Doing Words

iTunes: when labels lose the plot

// March 26th, 2008 // 0 Comments // Glocalisation, Music, Other news

iTunes: when labels lose the plotOriginally uploaded by thatjonesboy It’s tough managing rights and markets and content on the interweb. The interweb aggregates so well that all your whack geographical or distribution-focused pricing policies, never intended to be seen together in the one place, may suddenly collide, such as in this case with a Phoenix album available for both $10.99 and $17.99 in iTunes.Same album, same tracks, same file format, different price.iTunes doesn’t do a lot to help labels manage their content, offering only a very basic label and content management application.Still, take my advice: buy the $10.99 version

iTunes and iPhone and movie rentals: Awesomenicity!

// February 21st, 2008 // 0 Comments // software

iTunes and iPhone and movie rentals: Awesomenicity!
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.

Is "awesomenicity" a real word? It is now – now that I have a 16Gb iPhone and I can fit all my contacts, all my calendar, all the music I need, a selection of my best photos… and a MOVIE i rented from iTunes Store in ONE CLICK!

There’s only two people on this earth who could make me take the train to work instead of driving a car: AL Gore (obviously) and Steve Jobs – coz watching movies on an iPhone? I feel like missing my stop!

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch

iCal’s skinny, unresizable detailed info window blows

// January 14th, 2008 // 0 Comments // software

iCal’s skinny, unresizable detailed info window blows
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.

Where’s the little drag panel bottom right so i can inject some readability into this thing? And how come if the date is in the late evening, the ‘Save’ and ‘Edit’ buttons are obscured by my dock? And for that matter, why is there an Edit button at all? Why can’t I just click on the fields to edit them?

Choice is more often a feeling than an action

// October 29th, 2007 // 0 Comments // platform, Products

Duncan Riley is copping some criticism on Techcrunch over his opinion that OS X Leopard’s widgets are newsworthy enough to report on.

I think it’s an interesting feature of Leopard, but not really significant to the widget sector (is it a sector yet? covered by TC.

Unlike most other widget platforms, OS X’s widgets are hidden in a Widget app that you need to open first, reducing the number of views/user. They aren’t cross-platform, and Leopard’s market share is only a slice of the total OS X installed base. I don’t know what share of the total OS market OS X enjoys, but it must be small. Growing faster than other OSes, likely, but from a very low base.

Microsoft, with it stated aim of being the Internet OS – and its long-developed habit of copying Apple’s interfaces – may eventually copy this ‘create your own widget from the browser’ feature, but at MSFT’s current rate of innovation, count on seeing that some time >2020, by which time it’ll be Mozilla-based browsers, not IE, that will have dominant market share.

The other thing to consider is what percentage of users will make their own widget given the opportunity to do so. My experience working on personalisable homepages for portals suggests that while everyone ticks “yes” when you ask them whether they want their own personalisable homepage, when the product goes live, most of those yes-tickers will never take the time to personalise their homepage. My observations suggest that ease-of-use has no bearing on that result – it doesn’t matter if it’s one button on the toolbar away.

Personalisation is like fast-food – knowing that the fast-food franchise lets you choose your own fillings gets you in the door rather than the competitor’s door. But 98% of us choose the off-the-shelf burger after we walk in and view the menu because it’s quicker, easier, and we figure whoever decided that pickles and ketchup go together must know what they’re doing. Mistakenly…

We think we want choice, but what we really want is the feeling that we could choose if we wanted to.

Choice is more often a feeling than an action

// October 29th, 2007 // 0 Comments // platform, Products

Duncan Riley is copping some criticism on Techcrunch over his opinion that OS X Leopard’s widgets are newsworthy enough to report on.

I think it’s an interesting feature of Leopard, but not really significant to the widget sector (is it a sector yet? covered by TC.

Unlike most other widget platforms, OS X’s widgets are hidden in a Widget app that you need to open first, reducing the number of views/user. They aren’t cross-platform, and Leopard’s market share is only a slice of the total OS X installed base. I don’t know what share of the total OS market OS X enjoys, but it must be small. Growing faster than other OSes, likely, but from a very low base.

Microsoft, with it stated aim of being the Internet OS – and its long-developed habit of copying Apple’s interfaces – may eventually copy this ‘create your own widget from the browser’ feature, but at MSFT’s current rate of innovation, count on seeing that some time >2020, by which time it’ll be Mozilla-based browsers, not IE, that will have dominant market share.

