Matt Gemmell

How Designers Can Help Developers

2012-02-02T16:00:00+00:00

Traditionally, developers aren’t great designers, and vice versa. There are many exceptions (ahem), but generally the art of one group is a mystery to the other - yet we routinely have to collaborate on projects. As someone who has worked in both areas, I’ve put together a list of tips for designers, on how they can make life easier for the developers who have to bring those designs to life as apps and web sites.

This article’s topic was suggested and inspired by two great designers I know: Evgenia Grinblo and Sarah Parmenter. You should also check out Sarah’s presentation at Update 2011, which covers several of these points too.

Photoshop hygiene

Developers often have to deal with Photoshop PSDs from designers, so anything that benefits designers themselves is also good for developers. These tips pertain to creating maintainable, understandable PSDs for everyone.

Use an intelligent method of version-control

A folder full of ambiguously-named versions of PSDs is the bane of any designer’s life. Either decide on a sensible naming scheme for file versions (ideally one that will cause the files to show in strictly sorted order when viewed alphabetically), or use an actual asset management or version control system.

Keep your layers

Don’t flatten anything that doesn’t absolutely have to be flattened. Do exports by grouping and hiding/showing layers, exporting, then restoring the document to its previous state. Don’t destroy useful data. Machine performance isn’t a reason to flatten: get more RAM, or a better machine!

Name all your layers meaningfully

I know it’s a pain, but it really aids comprehension, particularly when reusing elements of a document. Make sure that the names of text layers reflect their content (they can get out of sync), and that duplicated layers are renamed to something more appropriate than “copy”.

Use groups, and do so sensibly

A discrete visual element composed of multiple layers should be in a group, and overall the groups should usually follow a standard left-to-right, top-to-bottom pattern if the document is a single design. Hierarchy and order are better than colour-coding your layer labels, because colours have to be maintained when layers are moved around.

Prune unneeded layers

Old versions, templates and reference materials, temporary duplicates and such should be deleted if they’re of no further use. Occasionally do a quick run-through of your layers, getting rid of anything that isn’t serving a purpose.

Use Layer Comps

Photoshop’s Layer Comps feature lets you create sets of layer states, such as visibility, position and even Layer Styles. You can use it to neatly incorporate multiple parts of a design (like multiple tabs in a web layout, or screens in an app) into a single document. It can reduce the need to duplicate layer groups and maintain them, and can thus reduce file size too. Make it part of your toolkit.

Keep everything as vectors, and scaleable effects

Go to extreme lengths to keep designs fully resizable. For app design particularly, it’s comparatively common to suddenly need the entire same set of artwork at twice the dimensions, for newer devices with doubled pixel-density. Make sure you don’t need to redraw a load of bitmap art at short notice.

Helping developers

There are also several tips which pertain specifically to designs for apps and web pages, which naturally have their own requirements and constraints.

Learn how to preserve rounded corners while resizing

Operating systems tend to standardise on a particular corner-radius for rounded elements, and use it everywhere (on iOS, it’s usually 12 pixels). Whilst Adobe Fireworks knows to keep a rounded rectangle’s corner-radius the same during scaling, Photoshop doesn’t - so make sure you’re familiar with the Direct Selection tool for selecting corner-producing points and resizing shapes the old-fashioned way.

Design at 72 ppi

A pixel is a pixel, and more of them just means a bigger document. Don’t confuse matters by changing the document’s resolution.

Snap to whole pixels

Make sure relevant shape tools (such as the rounded rectangle tool) are set to snap to pixels. Use the pixel grid and/or guides according to your taste. Prefer strong edges, sitting precisely on the pixel, because sub-pixel rendering on devices will otherwise turn your beautiful design into mush. Relatedly and consequently, work with even-numbered dimensions both overall and for individual elements, to ensure crispness. Thanks to Matt Drance for this point.

Always use RGB mode

This is important not just for colour display, but also for when developers need to sample colours from the document to use in code. You can’t go wrong with RGB.

Asset-preparation is part of your job

Many (most) developers don’t know how to use Photoshop for anything but very basic edits. Properly exporting cut-ups for use in apps or on the web is the designer’s job, since they’re most familiar with the document and with Photoshop.

I know it’s a huge pain, and it can take a long time, but it’s the “other 90%” of the job after the design work is done.

Be careful with fonts

Different devices and operating systems have different pre-installed fonts, and there’s no guarantee they have all the same fonts that you do on your design machine (indeed, you probably have far more fonts than the average person). It’s always best to render text as actual text in apps or on the web, so fonts are an important consideration in your design not just for visual reasons, but also for feasibility.

Remember that the license you have that allows you to create designs with a given font probably doesn’t allow that font to be embedded in an app (or on the web) in its entirety. Take care to communicate with your dev (and/or client) before relying on a certain font in your design.

Mimic the platform’s text-rendering (where possible)

For visual integrity, experiment with Photoshop’s text anti-aliasing settings to best reproduce the target platform’s rendering. For iOS, for example, you’ll likely want the “Crisp” anti-aliasing mode.

Be sure of design dimensions

Particularly for apps on mobile devices, screen size isn’t the whole story - you’ll commonly have to account for the presence or absence of system status bars and so forth, and how they affect dimensions in both portrait and landscape orientations (an iOS-like top status bar will reduce the smaller dimension in landscape, and will reduce the larger dimension in portrait, for example). Be sure to check with your dev whether the app is truly full-screen or not.

Use the platform’s idioms

Each platform (operating system) has its own idiosyncratic user interface elements, and interaction styles (these will also vary by device category). Be conscious of them. A good rule of thumb is not to design too far outside those concepts, unless you have a compelling reason to do so. On iPad’s particular flavour of iOS, for example, you’ll find these concepts:

A nigh-universal requirement to support both orientations.
Two-pane interfaces being acceptable, simultaneously in landscape and modally in portrait.
Pop-overs as a UI element and grouping mechanism.
A very specific style of documents-browser.
The expectation that hierarchy-navigating back-buttons have a specific left-pointing shape.

And so forth. Be familiar with the platform, because your design has to fit it. There’s no single design that suits all target platforms (not even on the web, without some degree of adaption and flexibility).

Design once for landscape, then design again for portrait

Different orientations require different physical interaction styles as by-products of not only screen aspect-ratio, but also the form-factor, weight and balance of the device when held. A design which doesn’t adapt to accommodate more than the raw aspect-ratio change is a weak compromise at best.

Design for each major screen-size, and their contexts

In app design, both content and interface presentation should be different on a phone-sized device than they are on a tablet, or a desktop computer. For mobile device categories, we also need to consider attention-span, distractions, the physical impairment of having to support the device while using it, and the possibility of the user being in motion and/or at risk (obstacles while walking, traffic when crossing the street, the need to safely maintain control of a vehicle, etc).

These contexts of use are irretrievably tied to the size and nature of the device, and an effective design will consider these factors.

Use genuine or at least realistic content

The hallmarks of good sample content are as follows:

Sample copy spans the entire range of possible lengths, not just what’s convenient for the mockup.
Required data, particularly such as user photos, are occasionally omitted, and a concrete design is presented for this situation.
Undesirable examples of input are considered; for example, extremely portrait or extremely landscape aspect-ratios in images which your design would prefer to be square.
Names include ‘extreme’ or unfamiliar examples, including very long and non-breaking forenames and surnames. A poor design features only Bob Janeson and Jane Bobson.
Addresses are not constrained by locale. Almost every possible length, format and arrangement of address can be found somewhere in the world. Allow space and flexibility.
Lorem ipsum is not found anywhere in the design.

Consider localisation

When most people think about supporting other languages, they’re thinking about text. When a designer or developer thinks about localisation, however, they should be thinking about layout. For localisation purposes, your designs should ideally accommodate a fifty percent variance in text-width, for all textual elements, compared to English.

Asian languages can require up to 50% less space than English to display equivalent text, and European languages can require up to 50% more space then English. In particular, your button designs and help-text placement should be very conscious of these statistics.

Respect the global light source

As a designer, it’s unlikely you need to be told this, but each platform has its own sacred and inviolable global light-source (on iOS, for example, it’s directly above-centre, or 90 degrees). Any and all lighting and shadow effects should be consistent with the target platform’s light source.

Make navigational or organisational constructs explicit

If your design incorporates constructs like tabs, navigational drill-downs or other disclosure mechanisms, make their existence and function clear to the developer. Be sure to respect platform conventions for such constructs, as mentioned above. Developers need to be aware of information hierarchy very early in the implementation process, so be sure your design clearly communicates your intent. Layer Comps are particularly useful in this scenario.

Export cut-ups without compression

Use PNG with alpha (transparency) unless explicitly told otherwise. Don’t use JPEGs unless asked. File-size is no object; developers and/or their development environment will suitably optimise the resulting images. Export each element with a transparent background, not a solid colour (even if a background part of your design does feature a solid colour).

Ask about shadows

Communicate with your developer about whether shadow effects should be included in exports. Commonly, developers will apply shadows themselves later, using CSS or by drawing them in code, which can actually be easier or more convenient and consistent than using pre-rendered bitmap shadows. Don’t assume that shadows should be baked into the images (though by all means mock them up for design purposes, using layer effects).

Understand how buttons are constructed

Buttons in apps or on the web are rarely created using a single image. Instead, they will almost always be either:

3-part images, with a left end-cap, a right end-cap, and a single-pixel-wide repeating central section (to allow for horizontal expansion of the button); or
9-part images, with top/middle/bottom-left end-caps, top/middle/bottom-right end-caps, and three repeating top/middle/bottom central sections (to allow for horizontal and vertical expansion of the button).

Design your buttons as end-caps with thin repeating middle portions. Take suitable care with gradients. For 9-part images where gradients probably can’t be rendered statically without visual banding after vertical expansion, discuss with your developer whether you can supply transparent-backed image parts and have the gradient applied via code or CSS afterwards.

Final thoughts

The creation of any kind of software is (or should be) a partnership between graphic design, interaction design, and implementation. None of these disciplines is any less important than another, and all are vital. By being aware of the needs of those working in other fields, we can be more effective and valuable in our own work.

I plan to write a follow-up article presenting the other side of the equation - how developers can help designers - and as usual I’ll announce it on Twitter; feel free to follow me (@mattgemmell) to keep up to date. Likewise, do feel free to share your own thoughts on these topics too.

iPhone User Interface Cookbook giveaway

2012-02-01T12:00:00+00:00

The lovely people from Packt Publishing asked if I’d like to give three copies of their book, the iPhone User Interface Cookbook by Cameron Banga, to lucky readers of this blog (or indeed my lucky Twitter followers). I said… why not?

The rules are very simple:

You submit your name and email address via the entry form.
The competition closes on Wednesday 15th February 2012.
Please enter only once. Give everyone else a fair chance too.
Winners from the U.S. and Europe can either choose a physical copy of the book or the eBook. Users from other locales are limited to the eBook only.

Thanks to a very enlightened attitude from Packt Publishing, I’m hosting the competition entry form myself (via Google Docs), and I’m also doing the random draw of the three winners. I will only send the three winning email addresses to Packt Publishing (so they can send you the book). If you don’t win, I’ll delete your entry after the winners have been chosen, and no-one else will ever get access to it (not even Packt). I insisted on this for the sake of your privacy, which I strongly believe in, and I’m grateful to Packt Publishing for agreeing. I receive absolutely nothing for helping with this giveaway either.

So, feel free to enter the competition, and best of luck!

Finally, as we all know, giveaways are intended to generate interest in the thing being given away, so even if you don’t win I’m sure you’ll want to find out more about the book.

Subtle UI texture in Photoshop

2012-01-29T16:45:00+00:00

On iOS and almost every other operating system, user interfaces tend to use gradients to give a sense of contour to interface elements. The trouble is, gradients alone can look artificial due to their unrealistically perfect visual smoothness. In the real world, almost nothing is completely flat and smooth - and that’s a good thing, because we rely on friction for grip.

We can add a touch of realism to our interface designs by combining gradients with subtle textures. My own favourite type of texture is noise, which gives an understated but effective sense of tactility. I used noise for texture extensively in my UI design for the Favorites 2 iPhone app.

This brief article explains one possible way to combine gradients with subtle noise in Photoshop (as with any effect, there are many other approaches to achieving the same thing; this is just how I usually do it). I used Photoshop CS5, and this tutorial should be suitable for Photoshop beginners. It’s aimed primarily at app developers, rather than experienced designers.

There are three main stages to combining noise with gradients, the first of which you’ll probably only need to do once.

1. Creating a noise pattern

The idea here is to make a Photoshop Pattern containing noise, which we’ll then apply to whatever objects we want to give texture to. Start off by making a new document (500 x 500 pixels is good), and filling it completely with a solid colour. I’d advise trying 50% grey.

Next, use the Add Noise filter (Filter menu, Noise submenu) to add some noise. The settings I tend to use are shown in the screenshot below; 50% Gaussian RGB.

Add Noise filter options dialog.

That’ll produce a fairly horrible TV-static-like pattern in your document. Select the whole thing, and choose Define Pattern from the Edit menu. Save your pattern with a suitable name, as shown below.

Saving some noise as a Pattern to use later.

You’re now done with this Photoshop file, so just close it (there’s no need to save it).

2. Creating a Gradient Fill layer with a Vector Mask

It’s always good to keep shapes as vectors for as long as possible, so you can tweak and resize them without destroying them. For that reason, I tend to draw all my UI elements using the Shape tools in Photoshop, then apply Layer Styles to achieve a particular look.

The problem is, whilst there are both Pattern Overlay and Gradient Overlay Layer Styles, the Gradient Overlay takes precedence over the pattern, so if you want to have both visible you need to reduce their opacity, which can wash the gradient out.

It’s better to use an actual Gradient Fill layer, with the same Vector Mask as the shape you want, then apply Layer Styles to that layer instead. It takes a couple of extra steps, but it’s still easy and quick.

First, use one of the Shape tools to make the shape you want. You’ll see the resulting Shape Layer in the Layers palette. I made a rounded rectangle in this example. Now, make sure the shape’s Vector Mask is selected by clicking on it in the Layers palette (it’s the rightmost of the two boxes in that layer’s row; you can see that it’s selected by the four black corners around it in the screenshot).

Shape layer in the Layers palette.

Now, switch to the Paths palette. You’ll see that your shape’s Vector Mask is shown as an implicit path.

Paths palette, showing vector mask path of a shape layer.

Next, save that path by choosing Save Path from the fly-out menu near the top-right of the Paths palette. It looks like a little grey down-arrow beside some horizontal lines. Give the new path any name you like, and make sure that it’s now selected in the Paths palette.

