Planet Tao of Mac

Michael Tsai: Airfoil Speakers and the App Store

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:05:39 +0000

Paul Kafasis, John Gruber, and Manton Reece discuss Apple’s rejection of a bug-fix update to Airfoil Speakers Touch because of images that it displayed (but did not contain).

Michael Tsai: Dangerous Cocoa Calls

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:56:39 +0000

Mike Ash has a great list of Cocoa APIs that are subtly dangerous. Note that since NSBundle isn’t threadsafe, neither is NSLocalizedString.

Michael Tsai: US Interstate Map

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:10:28 +0000

Cameron Booth has made a great map of the Eisenhower Interstate System (via Jason Kottke):

Drawing my cues from the original and best metro diagram, H.C. Beck’s wonderful London Underground diagram, I have rendered the Interstate system in a much simpler form. I have made the “major” highways (those divisible by 5) the framework of the map, with the “minor” highways reduced in importance and rendered as thinner grey lines. Even with these highways, a difference in the greys indicates whether they are even-numbered (west-east) or odd-numbered (north-south).

Now I feel like playing Ticket to Ride.

Pedro Custódio: Trillions

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:41:14 +0000

via vimeo.com

Michael Tsai: Generics in Objective-C

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:11:20 +0000

Jens Ayton proposes that adding generics to Objective-C would allow for better static analysis with no changes at runtime or to existing code. Jesper concurs. This seems like a reasonable idea, although I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle and visual clutter. I don’t think improper typing is a major source of bugs.

Michael Tsai: Blocked-C

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:03:32 +0000

Marcel Weiher points out that blocks are noisy compared to HOM. Of course, HOM can be more concise because it’s so much more limited. Chiefly, it requires predefined methods. He argues that this is a feature, not a bug, that HOM encourages good code and blocks encourage bad code. That’s not wrong, but with power comes the ability to shoot yourself in the foot. Blocks make the language much more expressive and solve problems that HOM can’t. Used judiciously, they can make for clean code.

Pedro Custódio: World Usability Day Charter

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:00:37 +0000

Today it’s the World Usability Day, this year’s theme is ‘Designing for a Sustainable World’, a theme that’s particular personal to me, not only refering to the usability factor, but also to this year’s topic! As founder of SHiFT – Social and Human Ideas for Tecnology, I personally recommend that all that agree with me that a lot need to be done to improve the way we experience and design technology to please read and sign the World Usability Day Charter:

Human error is a misnomer. Technology today is too hard to use. A cell phone should be as easy-to-use as a doorknob. In order to humanize a world that uses technology as an infrastructure for education, healthcare, government, communication, entertainment, work, and other areas, we must agree to develop technologies in a way that serves people first.

Technology should enhance our lives, not add to our stress or cause danger through poor design or poor quality. It is our duty to ensure that this technology is effective, efficient, satisfying and reliable, and that it is usable by all people. This is particularly important for people with disabilities, because technology can enhance their lives, letting them fully participate in work, social and civic experiences. Human error is a misnomer. Technology should be developed knowing that human beings have certain limitations. Human error will occur if technology is not both easy-to-use and easy-to-understand. We need to reduce human error that results from bad design. We believe a united, coordinated effort is needed to develop reliable, easy-to- use technology to serve people in all aspects of their lives, including education, health, government, privacy, communications, work and entertainment. We must put people at the center of design, beginning with their needs and wants, and resulting in technology that benefits all of us. Therefore, we, the undersigned, agree to work together to design technology that helps human beings truly realize their potential, so that we can create a better world for ourselves and future generations.

We agree to observe World Usability Day each year, to provide a single worldwide day of events around the world that brings together communities of professional, industrial, educational, citizen and governmental groups for our common objective: to ensure that technology helps people live to their full potential and helps create a better world for all citizens everywhere.