The other thing to consider is what percentage of users will make their own widget given the opportunity to do so. My experience working on personalisable homepages for portals suggests that while everyone ticks “yes” when you ask them whether they want their own personalisable homepage, when the product goes live, most of those yes-tickers will never take the time to personalise their homepage. My observations suggest that ease-of-use has no bearing on that result – it doesn’t matter if it’s one button on the toolbar away.

Personalisation is like fast-food – knowing that the fast-food franchise lets you choose your own fillings gets you in the door rather than the competitor’s door. But 98% of us choose the off-the-shelf burger after we walk in and view the menu because it’s quicker, easier, and we figure whoever decided that pickles and ketchup go together must know what they’re doing. Mistakenly…

We think we want choice, but what we really want is the feeling that we could choose if we wanted to.

My iTunes favourites: now scrolling near you

// August 12th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Music

Apple has launched three new widgets that let you show website/blog visitors what you’ve purchased, what you’ve reviewed, and how you’ve rated tracks in iTunes. Only really makes sense if you get most of your new music from iTunes, but that’s looking more and more like everybody these days, and certainly includes me.

Check it:

My iTunes favourites: now scrolling near you

// August 12th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Music

Apple has launched three new widgets that let you show website/blog visitors what you’ve purchased, what you’ve reviewed, and how you’ve rated tracks in iTunes. Only really makes sense if you get most of your new music from iTunes, but that’s looking more and more like everybody these days, and certainly includes me.

Check it:

Activating an iPhone in Australia, and first impressions

// August 6th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Other news

Can’t believe it’s taken me so long to commit this to the blog, but here’s my iPhone story…

Good friend Ben Keighran very kindly stood in line several times at Apple Stores across the Bay Area to finally snag me an 8Gb iPhone at the end of July. For the man in the midst of securing a Series A finance round from a big Valley VC firm, setting up offices in the US for the first time and recruiting an exec team, this was no small time penalty for him, and I thank you again, Ben!

Then Wyatt Zoi, a relative of a Bluepulse staffer, very kindly agreed to schlep the iPhone home to Sydney for me a week later. Wyatt and I had never met before, so we agreed that I’d meet him at the arrivals gate with a sign with an iPhone on it, so he could recognise me.

So there I was, at 8am on a Sunday morning, only one day back in Sydney myself after trekking in the Himalayas, and half-dead from the ‘flu. But I had a big colour laminated sign with an iPhone on it, and for every arriving traveller who assumed I was insane, there were two who looked at me and grinned, figuring out for themselves why I was there and what the sign was about.

Waiting at the airport with my custom iPhone sign so Wyatt could recognise me.

Wyatt, bearer of the iPreciousss, grinning at my lunacy.

Transferring the iPreciousss from Wyatt to me. Fortunately, he was immune to its power, and I didn’t have to gnaw it from his cold, dead fingers like you’d have to do to take it off me at this point.

I have the iPreciousss! See how its magical powers are making the reflective panels on my backpack glow with a spectral silver light? (OK, that could be the flash I guess).

At home at last. The box is so small! How does Steve cram so much geeky goodness into such a tiny box?

The unpack experience is a whole new level of geeky deliciousness. It looks so fantastic in the box it’s a shame to take it out. I felt like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone.

Sadly, I had heaps to do when I got home – friends coming around for a party, food to prepare, garden to prep, beer to chill – so I really didn’t get to play with the iPhone until 48 hours later, which nearly killed me.

It already had some charge when unpacked, but I had to leave it here for the rest of the day while I entertained friends. Curse them!

Getting the iPhone activated in Australia wasn’t too bad, once I found iActivator, a gui app that puts it all together and even gives you an interface so you don’t need to use command line. Step-by-step instructions and a download here.

However, I found I kept getting an error message on the final activation step. So if you try this at home kids, make sure you (1) use Activity Monitor to quit iTunes Helper as well as iTunes before you begin; and (2) make sure you launch iTunes again before doing the activation step in iActivator. Then it should work like a charm.

Update: thanks to Steve Fenech over at the Daily Telegraph for the heads-up on iNdependence, another new GUI activator app. Haven’t tried it yet, but worth a try.

iPhone? Nah, but awesome as the first PDA/Video iPod
It’s an extraordinary device. The presentation when I took it out of the box made me feel like I was stealing something from the cold, dead hands of an alien astronaut from the remains of his ship, or removing the sword from the stone that would make me King of all England!

