bradchoate.com

"Overworked Mom" and "In-N-Out Sous-chef" [Flickr]

2010-03-13T12:30:25-08:00

from Halloween, 2009.

Introducing Unicons

2010-02-18T04:40:40Z

Unicons is a little project I put together today, making it easier to insert some of those little Unicode symbols (like ☃ or ☺ or ✌) into web text fields. You know, the text fields you see on comment forms or Twitter.

The project is hosted at Github and feedback is welcome!

Apple and their Magic Mouse

2009-11-03T21:47:11Z

via apple.com

I picked up an Apple Magic Mouse at the local Apple store Thursday night. It’s pretty nice! It’s amazing to me how Apple brought the mouse to the mass market (well, Dvorak didn’t like it) but have done a poor job in the design, until now.

What I like:

the slim design
even with batteries, this thing is light, but not too light
fewer moving parts, and no scroll wheel to keep clean
most of the top surface area is touch-sensitive
no more red light for the optical sensor!

What I don’t like:

it was a little pricey, but I remember paying $100 for the first Microsoft optic mouse

My other area of complaint can’t be summed up in a bullet. Basically, it’s the gestures. Apple has brought three slightly different sets of multi-touch gestures to the market in three different products: iPhone, the multi-touch trackpad and now the Magic Mouse. I’m going to look at five of these gestures in particular:

clicking (or tapping for iPhone)
content scrolling
content magnification
content rotation
content navigation

iPhone (and iPod touch of course) multi-touch gestures are really, really natural to me, but maybe because I’ve been using them longer than these other devices. Gestures on iPhone for these five interactions are:

clicking: single finger tap
content scrolling: single OR two-finger slide up/down
content magnification: two-finger pinch/spread
content rotation: two-finger rotate
content navigation: single finger slide left/right (as used for photo navigation)

It is interesting that iPhone recognizes both single and two-finger slides for content scrolling. I believe this is done with an eye towards what I am looking for and will elaborate on — a universal set of gestures.

Apple added multi-touch to their trackpads and some gestures to go with them. They differ from those on iPhone, namely because you aren’t interacting directly with a screen, but with an area that is controlling an on-screen cursor. This is a very different model from a multi-touch display which has no cursor to speak of. So, the multi-touch trackpad gestures are:

clicking: single finger click and/or tap (MacBook trackpads can be configured to accept a tap as a click action but they are no configured this way as a factory default)
content scrolling: two-finger slide; omnidirectional
content magnification: two-finger pinch/spread
content rotation: two-finger rotate
content navigation: three-finger swipe left/right (as used to navigate backward/forward in a browser or navigating a photo album in iPhoto)

Now those are mostly the same, with the exception of the content navigation gesture.

So how about this Magic Mouse? Gestures are:

clicking: single finger click (a tap on the surface does nothing)
content scrolling: single OR two-finger slide; omnidirectional
content magnification: none
content rotation: none
content navigation: two-finger swipe left/right (as used to navigate backward/forward in a browser or navigating a photo album in iPhoto)

The Magic Mouse may not support tap-to-click because it has a serviceable button, and having two ways to click would be kind of weird. But the multi-touch trackpads that also have a tactile click for the trackpad itself (including all the new MacBooks, save the MacBook Air which still has a separate button) and can be configured to support a tap to click as well. I personally prefer this configuration since there is less effort to do something that you do all the time.

As for gesture two… well, obviously, a single finger slide on the trackpad is the mouse equivalent of moving the mouse around. So we can’t expect Apple to change the trackpad’s single finger slide gesture to scroll content (unless they add an optical sensor to bottom of their laptops, but who wants to move their laptop around to move the cursor?). The other option is to use two-finger sliding to scroll on the Magic Mouse. Well… actually, that works too — you can use either a one or two-finger slide for scrolling.

What about the gestures for content magnification and rotation? The Magic Mouse is missing these for some reason unknown to me. The hardware should be capable of recognizing such gestures as recognized on iPhone/iPod touch and trackpads.