Saving a shape’s vector mask as a path to use later.

With your saved path still selected in the Paths palette, create a new Gradient Fill layer. You can do this using the Fill/Adjustment layer popup at the bottom of the Layers palette, which looks like a circle that’s split diagonally into black and white halves.

Making a new Gradient Fill layer.

You’ll now have a Gradient Fill layer that has your shape’s Vector Mask pre-applied to it: essentially a shape that has a gradient background. We’re only interested in the new Gradient Fill layer from now on, so you can delete the old shape layer.

Gradient Fill layer in the Layers palette.

You might want to take this opportunity to click the Gradient Layer’s gradient swatch in the Layers palette, to choose the actual gradient you want. When you’re ready, open up the Layer Styles dialog and enable a Pattern Overlay.

3. Using a Pattern Overlay to add noise

There are two things you’ll want to do in the Pattern Overlay settings:

Choose your noise pattern from the pattern popup.
Tweak the opacity of the Pattern Overlay until the noise is subtle but noticeable. You’ll probably want something in the region of 5% opacity, depending on how much noise you applied, what the base colour of your pattern document was before you added noise, and what colour your layer’s Gradient Fill is. Just experiment until you find something you like.

Pattern Overlay options.

That’s pretty much it. You can toggle the Pattern Overlay on and off in the Layers palette to see the difference it makes; you should notice a slight but pleasing sense of roughness and realness when it’s enabled, making the shape just a little bit more inviting.

Here’s an example of two identical buttons, firstly with just a gradient (top) and secondly with some noise applied (bottom). Since this screenshot is on Flickr, JPEG compression might make the noise a bit less refined than you’ll see in Photoshop or in an exported PNG for your app.

Buttons without and with noise applied

Here’s a (similarly JPEG-compressed) close-up of the difference between the two buttons.

Close-up of buttons without and with noise.

You can download the finished button as a zipped PSD here.

Texture is an inherent part of any surface in the real world, and provides a cue to our brains that we’ll be able to grip or otherwise interact with that surface. Delicate use of noise can add a welcome note of reality to your interfaces, and make people want to use them.

If you’re interested in more beginners’ UI effects tutorials for Photoshop, follow me on Twitter and let me know.

iBooks Ideas

2012-01-19T20:20:00+00:00

I was intrigued that a few people saw my recent article about iBooks Author as a criticism (in the negative sense). That wasn’t my intention at all, and indeed I’m very enthusiastic about the ecosystem (iBooks Author, its file format, iBooks 2 as a reader/viewer, and the iBookstore as a storefront and delivery mechanism).

My piece simply acknowledged that, as in any situation, there are trade-offs to be made, and that a book isn’t a project to be undertaken lightly or without due consideration. I’ve thought about it a bit more, and I’m becoming increasing aware that the interactive features of iBooks 2 could be game-changing for many genres of book - not just textbooks.

Earlier today I posted a list of fifteen suggestions, and received a few more in response, and thought I’d write up that list to hopefully inspire potential authors and even traditional publishers.

Choose Your Own Adventure. Books where you can select which path the story should take, making decisions so you’re more involved in the narrative. Previously, we did this by conditionally turning to one page or another.
Mystery novels. Let me see the clues, or hear the hesitation in a character’s voice. Let me inspect a scene. Very few mysteries, as written, allow the reader to make an informed guess (or deduction) as to the culprit. Richer media lets us truly involve the reader.
Action. Include climactic or cliffhanger scenes as visuals, or mood-setting music or video. It might even improve the chances of your novel being optioned for a TV or movie adaption.
HTML 5 Tutorials. Since the iBooks 2 format allows embedding of HTML 5 code, tutorial material can include actual working examples in each chapter.
Wedding album. Photos, guestbook messages and even videos can be included in a virtual coffee-table book for everyone to enjoy, not just those who paid for a copy of the DVD from the videographer.
Your portfolio. Designers, developers, musicians, video editors… the list goes on. An interactive portfolio, showing your best work in the most effective way, complete with contact information and links to your online presence (or web portfolio pieces). For iOS developers, particularly, this would be powerful marketing.
Your family history. Genealogy fans can include the old home videos, scanned photographs, links to census data, and so on.
Band biographies. History, trivia, music, live performance videos, photos and interviews.
Movie Novelisations and Companions. With embedded extra-value clips from the big-screen version. Or: a director’s commentary, with special effects notes and interviews.
School Reports. Your child’s report on his or her vacation, trip or project doesn’t have to be static. We all have still and video cameras in our pockets these days, so why not use them?
Cookbooks. Recipes, with interactive how-to videos for those tricky souffles or macarons. Or even for the non-tricky bits, to help those who are clueless in the kitchen.
Skill-training. Whether it’s genuine (like origami) or humorous (“100 things every man should be able to do”), it’s a lot easier to learn by watching and replaying rather than simply reading and looking. I could do with a bowtie-tying guide. This also has strong possibilities for martial arts, crafts, public speaking, law enforcement and more.
Instruction manuals. Build your Lego kit, assemble your Ikea furniture, or convert Optimus Prime from a truck into a robot. Run through the process step by step, seeing exactly how everything moves and goes together. Even user guides for software or hardware, or videogame strategy guides.
Episode guides. A souvenir guide to your favourite TV show, complete with trivia, bloopers and extras.
User Interface/Experience Design books. Read case studies showing the iterations of designs on real projects, and explore animation and interactivity in their own terms, without relying on static diagrams.
Treasure hunts. I’m informed that HTML 5 widgets can (with permission) access your current location from within a book. Imagine the possibilities of that technology.
Client proposals. Wrap up your pitch in book format, with interactive visuals, estimates, timelines, contact information and a profile of your staff.
Rulebooks. Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, cricket, baseball… the list is almost endless.

And so forth. Now, granted, some of these ideas could be constrained by the current maximum selling price of $15 for an iBooks Author-created book, but I think the majority of the list would fit into that bracket (there are also other strategies, including splitting content between volumes, and so on, to say nothing of any potential future change in pricing policy).

I’m excited about the iBooks 2 ecosystem, not just because it’s got people really talking and thinking about education, but because it finally puts a powerful tool into everyone’s hands and says “show me what you can do with this”. Even if you have reservations about Apple’s walled garden, it’s difficult to ignore the huge potential of the technology itself.

Once you move away from thinking only in terms of textbooks proper, it quickly becomes clear that rich reading material has fascinating and exciting applications throughout the entire world of (heretofore) printed matter.

Footnotes:

If you’re interested in further discussion about iBooks Author etc, I’m probably talking about it on Twitter. You might want to follow me (@mattgemmell).
I enjoyed C. Y. Reid’s sensible piece on why he’s in favour of iBooks Author. You should read it.

iBooks Author for Authors

2012-01-19T20:20:00+00:00

Apple launched their new education initiative today, with the equally new iBooks Author application for Mac at its core. There’s been a lot of chatter on Twitter and on the web already, with much more to come, but one thing I haven’t seen so far is a simple evaluation of the the suitability of iBooks Author and the iBookstore as an authoring and distribution system.

My own interest is from the perspective of an independent author with a view to self-publishing books that aren’t necessarily textbooks. As with any Apple application, there’s a strong desire to explore it and a tendency to try very hard to retrofit my actual needs to allow me to use the shiny new application. Thus, this brief article is as much about tempering my own enthusiasm with reason, as it is as attempt to share my thoughts.

Here, then, are some important points to consider before using iBooks Author for your next project.

Your customers need an iPad to read your book. You can’t view them on iPhones, Macs or PCs, or any other tablet devices.
Specifically, your customers must use iBooks 2 to read your book. No other software can view the book.
If the book isn’t free, you must sell it via the iBookstore. You can repurpose the content and sell it via any other avenue you like, but you can only sell an iBooks Author-created book file on the iBookstore (where Apple will of course take 30%). You can distribute a free iBooks Author-created book file via any means you wish.
As with any distribution channel except true self-publishing, Apple naturally reserves the right to refuse to sell your book.
The maximum price of your book is $15. It’s not possible to set a higher price.
There are no collaborative authoring or editing features. If you have a multi-person publishing workflow, you may find it difficult to adjust.
iBooks Author runs only on Macs. It’s not available for PCs, and it does not run on iOS devices themselves.
The Author file format (.iba) is nominally a single large file, though it’s actually a zip archive containing media assets, property lists and XML files. Your version control system will probably see the zip archive as a single, opaque file, reducing the benefit of version control.
The published file format (.ibooks) is similarly a zip file, this time containing XML etc files that are encrypted (the meta-data property list file is not encrypted). Outside of iBooks 2, the file is of very limited use.
Naturally, once your text is in iBooks Author, you’re essentially writing and editing within a page-layout application, rather than a word processor or text editor. As with any publishing workflow, you will want to do the writing and editing first, and then put the book together (as much as possible). iBooks Author is resolutely not a writing environment.

The advantages of Author are clear enough from Apple’s publicity materials, including a rich authoring environment, easy interactivity, a polished final result and a ready path to distribution and sales. Those things aren’t in question, but the above considerations are worth carefully evaluating before committing to a significant project.

If you don’t require the proprietary features of iBooks Author, and/or some of those considerations are deal-breakers, you may wish to consider an alterative e-book generation tool. I can recommend any of these three:

Pages. Generates ePub files, with no distribution limitation for sales. Intuitive interface that’s very similar to iBooks Author.
Scrivener. Considered one of the pre-eminent long-form book authoring and scriptwriting tools on Mac OS X and Windows. A writer’s writing environment with many useful tools related to the craft and mechanics of writing. It generates ePub amongst other formats.
pandoc. A command-line tool available for all computer platforms, which can generate output in a vast array of formats, including ePub. Particularly attractively, it allows you to write in the Markdown format, using as many files as you like, and assemble them on output. It’s thus ideal for collaborative authoring, version control, and maintaining portability. I must admit, it’s my favourite of these options.

Once you have an ePub file, you can of course use KindleGen to create a book suitable for distribution on Amazon’s Kindle store.

I hope you’ve found this brief article useful. I’m extremely interested in self-publishing, and I’m pleased that it’s a topic that’s receiving wide attention. If you’d like to discuss any point I’ve raised here, you can find me on Twitter.

Morality and Persecution

2012-01-16T23:30:00+00:00

I recently read the Pope’s latest homophobic statements with disgust, though not with surprise.

Pride of place [among proper settings for the education of children] goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman.
This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself.
Pope Benedict XVI Gay Marriage a Threat to Humanity’s Future - Pope

The observant reader will note that this not only marks homosexual couples as unsuitable families and poor ‘settings’ for children’s education, but technically also discriminates against the non-married, and against single parents. Religion is extremely fond of its discriminatory diatribes, but even the jaded listener has to admire His Holiness’ audacity in this case.

We must also remember that it’s not just this particular sect that perpetuates appalling slanders and injustices against arbitrary subsections of its own species; such primitivism is endemic to religion as a whole.

The warm, comforting topic of family is a favourite of religion, and of divisive politics (to add the same qualifier to religion itself would be a tautology). It’s almost always followed by the word “values”, and is found in close proximity to words like “right”, “wrong”, “appropriate”, “inappropriate”, and (as above) “dignity”. The main word thrown around, though, is of course morality, something which religion bizarrely lays exclusive claim to.

Putting aside the self-evident ludicrousness and monumentally insulting (and self-hating) quality of the common assertion that human beings without religion cannot be moral creatures, I’m forced to wonder how His Holiness (or any of his adherents) can possibly reconcile dignity with the persecution of homosexuals, women, and people of differing (or no) ‘faith’.

Privilege

I’m very conscious that I’m an almost absurdly privileged individual. Indeed, in terms of the inherent biases, prejudices, allowances and social mores of my particular society, I could scarcely be moreso.

I live in the United Kingdom (that’s my context, not a claim to privilege in itself), and within that context I’m a white, male, British-born, English-speaking (in a country with English as a first language), university-educated heterosexual, who is free of physical or mental illness, free of debt (mortgage notwithstanding), free of any criminal record, gainfully employed (self-employed, for that matter) and of voting age within something akin to a democracy. Pinnacle of all glories, I even have a tidy beard.

My society positively falls over itself to award me entitlements, make excuses for me, and to listen earnestly to my views on any old thing - often to the detriment of other demographics, quite inexcusably.

I’m also, as of two months ago, married - which surely takes me to about 99% of my possible maximum social privilege (the remaining percentage point in the UK, making me the very model of a society’s cultural self-image, would be gained by being Christian).

Our marriage was not a religious ceremony, and did not (indeed, thus legally could not) take place in a religious establishment or have any religious content, yet I’m married nonetheless. There’s no alternate terminology for me, or for my wife. Our wedding was a wedding, its institution was marriage, and we are husband and wife. Cue yet another thunderous round of applause from Society At Large, presumably including every would-be moral arbiter from Canterbury Cathedral to The Dome of the Rock.

Even as a rank amateur, I can attest that married life is wonderful. There’s something that definitely changes upon making a formal commitment; a certain evolution of feeling, of patience, of outlook, and of attitude. Not a sudden night-and-day change, but a noticeable one nonetheless, that persists even after both hoopla and honeymoon. I’m delighted to be married, and by all accounts everyone else is delighted about it too. At no point has my pleasure at this happy new status had to be modulated by a qualifier, such as a fumbled-for and ambiguous word like “partnership”.

Because my wife and I are automatically paragons of ‘morality’, just like everyone else who doesn’t happen to be gay.

It makes me shake with rage, and weep with frustration, that in the year 2012 we still allow the madness of denouncing homosexuality. My wife and I aren’t religious - indeed, as thinking, rational people who can so easily see its human-fabricated nature and the many evils it has visited on the world, we’re contemptuous of and embarrassed by it - yet we’re permitted by the state to be married.

We opted-out from the insidious influence of religion, with its exhortations to switch off our brains and mindlessly ‘believe’, yet our rights haven’t changed. Why then should homosexuals be impeded by religion’s febrile influence, if even I wasn’t? Where’s the morality in that?

Morality

To discuss morality is to discuss what’s right and what’s wrong, from a certain social perspective. Morality is inherently subjective, and that’s an uncomfortable realisation. Your definition of right and wrong may differ from mine, and we’re both entitled to refer to those positions as our own sense of morality.

From the moral perspective of His Holiness (and most of the wildly differing, contradictory, and all equally human-originated and fabricated religions), homosexuality as a whole is “wrong”, and is at least partially sinful (I say “partially” because the current version of Catholic dogma fatuously distinguishes homosexual ‘tendencies’ as not being a sin, but homosexual intercourse being very much so - as if the two could or should be separated).

