When I bought my Samsung tablet, the runner up was the Asus Transformer. That tablet’s main appeal was that, at the same price point, came with a cleverly designed keyboard. I convinced myself that I’d still fire up my laptop if I needed to answer a lot of emails, and got the lighter, thinner Galaxy Tab. But now, a couple of months later, I think a tablet keyboard can be a really good idea. I find myself using my tablet for a lot of things that involve text entry, ranging from note-keeping to server administration using SSH.

This is why I jumped at the opportunity when GearZap offered to send me their “Metal Keyboard for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″. On paper, it looked like the perfect companion for my Samsung, and it’s a lot cheaper than the Transformer’s keyboard.

Docking and connecting

In essence, this is a simple bluetooth keyboard, with a ridge that’s designed to hold the tablet at the perfect angle for typing. There’s no connector inside that ridge, the connection between the two devices relies on bluetooth alone. Mechanically, this solution installs little confidence. It doesn’t really feel like you’re docking the tablet, the ridge just sort-of keeps it from toppling over.

The keyboard is also designed to clip onto your tablet as a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 case. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work reliably either. I was able to get all four corners to clip around the tablet, but found that they pop back off way to easily. If this would happen while the combination is inside your bag, the sharp plastic corners of the keyboard could end up damaging your tablet’s screen. Perhaps a strap or rubber band could fix this, but I’d be really careful.

Tactile feedback

The main reason to get a keyboard like this is the poor feel of on-screen keyboards. If you’re doing a lot of text entry, you need tactile feedback. This keyboard however manages to feel even worse than its on-screen counterpart. When you press a key, you can see all the surrounding ones sink as well. There’s so much flex that you can press keys all the way through the metal sheet that surrounds them. There’s also barely any “click” and I found that the space bar only worked half the times I pressed it. I needed to really pay attention to press it all the way to the bottom. It’s like typing in mud.

Using the keyboard

The keyboard has a built-in battery, but unlike with the Transformer, it just powers itself. There’s also no trackpad, which would have been a welcome addition. The top row has Android-specific and multimedia keys, which are convenient. But the “feature” that ruins the whole experience is the overly aggressive, non-disableable, power saving mode. It kicks in after only fifteen seconds of inactivity, and each time it does, the keyboard needs three seconds or so to reconnect to the tablet. I found that this happens very often, and it’s annoying as hell.

Conclusion

This is a product that looks nice on paper, but has so many serious design flaws that it completely fails in practice. It doesn’t connect well, type well, dock well or protect well. If you’re looking for a Galaxy Tab keyboard, I’d suggest getting a better quality product like Samsung’s own solution, or perhaps a good generic bluetooth keyboard and a stand.

One of the biggest, and most useful additions to WordPress in recent years has been the introduction of Custom Post Types. Before CPTs, all the content in your site needed to either be in pages or in blog posts. If your site needed a lot of different types of data, you’d typically use categories (or even tags) to tell them apart. I’ve seen (and probably built) examples where “products” and “news” were post categories, and the site’s front-end would continuously filter out one of the two. In hindsight: madness.

Since the introduction of Custom Post Types, it makes sense to declare separate types for different types of data. When doing so, there’s a crucial argument (passed to the register_post_type function) called “supports”. This argument tells WordPress which post features should be available for the new post type. This allows you to mix and match various features. No need for an excerpt? Require a “featured image”? Need custom fields? No problem. But there’s a catch.

Built-in features only

There’s a fixed list of features you can enable or disable. They correspond to the features present in WordPress’s two built-in types, post and pages. Nothing else. And as far as I know, there’s no (easy, developer-friendly) way to add new features. As nice as CPTs are, I think this seriously limits their potential.

Imagine being able to do something like this to create a CPT for a travel video blog.

'supports' => array( 'title', 'editor', 'author', 'thumbnail', 'subtitle' 'video', 'geo-coords', 'event-time' )

The first four features come standard, but the real fun is in the other (fictitious) ones. Being able to add a video to a post in a manner similar to how featured images work could have many potential advantages over simply adding it into the post’s content. And although there are plugins that’ll let you geo-tag and add timestamps, not all of those support CPTs, and they do not all store data in the same way. They’re all adding data to posts, but they’re all doing it in their own way.

Plugin territory

I’m not saying all these features should be in WordPress’s lean and mean core. Most of the ones I can come up with are arguably plugin territory. But it would be nice to be able to define custom post features once, and then be able to add them to any (custom) post type. WordPress could offer a coherent, standardized way for them to present themselves and store their data. A Widget API of sorts, for the backend.

