• It’s half as light? Doesn’t that mean its heavier? [regarding the weight of the new iPod Nano, ed.]
• No drive based iPods? Really screams for some cloud.
• Funny how the name Ping doesn’t really suck, but Bing still does.
• Ugh, more status updates. #irony
• I wonder how many will sign up for Ping simply to be able to follow Steve and his toilet status updates sent from his iPad.
• Poopin’. Sent from my iPad.
• A social network that only works in iTunes? It’ll be like visiting a Genius Bar. Tiresome and niche.
• “The day they come out on DVD”? HD content? He just doesn’t want to say Blu-Ray.
• Funny how in Apple UI design, “jiggle” means “rearrange”. There’s a boob joke hidden in there, somewhere.

Last nights Apple Event commentary appeared on Noscope on September 2, 2010.

Song of the day: In The Year 2525 appeared on Noscope on August 30, 2010.

Eye Dropper is my new favourite Google Chrome extension appeared on Noscope on August 25, 2010.

Is Google Discouraging Paid Android Apps?

The cynical view: Google prefers free Android apps over paid ones, because free apps try to make money through ads, and Google serves nearly all the in-app ads for Android apps.

Which, of course, I find ludicrous. But good friend Jonas Rabbe asked the more appropriate question: “why do YOU think that Google has not been able to roll out the full features of the market yet?”

For posterity, I’m going to store my answer here:

Let me start by saying that as an Android fan, the fact that I can’t yet buy apps without rooting my phone is an embarrassment.

So, why do I think its not yet possible? Its a real good question, and I have a few theories.

Since I have in fact rooted my phone, I have bought apps, and it works quite nicely. So the tech is there. Which leads me to believe that the lack of paid apps is either bogged by non tech issues, or intentional.

Non tech issues could be the rollout of Google Checkout, which is the only way to buy apps at the moment. Google Checkout, incidentally, is not in Denmark yet, and I presume not in a number of those other countries either. Perhaps Checkout is complex, perhaps its slowed by legal issues. Nonetheless, there may be a connection. Credence to this theory is lent by the recent rumor that PayPal is soon coming. Maybe in a desperate attempt to get paid apps everywhere.

The other theory I have is related to hardware and OS fragmentation, and the fact that there really aren’t many really great apps or games yet. I’m speculating that Google may be building the equivalent to DirectX for Android, a unified driver layer that’ll make it easier for developers to build good apps. Perhaps they’re postponing the worldwide rollout until good apps are possible.

A Theory On Why Only 13 Countries Have Access To Paid Apps In The Android Market appeared on Noscope on August 20, 2010.

[...] we decided to partner with a major broadband provider on the best policy solution we could devise together. We’re not saying this solution is perfect, but we believe that a proposal that locks in key enforceable protections for consumers is preferable to no protection at all.

I don’t know. I still think the US was better off before. Google may not be selling out, but it sure looks like they’re copping out.

Official Google Blog: Facts about our network neutrality policy proposal appeared on Noscope on August 12, 2010.

Incidentally, I think it’s an absolutely delightful device, and I can certainly understand why it sells so well. It brings the boons of computing to the masses in a way computers haven’t been able to for decades.

There’s more to it, of course. And I’m not “won over” by any stretch of the imagination.

What’s good

The UI. Apple knows its UI, and everything slides and flows in a very smooth fashion. The overshoot of homescreens, lists and zooms is silky smooth. Things very rarely feel slow, and the computer reacts to your input. I believe this is the highest praise I can give of this device, and for the vast majority, this will not only be the iPads selling point, it’ll be its killer app.

On top of that, battery life is nice. I’m not as impressed by it as everyone else seems to be, but then I remembered this is a sufficiently backlit screen that runs Plants Vs. Zombies.

The build finish is also worth mentioning in the “What’s good” list. Certainly the thing feels sturdy.

I like that iBooks syncs your bookmarks, and that you can download podcasts and video podcasts directly from iTunes on the device. But that’s about all the praise I’m going to give the iPads sync features.

What’s bad

Prior to engaging in this list of issues I have with the iPad, I ran in to colleagues who fiercely defend the iPad and what seems like every aspect of its ecosystem. As I told them, I’m going to tell you: these are my issues with it. If my praise above doesn’t make it clear that this is a nice device, then let its sales numbers speak for themselves. People like the iPad. I have issues with it. These are issues that can be fixed. Thats’ why I’m writing them here.

One of my issues with the iPad, is likely to be liked by someone else. The iPad weighs too much. There’s no doubt it’s the carved aluminum/unicorn-horn alloy that bogs this thing down, but for what’s essentially a 10 inch slate, this thing is surprisingly heavy. Which I’m reminded of every time I pick up the device in one hand to browse the web. There’s been a lot of talk about the iPad being an Amazon Kindle killer, and I’ve always defended the Kindle for its insane battery life and its non-backlit easy-on-the-eyes E-ink screen. Today, I’m adding weight to the reason why the iPad is not going to be a Kindle killer. One reason to buy an e-book reader, is for invalid or elderly people to be able to read in bed, without having to turn pages or have to lift the weight of Postwar.

Which brings me to the grip. This thing is slippery, and I find, hard to hold in one hand. Sure, the gorgeous black bezel is large upon first glance, but if you want to hold this thing and not drop it, your finger will impose on the screen. Which is rarely a problem due to multi-touch, but which is sometimes a problem. Remember how iPhones used to be plastic? I’m thinking I’d like a tablet in plastic — the rubbery kind you’ll find on Nexus One or HTC Desire phones.

In smaller issues, the onscreen keyboard (which is otherwise excellent), shows no visible difference between lower-case and upper-case letters, when you press shift. Another issue is the speaker and the rather low volume it lets you play at.

Another thing, coming from a not so well-working Android Market, where in Europe we don’t even have access to paid apps yet, I had high expectations for the iPad App Store. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I found the App Store underwhelming. The search feature is near useless, as I can’t search in categories or types. For instance, let’s say I’d search for a free iPad solitaire game. Had this been the Steam app store, I’d be able to check a box called “iPad”, a box called “free” or “below $3″, and I could search in “Card games”.

Additionally, the toplist columns are slow to load, and they aren’t persistent. Let’s say I click “more” beneath the top paid apps column, and at item #43 I find an app I want to read more about. I click that link, but when I click “back”, the top paid apps column has collapsed back in on itself. Finally there’s the “Install” button. Which is to say, there isn’t one. There’s a price button, or a free button, neither of which looks like a button, and when pressed once, turns into a “buy” or “install” button. Paging Jakob Nielsen?

As I have alluded to earlier, I really have a problem with iTunes. I find it extremely annoying that you have to go through this app to manage files on your device, when the thing should simply sync automatically and transparently. But the lack of wifi sync in music and files, it’s something I could live with, if it wasn’t for the fact that you have to have another computer for this device to work. The first thing you see when you turn on an iPad is an animated symbol that tells you to plug it in to a computer running iTunes. What? So you’re saying I can’t buy an iPad for a kid that doesn’t have another computer already? Seriously, what? I know Apple calls this a “companion device”, but in my book it’s a serious black stain on the otherwise pretty chrome finish.

Finally, this brings me to the lack of Over The Air (OTA) updates. You may have heard of a number of Android devices getting Android 2.2 over the last few weeks — these were OTA updates. Which means one day when you turn on the phone, there’s a message that says “There’s s system update. Please plug your device to a power outlet, and install”. What proceeds is a download, a reboot, an install icon on your screen, and your device is updated. This is the way the iPad should be updated, and not just for convenience, but for security reasons as well. Have you heard about the recent PDF exploit on iOS devices? I assure you a number of iPad customers haven’t. If a fragment of those don’t use iTunes on a regular basis, they’ll be open to these security exploits.