My own system of morality, however, regards the following as immoral acts:

Perpetuating institutionalised discrimination.
Indulging in the sophistry of equating morality with sexuality.
Perpetuating the deeply unhealthy doctrine of priestly celibacy, thus creating highly damaged, disturbed and repressed human beings.
Perpetuating sexist and homophobic attitudes under the guise of fabricated divine will.
Perpetuating the monstrous and intellectually criminal assertion that morality is conferred by faith, and absent without it.
Aiming the slander of ‘immorality’ against a harmless and normal state of being.

The idea that a consensual relationship, between adults of sound mind, could be somehow immoral is itself repugnant. If the charge of immorality arises from nothing but the sexual orientation of those people, we must upgrade that judgement to literally criminal.

To even make the association, much less to openly invite others to adopt it, is bigotry - and to create or perpetuate a system where such people’s actual rights are negatively affected, is another thing that religion has long and rightly been accused of: persecution.

I find it quite impossible to understand how an ethical, enlightened person can read His Holiness’ appalling, scurrilous and slanderous statement without repugnance. I also strongly doubt the character, moral fibre, and critical faculties of any person who would defend it.

But then, the vast majority of those - the devoutly (mindlessly, unthinkingly, blindly, tortuously) religious - who may support such a filthy, primitive and anti-intellectual remark are themselves victims of a far more insidious wrong.

Abuse

Given the topic of this essay, you’ll be expecting me to draw attention to the many reported instances (with still more being tragically uncovered weekly) of the sexual assault and abuse of children by religious authority figures (very commonly Catholic ones). And I suppose I just have, quite rightly. But that’s not the sort of abuse I want to discuss.

In the United Kingdom, when you provide personal information to a company, the law requires that you be allowed to opt-in to further communication from that company. For this reason, if there’s a “send me your newsletter” checkbox on a UK company’s online form, the checkbox will be unchecked by default.

This is a sensible and reasonable state of affairs, because unsolicited commercial communications are usually undesirable, and a fair and reasonable society presumes that in most cases, citizens wish to avoid undesirable experiences by default. If adults of sound mind then wish to explicitly agree to those experiences, then they may of course do so at their leisure.

Religion, however, doesn’t work that way. One of the oft-trumpeted virtues of western democracy is that we’re blessed with “freedom of religion”. The reality in the United States is of course that the country is essentially a Christian political theocracy, despite all efforts of that country’s Constitution to avoid just such a deplorable state of affairs.

In the UK, the overt influence of the church is somewhat less visible. Indeed, religion amongst the British adult population is often treated as a faintly humorous thing. Nonetheless, we still proudly lay claim to our cherished “freedom of religion”.

Which is somewhat puzzling, given that in a practical sense, freedom of religion just doesn’t exist. The problem, of course, is the checkbox on the form: for the religious exposure of the child, that checkbox unfortunately takes the more American position of being opt-out.

Freedom means not only the right, but also the means, capability and environment to exercise personal choice. A man who is entitled to vote, but who will be beaten if he tries to, is not free to exercise that right and thus is not free at all. A woman who is free to choose her religion, but who was told that one particular religion was true whilst she was but a girl, has a crippled, demeaned, reduced and abused version of the freedom to which she is entitled.

Indoctrination of children into religious belief systems is one of the great unpunished intellectual and social crimes of human history, and it continues almost unabated to this day. The word “indoctrination”, of course, means teaching someone to accept a set of beliefs uncritically - which is exactly what happens. To argue that a four-year-old, taken to Sunday School or such for the first time, is even capable of applying a critical analysis to the dogma is laughable. These children are victims, and the crime is one of morality.

Why does it continue? For the very simple reason that, if we took an enlightened stance and allowed children’s personal development to remain unfettered by religion until they reach adulthood, after which they could then evaluate and decide for themselves, religion would all but die out almost overnight. It cannot survive the calm light of reasonable, rational, evolved inspection, by those who have not been infected by its fairy stories whilst too young to defend themselves.

We’re faced with the ludicrous and Orwellian situation of innocent, credulous children being inculcated with divisive fantasy by adults who have themselves remained innocent credulous children in turn. A cycle of gawping, uncritical acceptance, creating a lineage of people who were never told that Santa Claus isn’t real - and who will defend that otherwise laughable fantasy with all the dangerous weapons of adulthood and civilisation.

There can be no freedom of religion until no child is opted-in, and should we ever reach that wonderful day, the point will become moot for all but the simple-minded, the desperate, and the damaged. In other words, the ill and the impaired.

Until then, and throughout our long history liberally soaked with the blood of faith-based and faith-motivated carnage, we find that religious “freedom” is a decidedly unbalanced proposition. Britain’s own Prime Minister somehow sees no outrage or laughable absurdity in claiming that the UK is “a Christian country”.

Countries, Prime Minister, have no religion. Some people do - and they also have a sense of morality regardless. The religious ones, unfortunately, also have a carefully-nurtured sense of supreme entitlement and certitude which they claim is literally divinely granted. A terrifying delusion as vestigial as the appendix, and just as dangerous when it unpredictably sours.

The language of religion itself is instructive in its attitude to outsiders. Religion demands ”respect”, but grudgingly preaches ”tolerance”. Respect is the very opposite of what I feel towards a socially cancerous, persecuting fantasy that stubbornly clings to the dark ages, and scurries to twist or refute every advance of science that would cast well-deserved doubt on its fables. It is rationality that demands respect, and religion which must for now be grudgingly and awkwardly tolerated.

Pity

My father is no more of a religious man than I am, and my mother (they’ve been divorced for many years, I should add) is religious to the extent that a great and increasing number of people are in today’s western world: statistically, but not practically.

If she were to be admitted to hospital, she’d dutifully inform the staff that her denomination is Church of Scotland (one of the Presbyterian flavours of Christian fiction-worship), but you wouldn’t find her having entered an actual church in a couple of decades (save for weddings and funerals, of course).

If any Bible exists in her house, I’ve yet to notice it, presumably because it lies dust-covered at the back of a cupboard, or rotting in the attic. The “I believe, but I don’t practise” brand of religion that sounds so very like “I’m vegetarian, but I eat fish”.

Accordingly, whilst I wasn’t subject to litanies at home, I was brought up to believe that religion (specifically Christianity) was a normal thing. I was taken to church (I wouldn’t quite say “I went”, because of course children don’t go; they are taken), and I “joined” (was signed up for) the Boys’ Brigade, a Christian association not unlike the Boy Scouts. I was a member from the Anchor Boys, through the Junior Section, and even approached the heady heights of the Company Section as I drifted towards high school age. To my mother’s presumably lasting pride, owing to its continued existence in her home, I even won a national medal for Bible knowledge.

Of course, as one approaches high school age, one has a troubling tendency to develop the capacity for rational, critical analysis - at which point my “religion” (which I viewed as no different from any other assigned attribute, and of no more importance) collapsed under its own weight. The patent ludicrousness of it all was manifest to even my untrained boy-man’s mind, and in a moment of sudden realisation I felt shriekingly embarrassed at how many people I’d nonchalantly admitted my “faith” to in the past.

Of course, I had no faith, and never had - at least not in the religious sense. If I have any faith today, it’s in rationality, science, and social justice. That, unlike the lie of my childhood, is a faith I can admit to as a grown man without feeling the heat of shame rise in my cheeks.

Religion was an inconsequential thing for me, and then rapidly became a joke. Only in adulthood did its dangers and persistent evils become uncomfortably clear. There are many people for whom religion can never be inconsequential, or a joke, because it robs them of their dignity or their very rights, without even first asking or caring whether they subscribe to its beliefs. If, as the paranoid and/or controlling religious authorities would have us childishly believe, an evil stalks mankind, then it must surely be religion itself. A throwback to the imagined terrors dancing just out of sight around the comforting campfire, feared by creatures who did not yet stand fully upright.

The legacy of religion is not peace, or morality, or comfort. It is war, and terror, and persecution. The legacy of religion is the Crusades, and tent-revivalist preachers stealing from the poor, and Afghan women who can be imprisoned for being a victim of rape, and can then be murdered by their own families if they will not then marry their rapists.

Such a legacy is clearly subhuman, and part of humanity’s fading childhood. It is to be discarded, after it has been fought to extinction. As a thinking, enlightened, rational person, I’m compelled to be its enemy.

Thankfully, our society is changing, and (equally thankfully) religion refuses to do the same. The patent idiocy and sheer manufactured quality of religion’s divisiveness, segregation, sectarianism and bigotry seems increasingly alien and deplorable to every new child who learns of it.

Religion’s time may not yet be short, but its peak has passed - barring, reason forbid, a calamity which even now any number of barbaric, theocratic nations strive to bring about.

The tide is turning. Agnostics, atheists and the antireligious can now speak aloud about their feelings without fear of the brazen bull, crucifixion, or breaking on the wheel. They cannot yet do so without fanatical backlash and the sophistry of religious “argument”, of course, but in much of the western world, at least, they can do so publicly.

The biggest change, of course, is coming from within - from the mental torture experienced by so many good and decent people, who do happen to be religious, and who must twist and contort their own capacity for reason just to accommodate words like those from His Holiness. So many dear friends of mine, who when faced with homophobic and misogynistic and xenophobic dogma, positively squirm and blanch, unable to reconcile their handed-down faith with what they know is wrong.

I have one friend who’s a scientist, with a Ph.D no less, in the field of physics. This person is a devoted Catholic, and is homosexual. His own faith all but disowns him. His depth and breadth of scientific understanding assails the teachings of his holy book. His inner conflict and personal strife is unimaginable to me, but I’ve nonetheless shed tears about what it must be like for him.

I feel such a swell of genuine pity for such people, because their attempted task is impossible. You simply cannot reconcile a mandate to love one’s neighbour, whilst then adding a list of openly bigoted exceptions. The only possible result is a crumbling, or an implosion. Sadly, it’s often of the person, rather than the faith which is to blame. But the tide is turning.

To His Holiness: your words are deplorable, and all the more so for being spoken in this age. To my dear, conflicted friend, and to everyone exposed to the religious virus: evidence and reason are indeed, as you suspect and know, the king of justifications for a belief - and the very minimum you have a right to demand.

And to religion, I offer the language of my own ‘faith’, that of science: evolve, or die.

Pseudonyms

2012-01-14T21:00:00+00:00

In reference partly to my recent articles on switching comments off, and also the ‘Identity’ section of my article on attribution of writing on the web, several people have sent me links to Disqus’ research on comments and identity.

For unfathomable reasons, the aforementioned research is presented as a gigantic JPEG in the guise of a web page, but let’s nervously ignore that eccentricity. The chosen title of the piece is “Pseudonyms drive communities!” - to which I can presumably reply “My blog isn’t a community!”, and participate no further.

Naturally, I won’t do that. The analysis is summarised (by Disqus) as follows:

The most important contributors to online communities are those using pseudonyms. In our data, they accounted for 61% of total comments! These contributors also comment more frequently - 6.5 times more frequently than anonymous commenters and 4.7 times more frequently than commenters using a real name (via Facebook).
Disqus Pseudonyms Drive Communities

Our first question must be: what’s the difference between a pseudonymous and an anonymous commenter? Disqus doesn’t make this at all clear, which troubles me; their only allusion to this surely key aspect of their own data is that pseudonyms “better represent one’s persona”, and “don’t sacrifice personality”. I’m going to thus generously assume that “anonymous” here means either those who are not registered (or logged in) with Disqus when using one of their comment forms. This leaves the question of how to account for those who are signed in but whose username is either “Anonymous” or some variant or equivalent thereof. If the latter group is counted as pseudonymous, the analysis becomes more skewed in favour of its conclusion.

Now, putting aside the further false assumption that everyone authenticating via Facebook is using their real name (in my experience, most people who do so are indeed using what appears to be a real name, so we’ll let this one slide), it seems to me that Disqus have summarised precisely the least interesting part of their analysis.

Disqus’ data shows that just over a third (35%) of the sample were anonymous, and that only 4% were identified (i.e. were using real names). Pseudonyms accounted for 65%, which is an accurate indication of how most people view the issue of identity online. The analysis of course compensates for the numerical difference by calculating the commenting ‘rate’ by identity, giving the summary previously mentioned.

Of course it’s true that those using pseudonyms will comment more often, and that there will be more such comments overall, than either anonymous or identified visitors. The primary effect of masking one’s identity is disinhibition, and an (almost complete) reduction in accountability. Anyone who, if forced to use a real identity, would choose not to post a given remark, may indeed post it if they can do so under a false identity. The conclusion is trivially true.

The issue of the disparity between pseudonymous and truly anonymous comments can be readily explained by:

Our conditioning towards signing up for, and signing into online services.
Our browsers’ ability to keep us logged into services without intervention.
Our enormous egos, craving recognition for some identity even if not our real one.

So far, so boring. The really interesting and controversial question is raised by Disqus’ conclusion that:

Pseudonyms are the most valuable contributors to communities because they contribute the highest quantity and quality of comments.
Disqus Pseudonyms Drive Communities

Our question must of course then be: what is quality? Disqus has a definition ready, of course. The study rated the quality of a comment using two positive signals and three negative ones, as follows:

Positive: The number of times a comment is ‘liked’.
Positive: The number of times a comment is replied to.
Negative: The number of times a comment is flagged (presumably as unsuitable).
Negative: The number of times a comment is marked as spam.
Negative: The number of times a comment is deleted (presumably by moderators).

Of these five metrics, we can safely discard the fourth (spam). If we assume the integrity of the system, with accurate and non-malicious use of spam-reporting facilities (as Disqus implies that we should by its very inclusion as a basis for conclusion), then those data points are relevant only to a discussion of how spammers behave online as regards identity. Since I view “comments” and “spam” as mutually exclusive (in that if a given remark is spam, then it doesn’t actually constitute a comment - and certainly not one to which a non-zero “quality” can be applied), the fourth result is superflous and not germane to this discussion.

The remaining four measures all seem reasonable, on the surface. Explicit peer approval, response generation, explicit peer disapproval, and moderator removal are surely relevant for inspection. The question is, do they measure what Disqus is trying to make them measure? My argument is that, no, they don’t - at least not with remotely sufficient definitiveness to drive the actual conclusion drawn. The problem is that these factors are being used in a way that defies much of my own (and I very much imagine, also your) experience with comments on the web. Let’s take each factor individually.

