Some Android Market Improvements I'd like

I just this story Hands on: Android Market website a step forward, still lags AppBrain and it's a pretty good review.

There's a few basic design things I'd like to see changed on the Android Market.

1. Use a different colour for the INSTALL and INSTALLED buttons, while your at it, pick another word, it's too confusing only differing by '-ED'
2. Offer list views with more content per page,  paging 12 apps at a time is very 1990's
3. Allow users to filter out installed from the listings
4. Continuous scrolling rather than tired old paging
5. The ability flag individual apps to be hidden from the listings, i.e. hide this app

Other Android observations ...

I've had a Nexus S for a while now and I'm really enjoying it as a phone, it's much smoother than my previous N1.
Battery does take ages to charge, thankfully I got two (more) chargers when I bought the phone.

Alas, the Gingerbread phone reboot bug has occurred a few times, otherwise the phone is really sweet.

The Gallery app is still a bit slow and the amount of time it takes to open a photo straight after taking it is a joke.

Tweetdeck is great, but it's started crashing all the time. The fancy scroll to the
top animation will crash it every time I jump back into the app after a few hours.

Perhaps a long press on the title bar bypass the scroll animation?

thoughts about buzz

so google buzz is here and to use common phrase, disruptive.

my thoughts, all in lower case

facebook has replaced most social email, often via facebook messages,
less often by wall post and comments. it's fun, random but rather noisy.

twitter is the high speed, realtime, random world of both your interests
friends, profession, interestes and your idols.

i'd hazzard a guess and say that email these days is mostly used for work,
only made really useful imho for by gmail.

work takes up a big chunk of people lifes, you may spend a lot of time in
the office, at lunch and after work drinks with work mates. often
in the professional world, you get to meet a lot of interesting people,
usually with common interests thru the work you do

the only instant messager i think should be used for work, is google-talk,
because you can save the conversations for later use.

so, then came buzz

i first saw it one my google nexus one, which i love btw, then it appeared
this morning in my gmail. interesting, lot's of "first posts" etc to start
with

i noticed myself enjoying the ability to comment on tweets and status updates,
which i rather liked, also sharing in google reader, which is then buzzed
straight away. it completely left the facebook share bookmark feeling
clunky and so like last decade :)

my audience so far is a more relevant social graph for discussion than
facebook, not because those people aren't also on facebook but i already
or do (occasionally) email them, or more often google talk with them

buzz ain't bad for a first release, google has now completely surpassed
microsoft as the dominant company in it.

between gmail, jira, twitter, facebook and google reader, gmail still has
the nicest interface, perhaps almost the oldest too.

now why can't i save my sms from my nexus one as conversations in gmail huh?

google contacts is perhaps one of the least praised aspects of google's
android extensions. i now have just one email and phone number database,
which i can edit with real tools like a keyboard and mouse, happy!

fingers crossed and lets hope google stays true to their motto

postscript!

my first reaction to buzz was, how good is this for business purposes?

facebook, twitter, sharepoint & notes have just been completely aced
by what buzz brings to google business offering, can they catch up?

iiNet free radio station playlist (m3u) Updated!

I shouldn't be so hard to find, the iiNet Freezone is a classic case
of what happens when you give a graphic designer a copy of flash
with explaining what the web is all about, nice easy to access content in HTML!!!!.

So without further ado, here's the iinet link to the page, complete with error message, that contains a playlist for all their free radio stations

Updated Link: 20/04/2011

Freezone radio station playlist updated
http://tinyurl.com/rbrgda (shoutcast PLS format all streams)
http://tinyurl.com/qz5jzz (M3U playlist format all streams)
http://tinyurl.com/yd6jgbw (M3U Playlist format without duplicate streams)

Source: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=946025&p=33#r657

New Facebook is lame, what about using that widescreen

Ok, the world et all reckon Facebook screwed up badly with their new design.

I concur...

People love knobs and buttons to tweak play and configure things (badly but hey), most of the comments I have read about the new approach relate it to twitter, but in many ways it's gone almost as brittle as MySpamSpace.

