Skip to content

Index

  • 2 min read

Switcher’s log, Part 8: In conclusion…

I love the fact that I switched to Mac. A lot of the fun is that it's new and different. Also I like the idea that there's UNIX beneath the skin because I wanted to get more familiar with it. Also all the applications are 'prettier ' to look at and that's fun. Of course the machine is blindingly fast but that's just because its so much newer than the pc it replaced. It is clearly more stable than Windows XP. But, it's not all perfect : It does crash sometimes, in mysterious ways. On Windows, I'd be impressed (and nervous) after about 3 days of uptime. On Mac that figure is more like 10 days. But stories about it staying up 6 months at a time don 't seem true. Also I don't understand the internals nearly as well so when some app misbehaves it's more mysterious to me. No cranking up of regedit and so on. I am gradually picking up how this works, but I am a long way behind where I was on Windows. The menu stuck to the top of the primary monitor is still ridiculous. The fact that there are so many keyboard shortcuts that you need to know to be efficient is silly. And that you have this tiny resize corner control instead of being able to use all edges to resize is also primitive. Net net - its a lot of fun, and I am glad I did it. If I was doing different kind of work I might think different 🙂 But I am not in the camp that says that OS X is simply superior to Windows XP. I would say it's different, in a good way.

  • 2 min read

Switcher’s Log, Part 7: How can Apple be so brain dead about usability?

Everyone says that the reason they like the Mac and OS X is that it 's so easy to use! I am not so sure that it's any easier to use than Windows XP. Yes OS X has some snazzy user interface frills and it's quite easy to use. But notwithstanding that some of these brain-dead UI decisions bely the reputation of unsurpassed usability :

  • Where is the menu? Even with two large screens attached to an OS X system, the menu bar is always glued to the top edge of the main screen. So I am looking at a little app running in the corner of my second display, and it's menu is at the top of the other screen. Huh?

  • What app is running? How about this one: I can close all the windows of an application, and it is still running, in fact it is the current application. The only way I can tell is by looking at the menu bar at the top of the main screen. Huh?

  • Resizing windows: The only way to resize most windows is by dragging around the right bottom corner, which can be off the screen or hidden. Oh and there is a kind of window that looks different (so called "brushed metal") where are the edges are resize handles - like windows - but there is no visual indication. Huh?

  • Keyboard Shortcuts everywhere Surprisingly there's a greater reliance on keyboard shortcuts on OS X than I ever saw on Windows. There are launchers to allow you to launch an app without looking for it on disk. Lots of useful functionality is only exposed with Shift-this or control-that or alt-the other thing. And then those wonderful little F-keys - a total of 16! But there are no keys to go to the start of a line (Control-A) or the end (Control-E). And no play, pause, etc. keys. Huh?

  • 1 min read

Wow! Google rocks!

Picture 1-2Google is now officially unstoppable! Check out how they've now integrated satellite images into Google Maps. Now we know what they wanted with the Keyhole acquisition. What a wonderful integration. Click on the image to see it full size! The address, by the way, is of the Harvard University Berkman Center.

  • 1 min read

[BLOGBRIDGE] BlogBridge 1.0 is out!

It 's here! We are officially declaring BlogBridge as a 1.0 product! The site is updated, the features are solid and we are off to the races. Here are some personal tidbits about where we are now and what happens next:

  • Actually 1.0 has been done for about a week now, and really over the last 4 weeks we've been much more focused on fixing bugs than anything else. And if by now you don't know - you can read all about BlogBridge hereand download 1.0 here.

  • Meanwhile we are well on the way to the design and planning of BlogBridge 2.0. Yes, this isn't the end of the line, actually it's the very beginning. I think of 1.0 as the minimalist "me too" foundation on which we can start building the really cool stuff. Our focus will be to push the envelope on community aspects of BlogBridge - both the application and the service.

  • BlogBridge is an open source projec t. One thing I've learned first hand with this project is that putting the "open source" shingle out doesn't immediately bring out a parade of willing volunteers. So it's exciting tat in the last 2 weeks we've gotten several new folks who are seriously interested in becoming contributors. which is good news because we have much bigger plans than resources.

Anyway, it's an exciting moment. Stick with us : we have HIGH hopes!

  • 2 min read

Switcher’s Log, Part 6: All is not honey and peaches in Mac OS X land

When things go wrong is when you start seeing some of the disadvantages of being on the 5% pc platform. Help is hard to find, alternatives are non- existent. Briefly here is the story: I tried a 'better' Palm synchronizer called "Missing Sync" from Mark/Space. After using it for a little bit I decided it didn't really have too many advantages over the standard one, so I uninstalled it. But… I uninstalled it "the wrong way." Who knew? Who knew that there is a wrong way to uninstall on Mac? Anyway the result was that not only couldn't I continue using Missing Sync, I couldn't even continue using the original Palm HotSynch. It was exactly like what might happen on Windows XP with a corrupted registry entry or a wrong .DLLs. Every bit as bad.