Liking

The two situations in which I’ve consistently seen by far the most “likes” (or equivalent votes) is on Facebook and on YouTube. In each case, the following holds true:

The liked comments are almost exclusively brief sentences or single paragraphs
The liked comments are almost always sarcastic (or at best, pithy) rejoinders
At least half of the time, there’s a discernible element of mean-spiritedness and/or ultra-partisanship to either the liked comment itself, or the act of liking it.

Twitter also has a voting system (the ‘favorite’ function), to which the above observations also seem to generally apply - brevity being of course enforced by the service itself.

It’s not at all clear to me that such voting systems are ever a measure of actual quality (contribution, extension of discussion, introduction of additional perspective, insightful commentary, etc) in comments.

Reply-generation

An open question is whether Disqus’ analysis counted only direct replies to comments, or whether it instead counted an entire reply-thread as all being replies to the root comment of that thread; the latter approach would of course be debatable, since not all comments in a thread semantically respond to the spawning comment. Let’s assume the former position.

The universally-acknowledged state of comments on the web is that they’re of extremely low quality on average, and are wildly slanted towards poor thinking and/or triviality. Even the word “comments”, in the context of the web, draws a weary groan. Here are few observations of my own regarding comment-threads; I’d imagine that they largely gel with your own experience. I must also remind the reader that we’re talking about a sample set of Disqus comments, and thus we’re excluding web forums (one of the few places, at least for technical help purposes, that often have threads of value).

Complex comments usually generate few replies, for obvious reasons of the effort required to assimilate them.
Trolling, partisan or otherwise unpleasant comments generate substantial backlash.
Similarly, crowd-pleasing remarks generate copious essentially disposable expressions of agreement.
Comments containing errors of fact or language reliably attract corrections and/or mockery.
Duplicate comments (not exact duplicates of the same author, but rather functional duplicates of another’s remark) are extremely commonplace.
Responses which constitute either straw men or critiques of points incidental to the actual discussion are extremely commonplace.
As with articles themselves, a significant percentage of responses are dictated by the topic of a comment, rather than its specific content.

The reply-generation value of a comment is based at least as much on controversiality, audience, topic and orthogonal characteristics as its content. It seems ludicrous to me, given our experience of web comments on a daily basis, to claim that it’s a measure of quality in the conventional sense. Reply-generation value is only a measure of what it claims to be: the number of replies generated.

Disliking, or unsuitability

This is the opposite situation as liking, and is governed by the same rules (and those of reply-generation; voting is of course a legitimate and succinct form of reply). For those very same reasons, it can’t convincingly be said that voting (in either direction) is a measure of objective quality of the content, but merely of subjective value to the voter.

In no way is it clear how (or if) that value-assessment correlates with the feelings of the blog owner (presumably one of the groups at whom the research write-up is aimed).

Removal

This metric is slightly more interesting, being the will of the actual owner of the blog (or at least a moderated trusted by that person), but ultimately it falls foul of the implicit fallacy that the blog owner is just, abhors censorship, practises a staunchly scientific attitude towards pushback and correction, and is a better arbiter of quality than the writer of a given comment.

None of those things are true in any absolute sense, so the metric is inherently subjective. The only thing that the deletion of a comment indicates is that its subjective value to the moderator was low; it says nothing of its inherent quality, much less give any indication of a correlation with the comment author’s preferences regarding online identity.

Final thoughts

In closing, I’ll briefly note that the entire piece of research, being about identity of commenters rather than the content of comments themselves, naturally addresses only one of the arguments I’ve presented against allowing comments on blogs.

On its own, I think it makes many (very quotable) assumptions about what the data actually shows, and generalises too far to be meaningful. I’m skeptical of the metrics being used, and I think that their interpretations are over-reaching.

There’s an unfortunate social psychology of comments that tends to place an undeserved implicit value on the conversational aspect, without considering whether they actually enhance the discussion of the original topic. Indeed, it’s almost taboo to even raise the issue, immediately drawing inappropriate yells about egalitarianism and right to reply.

The core issue with lack of online identity, for me, is the unpleasant and all-too-visible underside of the disinhibition it creates. One of the reasons I strongly prefer real names is precisely because that policy tends to filter people’s output, due to their words then being personally attributable. We’re egocentric creatures, and we all have reputations and self-respect to maintain.

Anonymity online produces interactions that are free from the interpersonal protocols that regulate society, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. It will remain so, and the ‘constraint’ of personal accountability will remain necessary, until we’re substantially more evolved creatures.

Comments Commentary

2012-01-07T17:00:00+00:00

My recent follow-up to my article of a month ago about switching comments off has generated quite a bit of interesting discussion, via email, Twitter, and (particularly) posts on other people’s blogs.

Let me just quickly say that again. High-quality, well-considered feedback and responses written on other blogs, rather than impulsive retorts and/or snarks. That’s exactly what I and my fellow no-comments advocates had hoped for and indeed anticipated. So, do keep that in mind.

First, let’s take a brief tour of some of the reactions, then I’ll respond to some of the pro-comments arguments (or general complaints) raised in some of them. First up, my wife!

Lauren Gemmell - Comments On

Lauren and I were discussing the comments issue recently, and she remarked that the types of comments received varied depending on the blog’s audience, and that she’d never disable comments on her food blog, for example.

She didn’t intend to write a piece about it on grounds of propriety, but I encouraged her to do so (getting married really does wonders for one’s magnanimity), and you can read it via the link above. I certainly acknowledge that my only real experience of comments is within the technology industry, where they have a deservedly less-than-stellar reputation. ‘Comments off’ may not be the right choice for a different audience, as she points out.

Now in my third year of food blogging, I have never received a negative comment.
Lauren Gemmell Comments On

She also, however, acknowledges the point about comments that don’t contribute meaningfully to the article itself, and indeed notes that in the food blogging community, reciprocal comments are a primary means of gaining much-needed exposure. That’s fine if it’s a mutually accepted practice, but my own feeling is that such comments are irrelevant noise which do little to benefit any reader besides the person being linked to.

MG Siegler - Comments Still Off

MG’s piece was probably the one that shared mine with a wider audience initially. He’s in strong agreement with a no-comments policy, and his argument is partly about deterring low-quality feedback, but more about comments being a poor cousin of writing at your own blog, in terms of giving weight to your words.

Commenting is a facade. It makes you think you have a voice. You don’t. Get your own blog and write how you really feel on your own site.
MG Siegler Comments Still Off

I’d agree with that; indeed, I see it as strongly related to a person’s online identity, and its importance.

MG then followed up with an additional piece entitled Bile, which responds to some pushback he received (it also contains some interesting further links to related discussion - on other’s blogs, naturally). He reminds us of something that seems obvious but which is often forgotten or ignored when debating the comments issue:

This is my site. I choose not to have comments. I recognize that sometimes people feel the need to respond to what I write here, and I love that. Please do it on your own site.
MG Siegler Bile

Fundamentally, it’s your site, and your right to choose whether or not to have comments. There’s a troubling sense of entitlement that repeatedly rears its head in this discussion. Everyone has a right to their opinion, but they do not have a right to express it on your site. A blog is not a democracy, and those that try to be are usually less engaging for it.

TechCrunch - Blogs Need Comments

TechCrunch’s basic position is effectively summed up by the title, but the article’s angle isn’t quite what you’d expect; instead, it’s a set of suggestions about how to address the well-acknowledged problems with comments: trolls, spam, moderation burden, and the dilution of importance of the actual article being commented on.

The suggestions make interesting reading, even if they don’t really touch on the (for me, more important) issues of quality, consideration (in the sense of thinking through a position before stating it), or the right to curate your own web presence.

The close of the article does do some hand-waving, though:

Comments keep bloggers humble, honest, accurate, and in touch with their audience. Personally, I enjoy debating with people who think I’m wrong, as long as they’re civil. I really value my commenters and often update my articles with thoughts they’ve inspired or corrections they’ve cited.
Josh Constine Blogs Need Comments

The first sentence is actually what’s at the heart of most disagreement with ‘comments off’ - not honesty, but instead humility, and righteous anger at anyone perceived to lack it. It says much more about the would-be commenter than the blog’s author, but I’ll touch on that later. And regarding comments keeping writers accurate, I prefer to believe that self-respect and professionalism do that.

The remaining two sentences aren’t actually an argument for having comments at all, which is a bit cheeky (and bordering on a false dichotomy: no comments does not mean “I don’t care what you think”). Instead, they’re arguments for reading and taking into account any feedback you do receive, via any medium. As such, they’re laudable common sense and courtesy, but aren’t particularly germane to this discussion.

MacStories - On Comments

This piece begins with a defence of the usefulness of comments in allowing readers to add their opinions inline with the article itself - evidently. It then, however, laments the very real issues of spam and moderation-burden, particularly with regard to older and thus potentially outdated information (a particularly problematic issue for technical material).

The issue of identity (or rather, malicious anonymity, aliases and/or sock-puppetry) is then raised, and there’s a brief discussion of technical issues with integrating commenting systems. Of most interest to me, it mentions the trend (very much confirmed by my experience, in the months before I switched comments off) of receiving much more feedback on Twitter than as comments on the article itself, and the benefits of that trend for the site owners.

The upshot of all this is notable:

In consideration of the reader, how we want the site to look, and due to the amount of time we can spend keeping an eye of this stuff, we will be removing comments from the next iteration of MacStories.
Cody Fink On Comments

It’s a brave move, and sure to court controversy. I freely admit to being surprised at the boldness and definitiveness of the decision (that’s no reflection on MacStories itself; it’s just that news sites, like any business, tend to understandably err on the side of caution).

MG Siegler also remarked on the piece, in his response MacStories Goes Nuclear On Comments, which you should read. Here’s a portion that resonated with me:

Even more interesting is the psychology behind “needing” comments on big sites. Let’s be honest: most of these sites defend comments because if they don’t, it will seem like they’re taking a shit on their readers.
MG Siegler MacStories Goes Nuclear on Comments

I think that’s indeed the biggest fear for higher-traffic sites and blogs, rather than the more-often-quoted discussion aspect. It’s a matter of assumed intent, and of course there’s that phrase about “assume” making an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me’.

MacStories cares about their readers’ opinions, as does MG, and as do I. My decision was made for the reasons stated, and certainly not due to a lack of regard for readers, nor a surfeit of regard for myself. I can only state that fact, and leave it up to you to decide whether or not to believe it.

GigaOM - Yes, blog comments are still worth the effort

GigaOM’s piece begins as a response to MG Siegler’s “Comments Off” article (linked and discussed previously), but quickly reaches its main argument: once again, it’s humility (the lack thereof; or, an excess of arrogance or ego). Even without the embedded image of a man using a bullhorn, the message is clear:

While comments can be a royal pain at times, they are a crucial part of what makes a blog more than just a bully pulpit.
Mathew Ingram Yes, Blog Comments Are Still Worth the Effort

A “bully pulpit”, indeed. Whilst I’m on record as an advocate of expressing strong opinions in journalism, that’s an extremely inflammatory position. My favourite extract, though, is this:

A blog without comments is a soap-box, plain and simple. Not having comments says you are only interested in passing on your wisdom, without testing it against any external source (at least not where others can watch you do so) or leaving open the opportunity to actually learn something from those who don’t have their own blogs, or aren’t on Twitter or Google+.
Mathew Ingram Yes, Blog Comments Are Still Worth the Effort

Again, the straw man of democracy. I was tempted to feel a little offended at the implication (I use that word charitably, where ‘accusation’ would be considerably more appropriate) that I want to avoid scrutiny, or even more ridiculously that I explicitly don’t wish to learn from others.

I’ll leave you to judge the quoted article for yourself, but I’ll say this: bandying-about the charge of hiding from discussion is an exceptionally facile response to the genuine difficulty that I (and others, increasingly) had in coming to the no-comments decision in the first place.

John C. Welch - One minor point on the comment bullshit

John’s article (strongly in favour of comments, and openly derisive of switching them off) is another response to MG Siegler - and an angry one. Having browsed his blog archive, anger seems to be John’s default emotional state.

In any case, he writes a considered, long-form response on his own blog saying that it’s a fallacy to think that switching off comments will make people write considered, long-form responses on their own blogs. Hmm.

(I’m actually being a bit unfair here; what he says is that comments-off won’t create more intelligent discourse. John’s response is intelligent as far as it goes, but I do take issue with its confrontational tone, implied ad hominems and nigh-constant needless profanity. I’d also say that this article that you’re reading now, with its many links to just such intelligent discourse, ably disproves his assertion.)

The main topic covered (and it’s the first time I’ve seen it in this debate) is that responses on external blogs which link to your article will confer search-engine relevance and rank to you. From my understanding of search engines, that’s true enough (with greater rank being conferred by links from pages perceived to be high-quality themselves). John is outraged at this, and implies - but never quite states - that that’s the actual, evil hidden purpose of ‘comments off’. Accordingly, he spitefully refuses to even link to the article which prompted his response.

If I comment on an article by someone espousing this stupid bullshit about comments, I’m not linking to shit. Why should I give them juice and ad money for free? What the fuck will they do for me in return?
John C. Welch One Minor Point on the Comment Bullshit

I’ll point out that John takes umbrage at his perception that comments-off blogs are trying to take something from him for their own benefit, then he justifies not linking by questioning how he’ll personally benefit from doing so. It’s up to you, the reader, to decide whether that’s hypocritical (you could also see it as an absolutely consistent, if somewhat crass, capitalist view of linking on the web).

I think that bringing reward into the discussion sabotages his erstwhile apparently principled stance. I’ll also remark that you can withhold the sharing of relevance by adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to any link.

Linking (and its effects on SEO, traffic and rank), as I said, is the main topic covered, but it’s not really what the piece is about. Here’s a list of words that caught my eye, all from John’s (500-word) article:

entitlement
elitist
hipsters
snotty
precious
tainted

The real argument here, once again, is that those who switch off comments lack due humility. We’re not humble enough for John, and that angers him.

It’s a very common argument against disabling comments (even moreso since I believe it’s the real motivation behind several other arguments), and it’s worthy of a serious discussion - which John’s article, in my allegedly not-so-humble opinion, isn’t.

Matt Alexander - Switching Comments Off

Matt touches on the same preference for responses via Twitter as MacStories mentioned, and also confirms my perception that switching off comments increases the amount of contact from those who really have something worthwhile to say.