Content navigation gestures differ in number of fingers across all three: iPhone only needs one finger (granted, the use there is for full-screen pages, like on the Springboard and photo albums; this same gesture can’t be used for navigating forward and backward in Mobile Safari), the Magic Mouse uses two fingers and the trackpad uses three! The trackpad cannot use two fingers because two finger scrolling can scroll horizontally as well as vertically. And while you could conceivably use three fingers on the Magic Mouse (there may be a hardware limitation, but I doubt it), it’s kind of awkward to do so.

All in all, it’s a mixed bag. I can understand the decisions made around making these gestures differ from one context to another, but at the same time, it’s frustrating that they are different. This feels like an area where a real standard should emerge, one that can be used across these devices so consumers don’t have to re-train themselves when they shift from one device to another.

If I had my druthers, I would recommend the following as universal gestures:

clicking: single finger tap and (Mac only) right-click: two-finger tap
content scrolling: two-finger slide (single finger use for iPhone/Magic Mouse)
content magnification: two-finger pinch/spread
content rotation: two-finger rotate
content navigation: three-finger slides

This affects all three multi-touch devices in subtle ways: for the Magic Mouse, Apple would have to support tapping the surface to behave as a click and support both two and three-finger slides for content navigation. They would also have to implement gestures for content magnification and rotation (I suspect they plan to eventually). For iPhone, recognizing three finger slides to navigate content in Safari would be great, as it doesn’t support any gesture for that interaction today. A three-finger slide could also be treated as page turns for other contexts where a single finger slide work now. For multi-touch trackpads, Apple would need to make tap to click a default configuration, so this behavior is supported without having to reconfigure your trackpad to use it.

With these minor adjustments, a single set of gestures can work across all these devices. Optimized versions of these gestures can still be supported — you should still be able to scroll on iPhone and the Magic Mouse with one finger, but the universal gesture would be two fingers.

It’s kind of strange to me that Apple has shifted from a position where they insisted on grounds of usability that a single-button mouse was “The Way” for so long to where we are today: a variety of input devices with rich and complex interaction features that also have varying control schemes. Hopefully some standard will emerge… I’m sure someone at Apple is thinking about this too.

Having said all that, I really do recommend the Magic Mouse, particularly for desktops and for the Mac mini which is where I use mine.

Finally, one last wish of mine: I’d love to see an alternate Magic Mouse driver written that makes this device function just like a multi-touch trackpad. I’d like to just leave this mouse stationary and simply use my finger on the surface as I would a trackpad. So single finger sliding would move the cursor, instead of moving the mouse itself. And if that were possible, I’d also prefer to use the mouse in a sideways orientation, since screens are generally wider than tall. Apple could do this as an alternate configuration for their mouse, but this feels like a third-party thing and one I would gladly pay for.

Bounce Slide [Flickr]

2009-10-24T19:58:25-07:00

Brad Choate posted a video:

Can rssCloud make me coffee? [Flickr]

2009-09-15T12:32:24-07:00

Brad Choate posted a photo:

(Untitled) [Flickr]

2009-08-25T08:49:46-07:00

Brad Choate posted a photo:

(Untitled) [Flickr]

2009-08-25T08:49:39-07:00

Brad Choate posted a photo:

Shortcuts for Bookmarks

2008-08-11T17:20:37Z

Did you know you can assign a keyboard shortcut that invokes any browser bookmark you’ve created? For example, I have a bookmarklet for sharing a link on FriendFeed.com. I’d like to run that bookmarklet on the active page using Ctrl+Cmd+F. To do this, I can create a keyboard menu shortcut for OS X:

Creating the shortcut is easy: open your System Preferences and go to the “Keyboard & Mouse” preferences, then click on the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab. Click the “+” button below the shortcut listing. Set the shortcut to apply to “Safari” (or “Firefox”) in the Application list, then type in the name of your bookmark (exactly as it is labelled in your bookmarks), and set a keyboard shortcut.

After you do this, you may have to restart your browser to try it out. I’ve also noticed that these shortcuts are not always recognized right away, due to the way the menu options for bookmarks are lazily loading until it is needed (Safari and Firefox both behave this way). Just click on the “Bookmarks” menu option if your shortcut isn’t already working; you only need to do that once after the browser has loaded.