Remember Myspace, lets not even go there.

I have said it before that FB's biggest failure IMHO is groups, currently FB groups are a bit like buying a Che Guevara t-shirt and thinking your a revolutionary..

<TANGENT>
Most people have the sucky new widescreens, some unlucky people have these 22" 1400x900 screens which say more about the lame influence of the Movie Industry than anything about usabilty.

Newspaper and books have traditionally an aspect ratio which is higher and than wider. That's because it's far more useful. As we are all climate change aware these days, I pose the question about all that white space on your average screen and how many black bubbles of CO2 are being wasted? Give us all more vertical resolution pleeeeaaasse
</TANGENT>

So back to FB. I would like to see the news feed break into an OPTIONAL Zac's Widescreen layout where I can see the summary (old style) newsfeed LHS, (with block this stupid app updates options please), with mouse over expanded views into the specific content RHS.

Why should we have to click and reload move just to see someone's profile, when the above approach achieves the same? Sure there is all this silly hitcount stats rubbish, but why not move to model which acknowledges information overload and allow us to quickly scan into something and then decide we want to read?

The newsfeed in FB was quite an innovation, no idea if it was FB who first pioneered this but they definitely got it out there.

So let's draw my two themes together, FB Groups could be the next big thing, all they need to do is adopt the same approach used for profiles for groups.

Where the F%&*%K is my newsfeed for groups? Discussions and comments are hidden, deep down and beneath one to two pages of boiler plate stuff that I honestly read once and then just blatantly IGNORE!!!!!

When I decide that I want to be a poster boy by joining a group which sounds cool or states a point, like "No Australian Internet Censorship", I don't really give a rats arse, ( I am refraining from swearing today) about 10 random people in the group.

As I am making a statement, similar to one sheep following another sheep who has found some nice tufts of green grass, all I care about is that there are 5 users or 2.5 million. Don't even get me started on the lame joke that viewing members of a FB group!!!

FB groups should be just like profiles, updates first, static info, a click away. Plus we need some innovative approaches to showing discussions, aka Gmail.

This could be so F%&^&%^king huge, it's unbelievable that FB have consistently failed to do anything in this area.

So in Zac's Widescreen FB, we have a two column home page, LHS has a configurable newsfeed with rollover insight into the newsfeed items. Groups becomes more like people and the conversation level will grow.

Twitter is something different and IMHO will never achieve the sheer joy of comments on FB about status updates.

Nuff said..... Time for my second Coffee of the day :)

A few tweaks needed for Google Blog search

Google Blog Search is cool, there's only one thing which bothers me about the interface.

Being able to refine your search by time is cool, ie last hour, last 12 hours and so on, but, when you refine a search and get no hits, rather than redisplaying the refine criteria, you land on a Your search did not match any documents page.

This page could be really improved by including the refine parameter used in the message and secondly by including the refine parameters on the no results page.

Dead end pages are so 1990's ....

Gmail now has themes!

I quite like the new GMail themes, particularity Night Shade, as seen above.

It's a bit rattling to not have the classic gmail view I have burned into my retina after four odd years, but I really like the contrast and focus of the color scheme, my eye is drawn straight to the content, not the app!

Handy little diagram tool - Pencil Project

Pencil is a nice and simple ( i.e. not Visio ) add-on for Firefox which allows for drawing a quick diagram or even a basic application UI's. It supports drag and drop, it's free and it only requires Firefox 3.

Once install it's available as a link off the Tools menu.

It was one of the 3 Best New Add-on's in the Extend Firefox 3 Contest

OpenLayers Architect

Erik Hazzard just posted an update about his GSoC 2008 Project OLArchitect.

OLArchitect is a web based gui/gui for building maps using OpenLayers, it's looking promising. No Mapguide support yet tho :(

For anyone who considering building a web based map interface today, OpenLayers is the must use Swiss Army knife for web mapping.

