Very interesting US start-up Square seems to be developing a service to let anyone accept payment by card using a mobile phone. I love the visible verification system for checking the card holder is really who they claim to be (identical twin fraud anyone?).
We’ve found recently that generating convincing dummy data early in the process of a web development project can catch issues a lot sooner than just using lots of test@test.com and lorem ipsum dummy data. Additionally it also allows you to start with a sizeable amount of data from the start, and to identify performance issues relating to database design and data relationships. The Generate Data website is an excellent tool to help create your dummy data “for use in testing software, populating databases and scoring with girls”, though we’ve seen no evidence as yet that it does actually fulfil the third requirement.
I really enjoyed reading Carsonified’s recent article on 10 Vital Lessons for Web Start-Ups [received via Smashing Magazine]. It’s an excellent account from the guys behind the new[ish], lightweight Perch CMS regarding the challenges and learnings in launching their first full product outside of their web development day jobs. It’s undoubtedly something that many small agencies/developers also face, or hope to face [ourselves included]. If nothing else, the article itself demonstrates an excellent PR exercise as I remember looking at Perch when it was launched and feeling that, without a demo, it wasn’t something I could evaluate quickly and, typically, haven’t been back since. However, amongst other things, the article explains how quickly such short-comings were revised and overcome. Looks like I better head back there soon and check out the now available demo!
I figured one of these would be coming along from somewhere soon. I nearly threatened to do one myself but, presumably like so many others, have battled on with a varied mix of GUI elements used in creating Android screensflows/wireframes and never quite feeling that I had a ‘kit’ that was worthy of sharing. Well, good old Smashing Magazine have done one for us! This Android GUI PSD Vector Kit will be an invaluable resource for anyone needing to design Android flows and screens.
We’re on the brink of finishing our first ‘full’ iPhone application to be distributed through the Apple App Store, and as such have been trying to learn more about the obvious pitfalls to avoid in terms of having an app accepted. We’ve already had some excellent word of mouth advice, and general rule of thumb seems to be “follow Apple’s guidelines like a bible!”. The following sites seem a good start for your checlist too… Avoiding iPhone app rejection from Apple offers a good starting point for the things to run through, with a round-up of comments/replies. Unsurprisingly, Stackoverflow always has excellent developer advice and discussion, and they too are a good starting point for successful AppStore submission.
Obviously we’ll update our own experiences in a few weeks once we’ve been through the process ourselves.
One of the most prominent utilities that we now take for granted on the web [and to a lesser extent on mobile] is that of URL Shorteners. These services create a short url that redirect a user to the original destination whenever visited, sometimes with additional services inbetween such as collecting traffic statistics. The first well known service was tinyurl.com, but there are a range of other choices now including bit.ly and is.gd. Unfortunately tr.im - one of the relatively prominent services recently - has just announced that is to discontinue it’s service, and this has raised some debate about a potential over-reliance on URL Shorteners and indeed the risks of relying on web startup services on the whole. E-consultancy have a good summary of the debate - What’s bad for tr.im is good for bit.ly, recognising amongst other things that Bit.ly’s relationship with Twitter as it’s default URL Shortener has allowed Bit.ly to become the market leader and potentially the safest bet for the future.
From a user experience perspective there are also growing concerns that using URL shortening is a poor approach anyway. For example, Webmonkey suggested in April that, at the very least, one of the problems with shortened URLs is that you have no idea where they go. Additionally, as in the case of tr.im, if a URL shortening service closes down then [soon after] so all their links, because the cost of the bandwidth in redirecting all those URLs is one of the major overheads for such services. In an age of web semantics, better url schemas and a stronger focus on user experience, it does seem that the future for URL shorteners isn’t completely safe.
I’ve been suffering a little lately from the information overload swell that occasionally comes upon us all. Hence, blogging, tweeting, FBing, etc has all taken a back seat whilst I reorganise. In doing so I thought I might share a couple of handy Twitter tools I used in the process. ReFollow is an excellent system for managing your Twitter account - allowing for really obvious features such as “show me people that follow me but that I’m not following”. It also allows you to see who’s following any twitter username and instantly follow all of them too… handy for immediately following all of your competitors, a fair number of whom will probably respond by following you and hence giving you a dialogue with your competitors customers! TweetLater is a set of power tools all of it’s own, overlapping in some ways with ReFollow but also adding functionality such as timed Tweets. Some of this functionality is available in various Twitter clients but both the above services added at least some features that helped me get my Twitlife back on track!
