Still No OS, But Google Takes Over My Desktop Anyway

The Google Mac team seemingly doesn't get to play with all the fun toys its Windows counterparts do. While the Windows team got to use Desktop long before we Mac users did, and thus far, holds a monopoly on the Chrome Web browser, it looks as if their hands weren't completely idle - as on Monday, they announced the release of a tool called Top Draw, which creates complex imagery and has the option to replace users' desktops. While an automatic background refresher isn't exactly innovative, as Apple has had this capability built into its system preferences for years, the new tool offers up compelling images that had me checking out my new desktop time and again.

Top Draw comes with integrated scripts with many preloaded image types, from Grid to Plasma to WavyGlow, for example.

The small viewer simply lets you select what Script type will run and how often it will refresh. For me, I have it running on randomly chosen scripts, every two minutes.

While not all the resulting images are postcard-perfect, a great deal of them surpass the bundled desktop patterns and pictures provided by Cupertino. A few examples are below:







It's one of those small products that piques the interest throughout the day. Also piquing the interest is wondering just what the Google Mac team is working on that would require this kind of engine, and if we'll soon get to see some serious Mac software and not just flashy toys that hearken back to decades-old screensavers.

Is Your iPhone Ready for Some Football?

For much of the United States, and increasingly, other countries, Sundays in the fall and winter months are dominated by one thing - football. And just because you happen to be of a geeky mentality doesn't mean you can't nurture your jock side through using your iPhone to get updated in near real-time to all the happenings in the NFL. One of my favorite free apps on the iTunes application store is "Pro Football Live", which provides score updates, play by play, current game situations, photos, news, and even the ability to talk back to other users through a feature called "Smack Talk".

Apple's most recent iPhone ads have highlighted the application store, and specifically, some of the games that have been developed for the nascent platform. But there's more to entertainment than video games and high scores.


You Can See Updated Scores from Around the League

With Pro Football Live, I don't need to go to ESPN.com or Yahoo! Sports to get all the scoring updates, and even if I'm away from the TV or radio, I can get the feeling of watching a game, by seeing the current game situation, including who has the ball, yard markers, downs and yardage.


You Can Talk Smack And Check Current Standings

And while I'm not getting streaming video, by using the Pro Football Live app, unlike TV, I have access to all the games at once, not just those being broadcast in my area. So if you're a fantasy football junkie, like me, you can toggle between today's Raiders/Chargers contest, and that of the Texans/Jaguars or Jets/Cardinals. You can, with a couple clicks of the phone, be on top of your game, and you can jump into "Smack Talk" to share your thoughts with other fans.


You Can View Recent Photos and News from the NFL

Pro Football Live also features "News" and "Photos" feeds from the leading sources, letting you get updated on which starters are expected to play or which players set personal records.

iPhone applications like Pro Football Live and MLB.com's At Bat have helped me be closer to all games when away from home, taking pro sports mobile. It's all part of how products like the iPhone can better reach across the digital divide and get into America's living rooms, or at least, entertain those who would rather be in their living rooms, instead of slogging along behind their significant other who won't let them watch the game.

iPhone Application Review: Mobile Fotos

By Phil Glockner of Scribkin (FriendFeed/Twitter)

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Author's Note: Louis and I share an interest in the iPhone / iPod Touch platform, and all the new applications being developed for it for release on the iTunes Store. Realizing this, I offered to write a series of 'mini-reviews' on applications I really like, and if applicable, their impact on the social media space. I'm going to start with Mobile Fotos, an application developed by Karl van Randow, a freelance New Zealand developer who has (according to his blog) been actively working on a 'web debugging proxy' called Charles.

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Mobile Fotos

Mobile Fotos, like several others in the iTunes store, specializes in connecting the iPhone and iPod Touch to Flickr, a popular photo-sharing web site. While I tried several others but I found Mobile Fotos to be the most feature-complete and easiest to use. The application costs $2.99, and there is no 'free version' available. However, I believe it is well worth this small price, considering its functionality.

Features

• Mobile Fotos Uses the Flickr API and supports authentication with the Flickr server.
• Flickr sets, groups, favorites, tags, contacts, photo search and explore by most recent and 'interestingness' are supported. Collections (groups of groups) and historical display are not supported.
• Uploading from the iPhone 'camera roll' archive and from a live picture are supported.
• Photos taken from within Mobile Fotos are also stored in the camera roll.
• Adding a title and description as well as adding a new photo to an existing set (or creating a new set) are supported at time of photo upload.
• Geotagging of photos after upload is supported, and controllable for each upload.
• With the 2.1 firmware update, uploading from the camera roll at full resolution (1200x1600) is supported.
• Easy-to-use interface follows a rigorous 'drill-down' methodology that, once learned, makes navigating through all the different browsing options very easy.
• Portrait and landscape modes.
• Searching for nearby photos using GPS is supported.

I should also mention some drawbacks I have encountered.

First, when browsing through photos at full size, the interface does not support 'sliding' a finger to navigate. You must click on a right or left arrow to move forward or back. Second, there is no batch upload feature. Photos can only be uploaded one at a time.

Usage

In practice, the one photo upload is not as much of a limitation as you might think. First, when you are out and about, you generally only need to take a photo, set a description and get it started. By the time you are ready to set up another shot, it is ready.