Article 1: Education

Wired and wireless schools are appearing everywhere. Students around the world benefit from low-cost, easy-to-use, reliable computing, Internet access, and telecommunication. Educational technology must be not only affordable and available, but must be usable by teachers, students and parents.

Article 2: Health

Healthcare must be available to everyone around the world. Medical technology can improve health, but it must be easy-to-use: error in this arena is costly. Because we are what we eat, we need healthier food supplies that will improve the well being of people everywhere. Technology that produces better food for all must be built on research that keeps the whole person in mind.

Article 3: Government

Governments around the globe seek to use new technology to better serve their citizens and increase participation in the civic experience. Citizens can pay taxes and take care of business online in many countries in the world; this same capability should be available to all, eliminating the digital divide that separates rich from poor or isolates social groups. Voting systems must ensure trust and confidence in elections. Technology that supports civic engagement must give all citizens equal access and opportunity, and must be easy to use and easy to understand by all citizens, including those with disabilities of any kind.

Article 4: Communication
People need to connect with each other. We have more means than ever to communicate: phones, Internet, messaging and the printed medium. Technology that facilitates communication between people must be intuitive to use. It should have instructions that are easy to understand, and knobs, dials and buttons that do not require constant tuning.

Article 5: Privacy and Security
As the use of technology grows, so do concerns about new forms of e-commerce, e-government and e-communication. We must build in appropriate safeguards to ensure that our interaction is secure, that children and others are protected, and that our systems are trustworthy.

Article 6: Entertainment

Entertainment is not just for our spare time. People use entertainment for many reasons throughout their daily lives. The world of entertainment has embraced technology to give us photos, movies, music and games in new ways and on new devices. But, even amusement benefits from usability! Incomprehensible remote controls, confusing instructions and blinking VCR clocks speak to the need for improvement in our media. Usable entertainment systems will make the experience less tiring and frustrating.

Sign the Charter

Michael Tsai: cdecl

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:46:29 +0000

Peter Ammon’s cdecl.org translates C type expressions (including function pointers and blocks!) into English—and vice-versa.

Pedro Custódio: Roomba Pac-Man

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:10:07 +0000

Via Roomba Pac-Man

Posted via email from pedrocustodio’s posterous

Florian Beer: Facebook iPhone Dev Quits Project Over Apple Tyranny

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:39:41 +0000

Facebook iPhone Dev Quits Project Over Apple Tyranny

What a shame! Joe Hewitt was a very skilled iPhone developer and it’s a pity to see him move back to the web because of Apple’s App Store policies.

My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.

The web is still unrestricted and free, and so I am returning to my roots as a web developer. In the long term, I would like to be able to say that I helped to make the web the best mobile platform available, rather than being part of the transition to a world where every developer must go through a middleman to get their software in the hands of users.”

via Techcrunch

Here’s quite an interesting interview with Joe Hewitt from earlier this year at the Mobile Orchard Podcast.

Pedro Custódio: Open Government Data Poster

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:53:10 +0000

Ton and James Burke created the Open Government Data Poster to help civil servants decide if and how it is ok to open up data sets they have available.

Also available in PDF (English) version.

Posted via email from pedrocustodio’s posterous

Pedro Custódio: Brand & Customer Experience

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:05:15 +0000

via Adaptive Path

Posted via web from pedrocustodio’s posterous

Pedro Custódio: Put This On

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:37:10 +0000

A web series about dressing like a grownup, from the guys that run the ‘Put this On‘ blog.

via Igor

Posted via web from pedrocustodio’s posterous

Nuno Nunes: Google Wave - how I use it

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:25:00 +0000

This is part two of a short series of essays I am writing on how I have been using Google Wave and my take on the system.
You can find the main article and index to the whole series here.