Apple iPad Observations From A Skeptic Who Got One For Free appeared on Noscope on August 11, 2010.

Well it’s not all polished and pretty. Some apps, while they may be superbly built and infinitely useful, their icons aren’t very pretty. Perhaps the developers simply didn’t find the icon important, perhaps they lacked the resources to give an icon the attention it deserves. The result may be an app that doesn’t look as pretty as it is useful.

Here’s an idea: those of you who possess the time and skills to build a proper icon for your aesthetically orphaned but still favourite app — why not actually make that icon and offer it to the developer for free? In fact, why not have a central website, called “The Icons For Developers Program”, where designers can submit icon replacements to developers? Hell, why not let developers put out their own requests for icons? It should all be free in the name of pretty.

Has this already been done? Could it be useful, or would it simply fullfill a niche desire? Your thoughts are welcome.

Here’s An Idea: The Icons For Developers Program appeared on Noscope on August 9, 2010.

The SugarSync Alternative With Increased Referral Quota appeared on Noscope on August 7, 2010.

Cobb, unable to be with his kids, gets one final chance to return to them as the reward for doing inception, which — as opposed to extraction — means planting an idea, instead of stealing one.

Christopher Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins), has made an extremely interesting movie worth discussing. Which I can’t do without spoiling it. Which is why you should stop reading, if you haven’t already seen the film.

What The Hell

Like all other recent movies, at 2,5 hours Inception is simply too long. Unlike The Dark Knight, however, it’s not way too long. No doubt this is due to the intensity of both the subject matter and the action on screen. You’ll be entertained for the duration, even if you don’t get what’s going on. Which brings me to the crux of this review.

This film is complex. And I don’t mean complex like installing iTunes on Windows without the bloatware. I mean complex like trying to solve a 50x50x50 Rubiks cube blindfolded. There’s layer upon layer upon layer of intentional confusion. So much that it becomes clear in hindsight that Nolan wants to be ambiguous. It’s likely you’ll leave the theater not knowing exactly what happened.

Which is what I want to give a shot at explaining. Second spoiler warning.

Planting An Idea

We learn at one point, that planting an idea in someones mind, is like a planting a virus. This idea can grow and grow until it defines your life. We learn at the end that Cobb planted an idea in his own wife, the idea that you can’t be sure the world is real. Well the idea grew in his wife until she killed herself, thinking she’d wake up. The idea came to also define Cobbs life, as it left him maniacally checking his spinning top for proof that he’s awake (if it spins eternally it means he’s dreaming). Letting go of this doubt becomes the subtext of the film and comes to fruition right at the end, where Cobb — returned to his kids — starts the top spinning. Before verifying whether he’s in a dream or not, his kids distract him, and as he walks towards them, he walks away from the still-spinning top. As the film cuts to black before we see the top fall over, the audience is left wondering whether he was really dreaming or not. All we know for sure is that Cobb did learn to let go. His journey is complete. Whether he’s dreaming or not.

This is where Nolan really bugs me. He could have easily made the ending less ambiguous. He even dropped hints — mindtraps — early on that started me down a completely different path.

Remember when Ken Watanabes character says the word “Inception” the first time? I thought I had it there; that Leos character was in fact dreaming… that the inception was actually targeted at Cobb. Perhaps he’s stuck in Limbo and his real world wife and kids were trying to wake him up — the entire film being a metaphor for saving Cobb from Limbo.

Incidentally, I don’t think Cobb was dreaming. The kids wore sligthly different clothes, and looked a tad older.

The bottomline is, Nolan really bugged me with this one, but even so, the watchability and craftmanship of this film is undeniable. The music is good, the effects are unquestionably real-looking, and the acting is superb. Even though I want to, I can’t get myself to give this annoying film a bad rating. Inception is mindboggling.

Watchability: ♥♥♥♥♥

Craftmanship: ♥♥♥♥♥♥

Overall: ♥♥♥♥♥

Inception (2010) Mini-Review appeared on Noscope on August 6, 2010.

Flickorna In Småland appeared on Noscope on August 5, 2010.

Here’s the spare parts I want them to migrate from Wave to Google Docs, Gmail and wherever else appropriate:

• The silky smooth drag and drop to upload images into docs and emails
• The live typing in shared docs
• The super easy sharing of waves to docs
• The embeddability of docs and spreadsheets and whatnot

Wave kan take its scrollbars with it to the grave, however.

In Memoriam, Google Wave: Here’s The Tech I Want Them To Migrate appeared on Noscope on August 5, 2010.

We’ll probably not get one next month, but I now believe we will get one eventually. For two reasons.

My current homescreen.

Development

The first reason is that, as an OS maker with an increasingly popular offering, slated (get it?) to soon appear on tablets and televisions, Google will occasionally need updated hardware to internally develop and test for. This was the case with the G1, it’s the case with the N1, and it will be the case with the N2. Probably come Android 3.0 this fall.

Skin Discouragement

The second reason is related to so-called Android “skins”. I’m preparing a larger article on Android skins and the scourge they represent, suffice to say, there’s no such thing as “just an Android skin”.

The point is, there’s a reason for Apples success. It’s the holistic approach to a unified, singularly consistent and polished experience.

Since I bought an HTC Desire, I got some serious time with HTC Sense. Enough for me to root my phone and install a stock Froyo ROM in disgust. Sense may be polished, but it’s not consistent, user-friendly or thought through in the way the N1 is. And I can say that with some confidence as the ROM I’ve installed is pretty much the N1 experience.

So, Google gets it. Apple gets it. Apparently, HTC, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson don’t get it. These dinosaurs clearly have OS envy, which makes them unlikely to discontinue their misguided reskinning efforts in favor of Google Experience phones. Which is why — in efforts to stall this fragmentation — Google will have to lead the Android 3 charge with new hardware that demonstrates what Android is at its best.

This Fall

The bottomline is, Android is facing a serious challenge with the fragmentation. Android is not just an application platform, it’s an experience, and right now Android vendors are showing a surprising incompetence by diluting this.

There’s no doubt Androids success is its openness, and the abillity for Motorola to feel like they own what’s on their phones. But this very openness is what allows them to bundle an uninstallable demo of Need For Speed Shift on the Droid X, or HTC to switch out the stock Contacts app with one that misses the point entirely. Android is a great operating system, make no mistake, and Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Sky Map and all the other fantastic Android apps will run fine on phones riddled with “Moto Blur”, “HTC Sense” or “Samsung TouchWiz”. But the Android experience, the one that has a shot at surpassing the iPhone experience, is riddled with holes. Which is why, if 3rd party vendors can’t make proper Android phones — and I’d argue we have only the Nexus One and the Motorola DROID as proper Android phones — Google will have to do it themselves.

Why I Now Believe There Will Eventually Be A Google Nexus Two appeared on Noscope on August 3, 2010.

Song of the Day: Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – Moon River appeared on Noscope on August 2, 2010.

The item in question here is HTCs Sense-branded lock screen for their Android devices such as HTC Desire and HTC Legend:

The lock-screen is activated every time you put the device to sleep by clicking the power button. The next time you wake it up, the lock screen is there, waiting for your finger to swipe that grayish handle downwards, ensuring that it isn’t accidentally woken up while in your pocket. Incidentally, that’s exactly what happens.

Vanilla Android – or Google Experience devices (Moto Droid, Nexus One), as well as the iPhone, have lock screens which require you to swipe horizontally, and for some distance as opposed to the meagre centimetre which unlocks HTCs screen. On those devices, the chance that you accidentally wake up and unlock your phone in your pocket is all but non-existant, whereas it’s now happened three times on my HTC Desire. The only solution I’ve found, short of re-flashing the phone with Vanilla Android, is to enable Androids unlock pattern, for an extra layer of pocket protection.

