Jeff Rock

Deep

Jeff Rock — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

A few days ago we got to see iOS 7 for the first time. To say that the design world (among other worlds) was polarized would be an understatement. Currently, there are dozens of places you can read about what people think about the visual design, so I'm not going to do that. I want to talk about the more important change, and what I think the next generation of iOS (and the devices that run it) might actually be about.

When you more closely examine iOS 7, you realize that the design hours were spent on realigning the OS to feel as light and effortless as the hardware it runs on. iOS views are translucent, etherial and weightless. They glide from place to place and settle like sheets of paper on a desk. Some of the most interesting work was spent on the Home Screen. The background drifts slightly behind the app icons based on the subtle motion of the device in hand. And if you look closely, icon badges are on a plane forward of the icons; they drift opposite of the background, further deepening the illusion.

If you had been reading the rumors you may have caught on to the fact that we were going to see this simulated depth in the near future. If you were reading a lot of the rumors you may have caught another one around the same timeframe that was pretty strange. I generally don't get into rumor-mongering but this one was hard to resist. Back on May 28th a post on Macrumors claimed that Apple was doubling display resolution yet again. Rationally there's absolutely nothing to gain from increasing resolution. Retina Displays are already almost indistinguishable from paper. There's no value to gain in doubling resolution again, right?

Well, last time Apple upped the resolution they didn't double the resolution, they quadrupled it. Retina Displays contain four pixels in the place of one. So doubling resolution would mean that the screen would either get taller or wider, which doesn't make sense. Unless you eliminate the assumption that pixels have to be square. If you double the amount of pixels on the x-axis and squeeze them all into the same physical dimension something intriguing becomes a possibility, something that I've been excited about since I tapped the screen on the iPhone for the first time. Something that could change mobile computing again.

Based on the resolution rumor along with the newly revealed pillars of iOS 7, I think the next frontier that Apple might be venturing into with iOS hardware is fully realized 3D Retina Displays.

Stay with me.

3D works by serving images to each eye rendered from slightly different perspectives at about 48 frames per second (24 fps per eye.) Your brain does the rest of the work to fill in the gaps and create the illusion of motion and depth. On an iOS device splitting each pixel in half would allow for full-retina integrity and at least provide the framework for achieving 3D. Nintendo proved that you can ship glasses-less 3D in a mainstream consumer device (the Nintendo 3DS¹) so there's already precedent.

And for people with accessibility issues that can't see 3D? Each set of two pixels can optionally display the same color and interpolation can be defeated in software. Go to a Gamestop and play with the depth slider on a 3DS for a real-world example.

Let's make the somewhat wild assumption that it is indeed possible. Why would Apple bother? The obvious reason is gaming, which is the single largest revenue generator in the App Store. Anyone who has played with a 3DS realizes the value immediately. It creates an opportunity for game developers that not only improves existing games but opens the platform up for spacial experiences never before possible on iOS. But I think there's more to it than that.

It comes back to user experience. It comes back to iOS 7. Imagine the Home Screen background pushed back into the chassis, appearing to touch the back of the iPhone. Imagine icons set back into space with badges held slightly ahead of them. Control & Notification Centers appearing flush with the face of the device when invoked. Frameless buttons appear forward of toolbars. Scrollviews that tuck beneath frosted glass panels. A system of layered views existing in a suspension instead of collapsed in a pane of glass. It's the kind of wonder that Apple loves to deliver.

As I stated above, I won't critique the visual design (I believe that it will evolve quite a bit over the next few months.) But I will pitch a justification for the main themes in it. To pull off convincing 3D the deep shadows had to go. So did fake highlights and gloss from artificial light sources. In order to illustrate depth they had to take directional light out of the equation. That's why everything is vivid and gradients don't correlate with noon-time sun. That's why shapes don't appear embossed and apps are full of white space instead of physical paradigms.

Apple had to go 'flat' to go deep. Eventually I think you'll be happy they did.