As for using the application as a mobile gateway to Flickr, the developer has gone to great pains to preserve the sort of free-form exploration that makes Flickr such fun to waste time in. You can search for a tag, for example, then bring up details on the photo, click on the photo's owner and then browse through their photostream, favorites or even their contact's photos. Each level you delve down is pushed on to a stack so that you can back up whenever you like.

Performance on both WiFi and 3G is very snappy. Uploading only takes a few seconds and pulling up photostreams and images is almost instant. If you use the app on the slower GSM network, be prepared to wait a while, especially for full-sized photo uploads.

Upshot

Mobile Fotos has become a valued tool for me when I only have my cell phone on-hand to take a picture and I want to get it on Flickr right away. Sure, there may be a few free apps will do this without geotagging. But, considering all the other features that are in this app, it is worth the three bucks.

Update: The latest version of Mobile Photos (version 1.3) adds support for 'swiping' through a photostream, as well as support for uploading from the full iPhone photo library. There also seems to be double the number of options that can be performed when viewing an image fullsize, and new even on a thumbnail, including assign to contact, open in Safari, email a link, and even Twitter support!

Read more by Phil Glockner at Scribkin.com.

The iPhone App Store Should Let You Try Before You Buy

With only a few exceptions, it's been universally accepted that Apple's move to sell iPhone applications on its iTunes store is an unqualified success. In fact, it's widely believed that Microsoft will soon follow suit, offering a centralized place to acquire and download applications for Windows Mobile. But in speaking with other iPhone users, I've heard concerns voiced that there is no way to use an application on a trial basis. We know Apple has the capability to use DRM to limit the amount of time a customer can rent a movie, so why not use the same technology to let users try apps for days or weeks?

Software developers outside the world of the iPhone have a number of ways to try and gain compensation for their work. Some give it away via freeware. Others use what's called donationware, which essentially means the product is free, but they provide a way for you to donate money, should you want to. Even more popular is shareware, which has a listed price, but lets you download it for free, and pay later, often limited to a number of users, or through repeat annoyances that make you want to upgrade. And, of course, you have software that's only available at full price, or in retail packages.

But so far, Apple's iPhone App Store only offers two options - free, and paid. And if you've paid for a premium application, and it turns out you don't like it, tough luck.

Practically the only way an application developer can offer users a way to "try before they buy" is to offer a free "lite" version on the iTunes App Store in addition to a premium version. Customers who want the additional features of the paid application would try the lite version and then buy a second, parallel, application, and need to delete the old.

This inflexibility is unnecessary given Apple's experience with setting DRM to give users a limit to how many times they can burn playlists to CDs and how long they have to watch movies rented from iTunes. Given that a text description and small pictures displayed on the iTunes store isn't always a great representation of the user's experience with the software app, it makes sense for the company to work with developers to offer time or use-based limits to software, which would first be free and later prompt to be paid for. The ability to try applications before buying them wold reduce consumers' concerns and still offer developers a way to make a return on their investment. DRM doesn't always have to be bad - it can help both users and content creators.

Apple's "Ease of Use" Fails Me Again, Time Capsule the Culprit

Two of the major reasons I've been an Apple Macintosh fan from just about my first introduction to computers have been the systems' ease of use, and product quality. There was a time when I would be happier using a decade-old Mac than the latest-generation Dell or HP, and that I felt absolutely sure buying AppleCare would be a waste of money. But over the years, it seems product quality has slipped, and I'm almost as likely to get a bum product as one I can expect to be perfect.

This most recent Saturday, I was delighted to pick up the long-awaited iPhone 3G, and also, a 500 Gigabyte Time Capsule, for backup. Now that the twins are here, I've been thinking to back up all their photos and videos would be a good idea.

So far, the iPhone 3G experience has been outstanding. I returned my Blackberry to IT today after transferring my phone number yesterday evening. Now that a friend of mine passed along a Bluetooth-enabled Jawbone headset, I can even make all those calls in the car without violating California's hands free law and being one of the thousands ducking below the dashboard to dial.


But the Capsule is an entirely different story. I unpacked it yesterday evening, installed the necessary software on my laptop, and plugged in the Capsule to my cable modem, as expected. Then I told Time Machine to find it, and start my first backup to the device.

It failed, saying, "the backup disk image could not be created".


So I checked out the settings and tried different things. I had the Capsule run the wireless network. I even tried plugging into the device directly, using Ethernet. No dice. And if I tried to drag and drop any files to the Capsule from my laptop over the network, they failed too. So, I took a paper clip, reset it to factory settings and started over. More shades of fail.

Try after try... failed.

Today, a friend on FriendFeed suggested that maybe the Time Capsule wasn't to blame, but instead, that my hard drive might have some permission issues. So, I tried that too. Why not?


Trying again this evening, I thought I had more luck, as the backup was "Preparing" for some time. But it too failed, saying "An error occurred while creating the backup directory."

Wandering through Apple's support forums shows I'm not the only person who has had issues like this, but after years of expecting Apple's product quality and simplicity to be a cut above the rest, I'm, like others, growing a little fatigued by products that don't just work right away, or making one of many trips to the Genius Bar to replace batteries, frayed power adapters, or laptop hinges.