I’m thrilled with Android, and I like the HTC Desire hardware. It is, however, becoming very clear to me that custom UIs is the scourge of Android, and HTCs Sense isn’t all you’ve heard it was. In fact, it’s not sensible at all.

The Travesty That Is The HTC Sense Lock Screen appeared on Noscope on July 16, 2010.

An old Chinese mandarin, during the minority of the young Emperor, had been governing the country for him. When the Emperor came of age the old man gave him back the ring which had served as emblem of his vicariate, and said to his young sovereign: “In this ring I have set an inscription which your dear Majesty may find useful. It is to be read in times of danger, doubt and defeat. It is to be read, as well, in times of conquest, triumph and glory.” The inscription in the ring read: “This, too, will pass.” The sentence is not to be taken to mean that, in their passing, tears and laughter, hopes and disappointments disappear into a void. But it tells you that all will be absorbed into a unity. Soon we shall see them as integral parts of the full picture of the man or woman.

When I remind myself this story, or tell it to friends in need, I usually go to great lengths to expand the story, elaborating the years it took to research this statement and how the final answer — wrapped in an envelope to only be opened in dire need — was only opened the day the emperor was chased up a hill by a raging mob. This too, shall pass, is ever true, no matter the situation.

This Too Shall Pass appeared on Noscope on July 15, 2010.

Click to embiggen.

Some observations:

• Firefox really feels faster than 3. It starts so much faster, and is generally more responsive. It’s not Chrome or Opera fast, but it’s way faster than Firefox old.
• The new theme has the benefit that, when maximized on Windows, the Firefox button actually DOES grab the top left pixel of the screen. In Chrome, that pixel is still reserved for the oldschool Windows icon menu.
• Alas, it seems the fullscreen “tab moves to the top” feature which we got a blurry look of a few weeks ago, hasn’t yet been implemented. I expect it to, though.
• With the addition of the Firefox button, menus now feel even more obsolete.

A Look At Firefox 4 Beta 1 appeared on Noscope on July 7, 2010.

Steve Jobs has created his own precious little walled garden. He’s looking more and more like Howard Hughes, holed up in his penthouse, making sure he doesn’t come in contact with any germs.

Sayonara, iPhone: Why I’m Switching to Android appeared on Noscope on July 3, 2010.

jQuery for Designers appeared on Noscope on July 3, 2010.

That said, for layman, HTML5 is really about the browser finally getting some much needed features such as built-in video support and advanced CSS compliance. Which means HTML5 will not kill Flash until you switch from Internet Explorer to any other browser.

This Is What HTML5 Is appeared on Noscope on July 3, 2010.

The God Debate: Hitchens vs. D’Souza appeared on Noscope on July 3, 2010.

It’s been barely six months since their last album, and here we go again. Kent’s new album, “En Plats I Solen” (a spot in the sun), is absolutely awesome.

The dansable electro-synth-trend that started with their 2007 Tillbaka till Samtiden album has subtly continued towards the sound of New Order and as a whole towards a softer, polished summer-themed sound, which make the title all the more appropriate. As usual, the level of polish is astounding and the production value through the roof. If you like New Kent, you’ll love this album. If you don’t like New Kent, I’m here to inform you that Isola and Hagnesta Hill albums haven’t disappeared and they’re still as good as ever.

Unlike the last album Röd, it doesn’t seem like Kent have tried making two songs in one, making this album far easier to listen to. Each song flows in to the next. If I were to pick out one song which is emblematic of the new album, it’s Ensam Lång Väg Hem which you can listen to as long as it stays on Grooveshark. Incidentally, this is my favourite song at the moment.

I find it mindboggling that Kent, only six months after their last album, can pull this rabbit out of a hat. Either the band is on a roll, or the story that floated around the Isola/Hagnesta Hill era are true; as it was told, singer/songwriter Joakim Berg wrote 30+ songs per album, only picking out a third or half for the album, some being released as B-sides, the rest disappearing to the ether. Perhaps he did this for Röd, and instead of releasing the pieces that didn’t make it to that album as B-sides, collected them and added them to this album. Good thing he did, because it’s a masterpiece.

Kent – En Plats I Solen (2010) Mini-Review appeared on Noscope on July 1, 2010.

New Details On Chrome OS appeared on Noscope on June 26, 2010.

Of course only Windows gets this benefit, since both Ubuntu and OSX have a menu there.

Firefox 4 Maximized, First Blurry Look appeared on Noscope on June 25, 2010.

Seeing friends fight it out on Twitter. Over whether Android or Apple iOS is better, whether it’s okay for Jobs to kill Flash, whether it’s okay for Google to make mean jokes about Apple. Can’t we all just get along?

I don’t want us to agree to disagree. But I want us to not fight, also. Let’s see what we agree on:

• Things were nicer when Google and Apple were friends
• We both don’t like Microsoft
• Competition is healthy for every platform

Right? See, friendships forming all around. Eyes tearing up yet? Let’s see if we can be friends some more…

What Google does well; like those of Christina Hendricks, their boons are undeniable:

• Search
• Sync
• Free / open

What Apple does well is also clear as industrial touch-screen glass:

• Polish
• Fit & finish
• Simple

Those of us who pick Android devices prefer the first three dots, those of you who pick iPhone prefer the second three dots. Imagine if we didn’t have to pick a camp?

The Apple/Google Let’s All Be Friends Posts appeared on Noscope on June 23, 2010.

So what of webdesign in five years? Will it exist as it does today, or will it drown in an app based web which wraps every content item into viewer into viewer, turtles all the way down?

If more and more websites are read through these web-goggles, here’s a few wild guesses as to what it’ll all mean:

• Likely, RSS feeds will get its content designed, things such as ads, logos and copyright notices included in each item. Maybe even even colors and font sizes will be tweaked
• Websites will primarily serve to advertise their RSS feed, and subscribing will be sponsored by Amazon 1-Click
• Way more RSS feeds will become excerpt-only
• Blog comments will continue their death spiral and their move towards social media

The focus of this speculation is whether traditional webdesign will have a place in the future, so please omit web-app websites like Gmail or Google Docs from these criteria.

Steve & Rupert, Sitting In A Tree

Apples vision is that of an app-based web. Large media companies that can afford iOS apps, will get their content wrapped in a distributable container. They can put a price tag or even a paywall on these apps and the content is usually presented in a fashion that is more “delicious” than “just a website”. Which when put this way, appeals to control freaks like Rupert Murdoch. The situation is that small individual websites like this one, maybe even yours, may be slowly dying as an editorially tailored, individual news stream. It’s easy to worry that in the future, all a website will be is a content teaser and a large subscribe button. Or a suggestion in an app-based feed-reader, where once subscribed, all visual distinction will be exorcised. Like the web killed newspapers and iTunes killed the album, so Google Reader killed the blog. This house is clear.

I don’t think the app-based web is the future of the internet. Wrapping your web-accessible content into something that has to pass through the App Store to end users is a fad, inspired by the joy it is to use a well-designed iPhone app. It’s also artificial respiration for Ruperts vision of control. In my mind, it’s only a matter of time before executives and recent iPhone switchers stop yelling “we need an iPhone app” — wait, maybe not — but it is only a matter of time before end users will avoid these non-apps like the plague. What will survive the age of enlightenment, are feed-readers, even ones that take your content and present it in book-like, newspaper-like or even magazine-like fashion. Ultra-personalized, tactile, Minority Report-esque, flying, folding, flipping rotating throbbing super feed readers.

The Consequence For Webdesign

I like a pretty weblog. I spend a profuse amount of time designing my own websites, not to mention client sites. It’s a joy to look at a content-well that’s well-crafted and put-together. My worry is that the designed website is going the way of the dodo, in favor of something that has to be “installed”.