How I use it

Personally I’ve used it in different contexts and for different purposes (but always for collaboration, i.e. working with other people to achieve a specific goal) and so I am now able to have at least an idea of what does and doesn’t work for me, for example:

Messaging: For me this does not make any sense. People have “waved” me with the “Hey, you’re on wave too, great, let’s chat!” talk and, quite frankly, it feels like trying to kill a fly with the proverbial canon. You can do it, but you really shouldn’t as it is a waste of effort, resources and just plain silly. There are myriad instant messaging solutions out there and most of them do much better in that field than wave does. It is overkill, it is slow, it is just plain silly;
Exchanging longer messages: The “Dear Nuno, How have you been? I have been thinking about that party last week and…” kind of messages don’t appeal to me in the least bit either. Do you realize that in a wave (as it stands now, anyway) anyone can edit what anyone else has written? Have you really tried editing long prose on it’s current interface? This is the canonical use case for email, so just use email for that. If it’s not a “living” document, edited by more than one person, then it’s an email, not a wave;
Instant collaboration over a project: The ephemeral wave. A project comes up, people set up a wave and work on it collaboratively (and yes, they use it as a discussion medium instead of instant messaging in the context of that particular wave), work progresses until the point when the project is over and the wave looses it’s meaning and usefulness. It didn’t coalesce into a document, it was just a kind “white board” for people to work actively on. It has the history of the work done recorded in it, but apart from that it holds no value whatsoever for the future. This is a usage case that has worked quite well for me;
Planning: Two or more people collaborating on planning something like a trip, a podcast, or anything of the sort. I’ve used it on both the cases mentioned and, as it should be apparent, it is really well suited for that purpose. Even planing something slightly bigger, say the design and implementations of an open software project (I’ve done that too, and still am in fact) becomes very fruitful. All of these activities require a high degree of gardening, though, because otherwise the wave just turns into an unusable mess.

Things I’ve learned that work OK

As with any new tool, especially one that is as complex as this one, it takes time and experience for one to grok it. I’ve been using it for a while and I’ve already uncovered some patterns of usage that seem to crop up in most waves with different users. Here are a few examples:

Commenting on sections of a document: I sometimes start a wave as an outline of a document I want to collaborate on or maybe as a few paragraphs about the subject under discussion. And what do people do the first time they open the wave? They do what they’ve been doing for years on email: they reply to my ideas either on the top or at the bottom of the wave, usually on a different wavelet, either quoting my own words/section titles or simply by launching into the discussion without even stating what they’re replying to.
But wave provides a far better way of doing this and after a while (and some experimenting) I find that people usually tend to drift to this way of doing things, which is to comment right there on the wavelet itself, creating a sub-wavelet that can even be collapsed if you just want to read the full text that’s being debated upon on this sub-wavelet. After a few rounds of this the document starts to look cluttered from all the sub-wavelets debating all the little pieces of text and so the need for curating arises. I will, on a later article, make some screenshots illustrating these items;
Curating the wave (think wiki gardening): When the document starts to look like one huge, chaotic mess (or better yet, before it comes to that) someone usually takes the time to read through the sub-wavelets pertaining to the section they’re most involved in, summarize it, change the “master wavelet” accordingly and then delete all of the sub-wavelets. This is a good thing to happen to a wave and not at all an attack on the sub-wavelet participants, as it ensures that the wave keeps fresh and usable. If the need arises for further discussion on a particular topic, people can just create a sub-wavelet and the cycle begins again. Also the history of what was said where by whom is still all there anyway.
Mind dumping: When an idea comes to me about a particular project/topic that I have a wave for (you know those “a-ha!” moments you usually have while on the shower or jogging) I usually go to the wave in question as fast as I can and I just write down whatever idea came into me head. This has too benefits for me: 1- I get it out of my head and into a written form. Doing this makes me organize my thoughts enough to write them down and may make some implications or problems immediately apparent; 2- It gives the other people I’, working with (the wave is about collaboration, after all) a chance to immediately start thinking about the issue/idea I’ve just got and I can get feedback really fast. I do this actively on some of the projects I’m waving about with people and it really works.