I haven't yet decided how long I'm going to keep pushing to try and make this product work, but if it doesn't end up working out, and I end up returning it to the Apple Store, I'm not so sure I'm getting another one. I'm on Apple products all day long, so getting the entire experience down right is a must. I'm geeky enough that just getting an Apple product to work for me shouldn't be this hard.

There's No Whale, But Apple Mail is Trying to Fail

Over the last dozen years, I've amassed more than 36,000 stored e-mail messages in my Apple Mail. Through upgrades from Mac OS 8 to 9, OS X and all the ensuing system updates, and from Eudora to Microsoft Outlook Express, Entourage and eventually Apple Mail, I've managed to import all the items, losing almost nothing in the process. And I've been a happy .Mac customer (now MobileMe Mail) since almost the day it debuted. But now, I'm beginning to think I need to start making more frequent backups and deleting old messages, as my index is threatening to die.

Since the update to MobileMe Mail, at any point during the day, whether I am receiving new mail, or moving mail from the Inbox to hierarchical folders, I've sporadically gotten an error saying Apple Mail needs to "repair its information", then forcing me to quit. This has happened practically every day over the last week-plus.




When trying to reopen Mail, I get a note saying I need to reimport all my messages, which takes about 20 minutes, and then, all should be well.





So far, as much as I can tell, no messages have been lost. But some of the metadata is definitely awry, as old folders long left untouched show that messages sent several years ago are now marked as having gone out today, with the timestamp of when my index was rebuilt.

Over the years, I've rolled up a lot of messages, and my e-mail archive is a great resource for me to find old conversations with family members (going back to 1996), or searching keywords to find the first time something came to my attention. My e-mail folder with my father, for example, has more than 3,100 messages in it. My "Blog" top level folder has 3,600 messages, "Commerce" has 3,200, "Comments" another 3,000. There are about 2,500 in the folder for messages to and from Mom, and between 2,000 and 4,000 apiece for Twitter and FriendFeed.

There's no question that alerts from the social services I use have accelerated my e-mail glut, and I'm a pack rat when it comes to saving my mail. But now that I'm starting to see more failures on my Apple Mail, which has been rock solid for more than a decade, I'm starting to "think different" about saving everything. I just might backup again and then go on a deleting run. Hopefully, I can get this solved before it's too late and I lose anything significant.

Me-Too Software and Web Apps Often Find Their Own Niche

As the price to develop Web applications and communities has decreased, and investment in people is less-demanding, it's no surprise that we've seen a boom in sites with significant similarities - be they social networking, lifestreaming, status updaters, online file storage or virtual worlds. While the rule holds true in software as it does in Silicon Valley, that the vast majority of products may meet a less than optimal fate, the potential payout continues to draw development, with new brand names hitting our RSS feeds on a daily basis.

The seeming onslaught of new services had the omnipresent Chris Brogan asking frustratedly yesterday, "Who's writing all these me too software apps? Do they feel accomplished?" Brogan later gave the services Kwippy and Yokway as examples of two services that had recently come across his view, adding, "(I) just dont' see why we need yet another of something we have in spades. Where's the innovation?"

Sometimes, in this age of instant analysis, determining the differentiation and purpose of a new site can be hard, especially as the bloggers and technology reporters try and grasp the new site and place it in the context of existing applications that are more well-known. (See: Inquisitr: Yokway: Sort of FriendFeed Meets Del.icio.us for one example)

Whether it's in the name of differentiation or competition, it's rare that a developer or startup team will be aiming to make a carbon copy of an existing site. RSSmeme debuted, after ReadBurner, to show the most shared items in Google Reader, and progressed differently, offering a custom FeedFlare and featuring deeper index with more linkblogs than ReadBurner, while ReadBurner partnered with multiple RSS engines, including NewsGator and Netvibes. Facebook was like MySpace and Friendster before it, but initially just for the college set and later high school, before opening up, and later adding a development platform.

There is a long history of services and software that have striking similarities to one another. That a product exists doesn't mean that any potential competing product should walk away and cede the market, delivering a monopoly. As Disqus' CEO Daniel Ha told me back in June, the existence of competitors like SezWho, Intense Debate and JS-Kit help let him know he's in a worthwhile market to pursue, even if it's a rare blogger who has plans to implement multiple commenting engines. The existence of Digg didn't stop Mixx from debuting, and the existence of HotBot, Lycos and Excite didn't look like too much of a hurdle for Google to get going.

Rob Diana of Regular Geek, in the FriendFeed comment thread spawned by Brogan's question, said, "Until someone dominates the space you will see a lot of similar applications," while Clint Ecker wrote, "The market will bear out the niche products and the unsatisfactory ones will fade away and disappear until the community has selected the 'best' service."

But even the selection of a "best service" doesn't mean there won't be more developers trying to crack the market. Plurk and Identi.ca are two recent approaches to microblogging, taking on Twitter. And Cuil's entry into the search market came at a time when Google's enjoyed its largest market share ever. The likelihood of these challenger sites to replace the market behemoths is very small, both short term and longer term, but just about every site and service can develop a dedicated community who swears by it - arguably making the developers' efforts worthwhile. You recently saw this happen when the niche community sites of Ballhype and Showhype, arguably Digg clones, were acquired for $3 million.