At the same time, I like the idea of the personal news-stream. Using my Google Reader and staying inside it, I’m instrumental in making this change happen. I also don’t bookmark websites anymore, or type in web-addresses. If I visit a website, it’ll be the odd situation when I step out of my reader, or visit a link you sent me. As much as I love it, I smell death on your lovingly crafted blog.

In one future that is forming, we search, and we use web-apps that have prominent app-like bookmarks. We read sock-off-knocking personal news-streams, and in this future, the RSS standard has been elaborated upon in a fashion that allows a modicum of interactivity and customization. It’s a future where a feedreader called “Duper Reader” combines RSS with HTML5, CSS, Javascript and extensions, and some of your design will survive its stripping and aggregation powers.

The Earth-Two Personal Website, Where URLs Survived The Great Purge

In another future, we still do type in web-addresses. In this one, the blog you spent time designing has a shot, and it doesn’t involve you excerpting your feeds. In this future, your well-written blog which features real content and not “song of the day” or “latest lol-cat”, will be visited outside of feed-readers. These websites work as they do today: users might star or favourite an item in your reader and then actually visit the website to discuss it with the author.

Depending on which future you believe in, what you want to do is ask yourself: do I care enough about my webdesign, that I want to give people reason to leave their feedreaders?

If the answer is no, then do the following:

• Love the reader. Screw your design. Use a service that makes it incredibly fast to post, like Tumbleblog, Posterous or Buzz.
• Make sure your RSS feed icon is large and super well advertised on your website.
• You absolutely must provide a full-text feed.
• If you want to monetize, put … gasp … ads in your RSS feed items.

If you can answer yes, then do the following:

• Write well.
• Provide means to share your columns.
• Put effort in your webdesign and set yourself the goal of out-designing the feed reader: your design has to be at least as easy and preferably more comfortable to read than an RSS item. Trust me that this is no trivial task. It involves font sizes, paragraph styles, column widths, and lack of text shadows.
• Find an app-based website you like. NY Times or Jamie Olivers iPhone apps, perhaps. Study them. Then grow the skills it requires to translate these reading paradigms to your website. I’ve seen what you can do in HTML5 and JavaScript. Leverage this to make a delicious, quick-loading, tactile reading experience, where the page jogs that are usually associated with loading webpages are minimal.

I sense it in the water; a purge is coming. If you can manage to build a great website before then, your website will survive feed-reader obscurity. If you cannot, embrace the reader.

Countering The App-Based Web appeared on Noscope on June 22, 2010.

Kent’s New 2010 Single appeared on Noscope on June 21, 2010.

There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, (and) science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.

“Religion will be defeated by science” appeared on Noscope on June 21, 2010.

You may click to embiggen.

Some quick thoughts:

• We should keep in mind these are mockups. There’s a very good chance not all these three images are updated with all the latest decisions being made at Mozilla. For instance, the “Page” and “Tools” buttons present on the Linux screenshot seem to have taken the back seat to the App button.
• Which is interesting because it’s one button, something Chrome is also moving towards.
• The App button isn’t present on the Mac. Perhaps that’s because the File menu is there anyway?
• The Linux screenshot has an early mockup of the Mozilla identity manager which promises to sign you in to websites for you.
• It’s both interesting and sad to think how much time was spent making sure Firefox 3 fit each individual platform  in icon style, when clearly the icons are more minimalistic (and therefore automatically cross-platform) today.
• I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: tabs should be on top. It’ll be interesting to see whether Safari gets with the program, or whether we’ll see iOS  and Android overtake desktops with their new interface paradigm before that happens.
• The general interface layout of browsers, these days, seems to be very Chrome and Opera 10. Yet this is still visually very much Firefox with its keyhole back/forward and square tabs. Subtle, great design work here.

Despite the great work that’s going on here, I’m really kind of sad that Chrome will most likely remain my main browser come Firefox 4.

Firefox 4 Mockups, Linux, Windows & Mac (Quick Thoughts) appeared on Noscope on June 21, 2010.

Smokescreen is a new open-source project aimed at converting Flash to JavaScript/HTML5 to run where it previously couldn’t and better interoperate with webpages where it previously could.

With Smokescreen you can reach new platforms without learning any new tools; your Flash is automatically converted to JavaScript/HTML5.

Smokescreen Real-Time Converts Flash To HTML5 appeared on Noscope on June 2, 2010.

Play it at http://www.supermariobrothers.org/

Super Mario Bros. X appeared on Noscope on June 1, 2010.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Googles Chrome browser. Which is why I followed Google’s instructions on enabling web-apps in the newest dev builds of Chrome. Here’s what I found out:

• Making a Chrome web-app is as simple bundling a  few icons with a URL in a .js file. Which incidentally is also how you build Chrome extensions.
• The bundling of icons with the .crx web-app bundle solves the problem of small 16×16 favicons doubling as launch icons. This is clearly more elegant than the stylized 8-bit converted favicon approach Mozilla experimented with for Prism back in the day.
• One immediate benefit of using Chrome web-apps is that once you’ve clicked “Install” on a web-app, you’ve automatically given it all the permissions it needs, such as access to notifications, geolocation and local storage.
• Installed web-apps show up on your new tab page. As seen above.
• When you open a web-app, it shows up as something other than a pinned tab. The design argument is for it to look distinct from your tabs, which you’re likely to have a lot of.
• When you click a web-app tab, the entire addressbar including navigation buttons and even the extension shelf, are hidden, maximizing the available real-estate.

For those worrying about Chrome web-apps not being “open”, it’s worth noting that as of this version of Chrome, all a web-app consists of is a URL. Just look at this code sample:

{
  "name": "Gmail",
  "version": "3",
  "icons": { "24": "24.png", "128": "128.png" },
  "launch": {
    "web_url": "https://mail.google.com/"
  },
  "permissions": ["notifications"],
  "web_content": {
    "enabled": true,
    "origin": "https://mail.google.com/"
  }
}

This is still a very early look at Chrome web-apps, but I can see it working, if nothing else then for the fact that it’s so easy to create a Chrome web-app. So yeah, it may just be a super-bookmark, but it’s so convenient. Imagine a Twitter for Chrome web-app. You click “Install”, and it’s there on your browsers new tab page, synced to your Google account, and it’s got geolocation and notification permissions without any extra clicks.

An Early Look At Google Chrome Web-Apps appeared on Noscope on May 30, 2010.

Posters appeared on Noscope on May 29, 2010.

Teenage Fanclub: Shadows appeared on Noscope on May 28, 2010.

One thing I’ve never understood about the iPhone and iPad is its reliance on a Mac or PC to sync data. With Android, you enter your Google account credentials and it will fetch all of your data. With the iPhone, you can do this with a MobileMe account but that’s another $99 a year. It gets better with Android’s 2.2/Froyo release. Google will not only sync your email, contact and calendar information, but also third-party application data so whenever you switch phones it will automatically pull your data from the cloud.

Very accurate.

From iPhone to Android appeared on Noscope on May 28, 2010.

Among the bleeding-edge hipsters that read this blog, Google Buzz isn’t doing so well. It had a strong launch, but was scorned after only a few days, not only due to its privacy issues (which have fortunately been fixed tenfold). The invisible consensus seems to be that this has given Buzz an early grave, and there’s really nothing more to come back for. Which I genuinely disagree with. Buzz just has to find its place, and where it’s useful. Here are a few ways to fix Google Buzz

1. Realize that Buzz can never be Twitter and stop the automatic Twitter integration

If you have a Twitter account and a Gmail account, chances are your Buzz was automatically hooked up to receive all your tweets. This is ridiculous and should be turned off, not only by you, but by default. Here’s why.