It seems the iPhone has an answer to everything. Or at least iPhone developers/marketers do. I can’t pretend to have tried out the TentFinder App so please do download it and give it a go rather than considering this a review but hasn’t anyone realised a] there’ll be a lot of tears when a lot iPhones go missing or get waterlogged at this years festivals and b] after using GPS, making some calls and recording some ‘amusing’ festival videos, the chances of the iPhone battery lasting long enough to help you find your tent on day 2 would be a miracle! Call me old school but personally I’ll be digging out an old robust Nokia with a black-and-white [black-and-green] screen, two weeks battery life and the kind of casing that you can drive a bus over, and then tieing a flag to the top of our tent.
The Guardian’s recent availability of most it’s data via API was a pretty big announcement and is in itself an excellent demonstration of a on a large media entity embracing future platforms. Even better, in a matter of weeks it seems that the examples and tools to help you get up and running have been vastly developed and the Guardian Data Store is now an amazing resource even just to browse or to get tips from, let alone to actually use their data.
Web usage has changed dramatically over the past couple of years, with even the average user now utilising web services alongside informational resources. As most of the major browsers have moved towards tabbed browsing, many web sessions now involve hopping between your ‘web service’ tabs such as rich email client, project management service, image manager, etc and other websites. Well, if you’ve ever found yourself thinking “I wish I could just run my web services as an application and separate them from this tabbed browser model”, you actually can. [Of course you always could just by running them in a separate browser window but that often results in even more confusion].
Fluid is an excellent little freeware app for Mac OS X that enables websites to be run as applications. The site is shown without the usual browser clutter around the edges and is presented as a standalone application in your App menu. The execution has been thought through excellently - such as web links to other sites being launched in your preferred browser, rather than the ‘app window’ losing the original app. For instance, I run the project management web service Basecamp as a Fluid app. This means that I can flick back and forth to it with ease, it never gets lost amongst other tabs in a browser, links to client sites/resources open appropriately in my browser, etc. Give it a try!
The Google I/O conference this week in San Francisco is a chance for the outside world to see some of the exciting stuff that Google has on the horizon. Google’s reach is so broad that there will be something to excite everyone, but two notable developments that caught our eye are Google Wave and Google’s increasing support for HTML5.
Google Wave is an attempt to unify communication and collaboration on the web, and has been created by the original team behind Google Maps, as described in this Mashable article.
HTML5 on the other hand is clearly not a Google product but something that’s been on the horizon for web developers for sometime. Personally I’d prioritise cross-browser support for CSS3 over implementation of HTML5 support, but it’s clear that HTML5 does offer greater flexibility and power to web developers. The current example demo’ed by Google is the use of HTML5 to render video directly in the browser using the new <pre><video></pre> tag as opposed to needing an intermediary plugin [usually Flash]. You’ll need an HTML 5 capable browser to get the full benefit of this demo page on Youtube, though viewing the source [in any browser] demonstrates the different approach of using HTML5 markup.
Spotify are apparently working on an application which would enable you to listen to their streaming music service via your mobile phone. The killer aspect is that a playlist prepared whilst you have an internet connection can then be cached on your phone for playback when you don’t. The demo is currently on Android, with an iPhone version promised soon.
The lengthy beta of Skyfire [which apparently saw over one million downloads] has come to an end and Skyfire has moved to an official v.1.0 release. If you have a high-end Nokia [N or E Series] or a recent Windows Mobile phone [WM5 or 6] then Skyfire is certainly worth downloading and installing.
At a glance, the features are similar to the very capable Opera mobile browser. The big win for Skyfire however is that it supports Flash 10 content. This means that a wealth of previously unavailable content is now supported on mobile, not least of course Youtube [and similar video sites such as Vimeo]. Having only used the browser for a short time, my first impressions are that it is not as fast at rendering a page as Opera, nor is the rendered text as sharp. However, in general usage the browser performed excellently, and standard browser functionality such as automatically rotating to landscape when I tilt the device worked well. Furthermore, using Flash content worked like a dream. It would also be a dream for mobile operators too of course as, when not in wifi range, the Flash content would typically chomp happily through my data bundle.