From the outside looking in, developers don't see themselves as copycats. Instead, they likely see opportunity, finding weaknesses in a competitor's offering, or finding a new way to seemingly offer the best of both worlds. And just because they aren't enjoying a majority market share in a given metric by a certain time period doesn't mean their efforts were in vain. There's no hard and fast law saying you need to sign up for every lifestreaming service, every social network, every microblogging client and every RSS reader, but as more options and alternatives are out there, there will be a small group of people who prefers the new entrant, whether it be for its GUI, its compatibility with plug-ins, widgets or extensions, or implied productivity.

As an early adopter, I'll usually be checking out most of these services, and I welcome more. It's not about finding how much they're all the same, but determining the differences, and seeing what I can do that's new. I might, sometimes, never use a service again, if I don't find it to do what I had hoped. But often, when I check back in a few months later, I'll find a small community that's calling it home, or see the development didn't stop at day one, making it a richer experience. So, development community, keep it coming. Let's see those new apps, the new innovation, and the new services. It will never be enough.

Posty's Single-Window Microblogging AIR App Adds Identi.ca Support

Adobe's AIR platform is seeing a rise in applications designed to bring Web activity to your desktop. From TweetDeck to Twhirl, Alert Thingy to Feedalizer, a host of new apps have debuted in the last few months, offering the ability to view or post to one or more services including Twitter, FriendFeed, Seesmic, Pownce, Jaiku and lately, Plurk or Identi.ca.

But not every AIR app gets all services, and those that support more than one service usually require more than one window to get the job done. A newer entrant to this space, Posty, authored by Cesare Rocchi, offers support, as of today, for six different Web update services, all in a single window, allowing those with accounts in multiple places to send simultaneous updates to more than one location.

Posty, from a single black square window, lets you post updates to six different services, including Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr, Friendfeed, and as of this morning, Identi.ca. And if you have logins at more than one of them, you can simply use the checkboxes to make sure your updates go to multiple destinations at once.

While the application is rather spartan in its ability to be configured, it simply gets the job done. At the top is a horizontal bar featuring each of the six individual services, a posting window, and a settings window, where you can add your login information.

Key to making the application useful is that for each service, be it Twitter, Identi.ca or FriendFeed, for example, you can view your own entries, entries from your friends, the public feed, see replies, or you can use integrated search.

As with other AIR apps, you can take appropriate actions per service. For FriendFeed, you can like or make comments. On Identi.ca, you can reply or go directly to the update. And on Twitter, you can reply, mark as a favorite, or open the note in your Web browser. This wasn't always available, as in the very first release of Posty earlier this month, you couldn't see your friends' updates, only your own and public timelines. After I traded e-mail with Cesare a couple weeks ago, he was quick to respond with a new version incorporating the update.

Unlike more well-known AIR applications, like Twhirl (which Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb called a "killer app" today) Posty handles all these services in a single window, utilizing the icons. Instead of monopolizing screen space with multiple parallel windows, Posty takes an all in one strategy.

When I first reviewed TweetDeck, some people said they were "tired of black" when it came to AIR applications, so if you're not a big fan of black, Posty isn't really for you, as that's how it looks, period. There are options to change the text color from "Sunny" to "Snowy", "Icy" and in between, but it doesn't actually change the app.

Cosmetics aside, Posty has given us a strong single-window application to both consume and send updates to multiple microblogging services at once. Identi.ca is rising now, and gaining momentum thanks to Twitter's occasional issues, and its open source roots. With services like Posty making it an equal player early on, the new kid on the block gets another boost.

To download Posty for yourself, find it here: http://tinyurl.com/getposty.

iPod Touch As An Apple TV Remote? Cooler Than I Thought.

When Apple's iTunes application store opened up last week, I, at first, skipped over the free Remote application that offered the option to manage iTunes or the Apple TV from your iPhone or iPod Touch. It just seemed stupid at worst, or a proof of concept at best. Why would I want to duplicate the Apple Remote's capabilities with a much more functional device, I thought? But after checking the application out the last few days, I can attest to the fact I've been pleasantly surprised, and am now taking my iPod Touch with me around the house, acting as a DJ on the move.

As the screenshots included in this post show, the Remote application on the iPod Touch or iPhone does more than just meet the same capabilities offered by Apple's miniscule white remote. Benefitting from the wide touchscreen, I can browse thousands of songs, albums and artists quickly, and see a mirror image of what's playing on my Apple TV, letting me change the song with a single tap of my finger, anywhere in range of the Airport wireless network that both my device and the Apple TV share.


In contrast, the white remote has always been painstakingly slow to browse large libraries, practically forcing an indent into my thumb as I held the down key just to pass the letter "M". Given my library has almost 6,000 songs on it, and 23.6 days worth of music, that can be a frequent problem.

Once the Remote application is synched up with your Apple TV, using it is very simple. Choose "Playlists", "Albums", "Artists", or search for a song or any band. Unlike the white remote, you can actually type on your iPod Touch or iPhone, making this very quick.