3D on the 3DS works by implementing a microscopic parallax filter over the screen. ↩

Wii + U

Jeff Rock — Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Yesterday, Nintendo started reminding Wii users that the Wii U isn't just a controller upgrade. It follows this statement from Satoru Iwata last week:

"Some have the misunderstanding that Wii U is just Wii with a pad for games, and others even consider Wii U GamePad as a peripheral device connectable to Wii," said Iwata. "We feel deeply responsible for not having tried hard enough to have consumers understand the product."

This does not sound good. When I first read Iwata's statement I thought it was a half-hearted attempt at excusing poor sales numbers, but the more I think about it the scarier it becomes. Nintendo followed the rules. They spent half a decade developing new hardware and software. They incremented their console identity with a new name just like the competition. So why are people mistaking the Wii U for a simple upgrade to the Wii? I think it's due to complacent brand and industrial design.

The PlayStation shipped in 1994. It's logo looked like this:

The successor to PlayStation, the PlayStation 2 shipped in 2000. It's logo looked like this:

And then came the PlayStation 3 in 2006. It's logo looked like this:

Notice a pattern? Brand incrementing with strong visual distinctions. Moving along, the original Xbox shipped in 2001. It's logo looked like this:

The successor to Xbox, the Xbox 360 shipped in 2005. It's logo looked like this:

Much the same story from Redmond. Incremental branding with vastly different designs. But here's where it heads downhill. The Wii shipped in 2005. It's logo looked like this:

The successor to Wii, the Wii U shipped in 2012. It's logo looked like...

...the first one. All different consoles. All the same generational name evolution. The difference? Nintendo didn't redesign the logo. Worse? They almost forgot to redesign the console.

For contrast, the Xbox had quite a wild physical transition between generations:

As did the PlayStation:

But the Wii U did not. It looks mostly like a rounded-over version of the Wii, further blurring the differences between the two. Also, it may be the first time I remember a console being backward-compatible with last generation's controllers. Nintendo may have thought that people would be glad that they could save some money and use their existing peripherals, but I think that backfired as well. As much as a disaster as the PlayStation 4 reveal was back in February, they made sure to show the one thing that might get people excited early on: a new controller.

It's very important to create visual separation between products, especially products with generational updates. From an outside perspective it looks like Nintendo added an optional peripheral and stapled a 'U' on to the identity. That's not good enough, and it may be that they're now suffering because of it, putting them one step closer to being a software-only operation.

Tumblr Play

Jeff Rock — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

I've been fascinated with the idea of native, media-specific social timelines for a good long while now. That's why I was thrilled to see Twitter #music launch earlier this week. I love the idea of listening to radio stations made out of the posts of the people you follow. So much so, that I shipped it in the official Tumblr iOS app three years ago (and you probably had no idea.)

Story time! The feature, which was shipped on the Tumblrette codebase is now two generations old, so it's probably safe to talk about. The feature was called Tumblr Play, and you could access it only if you knew the trick:

View the in-app settings.
Shake your iPhone. Twice. Hard.
When prompted for a password, enter the name of a certain adorable Boston Terrier.

After that, a new, third tab would animate in. No wonder the app reviewers never found it. Here's what it looked like:

It was a fairly straight-forward implementation. I parsed and paginated the audio posts on your Dashboard and played them back sequentially and automatically. Tumblr served the audio files in an iOS-capable audio format on a private endpoint to eliminate any need to transcode (thank god.) You could swipe left or right to change tracks or use the transport controls. You could be flip over the page view and the posts were represented in a standard table (in case you wanted to see farther ahead or behind.) You could like and reblog right from the view and it ran in the background so you could use it like Pandora. All you needed was a Tumblr account. It wasn't perfect, but I loved it. Sure, you ended up with the occasional comedy skit in between an eclectic mix of pop and indie music, but that was awesome. That was Tumblr. It was a sonic representation of your Dashboard and it kind of kicked ass.