From my perspective, I can corroborate Gemmell’s results. I switched off comments a few weeks ago, and have not looked back. While the daily volume of comments was still relatively small when I turned them off, I have noticed a drastic increase in users reaching out to me using other means to express opinions, ask questions, and to provide feedback.
Matt Alexander Switching Comments Off

Matt also notes the possibly unwelcome insulation from negative feedback, but acknowledges the real problems of identity and accountability, leading to rash and unhelpful remarks from the all-too-familiar trolls, teenagers and sociopaths who clutter almost every comment form and forum on the web.

He closes with a neat summary of why no-comments is not only a valid choice, but also an aesthetic one. I’ll leave you to read that for yourself.

Brent Simmons - Comments on blogs

Brent, who initially inspired me to switch to a static HTML blogging system, has an intriguing observation: that the comments vs no-comments discussion brings to mind another fiery (and ongoing) debate:

It reminds me of the classic geek religious war between the text editors Emacs and Vi.
Brent Simmons Comments on Blogs

Naturally, blogs with comments are likened to Emacs’ vast domain of functionality, and no-comments blogs equate to Vi’s task-focused and far more limited feature-set. You should read the whole piece for yourself (it’s not long), but there’s something compelling about the idea that your blog can have a different purpose, and that your choice of whether to allow comments can reflect that purpose. I’ll touch on this more later.

Jim Cloudman - No Comment

Jim (whose blog theme charmingly reflects his last name) agrees with comments-off, and echoes MG Siegler’s (and my) stance regarding identity and the ownership of one’s own words.

He then discusses an important issue: the need for a no-comments blog author to stay up to date with responses posted elsewhere, and to link to those responses where appropriate. That’s the other half of the contract implied by switching off comments, if you don’t want to be seen as simply hiding from all feedback.

I think it would be very cool if blogs without comments had, underneath each article, a list called “Great Replies” and then a list of hyperlinks to various replies that the blogger added because he/she thought they were great reads.
Jim Cloudman No Comment

His suggestions are sensible and well worth a read. I plan to adopt his “Great Replies” idea (and indeed, I already have in a few previous posts).

Matthew Mascioni - Comments… off

Matthew talks about his journey towards discovering the positive side of comments-off, leading up to his having taken the plunge last week: faster page loading, no moderation burden, and a sense of focus and cleanliness on each article.

He then cheerfully asserts his hope that a lack of comments will encourage, not discourage, conversation - and like me, lists Twitter, email and your own blog as suitable avenues of reply.

Darren Steadman - Re: Comments off

Darren’s piece opens by summarising the main arguments for comments-off (he himself does allow comments, and has no strong feelings on the issue), but then he moves onto a somewhat detailed technical discussion on how to solve the twin issues of:

Identity (and anonymity, trolling etc), and:
Relevance (unconsidered or irrelevant comments, including replies to out-of-date material)

The proposals are algorithmic, and make interesting reading. I won’t attempt to quote an extract; do take the time to read the article itself.

My thoughts

I think that’ll do for quoting others’ pieces for the moment; be sure to take the time to read those articles - several link to further discussion elsewhere. I think at this point that we can see the general thrust of the arguments on both sides.

For me, there are two ideas of primary interest, which have cropped up repeatedly: humility of the writer, and the purpose of your blog.

The two issues are interlinked, because misunderstanding the author’s purpose for his or her blog can lead to a perception that they lack humility; a perception that manifests itself as all sorts of tortured arguments about the importance of comments themselves, whereas in fact the underlying sentiment is an accusation of rampant egocentrism.

I freely and gladly admit that I enjoy writing, and that I particularly enjoy writing things that I know people will read. Writing is its own reward, certainly - any diarist will tell you that. But having readers is a substantial additional reward, and everyone likes confirmation and validation.

The vast, vast majority of all comments I’ve ever received have been agreement and/or praise. That’s just a fact. I write for a technical audience, who aren’t known to be either sycophants or simpletons, so I’m compelled to conclude that I’m doing something right. My comments feed was a confirmation of that, on a daily basis. If stating this basic statistical truth shows lack of humility, then I’m guilty as charged - but I won’t lie about it.

For most people in this discussion, the main worry about switching off comments has been a fear of reducing engagement or conversation. For me, that was about 50% of my concern; the other 50% was that I really, really liked getting those comments each day from people who (for the most part) agreed with what I’d written. I was in the absurdly privileged position that disabling comments amounted to switching off daily reassurance and validation. Accordingly, any accusation that I’m hiding from disagreement is frankly ridiculous.

Readers aren’t idiots (for the most part). Certainly not in this industry. If people didn’t generally enjoy (regardless of agreement or disagreement) reading what I write, they simply wouldn’t read this blog anymore. The kind of person who would voluntarily continue to read material he always disliked is a mystery to me. If he does so only to then post unpleasant comments, I think that borders on a personality disorder.

So, to humility. Putting aside the unpalatable but nevertheless true fact that there’s no requirement for you to be humble on your blog in the first place, I do understand and agree that no reader wants to feel patronised, or that the writer is intolerably arrogant. I feel the same way about the blogs that I read.

Of course, writing of any kind can never be entirely separated from vanity. When your writing is instantly published on the internet for all to (potentially) see, it’s difficult to completely subsume our very human egos. It’s enjoyable; I think we’re all adult enough to acknowledge that. I like pontificating, and so do you. I enjoy sending the truth down the mountain. Such is the human condition.

That doesn’t automatically mean that I don’t value feedback, or wish to be exposed to it. It most certainly isn’t the reason I switched off comments (giving multiple reasons for doing so, I might add). To arbitrarily claim, or to just have decided, that the motive for comments-off is arrogance or lack of humility, is a straw man. It’s a judgement which speaks more about the accuser than the accused. It is also, being an accusation which cannot ever be completely disproven (how can I prove my inner motive beyond doubt?), a weak argument.

That brings me to the purpose of a blog, or your view of what a blog should be. For me, “blog” implies:

A website
Primarily text
Updated periodically
Probably with an element of personal reflection and an individual voice

That’s all. It’s a very generic description. I don’t feel, personally, that a blog must have comments - but it seems that many people do. The reason, I believe, is that many see the purpose of a blog to be a kind of noticeboard of thoughts. Something that’s implicitly in the public domain, and thus fair game for on-site comments and such. Something that exists outside the personal domain of its author; indeed, a public extension of that person.

Others, including myself, have a different purpose in mind. To me, a blog is an extremely personal thing. It’s entirely within my personal domain, and is far more like a collection of essays than a noticeboard. I put a great deal of effort into these pieces, and I have a correspondingly proprietorial view of the blog itself. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable position.

So, to those who see no-comments as a violation of democracy, I see no such democracy here. You imagine that I’m trying to remove your right to attach a note to a public noticeboard, or to participate in a town-hall debate (which would indeed be reprehensible of me, and a violation), but from my perspective, I’m asking you not to scribble on my newspaper, or to be boorish at my dinner party. It’s simply down to a different perception of the purpose, and thus degree of ownership, of a blog as a whole. To me, this is my home on the internet. You’re most welcome to visit as often as you like, and to stay for as long as you like, and I’m sure you’ll understand if I retain the right to set the rules while you’re here.

The comments-on position is valid, and the comments-off position is valid too. Both can coexist peacefully. It doesn’t have to become an issue of principle, and indeed to try and make it into one is faintly ludicrous (it’s a website on the internet, for goodness’ sake). To frame it according to the now-hackneyed democratic principle, all we ask is the right to choose whether or not to allow comments.

I welcome feedback, both positive and negative. I always have. I’ve been lucky to enjoy a great deal of it, and I’ve made many friends and met many colleagues and clients via my writings here. I feel strongly about serving the community, and a part of my writing here is about doing so.

My main motivation, however (and I say this without compunction or shame), is to please myself by writing. I can’t help but write - as any writer will tell you - and I enjoy it immensely. I’m delighted to share it with you, and I respectfully assert my right to control the manner in which I do that.

Review, respond and critique as you wish - but please do so via your own public outlet, or privately via email, or over a shared medium such as Twitter. I do hope you’ll choose the first option, and add yet another piece to the list above - I look forward to reading it.

Whether you allow comments on that prospective post is a matter for you, and you alone. Your blog is what you want it to be, and no-one can tell you that it has to be a discussion.

Your thoughts on mattgemmell.com

2012-01-06T12:00:00+00:00

Last night I posted a brief survey about what kind of articles you most enjoy on this blog, and had around 150 responses. I’m grateful for the feedback, and thought you might be interested in a summary of the results (the survey is still open, by the way - so do feel free to share your thoughts).

The results for each question are presented as appropriate charts below, each of which links to the original chart image on Flickr accompanied by the raw data. If you can’t see the charts for any reason, the results are described in this article.

Article length

Some people enjoy longer pieces, and some prefer much shorter, bite-sized reading material. I asked what length of article you tend to like most.

The majority (65%) prefer articles that are a few screenfuls long, or thereabouts. Not too short, but not enormous either. In second place (23%), short articles of about one screenful.

Preferred topics

I gave a list of topics I’ve commonly covered, allowing you to choose as many as you liked. Because of this, the percentages add up to more than 100%; they show the percentage of all respondents who chose each option.

As expected, the most popular topics were user experience and user interface articles (86%), iOS and Mac pieces (84%), and developer-focused material (75%). More than 60% of you also enjoy tech industry news, design articles, and personal pieces.

The majority of those who chose the ‘Other’ option (14%) said that I should write about whatever I feel like, which is very encouraging.

Frequency of new articles

It’s always difficult to decide how often to publish a new piece, particularly if it’s a longer article. I asked how often you’d like to see new material.

The most popular choice was to see a new post at least weekly (47%), followed by 35% who chose a few times a month. Only 19% would impose no limit at all. That pretty much fits with my current output, which is somewhere between daily and weekly, and closer to the latter on average.

Finding out about new articles

I was interested to know how you find out about new articles. Note that the survey was announced on Twitter, so the votes for that particular medium are likely to be somewhat skewed. I still get the feeling they’re roughly representative, though.

As with the preferred topics question, this question allowed you to choose as many options as you liked, so the percentages will add up to more than 100%; they show the percentage of all respondents who chose each option.

Those who follow me on Twitter came in first at 88%, followed by those who subscribe to this blog’s feed at 63%. A surprisingly high 21% just visit the site regularly to see if there’s new content, and only 9% keep up to date via Google+.

Should comments stay off?

As I’ve discussed at some length, I recently switched comments off for this blog. I asked how you felt about that.

The vast majority (75%) agreed with the decision, saying that comments should remain off. 19% said they didn’t care either way, leaving only 6% who preferred that comments be reinstated (I don’t have any current plans to do that).

Other remarks

There were also free-form questions about what you dislike most about the blog, what accessibility requirements I wasn’t meeting, and a field to enter any further thoughts. I’m glad to report that there isn’t anything you significantly dislike, nor any accessibility problems of particular note (though a handful of you would prefer that the text was a little smaller).

The general feedback was very positive, and I’m extremely grateful for it - the most common theme was to keep doing what I’m doing, which I certainly plan to.

Final thoughts

Writing on this blog is one of the most personally fulfilling things that I do (right up there with fighting the good UX fight, and campaigning for accessible software), and I can’t adequately describe how pleased I am that other people take the time to read it.

Following the encouraging recent traffic milestone, the blog seems to be going from strength to strength - visitor statistics since then show an even steeper increase - and I’m looking forward to continuing to share my thoughts with you here during 2012 and beyond. Thanks for reading.

Microsoft Signature

2012-01-05T16:33:00+00:00

Many new PCs come filled with lots of trialware and sample software that slows your computer down—removing all that is a pain, so we do it for you! Every PC the Microsoft Store sells is put on a software diet and performance is tuned to run the best it can.
We call this process Microsoft Signature.
Microsoft signature.microsoft.com/…

Mac users, on the other hand, call it every computer we’ve ever bought.

Undoubtedly a positive step for Microsoft, but it’s very telling that such a thing is (1) necessary, and (2) deemed worthy of explicit branding and marketing. (And one of the worst offenders for new-PC clutter? I’m looking at you, Sony.)

Here’s vainly hoping that Android gets Google Signature sometime soon too.

Nintendo 3DS Review

2012-01-04T17:15:00+00:00

My lovely wife Lauren gave me a Nintendo 3DS for Christmas, and I’ve been playing it extensively (mostly The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D) since then.

My last handheld game system was a Nintendo DS Lite (I also have a Wii and a PS3), and I suspect that there are many DS users out there who are wondering whether to upgrade to the 3DS. I decided to write up a few thoughts from my first week of owning the device.

In the box

The following items are included in the retail box. Mine was the ‘Cosmos Black’ model, without an included game.

3DS console
Mains charger cable
Charging cradle (optional; the charger cable plugs into either the 3DS itself, or into the cradle)
Stylus (extendable; already inserted into top edge of the 3DS)
SD card (2GB; already inserted into bottom of left edge of the 3DS)
6 Augmented Reality (AR) cards
Assorted booklets, warranties, warnings and so forth

The packaging seems designed to also allow including a full boxed game if appropriate, and indeed there are Zelda and Mario limited edition bundles of the console already available, amongst others.

General impressions

Once you switch the 3DS on, you’ll want to connect to a wi-fi network and perform a system update, to get the latest version of the OS (including the web browser, which isn’t included in the pre-installed version at time of writing).

I’ll talk more about specific aspects of the device and its software below, but here are the primary things I learned within the first half hour, all of which were some degree of a surprise to me:

The 3D effect really does add to the gaming experience. The “how far away is that wall” phenomenon of simulated-3D games is one that irritates me occasionally, and the 3DS really does help with spatial perception in 3-dimensional game environments. Naturally, it also enhances a delightful sense of terror and vertigo in precarious situations.
Everyone has heard a personal anecdote to the contrary, but I can truthfully say that I can use the 3DS with full-intensity 3D effect enabled for hours without any headaches, nausea, eye-strain or suchlike. I haven’t experienced any negative symptoms at all. (And I wear corrective lenses, I’m quite long-sighted, and I have different corrections for each eye.)
The system is designed to always be on, and online. Nintendo wants the 3DS to always have an internet connection, even while asleep with the lid closed. There’s even an “are you sure” screen when you try to power the 3DS off, reminding you of the benefits of leaving it on but asleep.
It feels pretty much exactly the same size and weight as the DS Lite.
The Circle Pad is excellent. I find it precise, kind to the thumb, and with an ideal spring-back tension and surface friction.

Hardware

Nintendo 3DS

I said above that the 3DS feels like it’s the same size and weight as a DS Lite, and that’s very nearly true: it’s within 1mm (in all dimensions) of the DS Lite, and weighs only 0.5oz (15g) more, which to my hands isn’t a meaningful difference.