I love this tip because it makes bookmarklets so much easier to invoke, and it doesn’t involve using any weird third-party software hacks to do it.

7 days to go

2008-06-02T16:04:09Z

This may be the last week I have to use this clunky 1st generation iPhone. I’ve been anticipating the 2nd gen model since June 30, and the original doesn’t hold a candle to my expectations for iPhone 2.

Input Managers and Leopard

2008-03-02T06:44:16Z

Lets talk about a variety of Mac OS X software called Input Managers.

In brief, an Input Manager is software that can affect other running applications. The original intent of Input Managers was to provide a means for customizing the operation of the keyboard and/or mouse to support things like locale-specific input behavior (treating keyboard input differently for different languages or regions) and software that aids handicapped individuals. The name “Input Manager” is thus appropriate for these intended uses. (Read more about Text Input Management.)

However, it wasn’t long before Mac developers found this to be a useful way to graft additional functionality into other applications. There are several OS X software products out there that are input managers which have little to do with input management (Inquisitor, 1Password, Chax are three that I use today). These products are typically unstable in nature, since they often times rely on undocumented aspects of the “host” application. But when they work, they can add real useful functionality to other programs.

The downside to Input Managers is that it is a tempting means for rogue software to exploit. One such example is the “Oompa-Loompa” trojan which surfaced about two years ago. This was a download that supposedly contained pre-release screen shots of OS X 10.5. It masqueraded the installation program as an image file, and when the unsuspecting user tries to view the file, it installs itself into the user’s “Input Managers” folder. It then can access any application that is run and affects iChat in particular, so that it tries to spread to others in your iChat contact list.

One of the changes in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) was in how OS X dealt with Input Managers. The early rumors were that Leopard wouldn’t permit them to run at all. But after release, Leopard did run Input Managers, but only those that are installed in the system-wide “/Library/InputManagers” folder.

The distinction is this: before Leopard, if a user runs software that tries to install an Input Manager, there is nothing to stop it from installing one that is local to that user’s account (installing it to the “/Users/username/Library/InputManagers” folder). With Leopard, installation of an Input Manager requires system-administration rights (so the user is prompted to authenticate to permit the installation), and the Input Manager is installed to the “/Library/InputManagers” folder.

The authentication requirement is the key and is a welcome change. There should be some kind of barrier to install software of this nature. BUT, it is wrong for Input Managers to only be installable in a system-wide fashion.

Before Leopard, I always— always— installed Input Managers for my own account only. By doing so, I could always login as another user to disable them. Remember— by their nature, they are less stable, and can cause applications to crash. A common request of developers when reporting bugs in their programs is to disable any third-party Input Manager software to see if it resolves the problem at hand. I could do that by logging in under a different account before Leopard, but now I cannot.

Personally, I would have preferred that user-specific Input Managers were still supported, but also require an administrator’s password to install. So, you would have a path, perhaps like “/Library/InputManagers/Users/username”, which may even be symlinked to “/Users/username/Library/InputManagers”. I think this is a better option, than requiring Input Managers to be activated for all users of that machine.

Hopefully a later update or release of OS X will address this and restore the option of user-level Input Managers.

Netflix adds insult to injury

2007-11-11T03:11:33Z

Netflix.com has this option to watch a selection of their movies through your browser. Assuming your browser is running on Windows, as they require Windows Media DRM to play it.

But their promotional graphic (pictured here) shows it running on a black MacBook (Update: apparently, I’m jumping to conclusions — see comments below).

They doctored the thing of course, placing a still frame over the display, covering the portion that has the built-in camera and all evidence of the ‘MacBook’ imprinted at the bottom of the display. But you can make out the key layout, the size of the trackpad, and even the infrared receiver on the front-right side. It’s definitely a MacBook.

Now, it’s not impossible to get those videos on a MacBook. You can do it if you’re running Windows under Parallels or VM Fusion. Performance is fine, even at full resolution. But I seriously doubt they expect their average customer to do that!

Are you sure?

2007-11-05T23:35:58Z

The new empty trash confirmation dialog in Leopard.

But… I’m using Time Machine. There is an undo! This seems contradictory.

Also, the window grab action includes the huge drop shadow Leopard puts on focused windows. Is that necessary?