We talked about making it public, but ultimately, I think Tumblr was worried they could be sued by a music label (or three) for running a streaming platform without a license. I kept bringing it up for the next few years, but it never went anywhere. We moved ahead designing and developing a second generation of apps soon after Tumblr Play was implemented, but for a while I had an ad-hoc radio station unknowingly created by my friends and a parlor trick to show off at parties. Maybe one day they'll resurrect the idea if they feel that there's some value there (as Twitter seems to.) Until then it'll remain just another footnote in the history of Tumblr mobile. I suppose that's pretty cool, too.

The New $100

Jeff Rock — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

After using Euros all last weekend (more on that soon) which come in common sense denominations separated by color and size, this new $100 bill is a spectacularly poor showing (and ugly to boot.) Via Gawker.

Improving on the Silence

Jeff Rock — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Mike Montiero, via The Pastry Box Project:

Do you think picking a fight with some racist cracker on Twitter improves the silence? Do you really? Think twice about it. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. It’s your call. But I can tell you that in the last week I’ve probably deleted more tweets, after asking myself that question, than I’ve spiked in the entire preceding year.

I'd say I post 25% of what I type into Twitter. I edit, and edit and edit until I've either gotten to the core of what I want to say or figured out that it isn't worth saying. One of the more important lessons I've learned in the past few years is that reactionary communication is a dangerous, foolish habit. You don't have to publicly express your feelings about everything that happens in the world, whether it's in our shared one or your personal one. Silent contemplation can be a powerful thing.

Moving In

Jeff Rock — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

I enjoy designing and developing my blog much more than writing for it.
— Jeff Rock (@jeffrock) April 17, 2013

I posted this on Twitter last night while I was playing around with the layout on this poor blog that rarely sees an update. It got a couple nods, but a few hours later I got a reply which suggested that the idea behind my tweet was a "blog worthy topic" itself. That got me thinking about a couple things:

Yes, that is definitely a blog worthy topic.
Why do I continually design structures that I have a hard time filling with content?

At Mobelux, I mostly design apps that get filled with other people's stuff. Apps like Elixr, which is populated with the drinks my friends are enjoying and Carousel, which houses the Instagram photos of the people that I follow. When you think about it, 'house' is a pertinent term when describing apps. It's a comfortable, versatile structure. A typical house holds furniture, keepsakes, appliances, even memories. It has rooms that serve distinct purposes. Places to plug things in and set things down. It's a place for belongings. Apps hold our belongings, too. Photos, conversations, videos. Memories. These keepsakes are just as valuable as the physical objects we carry with us from place to place.

That means that I, and many other people like me, are actually architects, engineers and carpenters. We design and build these places for people and their things. True, we use PSDs instead of blueprints, and keyboards in place of hammers, but the apps we make are homes all the same.

I spent quite a while designing and building this new place that you're currently visiting. Making sure it was responsive and retina-supported. That it was navigable and reasonable attractive. And then, as usual, I finished it and never filled it with things. I suppose it has to do with my home building disorder. But I think it's time for a change. The walls have been painted and the cover plates installed for months now.

I think it's about time I finally moved in.

MacRumors "Roundups"

Jeff Rock — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Arnold Kim on the new MacRumors Roundups feature:

Today we are introducing a new type of page here on MacRumors called "Roundups". ... While MacRumors has always been a great rumor resource, we've long felt that it's been too difficult for visitors to catch-up with the latest news on a particular product. Even amongst our daily readers, we find people often lose sight of the big picture after seeing rumor after rumor.

Very nicely done. This is a good enough rumor site feature that it could have been spun-off into its own website. Now when you're at a barbecue and your uncle's brother-in-law asks you when the new iPhone/iPad/iMac comes out you have a URL you can send him to.

On iPad "mini" Pricing

Jeff Rock — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Marco Arment on the rumored iPad mini:

I bet they could sell that for $249, and that would be a steal. The iPad 2 is still great by today’s standards, and in some ways, it’s actually better than the iPad 3.