Nuno Nunes: Google Wave - my take on it

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:25:00 +0000

This is a short series of essays on how I have been using Google Wave in the few weeks since I’ve got my invite and why I think it is a great tool for collaborating.
This started out as an idea for a single blog post, but as I began outlining it and fleshing out the sections I wanted to write, it soon became too big for a single article and so I decided to split it into a few different ones so as to make each part bite-sized, making the whole thing easier to read and spreading it out over time a bit.

I’ll use this first article to keep track of all the subsequent ones, so as to turn it into a kind of index of the whole series (look for it at the end of this post).

My feeling so far can be summed up in like this: I really like wave!
I’ve been wanting a product like this for a long, long time and I’ve been using things like Google Docs for some of the purposes I now use wave for, but some things have been lacking all along.
I always knew what I wanted out of such a product (I’ve worked on a prototype of a system loosely resembling part of what wave is many years ago, on my last years at university, and I’ve been pinning for something like this to show up ever since then) and now, after using wave for a while, I find that it fulfills my needs quite nicely.

It is still not all there, of course (and I will address this on an upcoming article,) but it is on the right track.

This, then, is why I love Google Wave and why I think it is a product with great, great potential.
In the rest of the series I’ll describe some of my best use cases, interesting ways I found to use it and what I still feel is lacking.

Hope you enjoy it! (And no, at this time I have no invites to hand out, sorry.) :-)

Part 1 — Google Wave - what it is and isn’t
Part 2 — Google Wave - how I use it

Pedro Custódio: Celeste Motus (excerpts)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:58:01 +0000

“Celeste Motus” is an audiovisual excerpt, captured in realtime during a studio session, where both the music and the visuals are generated in realtime using the input of two electric instruments (a wind instrument and a piano).
For a more detailed description please visit the project page abstractbirds.com/celeste-motus/

Posted via web from pedrocustodio’s posterous

Pedro Custódio: The Berlin Wall, 20 years gone – The Big Picture

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:41:20 +0000

via boston.com

Posted via web from pedrocustodio’s posterous

Pedro Custódio: Advent Conspiracy

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:04:46 +0000

Posted via email from pedrocustodio’s posterous

Florian Beer: links for 2009-11-09

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:10:30 +0000

70 Of The Best Photoshop Actions For Enhancing Photos

(tags: howto design tips tutorials resources photoshop actions photography photo photos photoshopactions)

Random Posts

Pedro Melo: More Browser::Open

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:37:14 +0000

I pushed to CPAN a new release of Browser::Open.

I've added more commands to test (courtesy of code "borrowed" from SD, and the Launchy gem), and made the test suite more robust in case we don't find a suitable command.

<rant>
I'm amazed that something as simple as opening a URL is such a complicated task on most UNIX-based systems.

I have a single command to use on Mac OS X and on Windows based systems, but there seems to be no standard way of doing this simplest of things on UNIX systems.
</rant>

Planet Tao of Mac

Michael Tsai: Airfoil Speakers and the App Store

Michael Tsai: Dangerous Cocoa Calls

Michael Tsai: US Interstate Map

Pedro Custódio: Trillions

Michael Tsai: Generics in Objective-C

Michael Tsai: Blocked-C

Pedro Custódio: World Usability Day Charter

Michael Tsai: cdecl

Pedro Custódio: Roomba Pac-Man

Florian Beer: Facebook iPhone Dev Quits Project Over Apple Tyranny

Related Posts

Pedro Custódio: Open Government Data Poster

Pedro Custódio: Brand & Customer Experience

Pedro Custódio: Put This On

Nuno Nunes: Google Wave - how I use it

How I use it

Things I’ve learned that work OK

Nuno Nunes: Google Wave - my take on it

Pedro Custódio: Celeste Motus (excerpts)

Pedro Custódio: The Berlin Wall, 20 years gone – The Big Picture

Pedro Custódio: Advent Conspiracy

Florian Beer: links for 2009-11-09

Random Posts

Pedro Melo: More Browser::Open