Now, instead of relying on my iTunes on the laptop, and just turning up the sound to full blast, or resigning myself to not listening to my music as I move around the house, I can leverage the sound system on my TV set, and play DJ from room to room. I can even go to the "More" tab and select what the Apple TV was always intended to do - play movies and TV shows. But overnight, this little would-be useless application has become a must-have. I'm not leaving my iPod Touch laying around any more.

TweetDeck Twitter Client Gains High Profile Amid High Expectations

On July 4th, I had the opportunity to help introduce TweetDeck to the blogosphere as a fully-featured Twitter client, based on the Adobe AIR platform, with Summize integration, and the option to show Tweets in multiple columns, including dedicated screen space for replies, and customizable grouping. While the Twitter client space has already seen good penetration by Twhirl, Feedalizer and others, TweetDeck has gained a strong following over the last ten days, with many testing, and a good number, including me, using it as our default interface to Twitter's microblogging platform.


Tweetip Shows the Boom in TweetDeck Use and Discussion
In fact, the blog Tweetip, which watches Twitter closely to capture inflection points of when one term or another rapidly changes on the service, captured the boom in TweetDeck commentary last week, showing how much more mindshare the application got following our first post. But just because a lot more people know about the service doesn't mean it has a free ticket to application stardom. I asked people on Twitter and FriendFeed yesterday if they had made the switch. (See the FriendFeed discussion)

For every "Yes, been using it since launch+1, and still using and loving it!" and "Yes... And yes. Like it a lot" I received, I also got a few responses like "No. uses too much real estate" or "Use tweetdeck but prefer twhirl because it gives me Friendfeed and multiple twitter user accounts at the same time."

While I like TweetDeck's ability to display in multiple columns as a full-screen application in the background, others prefer the single-column look of alternative applications. Also, over the last week-plus, I heard calls to separate Twitter replies from Twitter direct messages. And in both cases, developer Iain Dodsworth delivered. Both the single-window feature, as well as a single column for DMs are available in the latest beta.


TweetDeck Added Support for Direct Messages

TweetDeck Added Support for a Single Column View
With such a healthy debut, users are expecting TweetDeck to grow up and do even more, including incorporating FriendFeed streams, as Twhirl and other newcomers do. I don't know that Iain has these plans, but if he did, the crowd which uses both might find the service even more intriguing. I'm also curious to see if TweetDeck would make any sense in an interface like the iPhone. With Twitterific debuting on the iPhone and iPod Touch on day one, it will be hard for competitors to make headway, especially those that use the AIR platform.

TweetDeck is in public beta, and can be found here: http://tweetdeck.com/beta/. Other reviews so far of TweetDeck include those from ReadWriteWeb, /Message and The Download Squad.

Apple's Own iPhone Apps Create Concerns for Small Developers

Apple takes great pride in the fact the company controls both the hardware and operating system for its Macintosh line of computers. In theory, this tight-fisted control can lead to higher product quality and an improved user experience. But as Cupertino expands its array of software titles from the desktop to the iPhone platform, independent developers are feeling the squeeze that comes when competing with the hometown team.

Yesterday night, just a weekend after Apple unveiled the AppStore for iPhone and iPod Touch, I got an e-mail from Kevin O'Neil of Candywriter.com, the creator of Imagine Poker, a Texas Hold 'Em game for the Macintosh. O'Neill wrote with excitement that the application had now also been released for the iPod Touch and iPhone platform for all of $4.99. But included in the good news was a foreboding note:

"When the App Store opened last week, it was revealed that Imagine Poker's rival Texas Hold 'Em game on the iPhone was actually created by Apple itself. We encourage you to check out their version of the game too (you can't miss it) but, as an independent developer, we hope you can come to appreciate the same solid game-play and sense of humor in Imagine Poker Touch that has made Imagine Poker Mac a success."

You can read between the lines and see the worry the small independent developer has with facing the Apple machine, just like Karelia Software saw when Apple introduced iWeb in parallel with their development of Sandvox, and of course, famously, when Apple embedded capabilities in Sherlock that closely mimicked their desktop search engine, Watson.

Microsoft got in all sorts of hot water when they embedded Internet Explorer in Windows, and forced third party hardware manufacturers to include the browser as part of their package, or face de-licensing. Apple, enjoying its minority position in just about all markets, has not always faced such scrutiny, even as they rolled out Apple Mail (eliminating the need for Eudora and Entourage), Safari (as IE languished), and an array of productivity offerings for free, including Preview (versus Adobe Acrobat), iCal and iPhoto. While the iPhone doesn't share the market position Windows does, it is taking an increasing share of the pie from Windows Mobile and Blackberry, and there could come a time when Apple's embedded apps or competitive apps gain more scrutiny than they do today.

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira of Profy has discussed the seeming non-balance she's already seen at the AppStore in a pair of posts: iPhone App Store: Eliminating the Competition and Advantage App Store: Two Paths to iPhone User Adoption. As she writes, "People are generally lazy, and will opt for the easiest and most convenient choice." For Candywriter.com, the easiest choice for customers just might be to keep Apple's Texas Hold 'Em game, and not seek out Imagine Poker, and this just might be the tip of the iceberg. If a small developer believes Apple will crowd them out of the market, then why try?

As for me, I did buy Imagine Poker. It's been a fun game on the Mac, and I'm looking forward to wasting more time with it on my iPod Touch.