Twitter has succeeded because of its minimalistic, slimmed down approach to status updates, not in spite of it. Buzz is not better than Twitter because it adds media and conversations to the mix; it’s something different. And because it’s something different, tweets that are crossposted to Buzz are useless. Because they are tweets, they are meant for the flowing loop that you sometimes want to be in. They have no images, they have no media, they are just shouts at the sky that someone may pick up. Buzz isn’t.

Google ToDo:

• Turn off Twitter integration by default
• Make it easy for users to filter out others Buzz integrated tweets

2. Separate Buzz from Gmail

The Gmail integration is a profound misunderstanding from Google. No doubt the integration was an attempt at giving Buzz that critical-mass boost such a service needs to succeed, but it’s clear if anything that this strategy hasn’t quite worked the way Google wanted it to.

So cut your losses and if you believe in Buzz, make it a separate service. Optional integration with services such as Gmail is alright, as long as we can turn it off. Buzz, however, should be a separate entity.

Google ToDo:

• Rejigger buzz.google.com to be the go-to URL from where Buzzes are posted and your followers explored.

3. Give me a memorable URL to my Buzz stream

Directly related to #2, part of making Buzz relevant means giving it a sharable location. Right now, you can follow my buzz at google.com/profiles/asmussen#buzz, the length of this URL speaking for itself. And when you get there, you get my Google Profile, of which my Buzz stream is a small part.

I’m not averse to Google profiles, I know their effect on search results (which is a different, interesting story). I don’t even mind my Buzz being shown there. But sharing links, images and stories is no fun if no-one is reading my shares, so naturally I want to make it easy to follow my Buzz.

So. Either pony up the dough to acquire buzz.com and give me asmussen.buzz.com, or buzz.com/asmussen. I’d even settle for buzz.google.com/asmussen. And while we’re at it, ditch the www, it’s so 2008.

Google ToDo:

• Clean up the Buzz URLs

4. Make it easier to follow me

Feel free to substitute “me” with “you”.

Have you noticed how there’s no “follow” button on my Buzz profile? Yeah, that’s an oddball decision. At first, Google made it too easy to follow people, by doing it for you. Now I’ve all but forgotten how it’s done.

Turns out, you do it in Gmail under the Buzz label by clicking “Find people”. One problem with this is that it’s all but impossible to see what this person has shared before following them.

Google ToDo:

• Make an inviting, soft, Follow button that’s easily visible on a Buzz profile

5. Build on the strengths of Buzz

Immediately on launch day, the strength of Buzz seemed to be the fact that you automatically had a huge bunch of followers among your contacts, and that you had already buzzed quite a bit since Buzz had connected to services it attributed to you and sucked out their contents. Now, I believe, that’s Buzz’ biggest weakness.

Related to #1, reading tweets in your Buzz stream is a waste of time at best, and confusing at worst. I’m not opposed to your ability to hook up your chat status, your Picasa, Flickr or YouTube streams, but it should be done in a way that makes it feel like it was meant for Buzz, not just an “oh by the way”, a lifestream or a backup system.

I now believe Buzz’ has a number of main strengths, which makes it more a Digg.com competitor than a Twitter alternative.

The good thing about Buzz, is that it’s

• easy to share things
• shared items are nicely layed out with readable text and pretty images or video to go with it
• a nice place to comment on stories, whether it be with your friends only, or the public as a whole

I’ve previously applauded the concise discussions that take place on Twitter. It keeps things fresh, and it’s now clear to me that the steady decline in blog comments has meant a steady increase in Twitter. This is all very good. Except that for some discussions, 140 characters doesn’t cut it. And that’s where Buzz has a shot.

Google ToDo:

• See points 1-4 and the pieces will fall in to place.

6. Give Google Reader a usability overhaul

Google Reader may have been the progenitor of Buzz, in that you could share things with friends, follow people, and comment on stories.

Now that Buzz is here, Google should decide the role of Google Reader. Either it should be

1. more integrated with Buzz, so that the overlap is clear and easy to grasp (which I think is a hard task)
2. less integrated with Buzz, so that all Google Reader does is post to your Buzz account

I’m personally a fan of the second option. Which means removing all social aspects of Google Reader, and working them into Buzz instead.

The result would be a Google Reader which is a feed-reader with the ability to post stuff to your Buzz stream.

Google ToDo:

• remove follow, unfollow and block features from Google Reader
• let the only remaining social features be “Share” and “Share with Note”, which posts to Buzz.

7. Iterate

Aside from the larger issues, there are a number of smaller issues to add to Googles Buzz ToDo, things that would trim and tweak the overall experience. Things such as:

• make it easier to integrate feeds
• make it easier to permalink to individual buzz posts.
• make buzz posts, optionally with comments, embeddable
• make it easy for me to create a “comment on Buzz” button on my website, so that I can finally turn off my blog comments

Coming Soon To A Blog Near You

I consider these bulletpoints to be rather straight-forward and even easy fixes for Google to integrate. Frankly, they’re not even novel ideas, they’re features one would assume Buzz to have launched with anyway. Which begs the question if Google omitted these tweaks on purpose.

I don’t think they did. It’s always hard building new products like this. I’m sure Google wanted to genuinely innovate in this spot. Failing to do so, they should make it work. Which I believe it can.

7 Ways To Fix Google Buzz appeared on Noscope on May 27, 2010.

Today Is A Perfect Day To Chase Tornadoes appeared on Noscope on May 27, 2010.

Google Font Directory appeared on Noscope on May 19, 2010.

Thoughts:

• They demoed Plants vs. Zombies. Which tells me the first Chrome OS hardware release will be a tablet, not a netbook.
• Interestingly, Plants vs. Zombies was built in Flash, which kinda explains why Google chose to integrate the Flash Player in Chrome.
• A Unity app was also demoed. Does that mean a Unity plugin is about to be included in Chrome?
• So maybe Google realises their Chrome OS HTML5/JavaScript strategy may be a few years in the future, so they’re using Flash and Unity as transitory technologies for web-apps.
• It’ll be interesting to see if the Chrome web-store will work in browsers other than Chrome. My guess is: yes.

Chrome Webstore appeared on Noscope on May 19, 2010.

Some quick thoughts and notes:

• YouTube is converting all its video to the WebM codec, starting with 720p video. You can opt in to the beta HTML5 version of YouTube today, and play the videos using Google Chrome dev channel.
• So H.264 is “patent encumbered”, WebM is not. Which is why this is a big deal.
• Microsoft previously announced they’ll only support H.264 in Internet Explorer 9. With Opera, Chrome and Firefox supporting WebM, IE is further digging into irrelevance unless they adopt this.
• The interesting thing is whether Safari will adopt WebM. My bet is they will, eventually.

VP8 Video Codec Rebranded WebM, Also Open Sourced appeared on Noscope on May 19, 2010.

Launched yesterday is a brand-spanking new-material-laden WordPress website for Limbo, an artistic, sidescrolling platformer. Limbo is engineered by Copenhagen-based Playdead Games which I’m proud to call my neighbours. As you can see from the screenshot above, the game is absolutely gorgeous, and it’s even better-looking when it’s moving, so you should definately check out the newest trailer on the website, and this gameplay footage from Gametrailers.com.

Limbo appeared on Noscope on May 12, 2010.

This Mess We're In appeared on Noscope on May 11, 2010.

It could work.

Embeddable Tweets appeared on Noscope on May 5, 2010.

Play Super Mario Bros. as Samus Aran, Mega Man, Link or other Nintendo 8-bit era characters. It’s absolutely awesome.

Super Mario Crossover 8-Bit-Gasm appeared on Noscope on April 29, 2010.

