Channeling Design Blog

Thoughts on the iPhone 'App Store'

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:19:00 -0800

My co-worker Laura thinks that Apple’s insistence on approving all iPhone apps prior to distribution is a bad idea.

On reflection, I disagree; look at the benefits for Apple, for iPhone developers, and for iPhone users:

iPhone owners get a more stable platform.
Developers get a low-cost QA pass to weed out any high-priority bugs they’ve missed, before distribution.
Apple gets to weed out any poorly or maliciously designed iPhone apps that could break the platform.

iPhone owners get always-on access to the iPhone ‘App Store’, a centralized repository for iPhone apps (undoubtedly featuring Apple’s customary ease-use) literally in the palm of their hands.
iPhone devs get reliable 24/7 access to a huge and growing audience, only a twitchy little impulse away from purchase. That’s a positioning coup that any marketing person would kill for.
Apple gets a permanent revenue stream to pay for distribution costs plus profits.

The iPhone App Store is the Apple Store in the palm of your hand.

That’s the elevator pitch. Wanna bet the App Store concept shows up on the desktop next?

Blogospheronomics: Win Mobile, Blackberry, & iPhone

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:59:00 -0800

Note that each chart has its own vertical scale. I haven’t sorted out how to fully control Technorati charting. Click on any of the charts to see Technorati’s collection of relevant posts.

These three charts will display the past 30 days from the day you view this post, so bookmark it for future reference.

Get your own chart!

Initial Notes on the iPhone SDK

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:40:19 -0800

For calender Q4 ‘07, the iPhone (28%) was second only to the RIM Blackberry (41%). Palm and all the rest are in the weeds.

[Translation: Buy AAPL while it’s still cheap.]

Full enterprise messaging and security features coming in the next update for all iPhones.

[Translation: Go short on RIM.]

It’s unclear whether the same is true for iPod Touch, but the SDK covers the Touch as well.

[Translation: Go really short on RIM.]

Apple has licensed use of the full MS Exchange API, and has built Exchange support into iPhone Mail, Calendar, and Address Book.

[Translation: We hate the Exchange client as much as you do.]

Your IT department can remotely wipe a lost iPhone to protect corporate secrets.

[Translation: You can get your boss to buy an iPhone for you, but you might want to buy another for personal use.]

The iPhone SDK is free to all Apple Developers after an additional registration step to become an iPhone dev.

There are additional costs to distribute apps: $99 annual developer fee for access to the iPhone “App Store”.

[Translation: OK, OK, OKAY! We get it! Apps aren’t music and don’t belong in iTunes.]

Free apps are distributed for free. Apple takes a 30% cut on commercial apps. You pick the price and you get a monthly revenue check.

[Translation: Free is great, but somebody has to pay the bills.]

There’s a $299 annual developer fee for the ability to distribute proprietary apps for corporate in-house use. This buys a private download page on the App Store for enterprise employees.

[Translation: We plan to make at least $299 per year from our cut of the sales of each new iPhone app.]

The iPhone SDK includes an iPhone emulator.

[Translation: Want an iPhone? Sell some apps!]

iPhone Developer Program Details

Check out the details and see the keynote.

Tip: In the keynote video, jump ahead to 41 minutes in to see a truly great game.

Notional Slurry »There are exactly two ways: one, and many

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:05:00 -0800

Notional Slurry »There are exactly two ways: one, and many:

William Tozier has written a great little essay regarding the nature and implications of the term “delay”. Here’s a taste…

… One cannot see one pattern everywhere. You are not a generalist but a crackpot if you see everything as connected to your personal model of the world. When you cast everything as a nail to be struck by your One Important Hammer, you’re just falling back on another flavor of specialization. The world is diverse—more diverse than any single description or model—and the proper generalist cannot be parsimonious, cannot be efficient in trying to force the world to fit.

She can’t afford to. A generalist has no more time or attention than any other person. She doesn’t see the whole of the world all as being the same, as being proof of something.

She slices the world in a different direction. Along a different axis, a personal axis. …

Go read it. Then start rethinking your attention queue.

Yahoo tries to buy time before proxy contest

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:08:14 -0800

Yahoo tries to buy time before proxy contest

America's Most Admired Companies 2008

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:44:19 -0800

America's Most Admired Companies 2008: I’ve never much cared about popularity contests, but as I’m now in the ad biz, huzzah for the winners, for they shall receive market share.

Design Redux / Andy Rutledge

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:36:41 -0800

Design Redux / Andy Rutledge: My buddy Josh made my lunch break happier by pointing me at Andy Rutledge’s Design Redux, wherein Andy analyzes and redesigns popular and/or notorious web sites. Excellent work!

Word of the Day: Earcon

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 10:26:00 -0800

Word of the Day: Earcon:

Continuing the ~~strip-mining~~ exploration of the Tactons Project haptics research website, I came across this wonderful word: EARCON:

[Wikipedia] An earcon is a brief, structured sound pattern used to represent a specific item or event but is not to be confused with an Auditory Icon. The term was coined in 1989. The earcon can be parameterized by specific attributes of the item or event. Although likely to be used in a computer/user interface, an example could also be a five-day weather forecast on a local news program where each day’s temperatures set the pitches in a five tone sequence. Earcons are generally not auditory caricatures of the signified, that is, they are abstract rhythmic / melodic patterns rather than everyday sounds.