I don't doubt that they could, but I doubt that they will. Apple has never worried about figuring out how to make devices more accessible to more people. Apple does worry about healthy margins. Plus, it would be priced too closely to the iPod touch (which starts at $199 now) and would do everything it does, except better¹. If Apple ends up introducing an iPad mini at the Fall event, where they traditionally introduce iPods and other media-centric products, I think it would be positioned as the top-end media device above the iPod touch instead of being positioned as a cheap iPad. And it would probably need to start at $299 to make sense in the lineup, especially since we know that Google is selling the Nexus 7 at cost at both the $199 price point.

In fact, if it weren't for those part leaks I was starting to think Apple was eliminating the iPod touch from the line-up this year. I've never understood the appeal of an iPhone without the phone, so my desire to see the iPod touch eliminated is probably just my own wishful thinking. In any case, I believe the iPad mini will cannibalize sales of the iPod touch regardless of how much higher the price is. ↩

Reboot

Jeff Rock — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Reboots can be fun. And frightening. And liberating. This website was is dire need one of one. There were technical reasons, and there were personal ones. I'll start with the technical ones.

It wasn't responsive. If a site can't be viewed efficiently on a mobile device or it redirects to a neutered "mobile" layout then the design is a failure. I was using a (handsome) Tumblr theme and wasn't in control of the experience.
It didn't support high-resolution screens. High-res screens are not a fad. We all have a responsibility to make the web look better on them. Again, I wasn't in control of the experience and so adding support would have been tough.
It was hosted. Hosting means you aren't the owner of your own content, point blank. There's not anything particularly wrong with that for most people, but it was time for me to make a change. Kind of. Read on.

I've been on Tumblr since early 2008. In that time I've watched Tumblr grow from a toy that my friends had never heard of into a tool used by millions. I've ridden the proverbial bell curve of the thing. I was so enthralled in 2008 that I wrote a native iPhone app so I could check my Dashboard and blog from anywhere. It was eventually acquired by Tumblr and transitioned into the official client. Years later my company made a second-generation client for Tumblr under contract. I got to know some of the most talented developers and designers that I've ever met there. My professional career is intertwined with Tumblr in a way that I've been unable to shake until recently. I haven't said much on the matter, but Mobelux ended its relationship with Tumblr some months ago. It was mutual and we all knew it was time.

This reboot serves as personal separation as well. This isn't a declaration or an abandonment; I still intend to check my Dashboard and post to my account and I'm leaving all existing content there. But it's not where I'm going to write. For me, Tumblr will return to simpler days. When I was posting photos and links for fun. My new site will be a place to post long-form about tech, life, work and whatever else hits me. That kind of post doesn't do well on Tumblr traditionally. I'm pretty enthusiastic about changing things up.

To sum up, Tumblr is where I'll post things I like. My new site is where I'll post what I'm thinking. Follow/subscribe accordingly.

What If

Jeff Rock — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Randall Munroe:

The lesson: If the optimist says the glass is half full, and the pessimist says the glass is half empty, the physicist ducks.

‘What If’ is a new blog by Randall Munroe, the author of XKCD, that explores theoretical physics via simple questions like “what if a glass of water was, all of a sudden, literally half empty?” or “how much Force power can Yoda output?” and then plays out the scenarios in exhaustive detail (with XKCD humor injected, of course.) The result is my favorite new thing on the entire internet. Recommended.

What They Don't Tell You About Public Speaking

Jeff Rock — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Zach Holman:

I’d read all the blog posts and heard all of the advice: slow down, speak loudly, tell a story. But goddamn, no one told me I’d have to put my laptop down on the ground twenty feet away behind a couch because that’s the only place the projector’s VGA cable would reach.

Rule #1: Always bring your own equipment, even if it’s just a backup. Assume the venue is full of black-hearted liars that want to see you look like a fool in front of hundreds of people. Everything else is follow-through.