• The Live Wallpapers are useless (and, by the way, doesn’t include the pyramid-like Nexus One wallpaper)
• There are 5 homescreens by default, but is configurable up to 9
• The 3D app launcher see on the Nexus One is not included; there’s a plain app-drawer, and home screen indication fades in on slide and is not permanently visible
• There’s a Facebook app integrated, not that anyone wants to use that anymore
• The Cooliris-built Picasa-integrated 3D gallery included on the Nexus One is not present in this 2.1
• Google Earth is not yet available for Motorola Android 2.1, though I believe this is a switch Google has to flip
• Voice-to-text input everywhere is not present any more than it was before.

Overall, 2.1 feels sligthly snappier than previous versions, but with so much left on the cutting-floor, this is not the droid I was looking for.

Quick Thoughts On Android 2.1 For Motorola Milestone appeared on Noscope on April 29, 2010.

We've Got Rocks In Our Pockets, But Nothing's Gonna Slow Us Down appeared on Noscope on April 27, 2010.

Color Scheme Designer 3 is a web-app that helps you pick colors for your next webdesign project. It looks great!

Color Scheme Designer 3 appeared on Noscope on April 27, 2010.

Mockingbird, For Wireframes appeared on Noscope on April 22, 2010.

The Firefox 4 Download Manager appeared on Noscope on April 20, 2010.

Gorgeous Retro Concept Ships appeared on Noscope on April 20, 2010.

Our intent was to reference dimensionality without making the forms overtly three-dimensional. The pieces merely form a tangram and never overlap each other, using just the light and shadow to suggest form and depth. We wanted the results to be mostly unresolvable abstract shapes that played subtle tricks with the eyes.

The results look damn good:

Here’s more on the branding: An evolution of the designers toolbox.

The Adobe CS5 Branding appeared on Noscope on April 16, 2010.

A Tab Is Not Just A Tab

My good friend Chris called me on referring to Google Chromes tab design “unique” and “branding”:

@noscope It’s a tab. Of course that needs to be there. I don’t see what anyone could do to change that or, make it look brand specific.

Let’s look at Google Chrome at launch:

Google Chrome (development channel) today:

Aside from the addition of an extensions pane, we notice a number of changes:

• The frontmost tab and toolbar is now monochrome as opposed to bluish previously.
• The reload button is now integrated in the addressbar field, and the favourite star has been moved inside the addressbar.
• I can’t recall if the old version would show the site favicon also in the addressbar, but in the newest version you’ll see the favicon only on the tab.
• Did you notice the Google logo is gone?¹.

What’s interesting here, is what Google did not change. And that is what I would argue is the most important branding. The tab design and layout.

Tintins Silhuette

Comic artists have worked for decades to create unique silhuettes for easily identifiable characters. Here’s comic artist Hergés Tintin:

If they made a movie, do you think they’d leave out this silhuette?

Games do it. Team Fortress 2, notably:

In the same vein, for software, the wireframe is the silhuette of the application. Here’s Firefox 4s wireframe look:

Clearly, the wave in browser interface design is tabs on top and minimal UI to save space for web-apps. It must’ve been a challenge for the Firefox designers (good job, by the way) to revamp towards this norm yet keep Firefox branding intact. Looking at the wireframe, the standout Firefox branding is now the App button and the Home Tab. The back/forward “keyhole” design not present on this wireframe is also an important Firefox branding element.

Usability Is Not A Jackson Pollock Painting

The design of the Chrome interface may be grounded in a rethinking of the browser — webpages are apps, tabs are app buttons — but the unique tab design is not an accident. Look:

One of the above is a Windows app, the other is a standalone OS. Sure, it’s iconified, but it illustrates the uniqueness of the tabs. These images are from the Chromium project’s Visual Design article, which also gives the following explanation for the design:

While it doesn’t show through today, we drew early inspiration from The Designers Republic’s work on the then-Psygnosis games WipEout and WipEout 2097; the focus on blinding speed, and iconography that could be recognized instantly even in the depths of your peripheral vision were both key attributes we admired.

The word “branding” may be thrown around a lot, these days. But in the case of the mysterious Google  Chrome tabs, I would consider it appropriate.

1. There’s a chance it’s gone because this is the dev channel, and that it’s present in the stable channel — I cannot say because I’m running only the dev channel. But my guts say it’s gone for good

The Branding Of Google Chrome appeared on Noscope on April 16, 2010.

The red-hot iPad and iPhone makes it obvious that Boxee’s top priority is to get on the iPhone OS ASAP. However, Boxee showing consideration towards a new hire with Android experience shows that an Android app is not far behind. Don’t expect to see it any time soon, but all the people who listed a Boxee app among their wants can know that the prospects look a little better today than they did yesterday.

Seems like a good idea since Android is showing up in the oddest places, including — recently — in Televisions.

Boxee For Android appeared on Noscope on April 15, 2010.

WebKit2 is NOT a rewrite of the whole WebKit stack. Webcore will continue mostly unchanged, and all ports currently building on top of it will keep working. It is also not a fork – the code lives in the same tree as the current version of WebKit, which will allow us to progressively move towards using this new, improved layer. WebKit2 is not Apple-only, and it is not dropping Linux support. Initial builds of the code that is being landed will likely show up building on Linux in the near future (specially because us porters are already eager to play with it).

More On WebKit 2 appeared on Noscope on April 15, 2010.

Takes some getting used to, but in comparison, http:// is looking rather quaint now, isn’t it?

What about the https protocol then? Well Chrome still shows that:

It’s a nice change, and I think there are very few arguments against it. I predict it will gain widespread acceptance — for those that notice the change at all. Rest in peace, http://, 1990-2010.

In Memoriam: http:// appeared on Noscope on April 15, 2010.

OpenTTD is an open source clone of the Microprose game “Transport Tycoon Deluxe”, a business simulation games, in which the player is in control of a transport company, and can compete against rival companies to make as much profit as possible by transporting passengers and various goods by road, rail, sea or by air.

Great for lazy sunday afternoons.

OpenTTD 1.0.0 Released appeared on Noscope on April 13, 2010.

They say a house is only as good as its foundation, and we believe the same holds true for web applications like Google Docs. With our old foundation, we could continue delivering most features you wanted quickly, but over time it became clear that some just weren’t possible. So we decided to rebuild the underlying infrastructure of Docs to give us greater flexibility, improved performance and a better platform for developing new features quickly.

Will it be possible to get a proper and automated page break system so I don’t have to manually insert them or enter “print preview” to see how things flow?

A new Google Docs appeared on Noscope on April 13, 2010.

Microsoft Kin appeared on Noscope on April 12, 2010.

Apple’s current—and in our opinion, objectionable—position is now close to the complete opposite of its initial stance. From promoting openness and standards, the company is now pushing for an ever more locked-down and restricted platform. It’s bad for competition, it’s bad for developers, and it’s bad for consumers. I hope that there will be enough of a backlash that the company is forced to reconsider, but with the draw of all those millions of iPhone (and now, iPad) customers, I fear that Apple’s developers will, perhaps with some reluctance, just accept the restriction and do whatever Cupertino demands.

It’s a gamble alright. On one hand, it could lock in developers with the iPhone in a very-good-for-Apple way. On the other hand, it could do the exact opposite. The good thing is, we’ll find out over the next year. Personally, I think Apple will pull it off in the 3-year near-term, but not the long-term.

Apple takes aim at Adobe… or Android? appeared on Noscope on April 12, 2010.

Blonde Redhead – Elephant Woman appeared on Noscope on April 12, 2010.

Kent – Döda Vinkeln appeared on Noscope on April 9, 2010.

Aardvark For Google Chrome appeared on Noscope on April 9, 2010.

WebGL is running inside the sandbox under the –enable-webgl flag (i.e. this no longer requires the –no-sandbox flag to run). Browsing with the –no-sandbox is dangerous and we strongly recommend that you not do it.