Mac OS X Leopard menu bar loses its rounded corners

2007-10-26T18:54:44Z

Just wondering how long it will take for someone to restore the rounded edges that have always been on the Mac menu bar.

From Tiger:

From Leopard:

Update: Not long.

Probably not what Vonage was expecting Mint.com to recommend...

2007-10-20T00:11:22Z

I suspect Vonage doesn’t want Mint.com to recommend existing customers to switch to a cheaper plan, but hey, you save $117 a year if you do!

Domain waste

2007-10-10T17:16:05Z

I guess if you’re a domain name registrar, you use entire domains for even trivial things like, say, your e-mail help manual. ‘emailuserguide.com’ is a domain for hosting the Network Solutions email user guide. Apparently, the whole thing is meant to be in a pop-up help window.

But wait, it gets better. The bulk of the guide is actually in a PDF file. So the domain, as best I can tell, hosts about 19 pages altogether (mostly FAQ material), with links to other places or files that have actual useful information.

Oh, and if you’re managing your account, you’ll want to use accountmanageruserguide.com.

Exposé key assignment choices

2007-10-05T00:43:40Z

The Exposé preferences dialog has some odd choices for key assignments.

Namely…

Why are ‘fn’, ‘Right/Left Shift/Control/Option/Command’ choices for these commands? Seriously, who maps these to a shift key?
Why are they not choices for the Dashboard command?
Why can’t I assign ‘fn+F3’? When I hold other modifier keys, the function keys become prefixed with that modifier, but not for the ‘fn’ modifier.

I just bought an Aluminum wireless keyboard and it’s great, but where it natively supports ‘fn+F3’ for “Show All Windows”, I have no way to do that for my MacBook keyboard (where fn+F3 mutes the speaker— that command is mapped to fn+F10 on the Aluminum keyboard).

And while I’m discussing the new wireless keyboard, I should also mention that it really strikes me as odd that they don’t have a Num-lock built into it as it exists on the MacBook keyboard. And my ultimate wireless keyboard would have a built-in trackpad or other kind of pointing device (“Mouse keys” doesn’t really cut it).

100+ iPhone Features I Want

2007-09-08T22:39:07Z

As wonderful as Apple’s iPhone is, it has a lot of room for improvement. I’m hopeful that many of the wishes listed below will some day be realized— either by Apple or by the tireless and industrious iPhone hackers out there. What follows is my brain dump of the dreams I have had for iPhone. As they are realized, I’ll be updating this list.

And much of these would also apply to the newly announced iPod touch.

Thoughts about the “Home” button

Once again, Apple has produced a minimal design device, and as with the mouse we’re now left to imagine creative ways in which to maximize function out of a minimal design. I’m talking about the one-button smart phone; specifically, the ‘Home’ button.

I think the ‘Home’ button at the bottom of iPhone could be used in combination with other actions to allow for lots of new behavior. These behaviors would not necessarily be required to use the device, but would yield features to users that want them. In this respect, this is akin to a right-mouse button on a Mac.

So here’s how it would work. I’ve noticed that the ‘Home’ button doesn’t actually take you to the Home screen until you’ve released the button. This means that it is possible to program the button to work differently when combined with other buttons or actions.

For instance: pressing the Home button plus the Wake button for a few seconds will trigger a shutdown action, which then lets you slide to confirm and upon doing so, iPhone shuts down. This works reasonably well on iPhone today.

I think this would make for an easy way to do text selections, which would then let you copy text to a clipboard. The first step is to define a copy point— this would work by pressing and holding to display the ‘loupe’. You place the cursor where you want to start selecting. Then while still holding the loupe open, with your other hand’s thumb, press and release the Home button. This toggles you to a selection mode. From this point, you drag the loupe to make your selection. Upon release, you get a popup menu which lets you choose between cut/copy/paste/cancel.

If you didn’t make a selection— if you just left the loupe where it was, you still get a menu, but one for just paste/cancel.

So how about ‘Home’ key plus volume up/down keys? That could be useful for specific tasks, but to me, the real extensibility is with the touch screen: gestures. The one problem is the current behavior of the Home key.