So many things have been well thought through in the industrial design. I love the resolution and brightness of the screen most of all, and the way the necessary external buttons are tactile, but really low profile so they don’t distract from the beautiful shape at all. I love that there’s absolutely no gap or difference in height between the chrome metal casing and the glass, god knows what the failure rate must be at that point of assembly.

The touch interface and supplied apps obviously have some more evolution to do but hell, this is version 1.0 people! I can’t believe how polished it all is for version 1.0.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if I can get this iPhone to work with my .au SIM card at some stage, but if I can’t, I’ll be happy to have this as my main iPod until the .au iPhone is released.

Since it’s not 3G and I can’t run my own Java apps on it, use a cut-down fast mobile-specific browser like Opera Mini or even install a custom ringtone, it’s not much of a phone, and so I’ve decided I don’t actually miss that functionality a whole lot. And the camera in my SE K800i phone craps all over the iPhone’s camera.

But as an iPod, I’m totally comfortable with what it cost to buy – it pwns the rest of the iPod family. I can’t believe Apple wouldn’t make this the interface for all future video iPods.

If I was Apple was rebrand and restructure iTunes. It’s way more “iSync” now than “iSync” is, and obviously “Tunes” doesn’t really reflect everything it now manages. The interface stiller flects playlist management, and that’s only part of it now.

I’d rebuild iTunes from scratch, since some of the core may still be third-party stuff they acquired to get iTunes built in a hurry. It’s still mentioned in the copyright notices for the product so I’m guessing it’s still in there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if I can get this iPhone to work with my .au SIM card at some stage, but if I can’t, I’ll be happy to have this as my main iPod until the .au iPhone is released.

Tell me, have you played with any third-party apps yet? Has anyone you know tried to reskin theirs? (like, why? but still, some people have!)

Activating an iPhone in Australia, and first impressions

// August 5th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Other news

Can’t believe it’s taken me so long to commit this to the blog, but here’s my iPhone story…

Good friend Ben Keighran very kindly stood in line several times at Apple Stores across the Bay Area to finally snag me an 8Gb iPhone at the end of July. For the man in the midst of securing a Series A finance round from a big Valley VC firm, setting up offices in the US for the first time and recruiting an exec team, this was no small time penalty for him, and I thank you again, Ben!

Then Wyatt Zoi, a relative of a Bluepulse staffer, very kindly agreed to schlep the iPhone home to Sydney for me a week later. Wyatt and I had never met before, so we agreed that I’d meet him at the arrivals gate with a sign with an iPhone on it, so he could recognise me.

So there I was, at 8am on a Sunday morning, only one day back in Sydney myself after trekking in the Himalayas, and half-dead from the ‘flu. But I had a big colour laminated sign with an iPhone on it, and for every arriving traveller who assumed I was insane, there were two who looked at me and grinned, figuring out for themselves why I was there and what the sign was about.

Waiting at the airport with my custom iPhone sign so Wyatt could recognise me.

Wyatt, bearer of the iPreciousss, grinning at my lunacy.

Transferring the iPreciousss from Wyatt to me. Fortunately, he was immune to its power, and I didn’t have to gnaw it from his cold, dead fingers like you’d have to do to take it off me at this point.

I have the iPreciousss! See how its magical powers are making the reflective panels on my backpack glow with a spectral silver light? (OK, that could be the flash I guess).

At home at last. The box is so small! How does Steve cram so much geeky goodness into such a tiny box?

The unpack experience is a whole new level of geeky deliciousness. It looks so fantastic in the box it’s a shame to take it out. I felt like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone.

Sadly, I had heaps to do when I got home – friends coming around for a party, food to prepare, garden to prep, beer to chill – so I really didn’t get to play with the iPhone until 48 hours later, which nearly killed me.

It already had some charge when unpacked, but I had to leave it here for the rest of the day while I entertained friends. Curse them!

Getting the iPhone activated in Australia wasn’t too bad, once I found iActivator, a gui app that puts it all together and even gives you an interface so you don’t need to use command line. Step-by-step instructions and a download here.

However, I found I kept getting an error message on the final activation step. So if you try this at home kids, make sure you (1) use Activity Monitor to quit iTunes Helper as well as iTunes before you begin; and (2) make sure you launch iTunes again before doing the activation step in iActivator. Then it should work like a charm.