Do you know any other third-party application developers on the iPhone who are now feeling the heat from Apple?

After Slow Start, My iPod Touch Is a Happy 2.0 Camper

As far as dedicated Apple fans go, I think I've had to turn in my "First Class" ID in exchange for a "Second Class" ID ever since the iPhone came out. The reason? I still don't have one, and no matter how many days in a row I wear my Apple logo watch or my Apple logo shirts, it won't make up for the fact the rest of the digerati have moved forward, and yet, I hold on to my two or three-generations old Blackberry.

But my so far steering clear of the iPhone doesn't mean I didn't get the chance to benefit from Apple's releases on Friday. While the reports from Apple Stores across the country poured in about long waits, activation delays and software bugs, I was at home trying to find some way to get my iPod Touch software updated, to benefit from the newly introduced iTunes Application Store. I had jumped the gun on Thursday, purchasing several of the apps, and yet, the 2.0 software package was playing hard to get.

Virtually all of Friday, the 2.0 upgrade for the iPod Touch was out of reach. Apple's Web site said it was a click away, but iTunes would continually fail, saying the upgrade was unavailable, putting me in a seeming infinite loop of futility. iTunes said I had an OS upgrade available, but it wouldn't even take me to the page where I could pay my nominal $9.95 and take my iPod Touch from trailing edge to leading edge.


Alright, I can Upgrade!

But Wait, This is Taking Too Long!

Ack! Failure Again!
But finally, after midnight last night, the trains started to run on time. I downloaded the more than 200 megabytes needed, over a half hour's time, and let my laptop and the iPod Touch spend some quality alone time, while data and settings were backed up and synchronized.

When all was completed, I not only had the 2.0 software, but several new applications for the iPod Touch, both free and premium, including:

• AOL Instant Messenger
  
• Baseball
  
• Facebook
  
• Google Mobile App
  
• MLB.com At Bat
  
• Salesforce Mobile
  
• Twitteriffic
  
• WeatherBug

I also added a handful of games, of course, from the basic SuperPong to Air Hockey, BlackJack, ZEN Pinball, and 300 Bowl.


The upgrade, despite the first day snafu, is absolutely a gem. Having push e-mail to the iPod Touch, and the addition of Twitterrific already has the iPod Touch playing a much more significant role as a communications device, and I'll be setting it up for full Exchange synchronization later today for sure. I'm also looking forward to working with the Salesforce.com tool, as Salesforce.com is one site I use constantly at the office to track leads, opportunities, reports and revenue.

And I can't overstate the geeky fun of the Baseball application. I was checking it out late last night, and what it delivers for any true sports nut is every statistic - ever - from the beginning of professional baseball through the 2007 season. You can browse by team, by year and by player to get all the data you'd need to win trivia games, or just to annoy your neighbors at the ballpark. Used in tandem with the MLB.com At Bat service, which lets you see game highlights on video throughout the contest, and after its completed, and you've got the potential to be a real seamhead as well as being a geek.

As for eventually crossing the chasm and finally getting that elusive iPhone? Trust me, it's tempting. The iPod Touch does a lot for me, but I would love to get it down to one device. But if your work paid for the BlackBerry service on Verizon, wouldn't you stick with that, instead of moving to AT&T and paying out of your own pocket?

TweetDeck: New Twitter AIR App With Summize Integration, Groups

For many, given the up and down status of Twitter, the search functionality of Summize has become a must-have to find conversations, replies, and topics. A new AIR app, debuting today, called TweetDeck, features full integration with Summize, and lets you customize your Twitter experience, through dedicated columns for your feed, your replies, searches, and even the ability to create custom groups of those you follow on Twitter for a micro-feed.

Authored by Iain Dodsworth, TweetDeck (available here), could give other AIR options, like Twhirl and Feedalizer some new competition. While I'm not typically a huge fan of AIR apps, I found TweetDeck to offer a great number of customizations that have me keeping it open and on the desktop around the clock.


The TweetDeck Interface (Click for Larger Image)
TweetDeck offers four major columns in which to organize Twitter data: "All Tweets", essentially your friends' timeline, "Replies", showing replies to you, the equivalent of Twitter's replies tab, "Search", which will keep a running search window open for a term you've selected, and "Group", which lets you make a sub-set of those you follow on Twitter, and make a miniature timeline.

Unlike some applications, whose preferred mode is single column, getting me only my Twitter stream, TweetDeck is actually very well built for being used in full-screen mode, of course, running in the background. Now, with one glance, I can see all updates, see all replies, and keep my eye out for keywords. And rather than force me to go out to Summize to search a keyword, TweetDeck has integrated Summize's search capability and also its ability to find replies, although, in version 0.15 beta, released just this morning, Twitter replies now have precedence, should there be duplicates.

You can also, of course, post your own Tweets from within the app, just by hitting the "Tweet" button at the top and entering what you want to say. TweetDeck counts down the number of characters to make sure you don't exceed 140.

The recent strain at Twitter has resulted in the service reducing the number of API calls developers can make to get Twitter updates, and there, TweetDeck has you covered as well, so you learn if there's any slowness, where to lay the blame.