One might argue that you can do all these things using meta boxes, post meta (or extra database tables) and such, but I feel there’s a certain elegance to opening up “post features” as an API. For one thing, there are plugins that let end users define CPTs without any coding, and this would give them more things to mix and match. And perhaps, something like the functionality of those plugins could eventually make it into core…?

Noel Tock, who’s at WP On Tour with me, just released a brand new WordPress plugin that lets you accept Stripe payments. Stripe is a new, highly developer-friendly payment solution. They have low rates for processing and a great API. Right now, you can only use Stripe to accept payments if you’re in the US, but if you are, you can accept money from all over the world.

WP-Stripe keeps track of recent payments (without storing the more sensitive bits), and has a widget that shows recent incoming transactions, with gravatars. If you’re running a charity, this can be a great way to thank your sponsors. Donors who’d prefer to remain anonymous can of course opt-out of this.

The donation form is inserted into any post or page on your blog using a simple shortcode. Here’s how it looks (screenshot, not an actual donations form).

Noel needs people to test the plugin, and fortunately, there’s a test setting in the API that lets you make payments without them actually getting processed. This is fully supported in version 1.0 of the plugin, and from what I’ve seen it works perfectly. Recommended.

This week, some of the brightest minds in WordPress – and me – are co-working in Sitges, Spain. As I wrote before, I’m part of the first WP On Tour, organized by Karim Osman of Automattic. We’re in a very nice villa and, compared to back home, the weather is excellent here. But more importantly, it’s really nice to be surrounded by fellow WordPress users and devs for a change.

We’ve set up a Flickr group, but at this time there’s very little in there. On Twitter, we’re using the #wpontour hashtag.

Most of the current generation of computer nerds started out writing small programs in languages like BASIC. If you’re in your 30′s, chances are you started out on a Commodore C64, or one of its competitors, and fiddled around with writing small programs. Since then, computing has changed dramatically. Knowing your way around Microsoft Word makes you a “whiz kid” nowadays, and knowing how to install Windows can get you a job.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is developing a small, inexpensive computer aimed at bringing back the “hacker spirit” from the old days. Starting at a mere $25, the “Raspberry Pi” is a credit card-sized circuit board with an ARM-based SoC (system on a chip), 128 MB of RAM memory and connectors for a display, keyboard and mouse (USB). It uses an SD card as storage, and can be used with a DVI-capable monitor or a TV (composite video). The $35 “Model B” has double the RAM and a wired network port.

Don’t let the low purchase price fool you though. The video above shows an early prototype running Quake III at Full-DH resolution, and while that is not its intended use, it shows that the hardware is quite capable. The CPU is a single core one, running at a mere 700 MHz, but the graphics unit is quite potent, and with some cleverly chosen (written?) software, it should be usable as a general purpose PC.

(image shows a prototype board)

The Foundation is probably right to expect mostly selling the first 10,000 boards to developers and enthusiasts. Like many (current) geeks. I can see tons of applications for this little board. It uses only around 1 watt of power, so it’s perfect for “always-on” type applications like small (NAS?) servers. Plus it plays video really well, so it could also be used to create a Linux-based media player. The sky is the limit . Or rather, 10,000 is the limit. This thing has “EPIC WANT” written all over it, so I’d be surprised if that first batch isn’t sold out in the blink of an eye.

In my opinion, one of the coolest things about Ubuntu is that it comes with a Bittorrent client pre-installed. Transmission is an excellent torrent downloader. I use it all the time on my media server PC, both using the GUI (on my TV) and the web interface. I’ve even set it up so it watches my dropbox folder for new torrent files, so all I have to do to start downloading is power up the computer.

However, in order to make that work, Transmission needs to start automatically with Ubuntu. This used to be really straight-forward in older Ubuntu versions. You could simply add the terminal command “transmission” to the startup programs and that was it. Since “Meerkat” (or perhaps the version before that), this does not work any more.

I googled this issue, and found lots of guides about how to set up “transmission-daemon”, a “headless” version (which means it has no GUI at all). This is probably an excellent solution for setups where there’s no monitor attached to the computer, but it requires you to edit configuration files for things that “regular” Transmission allows you to set though its graphical user interface.

As it turns out, you can still fire Transmission (the regular version) by adding it to the startup applications (a process described here). The trick is to use “transmission-gtk”. Optionally, you can start the progam in minimized mode, by adding the “-m” switch. Here’s what I use.

transmission-gtk -m

So, if your computer isn’t a headless one, I’d recommend not installing “transmission-daemon”, but simply auto-starting regular transmission. That way, it’s much easier to use, even though this simple trick is so hard to find.