Introducing Instapaper for Android

Jeff Rock — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The Mobelux Blog:

Here at Mobelux we’re pretty big Instapaper fans and have been since the beginning. That’s why we’re very excited to announce Instapaper for Android.

This was an interesting design project to work on for me. While I take no credit for the icon shapes or standard navigation concept this was a major design project to tackle. Assets had to be created for both light and dark modes for each of its states (that were different between tablets and phones) and then finely adjusted for three screen resolutions. That means every icon asset could have up to 36 permutations. Then there was the matter of completely custom popovers, trays and standard chrome elements. Needless to say I got pretty good at making sprite sheets. All in all this was an eye-opening project and I can’t wait to get to work making it even better.

Creating The Carousel Icon

Jeff Rock — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

I thought I’d wrap up Carousel’s anniversary week with a post about creating the icon. It was definitely one of the highlights of working on Carousel over the past year.

It was important to me that the icon feel at home on the Dock next to icons I appreciated and used every day. At the time there was a string of games that were iOS ports popping up in the Mac App Store. The icons for those games were all pulled right out of the iOS bundle and recycled for their OS X counterpart. The thought of anyone filling their Dock with round rects was petrifying so I was very committed to making the icon for Carousel feel like it belonged on the Mac.

Once the direction was set for the Carousel icon I started working up a few sketches before moving into development on the main form.

Once I had a few decent thumbnails it was time to gather up some photos of authentic samples to work from. My main sources of inspiration were these three Kodak projectors:

I chose later versions of the projector because while wonderful in their own quirky way, Kodak’s early Carousel projectors from the 60’s were a little clunky looking. As time passed the revisions to the projector cleaned up the form quite a bit and leaned closer toward the plasticky aesthetic I was hoping to capture. These photos of the hard-shelled mid-70’s Carousels did the trick. They almost looked like toys which I thought would translate wonderfully to a Mac icon. After getting all the source material together it was time to get to work. The only issue? I’d never made an icon for the Mac before.

Usually I go right from sketches to Photoshop when I work up an iOS icon. This time, however, the forms involved in what I was envisioning were too complicated to whip together out of shape paths. That meant it was time to turn to an old friend. I have quite a bit of experience from a past life modeling in Maya so I was able to build a simple wireframe pretty quick.

Hrm. While proportional to a real-life unit, there were quite a few issues with the first render. It was squat, looked like it was hovering and the materials left quite a bit to be desired. Furthermore, the perspective was off. After a few conversations and a little playing around it became apparent that the solution was to make it look more like a toy. There were a few things that worked. The body color was on the right approach, implying a connection with Instagram’s icon and the purple lens tied in to Apple’s new affinity with space themes in OS X. I ended up removing the bezel frame to reduce visual complexity, made the whole model taller and made the lens, adjustment knobs and handles almost comically large. Another key to getting the model to feel right was adjusting the camera angle of view from the standard 35º to roughly 12º. The net effect was that the model gained a lot of character and stature.

It still lacked depth, though. The color was pale. The lens had no life to it. The slide carousel reflections weren’t strong enough. From here I did a final render boosted to production settings and jumped over to Photoshop. A few blend layer effects really brought out the detail in the slide carousel and it didn’t take much to liven up the body color and the lens. Next up were the fine details, like the casting lines, Carousel embossment (in Futura Bold, of course) and the lens lettering. Finally, a multi-depth shadow lifted the model off the surface and completed the look.

I had a lot of fun making the Carousel icon. The icing on the cake was being asked to have it in The Icon Handbook by Jon Hicks late last year. It was quite a thrill getting to see my icon on its own page opposite the icon for Unison, an icon that I absolutely love. Hopefully I’ll have to opportunity to craft up more Mac app icons in the future.

Carousel: One Year Later

Jeff Rock — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Well, that was fast.

Roughly one year ago Mobelux launched Carousel. It was a fairly simple idea. Make a straight-forward, simple way to view Instagram on the desktop throughout the day. This post is a retrospective of the process involved in shipping that app.