Forget using the Google Maps API, Virtual Earth, Yahoo or anything else. OpenLayers can handle all these different maps using one API.

It means you can change mapping providers or servers without having to re-code all your mapping javascript to another API.

If your a developer you will love this because all the support is there under a single API.

From the business side of things, not being tied to a propriety vendor API means your investment is more flexible and can easily respond to changes.

The future of mapping is open source!

iPhone edition of The Age is better than the real one

In yet another modern irony, in the race to support the iPhone ( and all other smartphones like my N95), The Age newspaper has a minimal ad-free 'mobile' edition that is much nicer than the current mess.

If you do plan on reading stuff like this with your N95, I would highly recommend using Opera Mini over the built in browser.

Most websites seems to have a mobile version under either m.whatever.com and / or mobile.whatever.com, personally I like the m. version, not as clear but easier to type!

Why doesn't The Age link to sites it covers?

It's a source of endless annoyance when i read The Age online these days, it never provides links to website even when the article is directly about a website... doh!

This story is about a blog therefore in the interests of people forming their own option, IMHO they should link to the site, period, no discussion.

I could see some argument that their page rank (7) would increase the ranking of the site they are covering, but that's how the web works! They have only 2 point's more than my blog!

In this day and age (no pun intended) with everyone talking about the death of the newspaper and the move from information delivery via dead tree to burnt coal powered instant gratification, i would think Fairfax Digitial would get it.

It's not very hard to link, use a <a href="url">site name</a> :)

news.com.au isn't any better, but that's no surprise.

The actual blog site is locked down, but my argument is the same none the less. Links are used to provide structure on line and they help people research stuff...

The irony is to watch the Liberals fighting each other, thanks John, I love your legacy :) You have made Australia a better place to live

PicLens, coolest firefox extension ever!

Just read about this over on http://planet.mozilla.org/.

Allan Beaufour has just blogged about PicLens which is an amazing 3D picture viewer.

Once you install it, every image (on sites like picasa, facebook, myadspace) gets a little play button when you hover over the image with the mouse, click it and you jump into this amazing 3D film strip which you can use to explore through the images...

Install it, (you have to allow the site to install) and the jump over to my photo's on picasaweb, go into an album and press the play button to explore

Anchors can make great web bookmarks

One of the more useful sites for TV listings in Australia is yourtv.com.au. I have a bookmark for their page with the what's on now and next view view.

if you compare the results, you can see why anchors (the '#pageTitle' below in the second URL) for a more friendly bookmark

If you compare http://yourtv.com.au/guide/index.cfm?action=nownext
with
http://yourtv.com.au/guide/index.cfm?action=nownext#pageTitle, you'll see the TV guide opening up at the start of TV guide, instantly readable without scrolling down thru half a page of ads and headers.

One a related note, the introduction of HD in Australia is, well, stupid. There is no good reason 10HD isn't broadcast in digitial via SD.

Complicate that with tv listings that don't display 10 and 10HD next to each other so you can see when there is different HD programming (there's a lot of overlap, etc).

St Kilda Festival this weekend!

It's on again, not that the St Kilda Fest website is really so useful. Not to get back on my soap box, but it took me ages to work out that next Sunday 10th of February is the main day where St Kilda becomes one big crazy street festival?

The bottom of the page is not exactly user friendly, as it ignores a lot of what we have learnt about web page layout in the last decade or so! Where is the nice single page program for music in a printable PDF? The site looks ok, but really is rather 1990's when it comes to usability.

One thing you won't find there is anything bout dance music as far as i could tell.. I do miss the old Earthcore stage down at Katani Gardens on the Foreshore.. Then again i did miss seeing the HOODOO GURUS at Meredith

But never fear if you like Electronic Music, there is hope as found in my Inbox this morning!

SO! There is Dance Muzik @ St.K fest, this sun 10 feb!

St. Kilda Festival Dance Party

The Big Red Bus and Funktion One presents....