Update: thanks to Steve Fenech over at the Daily Telegraph for the heads-up on iNdependence, another new GUI activator app. Haven’t tried it yet, but worth a try.

iPhone? Nah, but awesome as the first PDA/Video iPod
It’s an extraordinary device. The presentation when I took it out of the box made me feel like I was stealing something from the cold, dead hands of an alien astronaut from the remains of his ship, or removing the sword from the stone that would make me King of all England!

So many things have been well thought through in the industrial design. I love the resolution and brightness of the screen most of all, and the way the necessary external buttons are tactile, but really low profile so they don’t distract from the beautiful shape at all. I love that there’s absolutely no gap or difference in height between the chrome metal casing and the glass, god knows what the failure rate must be at that point of assembly.

The touch interface and supplied apps obviously have some more evolution to do but hell, this is version 1.0 people! I can’t believe how polished it all is for version 1.0.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if I can get this iPhone to work with my .au SIM card at some stage, but if I can’t, I’ll be happy to have this as my main iPod until the .au iPhone is released.

Since it’s not 3G and I can’t run my own Java apps on it, use a cut-down fast mobile-specific browser like Opera Mini or even install a custom ringtone, it’s not much of a phone, and so I’ve decided I don’t actually miss that functionality a whole lot. And the camera in my SE K800i phone craps all over the iPhone’s camera.

But as an iPod, I’m totally comfortable with what it cost to buy – it pwns the rest of the iPod family. I can’t believe Apple wouldn’t make this the interface for all future video iPods.

If I was Apple was rebrand and restructure iTunes. It’s way more “iSync” now than “iSync” is, and obviously “Tunes” doesn’t really reflect everything it now manages. The interface stiller flects playlist management, and that’s only part of it now.

I’d rebuild iTunes from scratch, since some of the core may still be third-party stuff they acquired to get iTunes built in a hurry. It’s still mentioned in the copyright notices for the product so I’m guessing it’s still in there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if I can get this iPhone to work with my .au SIM card at some stage, but if I can’t, I’ll be happy to have this as my main iPod until the .au iPhone is released.

Tell me, have you played with any third-party apps yet? Has anyone you know tried to reskin theirs? (like, why? but still, some people have!)

Hello? Are you still there?

// July 18th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Other news

You are? Well, it would be my fault entirely if you weren’t still here. Like the n00biest of bloggers I drifted off to go exploring the Indian side of the Himalayas for three weeks without telling the blogosphere that I was going away, or when I’d be back. More professional bloggers would have been posting ‘daily links’ type posts from internet cafes in tiny mountain villages, but I was having too much fun with a Leica V-Lux, D-Lux, C-Lux and even an M8 (hah! bet you were expecting a ‘B-Lux’ next) while pro bloggers were hunched over crawling analogue interweb connections – sucked in!

I kept an analogue journal of the trip which I’ll transcribe to the blog shortly, and I’m still uploading hundreds of 10mb JPGs to the Flickr account, so stay tuned for my best shots.

While I was gone, some practical jokers tried to set themselves on fire and crash their car into an airport terminal. But it was Glasgow airport, and it takes more than a flaming jeep to do any real damage to anything Glaswegian. You can head-butt my uncle Jim repeatedly until you knock yourself unconscious and he’ll use your limp body to wipe the floor of the pub clean of your blood (he and the rest of my mum’s family are Glaswegian.)

Apple launched the iPhone – the Product I Must Acquire Before I Die From Not Having One but according to Ben and Luke I need to sign up for a three year phone plan with AT&T with a US credit card and a US social security number to get one. And then find a way to get it to work in Australia.

In fact, screw using it as a phone! I need a new iPod urgently, since I accidentally left my Nano in the passenger door storage of the Raja of Shimla’s personal Suzuki Vitara (long story, but there was a taxi strike and our guide managed to persuade them to lend us the Raja’s driver and his 4WD to drive us eight hours to Sarahan…)

If I could use an iPhone just as an iPod, for iPhoto storage, and as an iCal/Addressbook/iSync-driven PIM, that would make me happy enough for the time-being.

In fact, maybe that’s how Apple should address international markets where it has trouble securing an exclusive telco deal – sell an unsubsidized handset as an iPod/iPhoto/PIM device with the phone components disabled until Apple can show potential telco suitors that it can grow local sales without the help of the telco.

Or maybe I’m still crazy from altitude sickness? What do you think?