Here’s a very early (and rough) look at the original concept I threw together on a lazy Sunday in March, 2011.

While hideously simple, this first comp contained all the major elements of what Carousel would become. A single scroll view that held photos. Photos would present basic information and controls to take action on them. A toolbar for secondary actions and scope switching. It was very important that the design didn’t look and feel like an email client with Instagram photos in it. Packing the app with mediocre features and extraneous UI was unacceptable. I showed the first comp to Eddie a few days later and we had a more serious conversation about taking the design to the next phase. At first we were a little hesitant. Deciding to make a new app is not a simple decision for a young company. Risk and cost are serious factors to consider. Not only that, Mobelux had never shipped a Mac app before. It took a little time to come to terms with the complexities of a menu, keyboard commands and dealing with a dynamically resizable window. Ultimately we decided that it was worth a shot.

As with all software ideas it quickly ballooned in scope. What about saving photos? Comment moderation? The biggest drawback we had to deal with was that you couldn’t post a photo outside of the official Instagram app. What can we do well on the desktop that can’t be done elegantly in the official iPhone app? We thought hard about the things that would make a desktop app successful and came up with a feature list. Fast scrolling. Commenting and moderation. Liking. Viewing larger. Searching. Saving. It didn’t take long until we had to scale back all those features to a solid 1.0 and tuck the other ideas away for future updates.

Once we’d nailed down what it would do, we started talking about how the app would look and feel. Something about Instagram filters and the photos that resulted from them had always conjured up images of a Wes Anderson movie. So we went with it. It was a bit risky settling on such whimsy as the inspiration for the visual design on a Mac app. We knew that purists may take issue with the direction. But this wasn’t Mail or iTunes. Why not have a little fun? Eddie worked up some comps of what it might look like if we brought the textures and palette of Royal Tenenbaums’ home to the main window. We settled on the name Instaview for the app and got to work.

Not quite there, but it seemed to be moving in the right direction. Looking back I can’t believe we even entertained that giant label at the top. After a few design sessions we honed it to something more focused and somewhat traditional.

One of our favorite touches was that the frames matched the filter that was used. This was very important early on when photo frames weren’t optional on Instagram. It integrated each photo into the scrollview and made them feel coherent. Each photo frame includes a fair amount of distressing, lending to the aged aesthetic that the filters suggest.

With a design we were quickly becoming happy with it was time to scope the project and get to work building it. Initial discussions revolved around building a framework mimicking iOS navigation controller and UITableView. Shortly after we had that conversation, Iconfactory announced Chameleon, a clean-room implementation of UIKit. The timing was, needless to say, impeccable. Jeremy immediately got to work seeing how viable it was to use Chameleon as the core of Instaview. It wasn’t long before we had a working model with push-pop navigation, asynchronous fetching and popover support. It was time to wrap the Instagram API and start using real data.

In just under two months Instaview was almost ready to ship. As I started setting up all the accounts involved in branding it became apparent that using “insta” or “gram” in the name was going to be an issue. While it instantly tied our app to the Instagram bandwagon it didn’t feel unique. What if Instagram took issue with all the insta-infringers? What icon were we going to come up with that wasn’t a camera or a polaroid? Weren’t we getting sick of seeing all the tan and brown, rainbow-striped ripoffs out there? Furthermore, what if Instagram was acquired and shuttered? Wouldn’t we want to brand so that we could potentially switch services if there was a catastrophe? There had to be a better identity we could come up with.

I was driving around town with Emily and started explaining the issues with the name. I asked if she could think of anything that might work with the visual theme and the idea of artificially aged photos. She told me that in the pathology lab they routinely looked at slides on a dusty old Kodak projector from the late 70’s. It was called a Carousel. The name clicked. It was perfect. I immediately got to work on an icon and came up with a toyed-up version of a Carousel projector (we’ll save that process for a different post.)