Last week, I came across the video below, and it made me wonder how this smartphone holder worked. The stop-motion animation shows both metal and plastic objects clinging to the holder’s surface, so magnetism was out. I tweeted about it, Ideasbynet offered to send me a sample. It arrived today, and I think I have it figured out now.

The holder itself is made out of plastic, but the dark rectangle on the front is silicone. That patch of silicone isn’t sticky (no glue), but it offers extreme friction. And because it’s at an angle, gravity pushes your device onto it. The result is that the phone doesn’t slide off, but seems to levitate. Nifty.

My HTC Desire has a camera that extrudes slightly, so the back of the phone is not entirely flat. Because of this, the total contact area between phone and holder is smaller, but it still sticks perfectly. I can’t turn the holder upside-down, like with the iPhone 4 in the video, but I wasn’t planning to anyway.

Unfortunately, ideasbynet only sells these in quantities of 100 or more. So you’ll have to talk your boss into giving them out as promotional gifts, or at Christmas or something. Shouldn’t be too hard, given the holder’s geeky appeal, or should I say “gravitational pull”?

Last week saw the kick-off of the first completely unofficial Dutch Wordfeud tournament. I’m competing, and so far, things are going great. I have no illusions about making it to the next round though. Even though I’m winning most of the round one games, my scores are mediocre at best, and the accumulated total scores decide which sixteen players will compete in round two. But there’s a catch…

But although I wouldn’t really mind losing, I’d hate to lose to cheaters. There are a lot of cheat apps out there that can suggest the absolute best word to put on the board. Some are so advanced that they interpret screenshots from the game, or even interface directly with the Wordfeud server. In order to see if there was any way to spot when these apps were at work, my wife and I decided to play a game of Wordfeud using the best cheat apps on our respective phone platforms and see what would happen.

Scrabulizer for iOS

Scrabulizer takes a screenshot of the current game, recognizes all the words currently on the board, and then finds the best move. It uses the same dictionary as Wordfeud does, and offers a list of suggestions sorted by potential score. In our test, we used the top suggestion for each turn. Taking screenshots all the time is a bit of a pain, but aside from that the app is really easy to work with.

Wordfeud Helper plugin beta

Wordfeud Helper uses a different approach. It connects directly to your Wordfeud account, lets you select all current games, and then does the same thing Scrabulizer does. It too offers a list suggestions sorted by score, but there’s a nasty bug that affects Dutch language games.

It appears that the app continues to use the English letter values with the Dutch dictionary. This means that the predicted score can be off by as much as 20 points. You could probably get around this by manually calculate the scores for the top ten suggestions, but in our test we also used the top one. If this bug gets fixed, chances are that “Helper” will perform identical to it’s iOS competitor.

Fight!

The movie above shows the game from the iPhone end. The final score was iPhone: 573, Android: 361. However, the Android “player” was continually getting worse letters than the iPhone, and the language bug probably also affected its performance. I’ll try and do an English game and update this post, but the main conclusion has to be that playing with these apps is no fun at all, although it does sometimes result in monster scores.

Tightly packed

As you can see, these apps tend to clutter words together. Human players tend to look for open spaces, but it makes sense that packing words tightly together, thereby extending or creating “collateral words”, yields higher scores. I’m not sure whether there’s enough of a difference to spot cheaters, but this pattern may provide an excellent clue.

UPDATE

Here’s another video of both apps playing against each other. This time the game is English, and I’m happy to report that “Helper” did predict the correct scores. Again, there’s a similar pattern in the way words are connected.

Unfortunately, this particular game unearthed another shortcoming in the Android app. It does not use blank tiles at all. The Android player got one early on in the game, and the app only used the other six letters from there on in. This caused the app to lose the game, and by quite a large margin (340 vs. 501).

When I got my Galaxy Tab tablet, I thought I would mostly be using it at home. As it turns out, it’s also an ideal device to take with you. I’ve spent hours playing Wordfeud on long distance train rides, and well… everywhere else too. Like any tablet, the Samsung is basically a large piece of glass with some electronics glued to the back. Without a good cover, chances are you’ll eventually scratch the screen, and a drop from even one meter could be fatal.

But one of the downsides of not going with the absolute market leader, the iPad, is that there isn’t an abundance of protective cases available. My friends over at Mobilefun offer quite a few Galaxy Tab 10.1 accessories, including Samsung’s own Book Cover Case. They were nice enough to send me one of those to take a look at, and I’m happy to report that it’s pretty nice.