The device supports regular DS game cards as well as its own (3DS cards have a plastic tab jutting out, physically preventing them being inserted into an older DS). Unlike previous DS models whose games were region-free, 3DS games are region-locked in one of the usual three regions (US, Europe, and Japan). Happily, there’s an SD card slot on the side of the unit, which already has a 2GB card inserted. SDHC is supported.

Whilst I believe that Nintendo may be moving away from the stylus as a primary interaction method, one is still included with the 3DS. It’s inserted into the top edge rather than the right as on the DS Lite, and is thus shorter by default, but can be expanded telescopically to a maximum size that’s actually longer than that on previous models.

Notable new hardware besides the 3D effect (whose intensity/enabling slider is on the right edge of the upper screen) includes an accelerometer and gyroscope, for more modern motion-sensitive game control without additional peripherals. In my testing with Ocarina, the motion-sensing hardware works very well indeed.

Unlike on the initial DS model, the screen brightness on the 3DS is more than sufficient - unsurprising, since enabling the 3D effect actually boosts the brightness beyond the non-3D maximum, to maintain the same apparent brightness to the user (one reason why the 3D effect will inevitably cause increased battery drain). There’s a power-save mode which continuously adjusts the screen brightness based on the actual pixel content of the screens, and can provide up to 20% additional usage time before recharging.

The physical controls are the same as on any previous DS model (d-pad, X, Y, B, A, L, R, Select and Start), with two additions: the Home button, and the Circle Pad (analog ‘stick’). The Home button returns you to the Home screen (primary menu system for the device) from any other screen, suspending a game or app if necessary, and will also return you to that suspended software if its tile is currently selected.

The Circle Pad, as mentioned previously, is an impressive piece of design. It moves purely in two dimensions, its centre being movable through a circle described by the entirety of the pad when in its neutral position. It provides just enough return-to-neutral tension without putting any pressure on the thumb, and its recessed surface is subtly textured for grip. I haven’t any problems with slipperiness or inaccuracy at all. I’m very, very impressed with the control.

Here’s a brief video of me using it, while running around the Temple of Time in Ocarina:

The remaining hardware controls are straightforward. The power button is a small push-button, not the sprung slider of the DS Lite. The volume slider is on the left edge of the main (lower) body, and there’s a wi-fi toggle slider on the right edge. The 3D effect slider is, of course, on the right edge of the upper section (lid).

The headphone socket is on the lower edge, centred, and is completely standard - no nasty device-specific connector. The power charger port is one of the mini-USB variants, and is on the rear edge of the lower section, towards the right.

The casing (black, on mine) is very glossy, and shows fingerprints easily. Interestingly, the bottom half of the lower section of the casing is a different colour than the rest of the device (mine is grey).

Now, the one notable downside: battery life. The 3DS includes a 1,300mAh battery, which is rather modest. With the 3D effect active, wi-fi enabled, and active gaming going on, you can expect to get perhaps three hours of battery life. With wi-fi off, that’ll go up to four or four and a half hours.

There are third-party battery packs available very cheaply (less than £10 for a 2,000mAh battery which fits into the existing 3DS casing, or £15 for a 5,000mAh battery with its own thicker bottom case cover to accommodate it) which can be installed with only a screwdriver, and there are of course a variety of external battery pack solutions and cases too.

You can, of course, use the device while it’s plugged in. The power adapter connects either to the device itself or to the included cradle, which offers no-resistance cradling and removal of the device. There’s also a fold-down door at the rear of the cradle to let you access the game card slot without lifting the device up (if you’re really lazy).

The cradle included with the Nintendo 3DS.

Menu system

The main menu system of the 3DS, called the Home Screen like its counterpart on the Wii, is tile-based and mixes built-in functionality and apps with downloaded games, sharing features, and the currently inserted game card. Here’s a quick video of how it looks:

The tiles are resizable from a horizontal carousel to a dense grid. System settings is an app in itself, as are the camera (both 2D and 3D, including video), music playback, eShop, Mii Creator, Mii Plaza and Activity Log functions, amongst others. There’s also a menubar along the top of the screen, offering the following functions:

Brightness (including power saving mode)
Tile display mode
Game Notes (where you can draw or write notes below a screenshot of whichever software is currently suspended)
Friend List
Notifications (brief textual status messages about anything, from any app or game)
Web browser

The much-publicised Face Raiders and AR games are pre-installed, and also have their own tiles.

Only one game or app can be running, and can be suspended by pressing the Home button while you use some of the other functionality of the system. You can use Game Notes and the web browser while a game is suspended, for example (which is highly useful), but certain features count as first-class apps and require terminating any other suspended software, with a warning first. Presumably, that’s due to a system memory constraint.

Here’s a video clip of suspending and resuming a game. In each case, I simply pressed the Home button, which is centred immediately below the bottom (touch) screen.

Web Browser

The 3DS web browser is basic, but capable. It uses NetFront, which is WebKit-based like practically every other browser of note, and is usable enough on the 3DS’ unusual screen layout.

Pages are zoomable, scrollable with the stylus and navigable with both the stylus and d-pad. Web search options are either Google or Yahoo (no love for Bing here, though you’re free to go to the site, of course), and the browser renders only a limited portion of each page at a time: just whatever is currently visible. Scrolling produces a momentary but noticeable checkerboarding effect.

It offers bookmarks, text-selection and page information, and the only major omission I noticed was the lack of a find-on-page feature - perhaps rather irritating for game FAQs and similar usage scenarios. Twitter also works fine, via the mobile web interface (the asynchronous stuff on the regular web interface never quite seemed to finish loading properly). Here’s a clip:

Other built-in software

Very briefly, the other built-in software is capable if unremarkable - with the exception of AR Games, which is indeed remarkable. The 3DS package includes six physical, printed AR (augmented reality) cards made of thick paper, showing a Mario question-mark block and five well-known Nintendo characters.

The AR Games app uses the 3DS’ twin cameras to superimpose virtual characters and games onto these physical cards, as viewed through the 3DS. It’s captivating to see dragons and flying targets rise up out of your own desk or dining-room table, and I’ll be very interested to see what other AR games and apps are released in future. Take a look at how AR Games works in this video (not by me).

The camera app itself can take 2D or 3D photos or videos, and allow you to view them in either mode. The 3D effect is noticeable and functional, though the quality of the cameras is predictably modest. It won’t replace your iPhone or dedicated camera for quick shots.

3D effect

The 3DS uses a parallax barrier 3D effect, to provide 3D without the need for special glasses, but requiring the user to be at a well-defined focal position in front of the screen. In practice, a standard holding position and angle for the console works just fine - as designed.

I’ve mentioned previously that the 3D effect genuinely does add to the gaming experience, and I’d recommend that you try it on an actual device in a shop to see for yourself. There is of course a warning that the effect is unsuitable for children under six years old, for nebulous reasons of potential vision damage that I can find little supporting documentation on, so err on the side of caution. The system does of course include parental controls allowing you to disable the 3D effect permanently, protected by a PIN code.

Finding the 3D ‘sweet spot’ is easy, and within half an hour I found that I always found it immediately upon opening the lid of the device. I did not experience any headaches, eye strain, visual disturbances, neck or back tension, or any other negative effect. There’s a lot of hearsay about the 3D effect, and I advise you to just try it for yourself.

The 3D intensity (scaled maximum apparent ‘depth’) is adjustable via a slider, going from a barely perceptible, subtle sense of depth to a pronounced sense that objects exist “inside” or “behind” the (upper) screen. For an average 3D game environment perspective, including Ocarina of Time, in practice this means that the 3D world occupies a cubic space behind the screen extending to a depth of perhaps 3 to 4 inches, depending on the virtual environment.

In summary, the 3D really does work, it doesn’t injure me in any way, and it does enhance the experience. I have it active almost all the time.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

The reviews of this game speak for themselves. Whether or not you played the wonderful original on the N64, Gamecube or Wii, you’ll almost certainly love it. I assume you can make that judgement on your own, and I’ll merely make a few points for those who have played the game before. Here’s a tiny preview clip in the Temple of Time:

You’ll immediately notice the obvious visual improvements: not only are textures higher resolution, but more importantly the entire colour palette is brighter and more cheerful. There are also a few new 3D models in certain key locations, and a number of visual effects that weren’t present in the original. I’ll leave you to discover those yourself.

Item-switching is much easier with the touch-screen interface, and notably it’s much quicker and less annoying to switch boots when required. Relatedly, the Water Temple is substantially improved by using a clearer colour-scheme to indicate the places where you can alter the level of the water.

A few changes are facilitated or necessitated by the hardware, including looking around (and aiming arrows, the hookshot, etc) using the gyroscope, and the Stone of Agony now plays a chime rather than rumbling (as the 3DS has no vibration hardware like the N64 Rumble Pak). There’s also a new hints system for inexperienced players, using the same “visions” concept as that in Skyward Sword on the Wii:

Navi the fairy is present and correct, and subjectively she seems to bug you less often (though she has added a new type of nagging to her repertoire: advising you to take a break from playing every so often).

The game is every bit as controllable and playable as it was before, and indeed the Circle Pad is a big improvement on the N64’s blister-inducing analog stick. This is the often-lauded greatest game of all time, in your pocket, with a fresh coat of paint. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Summary

So, let’s sum up. These are the things I like about the 3DS.

Pros

It’s a pretty powerful games machine that fits in my pocket.
As well as new games, we’re sure to see more remastered N64/Gamecube-era titles.
It’s every bit as portable as a DS Lite.
The 3D effect works, and really does add to the experience.
It has a capable web browser, and an online games store.
There’s expandable storage, up to respectable capacities with SDHC.

And the things I don’t like so much.

Cons

Battery life is relatively poor.
The physical design is functional rather than attractive.

That’s pretty much it. There wasn’t anything else I was annoyed with or disappointed about, at least that I can recall at the moment. All in all, I can readily live with those things.

Conclusion

You’ve presumably already made your mind up either way, so I won’t include some unnecessary advice. I like mine, and I’m glad I have one. I will say this: don’t create a false dichotomy between the 3DS and some other games system (the PS Vita, perhaps). Decide whether each device is something you want, and then buy whichever you like - and maybe both.

If you’re interested in buying a 3DS and you’re in the UK (or nearby), feel free to do so via this Amazon UK link, and I’ll get a small kickback.

If you already have one, my Friend Code is: 2964-9119-4507. As always with Nintendo’s social systems, we’ll only see each other if we’ve both added each other - so you should probably tweet your own Friend Code if you add me.

As always, comments are off, but feedback is nonetheless invited. For the safety and sanity of everyone, the following need not apply:

Vendor/platform-philes. That’s for teenagers whose mum buys them just one machine.
Price-related criticism. It costs what it costs. We can’t change it.
Tech-specs criticism. Nobody cares. That’s for the forum trolls.
Claims that the battery life makes it unusable or not worth buying. Neither is true.

Others can get in touch via email, on Twitter, or preferably via an article on your own blog.

Footnote: Game list

At time of writing, I have:

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
Super Mario 3D Land
Sonic Generations
Star Fox 64 3D

I’d recommend all of them to you, if you enjoy the respective genres.

Comments Still Off

2012-01-03T22:30:00+00:00

Just over a month ago, I switched comments off for this blog. I wanted to post a very brief follow-up on that decision.

In a nutshell, it was definitely the right move. For the first few days I did miss the validation of getting a flurry of comments on each new article, but I quickly realised that I was enjoying the peace and quiet. The other benefits are manifest:

I receive far more thoughtful, considered email responses (and more article-related email in general).
I’ve seen many more responses published on others’ blogs, which is good for everyone.
I’ve had zero reduction in traffic; actually, it’s up a good bit.
My site loads faster, not having to wait for the comments list and form.
I don’t have to moderate anything, or see notification emails.
I feel more willing to publish short pieces, and to write more frequently.
I feel more positive, and I think the tone of my writing has evolved.

Between responding via email, mentioning me on Twitter, or writing a response on your own blog, you have plenty of excellent ways to participate in discussion.

I’m definitely not going back. If you have a blog, I’d advise you to consider switching comments off too.

Opinions in Journalism

2011-12-28T16:45:00+00:00

I read Ben Brooks’ article on The Verge’s lack of compelling reporting with considerable interest. It talks about the all-too-common bet-hedging approach to tech journalism, referencing MG Siegler’s piece (also about The Verge). Both articles make the point that, as readers, we’re often looking for insight to help with a buying decision, rather than raw information.

Even-handedness is admirable, but it can be (and often is) taken too far. We get caught up in the concept of impartiality, and forget that there’s more to product-related journalism than just repackaging information. No product exists in a vacuum, and if your ‘review’ seems to go to excessive lengths to equivocate, it’s then that I’ll suspect you have an ulterior motive.

The discussion reminded me of a TNW article about how information spreads more widely from journalists’ personal Twitter accounts than from corporate accounts. That makes complete sense to me. Human beings are hard-wired to form opinions; indeed, to form very polarised, strongly-held opinions - so much that we must actively struggle against innate prejudices and a tendency to oversimplify.

No-one is saying that bias is good, but trying to maintain an artificial neutrality is an overcompensation. Having an opinion is important. In many cases, it’s more important than what your opinion actually is. People will either agree or disagree, and either situation is vastly preferable to a reader having no strong reaction at all.

We all acknowledge that poor journalism expresses opinions formed with some kind of external bias (I do believe that some ‘biases’ can be legitimate, such as a track record of poor construction quality leading to trepidation about long-term durability of a new product - that’s a rational loss of confidence, not an unfair prejudice). Sadly though, this fear of bias had led to an unreasonable desire to not display any strong opinions at all.

When writing something that constitutes an opinion - such as a product review - impartiality is a starting point, not a policy. A review is the forming of an opinion, and a write-up of your review is the expression of that opinion. That’s what reviewing means.

Even an analysis shouldn’t be divorced from opinion. Analysis is an attempt to improve comprehension, and while it’s always valid to make data more digestible and comprehensible, a truly valuable analysis builds on that by then delivering an actual interpretation followed by corresponding advice.

Bias is bad, but forming opinions is good. Be as impartial as you can in your willingness to form opinions, but do form them. Anything else is poor journalism, and (far, far worse), unengaging writing.

One Million

2011-12-23T11:30:00+00:00

I was reading Rands’ 2011 in review earlier, and thought it might be interesting to check my own web traffic stats year-on-year, and list a few of this year’s most popular articles here on the blog.