In the bottom right corner, TweetDeck reports: "Twitter Status: Pretty much ok" or "Twitter Status: Rate limit exceeded" when there's a problem. It also provides a status as to when it was last updated, how many tweets were received, and when the next update is expected, polling every couple minutes.

In addition to the integrated search functionality, I was most impressed by the grouping function. I was able to create a group called "Lady Digerati", and could hand-pick which Tweeters would be followed, including @corvida, @sarahintampa, @veronica, @TheMacMommy, @NicoleSimon and others. You could, of course, make your own sub-groups to get a different subset.

While Jesse Stay and others have said Twitter's major issues have decimated the developer community's efforts around Twitter, there are still some looking to innovate, TweetDeck being a good example. Of course, given it's early status, there might be some issues, but it's worth taking a look, as the application has some great potential.

Crowdsource Software Payments to Reward Alert Developers

Not all software is free, and not all of it should be. Unless you are the type who can break out your C and Python manuals with ease, the time may come where you have an idea for a great application, and you're going to need someone else to do it. Why not leverage others who have the same need, and combine to provide a bounty, by which, if your solution is delivered to satisfaction, the developer or developers can reap the rewards directly from the end-users who will benefit from their product?

As a visible, active, FriendFeed user, I grew jealous by the success WordPress bloggers were having with Glenn Saven's nifty plug-in to show if items had received comments or "likes" from the popular social lifestreaming service. He had single-handedly developed a tool to unify conversations from disparate sources in an elegant way. But, for me, a long-time Blogger user, I was basically faced with a rock and a hard place. Migrate to WordPress, or keep my conversations separate.


This clearly wouldn't do. So, on May 25th, I said I needed a solution, writing:

Needed: FriendFeed Comments + Likes for Blogger (Old and New)

Thomas Hawk and I need your help. The WordPress bloggers are having way too much fun with getting FriendFeed likes and comments into their blog, and we using Blogger (both the old or new) can't yet do it. I am offering a $250 bounty to the developer of a solution good enough I can integrate into my blog. This would not replace Disqus, but go alongside it, as seen at the Inquisitr. Thomas and others, feel free to add to the bounty...

As much as the WordPress advocates wanted me to just switch blogging platforms (and I respect their views), I was looking for somebody to develop a solution that could help other FriendFeed users in the same predicament I was. After all, what was more likely? That you would see a lot of people make an exodus to a new platform for want of a widget, or that many people on Blogger would find the FriendFeed widget useful? I was willing to pay $250 to make this happen, and I wanted others to pay as well.

By June 16th, Pat Hawks had a solution worth paying money for, and Thomas Hawk agreed. He wrote, "I'm good for a match."


In the space of less than 30 days, I had helped spur an alert developer to create a fantastic solution which I have in place today, and one that continues to improve. Pat, for his efforts, not only gained at least the $500 from Thomas and me, but now has a great deal more awareness and respect across the FriendFeed community and the blogosphere at large. I bet that with platforms like FriendFeed, Twitter and others having direct, immediate, connections to people on the "demand" and "supply" side of the fence, this won't be the last time you see a crowdsourced method for getting software developed.


I am all too happy to give Pat $250, and I'm headed to PayPal now. In this age when you have developers trying to compete with free software and Web services, why not encourage them to build something that you would use, and offer them real cash? If you get enough friends together, you could end up with a serious code competition on your hands.

See also: WinExtra: Crowdsourcing a tech interview

Broadband Put to Test With 410 MB of Apple Software Updates

It doesn't seem all that long ago when it could take upwards of an hour to download a 4 megabyte update to Netscape Navigator. And in 1996, I once maxed out my best friend's 1 megabyte e-mail cap by sending him an IRC client as an 800k attachment, forcing him to beg and steal space from the UCLA IT administrators, just to get his e-mail functioning again.

Times change. Tonight, having heard Apple released an update to its Java support in Mac OS X 10.5, I opened up my Software Update, and was astounded to see the number of requested system enhancements, and their size. All told, there were 14 different updates available, totaling 410.069 megabytes - an eyebrow-raising amount, considering that in junior high school, I was comfortable tooling with HyperCard on a Macintosh IIsi with a 20 Megabyte hard drive, with an 80 Megabyte LaCie external drive.


Tonight's Available Updates (Click for Full Size)
In a great example of how far we've come in terms of hard disk space and consumer broadband, Apple's casually requested me to download the equivalent of twenty times the capacity of that same Mac IIsi. And I'll do it. As some of the items require restart, I won't hit the button just this second, but I know my MacBook Pro, with 200 Gigabytes of hard disk space, ten thousand times larger than the old Mac IIsi, is capable of handling this workload.

In the era of terabyte hard drives, 160 gigabyte iPods, and downloadable movies, maybe I should stop being impressed, but every once in a while, it's worth looking backwards to see how far we've come. Now if you don't mind, I've got some Mac updates to install.

My TiVo and My Mac, Finally on Speaking Terms

With two Tivos in the house and a pair of Mac laptops being on almost 24 by 7, you'd think we'd be earlier to the game as far as getting the devices to talk to one another was concerned. But, despite my occasional protestations, we've sometimes taken the slow adopter route, and not forced ourselves to be exactly cutting edge. That's why, more than a year after Roxio first announced Toast Titanium 8, with full Tivo2Go support for Mac OS X, I'm only now enjoying the benefits of taking my TiVo'd shows anywhere I like.