The case uses four plastic corners to snap onto the back of the tablet, and wraps around the front so the whole thing is protected. It can also be folded into a stand for watching video, or as pictured above to accommodate typing. Not quite as smart as Apple’s Smart Cover, but it does also protect the device’s back. What I like most however is the excellent material, and the remarkable build quality.

I’m glad I have a decent DSLR camera now, because otherwise it would have been impossible to show the nice, textured surface. It’s almost completely fingerprint-resistant, and it looks silky smooth. At the same time, the front and back panes are very rigid, so they probably offer excellent protection. All connectors are accessible, and it also doesn’t block the camera.

Another plus is that the case is lightweight. I estimate that with the cover on, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 weighs as much as an Asus Transformer or a Xoom without one. But because the case makes the tablet less slippery, it’s actually easier to hold. I like that it’s easy to remove the cover when you get home, but I think I’ll just leave it on. Recommended.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my first experiences with the Galaxy Tab 10.1. I noted that while its hardware is excellent, there’s a distinct shortage of tablet apps for Android. Most apps will work just fine, but they’ll make poor use of a tablet’s screen real estate.

But things are definitely improving. New apps are coming out daily. I’ve tried quite a few of them, and I thought I’d do a quick rundown of the apps I’m actually using on a daily basis.

1. Feedly

Feedly turns RSS feeds into a stunning digital magazine. You can use your own feeds (through Google Reader), or use the excellent default selection. It also interfaces with Read It Later and Bit.ly. I love the clean layout, and greatly prefer it over the Samsung-supplied Pulse reader. Highly recommended for keeping up to date with the news.

2. The Honeycomb browser

One thing I noticed while using my tablet is that there’s actually less need for apps. Many apps simply present website information in a more convenient small-screen format. With a large screen and Honeycomb’s excellent browser, there’s less of a need to do that. I’m a big fan of Wapedia on my phone, but I prefer to use the Wikipedia website on my tablet. I have a long list of bookmarks set up, and us the browser far more than on my handset.

3. Wordfeud

It may not look quite as slick as some of the competing online multiplayer Scrabble apps, but Wordfeud is an excellent, lightweight word game. The bigger screen eliminates the need to zoom in, and makes playing even more fun on tablets. Highly recommended if you have too much free time. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

(The app is portrait-only, making it hard to post a screenshot here due to layout constrictions)

4. IMDB

If you’re a movie fan like me, IMDB is an essential resource. An fortunately, their tablet app is great too. I’ll admit that I like earlier versions better than the current one, but it’s still by far the best movie info app. It offers access to numerous movie trailers, image galleries and pretty much the entire IMDB database. I would love to see forum access in future versions, but for now there’s a “view on IMDB” button that allows you to get there quickly.

5. VPlayer

Of all the video players I’ve tried, VPlayer has the best use interface. It has had no problems displaying any of the files I’ve thrown at it, and it ties in with tools like UPnPlay to play files for network sources.

Runner up: BSPlayer (which doesn’t quite look as good, but has a nifty LAN mode for connecting to Windows shares)

6. Apparatus

I’m not much of a gamer, but this clever puzzle game blew my mind. The goal is to use things like wooden sticks and rope to get a little ball from A to B. You get to build complex contraptions, and when you press “play”, the whole thing falls apart very realistically. I’ve rarely seen such realistic physics in any game, and like with Wordfeud, the larger screen makes playing much more fun.

7. TweetComb

To my knowledge, there are only two Twitter clients out there that were designed from the ground up to be used on tablets. Of those two, TweetComb sports best user interface. It’s not the best Twitter client I’ve ever used, but it gets the job done. Until TweetDeck, Seesmic or some othe major player comes out with a Honeycomb app, TweetComb is king of the (relatively small) hill.

Runner up: Friend Me (if Facebook is your thing)

8. UStream

I haven’t tried the publishing end of UStream’s app, but it’s excellent for browsing other people’s streams. There’s something magical about watching a live feed from the Space Shuttle on your tablet, and that experience alone warrants a place on this list.

9. Buienradar HD

Despite being of little use to non-Dutch users, I wanted to mention the new Buienradar (“rain radar”) app. Its user interface design is all over the place, but despite the near-psychedelic colors, it does offer all the weather/rain info you need.

10. Dropbox

There’s no specific tablet version of Dropbox’s Android app, but it scales really well. But more importantly, it offers a quick and easy way to get files from and to my USB-less tablet. All the screenshots in this post were transferred from my tablet to my PC using Dropbox. I didn’t include a screenshot because the user interface is basically a file browser, but it works very well. Recommended.