It turns out that 2011 marks something of a milestone for mattgemmell.com. I’ve been writing here for more than 7 years (since 5th September 2004), and this year I’m happy to see that I’ve exceeded one million pageviews (and half a million unique visitors). It’s not a huge number in the grand scheme of things, but it’s worth noting, and I’m proud of it.

Here’s a quick graph showing the last five years, from 1st January 2007 through 22nd December 2011. The granularity is yearly.

Traffic stats for mattgemmell.com, 2007-2011

(You can click the graph above to see it on Flickr, where I also include the raw data as text.)

I’m thrilled at the steady increase in traffic, and I’m deeply gratified that my writing here is being read (if not always exactly enjoyed, I’m sure).

Here are some of the most successful articles I’ve written this year, in rough order of popularity (massaged slightly to reflect some of my own favourites).

SEO for Non-Dicks - optimising your search engine ranking without cheating or dishonesty.
Apps vs the Web - the argument for native apps rather than web apps.
Latest Version - why it’s probably OK to support only the latest version of the OS.
Copycats - the shameful culture of mindless product- and design-copying in the tech industry.
Simplicity - my quest for simplicity in my life and work.
Comments Off - why I switched off comments on this blog.
Blogging with Octopress - my move to a static HTML blog, instead of a dynamic system.
MacBook Air 11” - my review of the late-2010 model 11” MacBook Air, with screenshots.
Makers and Takers - the value and importance of actually creating something, rather than just being a money-handler.
Critical Customisation Cost of Software - about my instinctive resistance to customising my computer setup.

I look forward to writing here for another seven years, and I hope you’ll continue reading. You can stay up to date via my RSS feed or by following me on Twitter.

All the best for 2012.

AllThis Sleazy Dishonesty

2011-12-21T15:43:00+00:00

At the weekend, I noticed a tweet that mentioned me, sent from the @allthisfeed account, which is an announcement account for @allthis. It read:

Ten minutes of Matt Legend Gemmell’s attention @allthis @mattgemmell http://j.mp/tGvzmC
@allthisfeed twitter.com/allthisfeed/status/…

The link in the tweet is dead now (as I’ll explain later), but essentially it’s from a startup whose business idea is to ‘trade’ (not sell, they repeatedly assure) the time of other people. The idea is that you bid on ten minutes of time with someone you want to speak to, for any purpose you like.

Here’s a screenshot of the tweet:

The tweet AllThis sent, mentioning me.

I clicked the link, and saw that I somehow already had a page on their site (also since removed by them), which showed who currently held the supposed right to ten minutes of my time, and even showing my supposed calendar over the next few days (all times were marked as available, of course, since they had no knowledge of my actual availability).

I had never signed up for the service, nor even heard of it before, yet they were implying that I’d agreed to give ten minutes of my time to whomever successfully traded for it.

They did this for a great many people; hundreds per day for several days. Here’s a screenshot of a very small selection of the resulting tweets:

A very small selection of AllThis’ tweets.

The list included every type of Twitter user, including celebrity accounts, and all the links I clicked showed me pages for these people, with the small and subtle disclaimer that the person (like myself) was “not a member yet”. The person who “held” my particular fictional ten minutes also “held” those for John Gruber and others.

This is not only dishonest, but also incredibly offensive to both those bidding on time and those whose time is being traded.

There was understandable uproar about it, notably including Joel Housman’s post (which you should read). Then, VentureBeat covered it, and it’s since been linked from various other sites including The Loop.

All of this negative coverage prompted AllThis to delete all of the pages they’d set up (they claim that it was in fact their users who initiated those pages by choosing people they’d like to have ten minutes of time with, but that’s an academic distinction - their service allowed it), and to post a ”response to the recent controversy”.

Here’s the thing: there’s no controversy. Controversy means that there’s disagreement, and there isn’t. We’re all agreed that while the business model may or may not be sound or interesting, AllThis’ tactics were incredibly sleazy and dishonest, in multiple ways:

They allowed pages to be created which directly implied that people had consented to their time being traded.
They publicised those pages on Twitter, mentioning the relevant person’s username, further implying endorsement.
Their responses to the ‘controversy’ have been characterised by wilfully wide-eyed, blinking confusion at how anyone could possibly be upset, and arguments based on semantics which aren’t germane to the central issue of deliberately misleading people.
They created a horrible situation between those whose time was unknowingly being traded and those who genuinely thought they were arranging some time with that person.

Here’s my take on it. This is a startup, that’s been praised by Mashable and that’s trying to attract users and eyeballs. I don’t think that this was a naive mistake. I think they did it deliberately, fully aware that there would be uproar, and similarly aware that the uproar would provide a temporary huge boost in traffic (they say as much in their statement to VentureBeat).

Whether or not the basic idea of AllThis is valid or useful, here’s my advice: don’t use their service. They’re at best extremely naive about people’s views about their own privacy and reputation, and at worse they’re willing to deliberately mislead you regarding who uses or endorses their service.

This is not a business you want to have any involvement with.

Open Source Code

2011-12-19T17:00:00+00:00

As developers, most of us will release some open source code at some point. I’ve released quite a bit of Mac and iOS source code over the years, and I’ve used or referred to the code of countless others.

I strongly encourage releasing reusable portions of your code - it’s the lifeblood of the developer community. Over the years, I’ve put together a set of best practices for releasing open source code, to make life easier partly for yourself but mainly for those who will use your code.

Speak the language

Programming languages don’t exist in a vacuum. Most languages are associated with a specific platform and toolkit, but even multi-platform languages are bound by conventions unique to them. Being aware, and respectful of these conventions is a requirement for releasing your code.

You can’t just release any old thing. To be useful to other developers, it has to follow the standard patterns, naming schemes, expected behaviour and configurability of their standard toolkit. If your code isn’t at home on its platform, please don’t release it - instead, spend more time learning the conventions and then release something that follows them.

This is particularly true of understandably enthusiastic recent converts to a platform, eager to make a mark on a new community and share their new knowledge. I completely understand that drive, and it’s admirable. But what the community actually needs is code that will be instantly at home in a piece of software on that platform, not something that smells vaguely like something entirely different.

We’ve all seen code that uses, say, Java-like conventions but is written in Objective-C (for example, making heavy use of exceptions for error control flow). It’s like speaking broken French in a British accent; you think they’ll appreciate your effort, but really they wish you’d just go away.

Name methods as they’re named in the standard toolkit. Obey conventions about indicating (explicitly or implicitly) what’s public and what’s intended to be private. Use the parlance of the platform, particularly in documentation where the compiler won’t alert you (an “interface” is a very different thing in Objective-C than it is in Java).

Make the code at home on the platform, or keep it to yourself. Be respectful of local customs, or go home.

Make it reusable

There are appropriate places for snippets (chunks of code, often trivial, to paste into your own methods or functions, which aren’t reusable in the traditional sense), but don’t release them separately.

If your IDE or editor supports exportable libraries of snippets, put them there, or answer a question on Stack Overflow. Generally, the most useful open source code starts at reusable components like classes or libraries, and goes all the way up to entire apps or frameworks.

Document realistically

Decide whether you’re going to provide separate documentation for your code and keep it up to date. If you can’t promise that, then don’t provide separate documentation.

In either case, provide brief explanatory documentation in comments for salient public properties and methods, particularly initialisers and commonly-used functionality, and explain any particularly obscure code where necessary. A big-picture block-comment at the top of a header file outlining what a particular class is used for is always handy, with a link to your site or repository for more information.

Try to consider the getting-started case too. If there’s something non-obvious about getting your code up and running in a new app, that’s clearly worth special mention (and perhaps a redesign before release, if possible).

Include a Read Me

Your Read Me file should be plain text; don’t be an idiot and use RTF or some horrible format that isn’t immediately readable in the repository, on the command line, and in a modern graphical file browser without launching any dedicated application. No, including a screenshot is not a valid reason to use a non-text format.

The minimum information you need is:

What the code does, broadly speaking. Skip the marketing; just describe its purpose.
The name of the author, with contact info if appropriate.
Where to get the latest version (your code will be redistributed as isolated, outdated files). Ideally, this will be a public repository with an issue-tracking system.
What the dependencies are, if any, including the versions you used.
What license it’s released under (see the License section below).
The minimum essential set of files people will need to copy into their own project to use the code. Almost everyone forgets to include this.

You might also want to include the following optional but helpful information:

A brief, readable feature summary so others can decide if it’s suitable for them.
Whether you offer support via email (I’d advise that you not do so - instead, point people to a suitable community site, and spend your time writing new code).
Any particularly interesting/thorny points or weirdnesses we have to know about.

Keep any long-form discussion out of the Read Me; people mostly don’t care about the back-story, and those who do will happily go elsewhere to read about it. Write a blog post, and link to it from the Read Me. You’ll also get more interest and reputation by doing it that way.

Include a demo harness

Don’t just release bare classes. Create a new, empty project for your chosen platform and build it into a demo of your code. There doesn’t need to be a checkbox to toggle every possible option; just show people what it can do, and how to use it in an app.

Keep the project loosely coupled to your code; don’t cheat. If you can’t make a demo harness without coupling it tightly to your code, your code isn’t sufficiently reusable and needs to be revised. Don’t waste other people’s time. The fact that you’re giving some code away doesn’t excuse you from professionalism.

Make sure that the demo code is very brief. If you require significant app demo code just to show how your reusable code works, you need to revisit your code and consider whether its default behaviour has been sensibly chosen, or whether you can add some low/zero-config convenience behaviour to get people up and running quickly.

Use a permissive license

Don’t use the GPL. The only reasonable scenario for the GPL is for an entire piece of software which must remain open for all time, to insure against data lock-in or premature hardware obsolescence. If you’re writing a printer driver or a codec, fine, you could consider the GPL. But in 99.9% of cases, avoid it like the plague.

The point of releasing code is to let people use it. Most people want to use it commercially, because that’s how the world works. Your code isn’t so special and wonderful that it couldn’t have been written by someone else. So, using the GPL is enforcing assholery on everyone because you think that someday, some other asshole might not make their code available in a time of dire social need. That’s crazy. It’s dealing on pure idealism and ignoring statistics and commercial reality.

Here’s the sequence of events when an inexperienced developer downloads some open source code that’s licensed under the GPL:

Dev looks at the code, and realises it’s perfect.
Dev tries integrating it into their app. Dev feels happy.
Dev checks the license, and sees it’s the GPL. Dev feels sad.
Dev either:
- Throws your code away and finds a substitute,
- Rewrites it themselves, or:
- Uses the code in a commercial app anyway, hoping to not be found out.

The timeline for experienced developers is shorter, and also applies to all companies:

Dev searches for code, and checks license before downloading.
Dev sees it’s GPL, snorts with disgust, skips it and continues looking.

You’re kind of destroying the whole point of open source code if you use the GPL. So, ignore what the Software Unabomber says and use a sensible license.

Your license should:

Allow use, modified or unmodified, in binary (compiled) form.
Allow redistribution, unmodified, in source form.

Your license probably should:

Allow redistribution, modified, in source form (with clear documentation as to what was modified, and by whom).

Your license maybe should:

Impose whatever conditions or restrictions you prefer (commonly, attribution for yourself as the author).

Your license absolutely should NOT:

Require that apps using the code be themselves released as open source code.

If you’re in doubt, I’d say go with one of the BSD licenses or a more explicit attribution license. In some cases, companies who want to use your code won’t be able (or willing) to provide attribution in the resulting software, and will ask to be granted a custom license. That’s absolutely fine. I suggest making them pay for a non-attribution license, which is what I do on my code license store.

Use source control and issue-tracking

If you’re not using source control, even for your own personal projects, you’re not a developer - you’re a hobbyist or a tinkerer.

It doesn’t matter what your situation is. Get out of bed before noon, shower every morning, dress as if you’re leaving the house even if you aren’t, and generally have some self-respect. Professionals use source control, and you should aspire to be a professional.

Similarly, use an issue-tracking system. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it does have to be more than your email app. Github provides one for you, there are dozens of free (and open source) implementations you can run on your own server or locally, and you can even make one yourself with whatever database package you’re familiar with. Just make sure you have one, and make sure you use it.

Conclusion

If you’re considering releasing some of your reusable code, that’s great. Do it in a way that maximises benefit while minimising difficulty, and you’ll have the best chance of receiving all due credit and reputation for your work.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also want to follow me on Twitter.

Women Conference Speakers

2011-12-15T09:15:00+00:00

I periodically attend (and speak at) technical conferences, and I love doing so. One thing you quickly notice is the gender balance, or rather, imbalance - there are always far, far more men than women.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that every profession (or any other grouping of people) should have a fifty-fifty gender split, any more than I think there should be a precise ethnicity split, or a religious split, or a favourite-football-team split.

What I do think, though, is that people should be adequately (rather than artificially) represented, and when it comes to female speakers at the average tech conference, that’s clearly not true. One of the nice things about Update Conf was the more believable gender split among the speakers.

I’m not entirely sure why tech conferences don’t have more female speakers. I would assume it’s largely due to some combination of:

Inertia (Most current speakers are men, and those who speak tend to be invited to speak again), and:
Self-promotion (On average, men are probably more likely to volunteer to speak, for a variety of reasons both social and psychological)

The first point seems likely, and the second at least makes some kind of sense - but, never having been a woman, I can only speculate.

In any case, the lack of women speakers at conferences most certainly isn’t because there aren’t any suitable candidates in our industry. That’s just trivially true, because I know many such women myself. At my last job before I started my own business five years ago, the development team was at least 50% women. My wife is a developer too (Java, for Amazon).

So, if you’re organising a tech conference and working on your speaker line-up, think about going outside the usual male suspects and considering some female speakers too - on merit, naturally.

To make it easier, here’s a list to get you started. These are all women that I know (some just on Twitter, and some in real life too) whose work I’m familiar with and respect, and whose opinions I find interesting. They’re from the worlds of iOS development, web development, user experience and UI design, content strategy, and more.

As with any set of potential speakers, some of them won’t have spoken before, whereas some of them are regulars on the conference circuit. I’m certain that all have something to contribute to your event, and I don’t hesitate to recommend each of them.

And remember: there are many ways to participate in a conference, even if you’re not up on the main stage presenting. Blitz talks, panels, interviews and workshops all need excellent people, and can be a good way to ease new speakers into being up in front of a room.

In no particular order other than recency of their last tweets on the day I put my list together, here are some of my friends, colleagues and fellow professionals who happen to be women. In each case, I’ve included a Twitter link, and at least one link to either a blog, portfolio or business site.