Google has been working hard to get WebGL 3D hardware acceleration working properly — you may have seen a Quake 2 demo in HTML5 one of these days — no doubt to have it ready for the impending release of Chrome OS.

Interesting turn of phrase, also: “browsing with the –no-sandbox is dangerous”. To my knowledge, browsing without sandboxed processes means browsing with any other browser than Google Chrome.

WebGL In Google Chrome appeared on Noscope on April 9, 2010.

WebKit2 is designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process. This model is very similar to what Google Chrome offers, with the major difference being that we have built the process split model directly into the framework, allowing other clients of WebKit to use it.

This is good news for everyone; webdevelopers, Apple users and Google Chrome users alike. Remember back when Microsoft dominated the web? Dark days.

WebKit 2 appeared on Noscope on April 9, 2010.

New in Gmail Labs:

Labels are more flexible than folders because a given email can have several labels but can’t be in several folders at the same time. A highly requested feature for labels, though, comes from the world of folders: the ability to organize labels hierarchically.

The way these work is exactly like IMAP subfolders have been treated so far, meaning they’re only visually nested. A label named “Work”, for instance, will nest all labels named “Work/[something]“, for instance.

Gmail Gets Nested Labels appeared on Noscope on April 9, 2010.

This seemingly arbitrary redesign of a central UI concept — window management buttons — has received some flak in the community. Alex Faaborg mentions that the up/down arrows are reminiscent of scrollbar buttons. The community has called out the lead designer to explain the reasoning behind this new direction, and Ivanka Majic responds haphazardly:

After the internal debate and analysis (which went something like the picture below) we decided to put this version in the theme and to use it. I have had it running on my machine with the buttons in this order since before the Portland sprint (first week of February?) and I am quite used to it.

Is it better or worse?

It is quite hard to tell. The theme has been in the alpha since Friday. Now that you have had a chance to use it what do you think?

Personally, I would have the max and min on the left and close on the right.

Aza Raskin, creative lead for Firefox responds on Twitter:

It’s this kind of wishy-washy design speak (from the lead Ubuntu designer) that weakens our field in open source http://bit.ly/axDRbf

Eloquenter. Point: Aza.

Had you asked me yesterday, I’d have cared slightly less about the design of maximize or minimize buttons or even whether they’re left or right (exciting new platforms and UI paradigms intrigue me more these days and these traditional OSes now seem quaint), but this kind of — Aza puts it rightly — wishy washy design speak belittles the whole interface design process.

Not all UI designers think like Ivanka and the Ubuntu design team.

I don’t even care to discuss left or right or up or down. But I will say that window management buttons, minimize, maximize and close, are vital parts of an operating system. That doesn’t mean this is by any means a sacred goat that should never ever be touched, it simply means that when you do touch it, you’re walking on the razors edge (don’t look down, you’ll lose your head).

I’ve said this before: usability is not a Jackson Pollock painting.

If you were designing a faucet, would you switch the locations for hot and cold water? How about making a door-handle go up instead of down to open? What about the direction you turn a key to unlock? Should we drive on the left or the right side of the road? Should americans switch from the imperial system to metric?

Whenever you change a completely vital aspect of a system, do not justify the change by asking: “Is it better or worse? It is quite hard to tell”. That will not fly.

Anyone can make up wishy washy design speak. In fact, here’s a snatched-from-the-ether list of similar justifications:

• “Steve told me to do it.”
• “Our branding team told us we had to mess with the buttons in order to stand out from OSX and Windows. It was either left-aligned, close button third-from-the left, or centered buttons.”
• “It started as a joke, but then we kinda liked it.”
• “We wanted to be more like OSX, but without blatantly copying.”
• “Oh right those buttons. What do they do again?”
• “The close button is a destructive action, which is bad. So we placed it in a really awkward place. The shut down operating system button, however, we placed in the top right corner of the screen, right at the edge, you know, where Windows has its maximized application close buttons. We think it looks good.”

As long as we’re playing “make up an excuse”, there are plenty better ones to pick from.

[Update]: Here’s a super quick mockup, which should hopefully serve to illustrate that the new theme aesthetics could easily work without changing basic window management layouts.

Wishy Washy Ubuntu [Updated] appeared on Noscope on April 7, 2010.

The process is simple. I project a child’s drawing with an opaque projector, faithfully tracing each line. Applying a combination of logic and instinct, I then paint the image as realistically as I can. My medium is mixed—primarily acrylic, airbrush, and colored pencil.

The result: gorgeous, “realistic” kids artwork.

The Monster Engine appeared on Noscope on April 7, 2010.

My friend, Brian Meidell, has spent the last several years polishing what is no doubt the ultimate in match-3 puzzlers. It’s got great music, a puzzle-quest-esque experience point system, powerups and otherwise completely snappy brick matching. It’s absolutely awesome, and you should buy it for Windows today, or wait a little while for a mac version which is in the pipes and coming soon.

Deep Blue Sea 2 appeared on Noscope on April 6, 2010.

Here at Google we’re really excited about the promise of tablet computers, which will be great for browsing the web and using apps. We’ve been working hard to optimize our services for the new format – larger touchscreens, increased portability, rich sensors – and we’d like to share some information about our progress so far.

Gmail in a two-pane view on the iPad is nice, but what I find interesting about this post is how much it reeks of a Google Chrome OS tablet. This is Google optimized for iPad and tablet computers. Steve is about to get even angrier.

[Update]: On a related note, Lifehacker shows us how to run the new finger friendly Gmail outside the pad.

Googles iPad Optimized Websites [Updated] appeared on Noscope on April 2, 2010.

Service Announcement: New Server appeared on Noscope on April 2, 2010.

Leaked Screenshots of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 - Daring Fireball

Icon for the Save button is still a floppy disk, despite the fact that Apple hasn’t sold a machine with a floppy drive for a decade.

★

Michael Heilemann –

That isn’t an interface; that’s a disaster zone.

Joen Asmussen –

You’re just a fan of new-app / new-age minimalism. Sure, it’s not nice. But it’s got somewhat discoverable buttons for a plethora of functionality nobody uses.

Michael Heilemann –

I think an interface tells a user what it’s for. And yeah, I’m an Apple fan, but that’s because I think Apple’s interfaces get out of the users way and teach them that their applications are for content creation and manipulation, and not as is the case here, about interface interaction.

It is. Ridiculous.

Forget about the mom-scenario, I would be frightened if I opened this, and I would literally have no idea where to start looking. It’t not just the layout, it’s the style and the icons. It looks as native to OS X as Firefox, which is to say not, and has a plethora of obscure mystery-meat-esque icons.

Compare with Pages (http://images.apple.com/lae/iwork/numbers/images/whatsnew-screen-linkedcharts-20090106.jpg), which even when it’s flying all its flags, isn’t nearly as horrible as that.

It hurts me inside.

Joen Asmussen –

Pages is a good example of an alternative which I, judging from only screenshots, don’t think is any better at all.

Bear in mind here, I’m doing my thing and playing devils advocate. I’m all Google Docs, even though it’ll probably be another 3 years before that app becomes full featured.

So what I was alluding to, is that the iPhone, iPad and Android platforms herald an exciting new era in which we throw down the shackles of legacy and start anew. On an operating system and application level. I don’t even remember what iWorks on the iPad looks like, but I’m assuming it’s way cleaner than Pages (and certainly Word). Because it’s a writing app how it’s built if we started today. Which Word is not.

Now legacy is an interesting word. In this situation, legacy refers not only to the Microsoft way of supporting every operating system they’ve ever made with their apps, or even including and still using 20 year old code in their applications. No, legacy also refers to the userbase Microsoft is scared of alienating. The very same user base that use Word Art, templates, Comic Sans and that clip art image of a martini glass with fireworks in the background. Both Microsoft and its consumers believe they won’t buy an app that removes features.