I couldn't ask for the process to be much more simple than Roxio has devised. Their Toast Titanium suite comes with multiple applications, focused on CD burning, and a TiVo Transfer application. After entering in my TiVo's DVR ID, and connecting the TiVo to our wireless network with a simple USB adapter, Roxio scanned the TiVo's disk and showed me the TiVo's contents, including show name, description, duration and how much space it would take up on my hard drive to download it.


The TiVo Transfer Interface (Click to Enlarge)

To grab a show, all I have to do is click it, and hit "Start Transfer". I can even choose "Create Auto Transfer" for a specific show, so that every time my Mac is connected to the network, it'll download it directly to my hard drive. Now, if my wife is monopolizing the TV, or if the house needs to be quiet for whatever reason, I can take the show directly to my Mac, plug in my headphones, and watch on my laptop instead, with quality no worse than on my set.


Downloading from TiVo Transfer (Click to Enlarge)

TiVo changed the game on television networks by shifting when we watched shows, or how we consumed advertising. The option to take the shows with me on my laptop changes the location where I watch my entertainment. While the downloaded TiVo content isn't set up to play on my iPod Touch, or at least without file conversions I haven't tried yet, I appreciate having this new, fun, feature. Now, I intend to slink off and catch up on a few Daily Shows with Jon Stewart.

Dave Winer Launches FlickrFan, Synching Photos With TV

Dave Winer, a true Web pioneer behind many of the major innovations of the last decade, including blogging, RSS and podcasting, to name a few minor ones, has fallen in love with the ability to bring a stream of photos via Flickr to your big screen television. Now, he's released a new app, in beta, for you to enjoy the same.

The new product, called FlickrFan, essentially connects your Mac screensaver with a stream of Flickr photos you have subscribed to, like RSS, and displays them on your TV or your Mac desktop. Of course, to get them to your TV, you need to attach your Mac, as he and Robert Scoble have done with their Mac Minis.

As with RSS, the possibilities here are wide-reaching. You could subscribe to photo streams from famous photographers and artists. You could follow friends or family, or famous people. But now, beyond the little screen of your computer, you have a new target - the big screen. Scoble swears by it.

It's only available for Mac users now, and we don't mind. Should be fun to watch its continued development. (Download it now)

Oh... and my boring photos are here.

Even Virtual Windows Can Drive You Nuts

I've been a very happy VMWare Fusion customer for a few months now. Getting into the world of dual operating systems on my MacBook Pro has been almost universally rewarding from day one - starting with ditching my old Dell laptop, and being able to use Microsoft Outlook, use Internet Explorer 7 and other applications unavailable to us Mac folks - but in a single virtual window, letting me use the Mac the other 95% of the time.

Yet, the other day, while working on e-mail or catching up on RSS feeds, I heard the familiar "Windows is shutting down" chimes, and confirmed it by looking at my VMWare Fusion application. In full text, Windows was informing me my settings were being saved, and indeed, the operating system was shutting down. And no, I didn't tell it to, and no, I don't have any idea why. I told a friend at work, who laughed and said, "Windows needs a reason to shut down?"


I caught Windows in the act of bailing on me this morning...
It happened again yesterday morning. Going to my VMWare Fusion application, I sent the Ctrl-Alt-Del command to the Windows virtual machine, and it didn't come up. I closed Fusion and reopened it. Still no dice. I went to my virtual machine library, selected Windows XP and hit "Run". Nothing. It actually took rebooting the Mac for the Windows virtual machine to launch correctly again!

So guess what... 10 minutes ago, I heard the chimes again. Windows is shutting down. Again. Without rhyme or reason. Again. Now, I have to see if I can trick it into relaunching without making me reboot my Mac. Again.

I'm happy I'm not using Windows as my primary operating system, but even this is annoying. How do people live with themselves day to day in this type of OS hell? Ridiculous.

AideRSS Judges Feed Posts as Good, Great, Best

While many in the blogosphere discovered AideRSS upon its debut back in July (see: Read/Write Web, Mashable or Mathew Ingram), I've only recently come across the interesting tool, which analyzes specific feeds, and based on their social activity, whether through the number of comments, Diggs, bookmarks on Del.icio.us or Technorati links, determines their "quality", in a ranking of Good, Great and Best.

The idea behind AideRSS is that you can subscribe only to the "Best" or "Great" posts in a particular feed, rather than getting all of the feeds, in effect, slimming down your reading material - a lot like iTunes' option to buy single tracks from an artist's album without also having to purchase the filler.

According to my pointing AideRSS at my own feed, it tells me that of the 197 posts it found after July 8th of this year, 23% rate as "Best", 47% as "Great" and 63% rank "Good" or better. I'd expect they try to follow a quintile rule, showing a common 20/40/60 tiering. But this grade is obviously on a curve. Given that I often have posts without any comments at all, a pair of comments or handful of external links can vault my post into the "Great" category. I'd venture a guess that the bar is a lot higher for more popular A-List blogs.




Over the last few months, I can't argue with AideRSS' analysis to my top stories, including "What is the Future of MyBlogLog?", "Alexa Web Statisti