? Yes. Does that help some people? Maybe a few.

Tufte has managed to connect both NASA space shuttle disasters to poor communication and representation of data -- the key information was there, but in the Columbia disaster, for example, the data was buried in a PowerPoint slide.

In summary, he decides (and I agree) that slideware is a poor to distribute technical information, because it over-simplifies technical information that deserves a report or paper-printed graphs.

Too bad Tufte's class in Boston this week was full -- 3 separate days, all sold out by the time I called. Go Boston!

Sources: Tufte's Essay On PowerPoint

"Why is software so bad?"

2007-02-18T20:30:00.000-05:00

This is a rather interesting group of articles:
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/johnreynolds/archive/2005/02/why_is_so_much.html
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000D8&topic_id=1
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/12887/

Of course, I found this because I've spent too much time mangling stuff in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint lately (OpenOffice is no better). These complex pieces of software have a lot of problems and are very inflexible -- these articles address a few issues in particular. Software products in general have a fairly limited view -- if the programmer didn't think of it, you can't do it (unless you write code yourself). Any idea if this mode of thought will be outdated anytime soon?

Driving Games

2007-02-11T16:41:00.000-05:00

Gran Turismo used to be the champion of all driving games. I just rented GT4. It took me about 5 minutes and 15 dialog boxes with Windows-like "ok/cancel" buttons a before I could get to any part of the game -- not the best start.

The Gran Turismo series has been designed for realistic cars and realistic driving. I can drive my Buick. My friend Pat got a Honda Civic in it and pumped it up, just like driving his real civic, except he drove it more recklessly -- because it can't get scratched! In GT3&4, you can't damage a car -- even if you try to drive it off a mountain edge at 150mph, the car just miraculously stays on the road... The realism ends after the physics engine.

A new driving game, Burnout Revenge, takes the opposite strategy -- it's designed to be fun, not to be real. Crashing cars is the norm and the bigger the accidents you cause the better you score. It's more fun, but less like the real world. Don't play Burnout Revenge right before you drive to work in the morning :)

Moving around the web...

2007-02-10T22:46:00.000-05:00

I'm about to lose my CMU account, so I'm moving to a new website -- right now, plain and empty.

http://www.aaronpowers.com

I'm checking out Google Domain Apps. At first, I'm very amazed at it -- very easy to start up on! However, it's hard to move from an old webpage to Google Domain Apps. They simplified it to make it incredibly easy to put up your own site on your own domain, but the simplifications limit the functionality in many ways. It's great that the only cost is registering your own domain for $10, so it pretty much beats other hosting services. I can't wait until they integrate Jot.com's Wiki into this (I'm assuming that's why they bought out Jot.com).

Bookmark Synch

2007-02-10T22:38:00.000-05:00

I just discovered FoxMarks -- it lets you synch your bookmarks across Firefox on all of your computers. It merges, too.

It's not the only tool -- del.icio.us has a Firefox plugin, and so does Google (google synch). Google synch also synchs your passwords, history, etc., so it's also worth a look -- but apparently google synch doesn't merge, just copies. And del.icio.us's plugin deleted my folder hierarchy, so it loses, too -- FoxMarks means I get to keep using the regular Firefox bookmarking system seamlessly across computers, whether they're all connected to the network or not.

What a big timesaver! Suddenly I'm motivated to organize my bookmarks well too, because I no longer have 7 different lists!