Pressing and holding the Home key for a few seconds currently forces the current application to close and returns you to the Home screen. I think this should change to Home key plus Wake key— not holding both, but just pressing both in conjunction. This frees up the Home key for many other uses. Left as a ‘force-close application’ key, I’d be afraid to use it for fear of triggering the close mechanism.

Another way to add more functions to iPhone’s UI is through voice commands. I think these are useful, especially for hands-free operation, like when you’re driving. But I would probably use gestures more frequently, since they can be done silently and are more easily recognized.

Thoughts on iPhone as a Mountable Drive

I’d really like to try using iPhone as a small computer. To do so, making it work as a mountable drive when attached to another computer would go a long way.

For instance, I could copy files from my laptop to iPhone, then while away from my laptop, I could email those files to others, or could edit text files right on the iPhone. I could take files I receive my email and put them on another computer. This wouldn’t require syncing— it would just mount the iPhone data volume.

Custom applications would also be able to locally edit and manage files in the data volume on iPhone.

Thoughts about iPhone Games

While iPhone doesn’t yet offer any (legitimate) games yet, I think it could make for a really good game platform. And the video out support that is coming for iPhone may promise even more. Think— would it be possible to hook iPhone up to a TV and play a game that is controlled while attached to a TV? Imagine playing a full-screen video game on a HDTV display while holding iPhone— and mind you, it has a built-in accelerometer which makes for some really cool possibilities. Now add to that, the idea of being able to use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. You could be playing iPhone DOOM this way some day.

General Features

Custom application support. Number One Request. These are already available, but non-sanctioned by Apple.
Custom Dashcode widgets. You know, so mere mortals can make iPhone apps! I’m surprised no one has enabled this yet.
Custom keyboard overlays/layouts. ~~Switch to international keyboards.~~ (Available as of the iPhone 1.1.2 release)
Use iPhone as a mountable drive, just like an iPod. This would create a file-based data storage area that could be drawn from for Safari file uploads, editing local files in the Notes app, email attachments, etc.
Method to copy and paste text and pictures.
Word completion dictionary learns new words/patterns from typing history.
Better recognition of caps mode. For example, when typing two or three consecutive upper case letters, enable caps until end-of-word character is pressed.
Use of wallpaper for background of home screen, not just for the unlock screen.
Better Bluetooth support: file transfer, keyboards, mice, stereo headsets. I’m hoping this doesn’t require new hardware.
Spellcheck! One that works for every instance where a keyboard is available.
Sync over WiFi.
Transmit your contact card to another iPhone user, just to annoy Palm.
Support for Bonjour.
Remote control for a desktop computer via WiFi. This would employ a mouse pointer that you could drag around with overlay buttons to click, right-click, double click and so forth.
Easy tether support to let you access the Internet over EDGE on your laptop.
Customizable keyboard input macros. I.e. ‘zsig’ might be a trigger to suggest input of a common signature line.
Spotlight… for email and notes at least!
Voice commands— “Music”, “Videos”, “Play”, “Next”. These would go a long way and would make up for a number of missing buttons.

Notes

Choice of font. Nobody really likes Marker Felt— it’s the equivalent of Comic Sans for Mac OS X.
A way to sync notes to host computer. Good news: this should be in Leopard.
Assign title of note independently from content.
Simple formatting: bold, italics, etc. I’m not asking for Pages functionality, just the basic stuff. This requires some means of selecting text— a feature also required for copying text.
An easier way to produce bulleted/numbered lists. Like, if you start a bulleted list, continue it with each new line, as most word processors do these days. End it when the user makes a new paragraph. And support for a simple asterisk as a bullet choice, since that’s Markdown-friendly.
Ability to post content in note to a blog using metaWebLog or Atom APIs.
Folder support.
Ability to type notes with a horizontal iPhone.
Ability to open/edit text files that are stored in data storage portion of iPhone (if configured to work as a mountable drive; see above).

Calendar

Ability to assign events to specific calendars. I hate that this is a choice you make in iTunes. I want more control.
Ability to subscribe/publish iCal calendar updates over WiFi/EDGE.
Colored events matching the colors assigned to calendars in iCal.