See the Glasgow Interactive Systems Group’s Guidelines of the Creation of Earcons for background and implementation details.

Google’s logo for Leap Day ‘08.

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:19:51 -0800

Google’s logo for Leap Day ‘08.

The best kind of hands-on, real-world user experience research.

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:30:00 -0800

The best kind of hands-on, real-world user experience research.

Going beyond Multi-Touch [ @ Unwired View ]

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:47:00 -0800

Going beyond Multi-Touch [ @ Unwired View ]:

It seems to be raining future-interface links today. Here’s a detailed rundown of Nokia’s no-touch-required gestural interface for mobile devices.

My favorite part? Nokia is planning to use ultrasonic sonar to track 3D hand gestures. Batphone, anyone?

P.S. Here’s the Nokia patent application.

Google Code: iPhone haptic interface hack

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:34:00 -0800

Google Code: iPhone haptic interface hack:

Hot on the heels of Dan Saffer’s new gestural interface book, there’s news that those crafty Glaswegians at the Tactons Project have added tactile feedback to the iPhone touch interface. Who cares if the iPhone screen has no buttons when you can trick the user’s fingers into feeling the onscreen buttons?

I look forward to seeing — and feeling — what this group can do when the official iPhone SDK comes out.

Interactive Gestures: Designing Gestural Interfaces

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:17:00 -0800

Interactive Gestures: Designing Gestural Interfaces :

Hey, gesture geeks! Dan Saffer, Experience Design Director at design firm Adaptive Path, is working on a new O’Reilly book. Check out the website and download the sample chapter.

[Don’t forget to bookmark the site, because you won’t want to type designinggesturalinterfaces.com too often.]

Confirmed: Yahoo Design Innovation Team Axed The entire Yahoo Design Innovation Team, aka yHaus, has...

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:22:00 -0800

Confirmed: Yahoo Design Innovation Team Axed

The entire Yahoo Design Innovation Team, aka yHaus, has been axed en masse, Portfolio.com has confirmed with one of the team’s former members. …

Uh-ho!

So much for Mr. Bill’s plans for buying him some ~~indentured servants~~ ”great engineers”.

More details at Information Esthetics.

Spidery, spidery fun!

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:07:29 -0800

Spidery, spidery fun!

Give your résumé a face lift

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:36:01 -0800

Give your résumé a face lift: Excellent advice from LifeClever.com regarding typography, layout and content.

Installing the GIT revision control system on Mac OS X Leopard

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:10:44 -0800

Installing the GIT revision control system on Mac OS X Leopard: Handy install notes from the ever-superb Wincent Colaiuta.

[REBLOG] Enable comments in Tumblr

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:43:52 -0800

Comments are the big debate between Tumblr users… to use them or not?

At the moment Tumblr does not provide a comment function, but you can get them by adding some line of code in your template.

The first option: Flobbe Chatbox (or anything similar)

Chatbox are more like…err… a chat. I would use them only on certain posts.

The second one: Linebuzz

From the website: LineBuzz gives blog readers the ability to post comments directly on the text of a blog entry. A blog author simply installs one line of JavaScript and LineBuzz is activated.

I tried it on my personal tumblr… it’s great for quotes. Users highlight what a part of content, and they can drop a comment. Main backdraw… users need to register to linebuzz.com (argh, yet another registration!)

There is a third-old-school option. Receive comments by email and manually add them to your post. I occasionaly saw that on Useit.com

— hacks

[REBLOG] Installing The Perfect Tumblr Search

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:42:00 -0800

Jacob Dehart has created the perfect Tumblr search engine. It does not require pages to be indexed by Google or Yahoo and is based on the Tumblr API meaning if its on your tumble-log, it will be found on the search. The best part is you do not have to re-load another page or click a button to view the search results. You can see the search engine live on my tumble-log here. So here is a tutorial on how to install such a search engine for your Tumblr page.

1. In the head section of your html, paste the following lines of code after the

 section:

2. Now paste the following line of code after wherever you want to position the search engine. I like my search engine underneath on my description area, so I paste it on the description section:

3. Optional: Give credit to Jakob Dehart. To do so, paste the following code on the

section:
Search by Jakob Dehart

4. If you did everything correctly, Congrats! You successfully installed the tumblr search engine

Note: Jacob Dehart owns all the rights to this search engine. The only downside to this search engine is that the javascript will slow down your page load time by about one second.

PS. If you are interested in purchasing a facebook application (with hosting) for your tumblr site for $15 , email me.

— mirza

A little something for my buddy Misty, on the occasion of Having...

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:38:33 -0800

A little something for my buddy Misty, on the occasion of Having Given Her Notice.

May her next job feature a few less Po-Jama People.

“Po-Jama People”, Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention in the uniformly excellent One Size Fits All, 1975)