So what I’m thinking, kinda defending this interface as not ridiculous or a disaster zone, is that it’s been a bitch for the interface designers, having to add new features, tuck in ALL the old ones, and still make a somewhat userfriendly interface. This compromise sucks like all the Words suck, but it doesn’t suck ridiculously.

Okay so we can split hairs whether “undo and redo” deserve such prominent positions, or positions at all. And you’d probably win the discussion.

But do you see my point?

Michael Heilemann –

It’s always possible to defend MS’s position from a pragmatic standpoint. But that doesn’t make it any less confusing or solve the fact that most of the interface cruft won’t come into play for most people more than a fraction of the time; if at all. It’s like they decided to not take any decisions on what to include and what to hide away.

Joen Asmussen –

Well I’m not so much defending it, as saying that it’s not a disaster zone. Sure, it could be better, but so could Photoshop. Photoshop is a good example, actually — quite a few people use quite a lot of the features, and even more use nearly none of the features.

How would you tackle Photoshop? I actually consider that a disaster zone.

Michael Heilemann –

Well Adobe put out Photoshop Elements, so I guess they acknowledge that a pro+level application isn’t necessarily needed by our moms. Essentially PS has the same problem as Word, which is that it tries to be everything to everyone. Personally I’d either split it into two products (saaaaay iPhoto vs. Aperture or iMovie vs. Final Cut Pro) or at least let the user pick basic or advanced on first open.

I just don’t understand why ‘glowing text’ is an option you want to give as much attention as font size. How often have you used glowing text? Most people will never use it, except of course because it happens to be right there, which is going back to what I mean by the UI teaching the user things they shouldn’t be learning. It’s like having a ‘Comic Sansify’ button in the UI; it’s good for one in a million users, but it hardly needs its own button.

Joen Asmussen –

That’s the thing. Part of me thinks splitting Photoshop (or Word for that matter) in to “basic” and “advanced” versions is a usability and interface design cop-out. Sure I’m not presenting any other options here, but ideally there’s another way.

I agree with the rest of what you have to say.

Michael Heilemann –

It’s like shipping a car that is both a sedan and a (small) construction crane; you can do it, but why do you want to? Except in the case of software it’s ‘easy’ to ship one product that serves two masters just as easily as one.

In fact, Photoshop already does this. Go to Window > Workspace, and you can choose the interface profile that works best for what you do…

So, yeah.

Joen Asmussen –

Alright then. You win this round.

That Isn't An Interface; That's A Disaster Zone (Asmussen vs. Heilemann) appeared on Noscope on April 1, 2010.

Harmony is a fun little web-app that uses HTML5s Canvas element and JavaScript to allow you to draw little, simple, sticky drawings. Read up on it and give it a whirl.

Ricardo Cabello's Canvas-Based Harmony Sketching WebApp appeared on Noscope on March 31, 2010.

dropbox quota now 10GB! if you max out referrals – http://www.dropbox.com/referrals – get busy! :-)

@dropbox

Well, since DropBox is really excellent, I’m going to do just what they suggest and refer you. You should sign up for Dropbox using this link, and you’ll get 250mb extra (and so will I my friend). Good times.

DropBox Referral Quota Now 10GB! appeared on Noscope on March 31, 2010.

GDocsUploader isn’t a syncing solution. It will not upload directories, and it requires Adobe Air. But it will bulk upload files.

GDocsUploader Bulk Uploads Your Files To Google Docs appeared on Noscope on March 31, 2010.

body {
	color: red; /* all browsers, of course */
	color : green\9; /* IE8 and below */
	*color : yellow; /* IE7 and below */
	_color : orange; /* IE6 */
}

Sure, specific CSS should be served using conditional comments, but every so often, a good ol’ CSS hack is just so useful.

How to Target IE6, IE7, and IE8 Uniquely with 4 Characters [CSS Hacks] appeared on Noscope on March 31, 2010.

Our hope is that the robust integration between Chrome and Flash Player will serve as a showcase for more consistent, seamless, and efficient Web browsing experiences. We feel that this significant effort by both Google and Adobe will directly improve the speed of innovation and move the Web forward, benefiting the entire community of developers and end-users.

The benefits touted include transparent auto update and a more crash proof experience. Which, if true, makes the above statement even more juicy in the ongoing war both Google and Adobe wage against Apple.

Google Chrome Gets Flash Player Built-In appeared on Noscope on March 30, 2010.

This is interesting for two reasons. On the one hand, this leaves Internet Explorer users with a “gracefully degrading” less aesthetic solution, since IE support for CSS3 is a joke. On the other hand, it’s interesting because WebKit (Google Chrome and Safari) has a different CSS gradient syntax than that of Firefox, which incidentally also means that the buttons look different in Firefox. Fortunately, WebKit is soon to adopt Firefox’ superior CSS gradient syntax. Fast times at Google campus.

Gmails New CSS Buttons appeared on Noscope on March 29, 2010.

We have people who think you should throw battery acid in the faces of little girls for trying to learn to read in Afghanistan, so clearly, there are real world correlates of that kind of thinking, that kind of orientation. And it’s not our job to not judge it and say, well, to each his own everyone has to work out their own strategy for human fulfillment, it’s just not true. There are people who are wrong about human fulfillment.

Eloquent as always. A tough argument summed up so that anyone can understand it.

Sam Harris: Why We Should Ditch Religion appeared on Noscope on March 27, 2010.

Pwn2Own 2010 is under way, and after day one of the annual security showdown the results are darn near an exact replica of last year’s. Safari was the first to fall, followed by Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7. Firefox on Windows 7 x64 was also taken down, as was the iPhone’s mobile Safari. Google Chrome, however, has yet to succumb.

I would have honestly thought Internet Explorer — any of them — would be first to circle the drain.

[Update]: One person makes the interesting observation that Safari is first to be hacked because the prize, the Macbook on which the browser ran, was the nicest of the prizes.

Safari Was The First To Fall [Updated] appeared on Noscope on March 25, 2010.

Schmidt’s mobile phone rang on the highway between Reno and Burning Man’s movable city in Black Rock Desert. It was Jobs, angry. The call then dropped; bad signal, middle of nowhere. The disconnect couldn’t be blamed on a flaky iPhone connection: Schmidt had long ago given up on the Apple handset because he couldn’t stand the on-screen keyboard. His wife had tested a prototype, but didn’t care to keep it. Schmidt, we’re told, ended up giving his iPhone to Bohner as a gift.

Schmidt located a convenience store and used a pay phone to call Jobs back. The Apple CEO “shouted” at Schmidt and “railed” at him, furious about his smartphone plans and duplicity, said our source. After all, Schmidt sat on Apple’s board and was supposed to be a partner on the iPhone, providing internet services like maps.

In this increasingly ridiculous feud, I find it important to remember that the Nexus One is simply a phone, one which Google doesn’t even produce but simply deliver software for. How is Google supposed to deliver good mobile software without a platform on which it can install its Voice app? I’m surprised that Jobs is surprised at Google for doing this, and I think his anger betrays his belief that this is a legitimate threat to the dominant iPhone.

How Eric Schmidt Lost His Mistress, His Partner And Steve Jobs appeared on Noscope on March 23, 2010.

function remove_dashboard_widgets() {

	global $wp_meta_boxes;

	unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_quick_press']);
	unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_incoming_links']);

	unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_right_now']);
	unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_plugins']);

	unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_recent_drafts']);
	unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_recent_comments']);

	unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_primary']);
	unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_secondary']);

}

if (!current_user_can('manage_options')) {
	add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'remove_dashboard_widgets' );
}

This removes all dashboard widgets, so you’ll probably want to poke around and comment out some of these array unsets.

WordPress Trick: Remove Dashboard Widgets appeared on Noscope on March 23, 2010.