Phone

Better prevention of accidental dialing. No calls can be initiated by clicking on lists such as the recent calls list- they must be initiated by clicking a button.
Taking a photo for assigning to a contact should also place that picture in your photo roll.
Voice dialing. “Call home” dials home regardless what screen you’re on.
Set an option for a contact to force their calls into voicemail immediately.
A mode that forces ALL calls into voicemail. That lets you leave the phone on.

Maps

Way to plot a route and email it to someone.
~~Hybrid view. Map labels + satellite view.~~ (Available as of the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware release.)
Google street view.
~~Ability to bookmark locations and routes and add notes to them.~~ (You can drop pins to create your own bookmarks with the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware, but you can’t add notes yet.)
Ability to define a location as your current location, which would allow iPhone photos to be assigned GPS coordinates.
Ability to define a “trip” which would save the route, along with cached imagery for the route. Multiple resolutions to allow scaling, viewing satellite/streets, so that maps could be accessed even without WiFi/EDGE.
~~Fuzzy location detection based on cell tower position.~~ (Available as of the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware release.)
Ability to reveal GPS coordinates for a particular location.
Home button gesture— Home plus tap, add a bookmark to tapped location. Home key plus tap on a bookmark, menu options for removing, editingng it.
Home button gesture— Home plus drag on a route— alter route.
Home button gesture— Home held down; raises menu options, among them being the “Set as current location” command (see above) which would let you pinpoint your current position on the map.

Mail

Support for flagging email for IMAP based accounts.
Support for junking an email.
Option to prevent loading of images from people that aren’t in your contact list.
A way to exclude certain IMAP folders from being listed/syncing.
A way to specify the photo resolution for photo attachments; both a default and per email setting. Or just a simple on/off switch for rescaling photo attachments. It’s rather atrocious that 2 megapixel pictures are resized down to 360x480— that’s a paltry .2 megapixels. This makes “moblogging” to Flickr and even .Mac Web Gallery rather useless.
Ability to add new attachments to an existing message. From photo library, or from files in the data storage portion (see above).
Ability to save images from email to your photos.
Ability to save other attachments to a ‘Documents’ folder, or a folder of your choice. These would be accessible when connecting iPhone to any computer as a mountable drive.
Email templates. A “Templates” folder, which is similar to a “Drafts” folder, but once you edit and send an email, the template version stays in the “Templates” folder.
Ability to compose email with a horizontal iPhone.
~~A bonus wish for Google: Google Mail via IMAP.~~ (Yay! Google supports IMAP!)
Home button gesture— Home pressed down while “Delete” button is shown for a message changes the button to “Junk”, which marks the message as junk and moves it to the Junk folder.

Stocks

Actual trading.

Weather

Weather forecast text.
Ability to set the weather to something more desirable. Okay, I had trouble coming up with ideas to improve this.

Clock

Time server sync support as a fallback if AT&T service is unavailable.
It’s silly, but I’d like a display mode for a big analog/digital clock. One that tilts based on orientation of iPhone. That way, I can prop iPhone on my desk when it’s idle. Perhaps another mode that displays clock plus calendar.
Ability to assign any song / playlist for an alarm.

Calculator

Programmer mode. So I can add DECAFBAD + DEADBEEF.
Scientific mode. Graphing calculator even?
Support for paper ticker that can be saved/revised.
Home button gesture— hold Home down, raises menu with alternative modes.

iPod

Voice recording.
~~Buy songs from iTunes over the network.~~ Yay! Already announced. (Available as of the iPhone 1.1.1 firmware release.)
Buy TV shows and movies (and games?) from iTunes over the network.
Play music over AirTunes to an Airport Express.
Play media from shared iTunes libraries.
Remove prompting to erase videos on watching them; make this a function of syncing alone.
Free WiFi at Starbucks with purchase of $5 or more from iTunes store?
Could iPhone’s accelerometer serve as a pedometer similar to the Nike iPod Sports Kit?
Home button gesture— Home plus slide right: next track.
Home button gesture— Home plus slide left: previous track.
Home button gesture— Home plus tap: play/pause.

SMS

~~Multiple recipients.~~ (Available as of the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware release.)
Save/email SMS conversations.