Carousel shipped on May 11th, 2011. It’s been a ton of fun to work on over the past year. A few months ago we shipped an update that brought us up to date on all the features we set out to ship last March, including support for five languages. We’re very happy with where the app is. But don’t worry, we’re not resting on our laurels.

Now it’s time to get to work on Carousel 2.

Why Nikola Tesla Was The Greatest Geek Who Ever Lived

Jeff Rock — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The Oatmeal:

Over one hundred years ago, a Serbian-American inventor by the name of Nikola Tesla started fixing things that weren’t broken.

In a time when the majority of the world was still lit by candle power, an electrical system known as alternating current was invented and to this day is what powers every home on the planet.

Unquestionably the best thing posted on the internet today. There hasn’t been a person born who has had more impact on modern daily life than Nikola Tesla.

RVA Hackathon

Jeff Rock — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The Mobelux Blog:

No theme. No contests. 24 hours to make cool stuff with smart people.

We’re super-excited to announce RVA Hackathon, a free event for developers and designers on April 20-21 at Corrugated Box. We’ve been toying with the idea of throwing a hackathon for a while now, but we didn’t want to create something with prizes, judges, themes and agendas getting in the way of making cool stuff. This event is free-form, meaning that you can show up with a team or go it alone. Make something that you’ve been talking about but haven’t dedicated time to or go crazy and prototype out a new idea. Present your progress at the end or just enjoy the party. We, along with our sponsors will keep you fed and caffeinated along the way.

We think that by relaxing restrictions you’ll have more fun and make cooler stuff. We’d love for you to show up and prove the theory. Visit rvahackathon.com to learn more and sign up!

I’ve been excited about putting something like this together for a long time. Richmond is a vibrant place with a bunch of smart designers and developers making great things, both for themselves and for others. It’s well past time we all got together and collectively shared that enthusiasm. I hope you’ll join us!

Neil deGrasse Tyson: How Space Exploration Can Make America Great Again

Jeff Rock — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Tyson in an interview with The Atlantic:

All the adults are saying, ‘We need to improve science in the world. Let’s train the kids.’ I’ve never heard an adult say, ‘We need more science in the world. Train me.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a national treasure.

Stealing Your Address Book

Jeff Rock — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

John Gruber in response to Dustin Curtis:

I understand that Apple doesn’t want us to be badgered by too many permission-granting alerts, but address book data is sensitive enough to warrant it, in my opinion. Why not treat it like they do location data?

It may seem like a gaffe on Apple’s part at first glance, but I think it’s because address book upload is an edge case that Apple either never saw coming or never thought would be a wide-spead problem. The original intent for the API was to grant the ability to build custom views to navigate address book contacts in an app. Under normal circumstances, asking for permission to view address book data is along the same lines as asking for the music library in a music app (which is another personal data API that can be accessed without alerting the user.)

Put simply, Apple probably never thought about using the address book API as a way to spam your friends about a new social network.

Arguments Against Using Facebook Connect as Your Primary Log in Mechanism

Jeff Rock — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Buzz Anderson, commenting on Bijan Sabet’s post:

For the (I suspect rapidly growing) portion of us who only grudgingly maintain any sort of Facebook presence, it’s like asking us to reaffirm our commitment to a religion before being allowed to eat in your restaurant.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, but it’s not the thing that bothers me the most about Facebook-based authentication (or Twitter-based authentication for that matter.) The benefits of using other platforms to lower the sign-up barrier don’t outweigh the drawbacks of being tied to the another property for something as pivotal as logging in to your own service. If you think Facebook is too big to fail, think again. Nothing lasts forever. No matter how long the timeline is, there will come a point on it where you’ll have to move away from 3rd party tokens for authentication. Whether it’s the downfall of Facebook/Twitter as a popular platform, their cessation of the authentication program or simply a political disagreement.

And then you’ll be stuck with the task of messaging, inconveniencing and supporting your user base through the log in process, which is, ironically, exactly what you were trying to avoid doing in the first place.