Sophia Teutschler

Sophia is an iOS and Mac app developer, with a number of rather famous apps including Articles, Magical Weather, Tipulator and CoverSutra. She’s an Apple Design Award winner, and she’s based in Germany.

Anne Halsall

Anne is a product, UI and interaction designer. She’s worked at Google, Inkling and Quora, she speaks Japanese, and she’s based in San Francisco.

Amanda Wixted

Amanda is a mobile developer who’s worked on lots of well-know apps and games including Farmville for iPhone, Mafia Wars, Pacman and more. She’s an experienced public speaker too.

Amber Weinberg

Amber is a web and iOS developer who’s moving to London very soon. She specialises in valid, semantic and accessible HTML, CSS and WordPress sites.

Jane Lee

Jane is a software developer based in LA. She creates iOS, Mac and Rails apps, and she’s an avid gamer.

Sarah Parmenter

Sarah is a UI and interaction designer for iOS, the web and more. She’s an experienced conference speaker, and is .net magazine’s Designer of the Year 2011.

Cathy Shive

Cathy is a software developer and user interface designer based in Menlo Park, California. She cares deeply about interaction design and is an engaging and charming speaker.

Relly Annett-Baker

Relly is writer and web content strategist based in the Home Counties in England. She’s a very experienced conference speaker, and co-founder of a web user experience company.

Geri Coady

Geri is a designer, illustrator and photographer based in St John’s, Newfoundland in Canada. She’s an Art Director at an advertising agency.

Liz Lettieri

Liz is a web designer at 29th Street Publishing, and she’s based in Manhattan, New York City.

Clare Sutcliffe

Clare is a web designer based in England. She writes about design and user experience, and she’s a regular conference attendee and organiser.

Anna Debenham

Anna is a freelance front-end web developer based in Brighton, England. She’s a conference speaker, and she launched an online magazine for young designers and developers.

James Keller

James is an iOS interaction and product designer based in Portland, Oregon. She’s co-founder of a company that helps organisations create, develop and launch iOS products and services.

Evgenia Grinblo

Evgenia (“Yev-geh-nee-yuh”, or ‘Jenny’) is a UX and print designer who’s interested in the social aspects of creativity. She’s based in Israel, and her name actually means “born to design”.

Liz Elcoate

Liz is a freelance web designer, graphic designer and front-end coder. She has her own design and brand identity studio, and she’s based in Lincolnshire, England.

Laura Kalbag

Laura is a freelance designer and developer, with a focus on the mobile and semantic web. She’s based in Surrey, England.

Your suggestions

I had a huge number of recommendations from readers regarding others who should be included here; they’re listed below. Be sure to consider them for your conference too. Clearly, there’s absolutely no shortage of women to speak at technical events.

Gilly Dekel, iOS developer based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Brittany Tarvin (@wildchocolate, Business, Blog), software developer based in Chicago. She wears many hats, including co-founding FadingRed. She’ll also be helping to plan next year’s SecondConf.
Cindy Li (@cindyli)
Jenn Lukas (@jennlukas), speaker on panels at SXSW and other events.
Veerle Pieters (@vpieters)
@missrogue
@pamelafox
@bobulate
@iotwatch
@jensimmons
@nicoleslaw
@traceykthompson
@humuhumu
@jaimeejaimee
@andriajensen
@hmason
@jktweet
Andie Nordgren
The various women among the speakers at Webstock 2012
Jen Matson (@nstop), a freelance interaction designer based in Seattle, Washington. Her specialties are interactive prototyping in code and mobile web user experience design.
Katey Deeny (@followsprocess) Director of User Experience Design for WebMD based in Portland, Oregon. She has also taught design at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
Sandi Wassmer (@sandiwassmer). Sandi runs a digital agency in London and is a regular public speaker. She thinks, talks, writes and generally obsesses about all manner of marketing, design and technology. She writes for .net, blogs weekly for Action for Blind People, and wrote the Ten Principles of Inclusive Web Design which were published by the UK Government in May 2011.
Val Head (@vlh), an independent designer and consultant based in Pittsburgh, PA. She is an experienced conference speaker who especially likes to talk about UI animation and interaction design. She also organises Web Design Day and runs a local creative coding meet up.
Samantha Warren (@samanthatoy), a web designer based in San Francisco, CA. She is an experienced conference speaker who loves to share insights into smart design processes.
Alyson Fielding (@alysonf), a digital content adaptation / storytelling expert, who was Story Consultant on the BAFTA-nominated Malcolm Tucker app, and has content-wrangled a number of apps for iPhone and iPad. She’s spoken in the past about helping content experts and web / app developers work more closely together. She’s based in Leamington Spa in the UK.
@denisejacobs
@leaverou
@estellevw
@divya
@jenseninman
@stefsull
@garannm,
@girlie_mac
@avni321
@becka11y
@tenaciouscb
@designjuju
@emilylewis
@kitt
@stubbornella
@sarahmei
@ultrasaurus
@doristchen
@goodwitch
@jancavan
@stefsull
@zomigi
@mollydotcom
@jina
@pui_ling
@rmurphey
@amyhoy
@audreyr
@tiny_mouse
@webdevgirl
@sandymahalo
@estherbester
@kjam
@backcode
@msjaneaustin
@JJenZz
@alicenwondrlnd
@ErisDS
@sniffles
@FinalBullet
@beekernortham
@LeaVerou
@jessicahische
Faruk’s list of female speakers

Final thoughts

Conference organisers, get in touch with these women when you’re putting together your speaker line-up. There’s no cause for an all-male speaker list in this day and age.

If you’re interesting in getting started with speaking, I wrote a list of my public speaking tips that you might find useful. If you only want one tip, it’s this: you can do it.

As when making any list, I’m certain I’ll have forgotten a few people - absolutely no disparagement intended, except to my own memory. If you have a correction to suggest, or would prefer not to be listed, get in touch via email - here’s my contact info.

To keep up to date with new posts here, either subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter.

Dear TextMate

2011-12-13T12:35:00+00:00

Dear TextMate,

I wanted to write you this letter after we bumped into each other on the street yesterday. I guess it’s long overdue.

I’m glad you’re doing well, and that you’re going to be at 2.0 soon. I know you always wanted that. You look good, and I’m happy for you.

We didn’t have much time to talk earlier, but like I said I’m doing great. Things are really good. I’m editing with BBEdit now. It’s been almost six years. We’re very happy.

I think I need to talk a bit about what happened, though I guess only you really know.

It hurt me when you just sort of disappeared.

I know the relationship wasn’t really moving forward. BBEdit and I have been through two whole new versions (and lots of point-releases) since… well, you know. Since you just kind of went away. You and I only ever managed a point-five.

I still remember the early days - they were amazing. The bundles, new stuff every week, the syntax highlighting (oh man, the syntax highlighting). Yeah. Those were good times. It wasn’t just me, right?

I was talking to my friends last night; I told them I saw you. They send their best. For what it’s worth, even BBEdit says hi. Not everything they said was positive, of course - but that’s normal. After all, they’re my friends. I actually caught myself defending you and talking you up at one point.

“TextMate looks really good,” I said. “Multiple carets, themes… and even that drawer thing is long gone!” I think I even said that our talk had been just like old times. That was stupid of me, and they told me that. Because they’re my friends.

They also told me the one thing I was ignoring: you dumped me, and it took me a long time to get over it.

I know it wasn’t totally your fault. Mainly you just promised a lot. Too much, in fact. I don’t know what that was about. I’d have been happy to wait for the features. I didn’t have a deadline.

And the money thing. Ugh. That really messed us up. You always insisted on paying, even though I was happy to. I could have supported you; I was glad to help with that. Maybe you could have got to 2.0 sooner. But you didn’t give me the chance. It just all felt a bit one-sided.

I think that in the end you felt trapped by your own promises, and it was easier for you to leave. I get that now. I really do.

I didn’t give up at first, you know. I kept “our” - your - bundles. For a while. Eventually I deleted them. I felt guilty about that. Later, I felt angry at myself for feeling guilty. Much later, I was able to laugh about it.

I think I actually might still have one of your release notes files around here somewhere. It’s not really “yours” anymore, though; it hasn’t been for a long time. It’s just a markdown file.

You mentioned maybe getting together for coffee. I lay awake for a while last night thinking about it, and honestly I don’t think it’s a good idea.

I’m not sure what you’re offering, but I don’t think I can even judge it rationally. I already made all your excuses for you long ago. I can’t even see you for who you are today.

You’re just the editor that went away, and I’ve moved on.

Best wishes,
-Matt

P.S. I can’t believe I actually had to check which letters to capitalise in your name. I used to know it off by heart. I guess that’s a good thing though. All the best.

Footnote

I have the alpha of TextMate 2, and I’ll naturally be giving it a fair shot. I’m interested to see what’s new since I last fell in love with it five years ago.

I thought that the “letter to an ex” format (inspired by my own tweet last night) would be an interesting way to explore what for me, and many of you, are genuine abandonment issues. Yes, there were small point-point-updates throughout, but I cut and ran after a year of feeling that it was strictly in maintenance mode.

Since then, several years have passed, and it’ll be tricky for lapsed users to re-commit without always keeping one foot out the door. I genuinely think the analogy is valid - and, more importantly, amusing.

Open Source webOS

2011-12-09T21:35:00+00:00

As the entire industry reported today, HP is going to make webOS open source. That’s a terrible shame.

John had an apt analogy for the situation:

I think this is just the difference between putting your dog down and letting it free on a distant mountain road.
John Gruber HP to Contribute WebOS to Open Source

Don’t get me wrong: I want webOS to have a bright future. Before Windows Phone 7 came along, webOS was the iOS competitor to watch. It has many nice touches, and it dares to differ from iOS without doing so mindlessly or gratuitously.

Open source probably isn’t that bright future. Viable consumer operating systems, particularly those for touch-screen devices, come about due to a host of factors - but the two key ones are:

A clear, coherent vision for the user experience…
… enforced by absolute tyranny.

That’s the opposite of open source. People talk about “design by committee”, but open source is more commonly lack of design by dozens of committees.

Want to know what happens when you make an operating system open? The same thing as when you leave your car open: sooner or later, it ends up smelling like a urinal.

The people most happy about webOS being open source (the geeks, early adopters, developers and tinkerers) are its least qualified stewards if it’s to survive and flourish. Sorry, but you’re probably just going to ruin it for everyone. If you think Linux is a counterexample, ask your granny to use it for a day.

Can an open source webOS become a successful consumer OS for touch-screen devices? Absolutely. Will it? Signs, sadly, point to hell no.

Unfortunately, when you open-source an operating system, what you usually end up with is an open source operating system.

(Enjoyed this? I sound the same on Twitter.)

Google Currents

2011-12-09T14:20:00+00:00

A developer at Google got in touch with me today regarding Google Currents, a new app for both iOS and Android devices that offers a curated, formatted reading experience for the content you care about. I’m enjoying using the app, and I thought you might be interested in a brief overview.

Google Currents is US-only at time of writing (9th December, 2011), but hopefully we’ll see a wider roll-out soon. I was offered a build of the app to try, and you can get it on the App Store if you have a US iTunes account. Android users, you’ll want to grab it on the Android Market.

I’ve chosen to use iPhone screenshots here, because I think it’s harder to make content truly readable and browsable on smaller screens. Currents does a decent job of it. I’ve also chosen landscape orientation, since I prefer reading long-form text in landscape on my phone, and most of the other online coverage of Currents has chosen to show only portrait-orientation screenshots.

The Library, listing the Editions you subscribe to.

Currents calls content-sources “Editions”, and the Library screen lists them. There are more than shown above by default; I’ve removed some. You can tap the “+” proxy-edition to add more, with a pre-made list of many possible recommended sources split into categories. If you use Google Reader, all of your feeds will also be available to choose from (you sign into your Google Account when first launching Currents).

My blog, along with Daring Fireball and those of my fellow Read & Trust members, was used as a test Edition during development of Currents.

The Trending section of the main screen.

Trending is the second half of the main screen, after your own Library of Editions (sources). This section lists trending topics regardless of whether their source is in your Library. They behave slightly different from regular Editions since they’re an aggregate of stories on a given topic, as shown in the next screenshot.

The details screen for a trending topic.

Each trending topic has a screen like this. The Stories section obviously contains all the recent stories which give rise to this topic being considered to be trending. User Generated seems to focus on media surrounding a topic, and the About section seems to be an auto-search of factual information pertaining to the given topic (often Wikipedia articles, official sites where relevant, and such).

The primary screen for a given Edition.

This is the screen for an Edition, showing a list of all stories from this source. The display differs on larger-screen devices, having a much more magazine-like layout. Thankfully, they didn’t try to do that on a small iPhone screen, and stuck with a pleasingly clean and readable list.

Reading a story - beginning.

This is the beginning of an article I’ve tapped to read. The numbered page-control dots fill in as the article loads in the background; you can start reading immediately.

The buttons along the bottom are, from left:

Return to the Edition (source) page (which presents all stories for this source)
Show the story-selection popover (screenshot below)
Return Home (to the Library/Trending screen)
Share (via Google+, email, Instapaper, Pinboard, Tumblr, Facebook, or Twitter)
Jump to the next story

Reading a story - middle.

Mid-way through a story. There’s no vertical scrolling; it’s strictly horizontal. There’s no page-flip effect - the display just slides horizontally in a quick animation. Embedded images are centred, and links are highlighted with colour (and will open within a full-screen embedded browser if tapped).

The story-selection sidebar.

You can pick an arbitrary story from the current edition (i.e. site or blog) to read, or you can just page through them in order with the ‘next’ button at bottom-right. When any pop-over is visible (such as this sidebar, or the sharing pop-over), the remainder of the display is darkened to remove visual focus from it.

I’m pretty impressed with Google Currents; it’s a solid 1.0 release. It focuses on being a visually-pleasing way to read the content you’re specifically interested in from the web, rather than taking Flipboard’s approach of letting others (at least in part) determine what content you see.

The aesthetic is quiet and calm, and it does just enough with trending topics to ensure you always have something to read without feeling that your own selected content is being intruded upon.

If you’re a fan of curated content consumption mechanisms such as Flipboard and feed readers, and you appreciate legible, humane formatting of web content as provided by Safari Reader or Instapaper, you might want to give it a try (and if you’d like to share your thoughts, I’m @mattgemmell on Twitter.)

Footnote: If you’re the author of a blog or other site, you can exercise additional control over how Currents presents your content by signing into Google’s Producer publishing tool (at time of writing, via the Google Chrome web browser only).