Camera/Photos

Option to make the entire surface the button for taking pictures.
Option to take picture upon press instead of release.
Way to create albums/events and place photos in them.
Ability to create, manage a .Mac gallery from iPhone itself, including syncing of new pictures down to iPhone.
Rate photos.
Tag photos.
Support for Flickr— Apple is a Yahoo! partner for this device after all. Better yet… define an API that can be implemented for any service.
.Mac web galleries should be listed here and viewed here rather than in Safari. I want to be able to use the same gestures to navigate photos: sliding my fingers on pictures, etc., and you can’t achieve that in Safari web apps. At least, not yet.

YouTube

Login support; view bookmarked/my videos; create bookmarks.
Comment support.
Save YouTube videos to iPhone, for fast viewing offline.

Safari

Upload file support which would offer selection of files drawn from: photo library, email attachments, MP3 files such as voice recordings, files stored when used as a mountable drive (which is another request; see “General” list above).
Ability to save files to iPhone when configured to allow use as a mountable drive; files would be stored in portion of iPhone dedicated to data storage.
Ability to customize viewport size/scaling for a given bookmark/domain.
Flash support with ability to enable/disable on a domain basis.
Pressing and holding the forward and back buttons for a second or so will show the history in that direction.
Support for richtext editing in web-based applications.
Save / prefill form support. I would love to run 1Password on my iPhone.
A semi-transparent keyboard overlay; one that is controllable with respect to layout via JavaScript or HTML input field hints. I.e., keyboard for entering a URL, or e-mail address.
Enable/disable JavaScript on a domain basis.
Option to hide toolbar at the bottom. It could be raised through holding down the Home button. Ie, push and hold Home button raises toolbar, tap forward/backward/bookmark/windows button.
Home button gesture— Home plus tap link, opens link in new window. Either that, or tap and hold on link shows menu when gives you the option to open in a new window.
Window button shows a button that lets you save that window as a web archive for offline viewing.
Bonjour support would display a list of web sites discovered by Bonjour under your Bookmarks list. Just like it does in Safari.

New Application Ideas

Twitterific for iPhone. The web-based Twitter clients are nice, but I want an app that sits on my iPhone’s home screen that shows an indicator when new messages are there. And I don’t want it just over SMS.
Colloquy for iPhone.
Skype for iPhone. Voice-over-IP, please! This is forward thinking, and I hope the most forward-thinking computer company would embrace it.
Some kind of drawing app? Bitmap and vector drawing seems obvious for a device with a touch interface. Is the screen sensitive enough to allow for drawing on with a stylus for finer precision?
“Mobile Numbers” app; simple spreadsheet creation and/or support for viewing Numbers documents.
“Mobile Keynote” app; for playback alone. Would be super with the video-out support.
App for tracking expenses. Could also use “Mobile Numbers”.
App for tracking time at work.
App for doing product lookups based on barcode picture— think Cue Cat and Delicious Library; and support for those Japanese square barcodes that are used for all kinds of things.
iChat or AdiumX for iPhone; persisting network connections even as you use other applications.
Translation widget. This would mostly require clipboard functionality.
Movies widget… maybe with links to Fandango for easy purchases. moviesapp.com is a pretty good alternative until then.
~~Web clip widgets.~~ Or, sync these from your Mac. (1.1.3 firmware now lets you place web clips on the home screen)
Dictionary and Wikipedia widget.
NetNewsWire or better UI for the mobile Google Reader on iPhone.
Flight tracker widget. This one stores data for the last flight viewed so it can continue to work in plane mode.
Some games for crying out loud! Soduku; Tetris, were you otate gesture to turn pieces, down gesture to drop it; PacMan, where you press on edges of display to control; and DOOM of course. DOOM is, after all, the Turing test for whether a device is a gaming platform.
Terminal app, with secure shell support.

Updates

iPhone 1.1.3 firmware release:
- adds faux-GPS location for Google Maps (using cell and WiFi positioning).
- adds web-clip feature and customizable home screen.
- adds support for multi-recipient SMS messaging.
iPhone 1.1.2 firmware release:
- adds international keyboards.
iPhone 1.1.1 firmware release:
- adds iTunes WiFi Music Store support.
- adds ‘double-tap’ support for ‘Home’ button to surface iPod/Phone features, depending on configuration.
- adds TV-out support.