  • I looked for a "force uninstall" utility for OS X. Can 't find one.

  • I tried to call Missing Sync for help. Do they even exist? I got no response to email and phone calls for several days. Finally I got several, totally off the mark responses.

  • I tried to get help from Sprint (who sold me my Treo Palm phone) - who knew exactly nothing about Macintosh.

  • I tried getting help from Handspring who built the Treo, and again, nobody home - they bounced me back to Sprint.

*

Anyway, it was hopeless. Finally with the help of some Mac expert friends, I went around deleting files and directories all over the place and was after lots of (scary) trial and error able to get the thing back to life. So, the lessons are:

  1. Uninstallation can be as dangerous as installation. Look for instructions about the 'right' way to uninstall

  2. Use the Mac market is so much smaller , expect much worse support and don't feel bad when you get the cold shoulder

  3. OS X isn 't perfect

  • 1 min read

Talking about RSS Aggregators

Doctor Scoble poses a provocative question: "Which aggregator do you like best"? Quite an amazing variety of aggregators are mentioned. It might be the most crowded space I've seen in a long time. Gee, and my own project, BlogBridge is in the space. Of course, we are willing to take on all comers because we feel that we've got a better mousetrap, and that we've pushed the envelope in some really important areas. But you know, I bet all of them feel the same way. Robert, if you read this: check out BlogBridge won't ya?

  • 2 min read

[GEEK] Java Web Start

There's another flame- up on the WebStart commentary on the web, this time under the title _" Webstart, now I see why people don't use it." _Even though I've spoken out about this once or twice, I couldn't resist weighing in.Here's what I wrote:

I have written so much about this in Blogs, newsgroups, etc that I won't rehash it here; however I will put some links below for those who are interested. My Bottom lines:

  • WebStart is a very promising (I would call it tantalizingly close) approach. The problem is that when you are trying to get people to use your application, the one place where you need to be super robust is in the install and setup and initial user experience, which is exactly where WebStart falls down.

  • The BlogBridge project is a major cross platform application that uses Java Web Start. Today there have been thousands of installation. Of the people that have any kind of installation or startup problem, 9 out of 10 are Webstart related. Try BlogBridge's Web Start experience for yourself.

  • Java Web Start is not a solid solution for a cross platform java application that you intend to deploy widely (on the internet not just internally where you can handhold each user)

  • BlogBridge will be abandoning WebStart in the next release with Great Regret.

  • IMHO Sun is acting contrary to their strategic goals (as stated) by not paying sufficient attention to a major hurdle to succeeding on the desktop and their progress on this front is so slow it's absurd.

  • Sun has heard lots of highly specific technical explanations of where the problems are and what the impact is and they say they understand but don't act on it.

Here are some links where I wrote about this in the past. I am but one voice in dozens. Click to read:

  • 1 min read

Another VC is blogging – what’s going on?

If you are interested in some thoughtful perspectives about the world of Venture Capital , from a reformed (or is it a corrupted?) entrepreneur, you should check out Jeff Bussgang 's (of IDG Ventures) new blog, "Seeing both sides." He's off to a great start!

  • 2 min read

Attention.xml

Steve Gilmor muses about the history of the Attention.xml spec in his blog. Steve thought up Atttention. xml as way to capture what feeds and items people do and don't spend time (their attention) on, collecting, aggregating and then mining this information for all kinds of purposes. (This is my interpretation, but I think it's pretty accurate.) BlogBridge is a feed reader with a primary goal to save the reader's time by collecting and using any information possible to help the user focus on what will be useful to them and ignoring the rest. So there's an excellent alignment between BlogBridge's goals and what Steve is trying to accomplish with Attention.xml. BlogBridge will support attention.xml. The section in Steve's post that is particularly interesting to me (and to BlogBridge) are his ideas on how to use Attention information to triage information being displayed in a feed reader - basically an outline of the kind of heuristics that might be used. It's a long section (in the second half of the post), so I won't quote it, but here's the tantalizing beginning:

" Why is this so important, at least to me? Because RSS is about time, and the data about lack of interest is intensely valuable to me as an indicator of what can be thrown out or pushed down the priority stack. As RSS takes hold, we are moving rapidly to a multiplicity of valuable content, where throwing out duplicates, redundancies, and repetitive analyses is key to providing enough of a window for absorbing the much greater signal-to-noise of the attention stream."

If you are interested in this topic, I really recommend that you read Steve's whole post.