All in all, Skyfire is a highly capable browser and brings my N95 mobile browser experience to a new level. Whilst not quite threatening the alround iPhone or Android browser experience just yet, it demonstrates that we can continue to expect a high quality mobile internet experience on non-touch screen phones for sometime to come.
Symbols are too easily overlooked in Fireworks. Although we’re used to using them all the time in Flash, it’s only recently become apparent how useful they are in Fireworks as, yet again, it proves how much more effective it is for web and interactive design than Photoshop. Symbols allow you to define a visual object once and then re-use it time and again, with the ability to modify each instance’s paramters whilst having a single master object in the library to update if needed. The obvious usage in interface mock-ups is for buttons but once you’ve grasped the concept it’s easy to use for logos, site-wide graphics, navigation elements, etc. Check out this excellent Adobe article to get started.
Before anyone cries “Mashups are sooo 2008″, check out the Mashable post listing five Flickr/Twitter mashups - all of which are highly enjoyable. If nothing else, it demonstrates what can be achieved with such a mass of accurately tagged/keyworded content - Flickr in the form of an engaged and committed tagging community and Twitter by merit of Tweets being so short that they can mostly be used as a bunch of keywords. Using this model, Flittr adds visual detail to tweets by taking the last tweet from a user and adding a mosaic of 16 Flickr pictures, usually with very apt results.
Fireworks is pretty much the most powerful tool in our box, enabling us to deliver everything from interactive wireframes through to fully design UI mock-ups. However, it wasn’t until recently that we started to dig a little deeper into it’s customisation potential, and it was a very pleasant surprise to find that with only a little Javascript you can create very powerful Fireworks extensions. Photoshop introduced ‘Actions’ many versions ago but they always felt a little clunky and only worth setting up if you had a lot of repetitive tasks to get through. However, with extensions it is much quicker and more flexible to consolidate a whole range of steps into one command, and vastly increase your productivity in the meantime. Check out the Adobe documentation Adobe documentation or this tutorial to get started. You won’t regret it when it avoids a thousand select/copy/paste/tweak/save tasks!
Note to Mac CS4 users: the place to put your saved extension files is:
Macintosh HD:Users:<User>:Library:Application Support:Adobe:Fireworks CS4:Commands
Looks like when Adobe offered to supply the $699 software package for free to developers who could prove they were currently unemployed they may not have expected to have to withdraw the offer so quickly. Cynics might suggest however that Adobe fully expected the deal to be snapped up and now they can sit back, happy to have rapidly expanded their Flex community by another 15,000 developers. Either way, it is often the case that innovation and creativity are increased during hard times so let’s hope this paves the way for yet more exciting new Flash developments. At least with Flex we’re unlikely to see 15,000 new ’skip intro’ sites!
Here’s one for the keyboard shortcut lovers out there. When I moved back to the Mac 18 months ago the only thing I really missed was Launchy. I’d always been aware that Launchy was known to be inspired by Spotlight on the Mac, yet when I finally got to use Spotlight I found myself wanting Launchy back as Spotlight just doesn’t do enough. It’s fine to quickly find a file, email or contact but doesn’t have the contextual actions that Launchy did.
Well, even better, Quicksilver on OS X improves massively on Spotlight and, after a few months usage, I’d say is even better than Launchy too. This is one OS modification that I think everyone with a liking for keyboard access should use. Initially it feels a little bit of an effort but once you’ve persevered a short while you’ll never look back. Open the last document an app opened, find a contact and start a blank email, add something to your calendar, etc. It’s all merely a few key presses away. Once you’ve downloaded Quicksilver and tried the basics, there are a few tutorials out there but here’s a good one to get started.
Some interesting perspectives regarding whether any of many’other’ app stores [Google's is out, Nokia due imminently, Blackberry and Microsoft on the way, various operators are live or in the pipeline, etc] can expect to have any of Apple’s success. Without the all-round integrated experience of the iTunes ecosystem it’s hard to see how any other app store can deliver quite as good an experience but time will tell.