MT hack-a-thon day at Six Apart, Japan

2007-08-25T06:25:04Z

Today I’ve been participating in the Movable Type hack-a-thon hosted by our Six Apart office in Japan. And I’ve been updating some of my older Movable Type plugins for 4.0 compatibility. Hey— did you know we released MT 4.0? They even made a cool t-shirt for the event— one that won’t make sense to a lot of folk, but I certainly appreciate it (and the irony is that my work today eliminates the ‘extlib/bradchoate’ installation path for these plugins).

Anyway, I made a list of some of the plugins that are obsoleted by MT 4 or previous versions since joining Six Apart. Each of the following plugins have most if not all of their functionality built into Movable Type itself:

MT-Authors (exceptions: AuthorBlogCount, AuthorEntryCount, AuthorPublicKey)
Supplemental Category Tags
IfEmpty (use the new ‘if’/’unless’ tags instead)
Regex (exceptions: many arcane uses; the important stuff is supported)
Textile (bundled)
EmbedImage (replaced by asset framework and assetthumbnail tag)

And some other plugins I have written are now re-released for MT 4:

The SQL and PerlScript plugins were also improved upon. The SQL plugin now allows you to connect to additional databases (even running on different servers) for issuing queries against them. Pretty nice if you need to pull content into your blog from other sources.

PerlScript now uses the Perl ‘Safe’ module to run in a protected compartment. This can be customized (and even disabled), but it is a good default to use for such a plugin.

On the iPhone SDK (or lack thereof)

2007-07-09T21:17:08Z

There is a lot of controversy in the Mac development community over Apple’s newest computer— the iPhone. That wasn’t a typo— the iPhone is a small computer with phone capabilities. That’s what separates “smartphones” from “dumbphones”.

But, unlike most smartphones on the market, there isn’t a proper way to develop for it. For now, Apple has chosen to limit development for the iPhone to web-based applications. This is severely limiting and Mac developers are fuming mad over it. With good reason.

So why would Apple do this? Maybe they just haven’t finished work on the developer tools? That’s a little silly, because obviously they have such tools and they work well enough to develop the built-in iPhone frameworks and applications. So why not release them? Why not make an open device, as the Mac is open?

I suspect the real limiting factor here lies in legal contracts that have been signed with partners: AT&T (their service provider for the iPhone), Yahoo and Google.

Think about it— if the iPhone were truly open, you could measure in days the time it would take to port these key applications to the iPhone:

Skype (or other VOIP software)
Twitterific
Adium
NetNewsWire

These are communication tools that would draw usage and control away from existing communication tools on the iPhone. VOIP over WiFi is a threat to the minutes-based model AT&T has for all their plans. If you could Skype to other Skype users (anywhere in the world, mind you) on your iPhone for free, that cuts into their profits. Likewise with using Twitter or Adium instead of SMS. Also, these services would also place a heavy strain on AT&T’s EDGE network.

But the biggest risk an open iPhone poses isn’t to add-on services like SMS. If the iPhone can be truly open, then the future replacement for ‘EDGE’ is not 3G, but WiFi. An open iPhone means that two years from now you won’t need an AT&T contract— or a contract with any mobile phone provider. And that is why there is no SDK today.

I think the next step Apple will take is to allow custom widgets to be developed and installed for the iPhone. This is little more than a web-based application that runs locally on the device. There are thousands of these widgets for Mac OS X today. ‘Dashcode’ (the widget development tool, currently in beta) is a decent environment for making these. And these would likely still not be able to run ‘native’ compiled code, but it’s a baby step toward custom applications on the iPhone’s ‘Home’ screen.

But even that would not be enough. Apple will need to allow full-blown, rich Cocoa applications to run on the iPhone. Maybe it happens after some contractually-imposed moratorium, but I believe it will happen.

iPhone web apps

2007-07-03T04:47:59Z

A nice roundup of 25 iPhone web-based applications. This is one of the biggest reasons for buying an iPhone— Apple’s developer community. Number 26 is Ta-da Lists.