Finally, a music service that feels like it’s actually geared towards online usage rather than merely trying to shoehorn an offline model into a web-shaped box. I’ve only been using Spotify a few days and I’m already convinced that it’s way better than Napster [my existing music subscription service]. Spotify has got quite a bit of ground to make up but news that it is to launch a new API this week shows what a serious challenger it will very quickly become.
Though not a surprise, Twitter has now revealed that it plans to add paid-for services sooner than expected. It is almost certain that the services will be in the form of a premium account targetted at businesses.
We’ve been following the progress of the relaunched Skittles site with interest to see if they’d be sticking with their relatively brave approach to creating a web experience relying almost exclusively on utilising the big destination sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, etc. The site itself doesn’t offer much that’s new except for the blatant approach to exposing the underlying web properties and a quite nifty [though also not new] use of a floating Flash ‘controller’ to keep it all together. Wonder how long this will last and/or if other brands will follow suit.
I was only recently introduced to the wondrous suite of visual/design online applications at Aviary.com. Having had a brief explore, I’m sure Adobe aren’t worried just yet but as a demonstration of how usually complex graphics applications can be delivered online using Flash they’re an amazing showcase. As with Google’s online application suite, the opportunities for such applications are best maximised either by focussing on the 10% of an applications features that are used by 90% of it’s users or when they deliver features that couldn’t be delivered with offline software. In Aviary’s case this might mean being able to quickly alter a photo before posting to a blog or photo-sharing site or being able to collaboratively edit a visual in real-time with other users.
Well, I say apologise. It’s not exactly a “grovelling on your knees” apology by any means. In fact, in Google’s apology for Gmail being down for two and half hours they are actually “sorry that it disrupted your working day”. I guess that’s why Google Apps comes in two flavours - free and premium - though from what I can understand the premium version was also affected.
OK, quite possibly my finest ever “sandwich short of a picnic” moment but I’ve just realised how easy it is to schedule future posts in Wordpress. If sometimes, like me, you blog in bursts and then save some of your posts as drafts to publish at a later date, but then inevitably keep forgetting to go back to the drafts folder, then scheduled posts are for you. Or of course if you’re in the habit of writing posts such as press releases that have a specific release date. That would be a far more obvious example! Anyway, just write the post as usual but change the publish date to a future one and, in Wordpress 2.7+ at least, the ‘Publish. button will miraculously change to read ‘Schedule’ and your post will not be shown until the specified time. I’m sure I’m pretty much the last person ever to cotton on to this but I find it very useful.
It will be interesting to observe whether O2’s forthcoming venture to run a branded version of Bebo is a success. Apparently an earlier trial saw traffic grow by 60% so whereas on the one hand one might assume that any brand - particularly mobile operators and ISPs - would be viewed cynically by “the yoof” as trying to own their social network, it may be a sign that the mobile operators are finally gaining acceptance as credible providers and partners in such web services as opposed to merely becoming back-end enablers. Or it may just be that the tariff is good.
One of the biggest issues we found with Google Apps as a genuine business/enterprise mail and calendaring solution was the difficulty of synchronising calendar clients with the Google Calendar server. For example, it was straightforward to set-up a calendar application to pull in events from a GCal using the iCal format but ‘publishing’ events involved a convoluted workaround or use of 3rd party syncing software. Recently this has changed however and having followed the instructions from Google on getting started with CalDAV we now have a much more savvy centralised calendaring system.
Robert Scoble, well known technology blogger and commentator, suggested nine ways Twitter could make money. And it turns out of course that, with Twitter being one of the biggest albeit tech-focussed successes of 2008, a lot of other people had some ideas too.
Intersquash.com offers a straightforward way of translating your website content into an iPhone optimised webpage. The resulting page offers little more than a generic iPhone skinned version of a site’s RSS feed, but it appears to be a quick and easy way of optimising any content for the iPhone that’s already available via RSS.
It’s not the first Twitter app and it won’t be the last but the simplicity of the twistori site is very pleasing to use and almost always returns interesting content within the first few lines. Choose from one of six feelings to filter Twitter messages [tweets] such as ‘think’ or ‘wish’.