Join us on Sun 10 Feb; 11-11pm, in the lush garden of FUBAR;
16 Belford st, St.Kilda (btwn Acland & Barkly sts)
where a Funktion One sound system will be made the most of,
by some of Melbourne's finest underground dance DJs.


View Larger Map

From world tribal beats to progressive trance and psychedelic sounds,
we promise you that this will be the best place to be at St.Kilda Fest this year.

Great food and a great bar selection plus comfy couches in the sunny garden
- what more could you want!

11am andycan
12.2 Mixta X
13.4 U_One
15 Chunky
16.2 bEan
17.4 Tony Loucas
19 Cacophony
20.2 Menno
21.4 Orpheus

thanks Brad for the email, I'll be there!

BTW: There's a St Kilda Fest Facebook page as well

Attention FairFax, Page Overlay Ad's suck

<rant mode="on"/>

I am a regular reader of The Age, i used to be a subscriber, but i got sick of reading the same articles i read the night before on the way home in the Cheap and Cheerful free MX, combined with the waste of several trees in each edition, I decided to go online only.

I use firefox as my browser of choice, one of the nice addons is Adblock Plus. I understand that Ad's are a necessary evil online, and i tolerate them, but i draw the line at Full screen overlay ads.

They are super bloody annoying, so any site which uses them gets treated with a blanket ban on advertising. I just got a Huge Nokia overlay on The Age website, so I have enabled Adblock-ing for their site.

Fairfax have created a weird website for The Age, the front page focuses on fluff, the best articles are hidden in the opinion section several screens down! Arrghh...

I tend to reply on the top article side links because I can't be bothered scanning through the rubbish on the front page...

<rant mode="off"/>

Facebook Event Guest list security

One of the difficult things with privacy is the need to offer functionality, but not to provide informatiom that otherwise isn't meant to be shared.

With Events on facebook, you can have a hidden guest list, however, on accepting the RSVP you can then view the guest list via the 'invite people to come' link.

Which can be seen as justifyable but is also a bit counter intuitive.

The guest list is hidden doesn't explain the concept very well, it is infact somewhat misleading, especially as after you can access the group list via the invite link.

The solution would to have a third privacy option like "Limited to Members & Invitees", if i have been invited i should be able to see the guestlist before I accept.

Forcing a user to RVSP maybe attend is 'counter-productive-action-coercion' which when combined with the lack of a Member List when the list is (only partially) hidden sucks...

It defeats the localised momentum building opportunity that Facebook could achieve and offer for Private Events... Google really did something amazing with the threaded conversations in Gmail, I remember the revival of the old massive thread party discussions once Gmail started... and then I shudder at how limited the Facebook version is (up there with using Outlook!).

Writing this made me thing about Corey

I guess I'm ranting :), Facebook is a scroll site. the Home page news page list is great. Most recent information is at the top of the page. Events would be vastly improved with more of a news feed interface.

Multiple 'content boxes' all sorted by date, and only with limited info, keeping track becomes is a very demanding exercise (or skipped) activity for the user. Just reading the Wall for an event, the area of most activity requires scrolling as depending on the content

Why not accept that we are living in a 16:9 world, screens are getting wider and unfortunately often shorter (1400x900) therefore we are back to content where, with start menus, browser chrome, etc we have less than 800 pixels of vertical visible browser content.

It means with it's 800px wide layout, Facebook is a 800 by 800px application.

Kinda explains why most apps are so crappy from an interface perspective! The viral invite friends to this application thing is tiresome, humans are organic creatures!

I reckon the inability to Trial an Application or Preview Application actually impedes uptake.

That said i enjoy really do enjoy Facebook and it's refreshing to see facebook sceptics give it a go and see what people enjoy about it.

In Australia, Facebook has spread like wildfire in the last 6 months and enjoys a very large user base which is the key to it's popularity...

Flash 9 HD and a new look Adobe.com

Ok, Adobe releases some cool new HD stuff with Flash Player 9 and their website has been given a make over....

but it's so 1990's.. who the hell designs a website these days which is only 800 pixels wide.... every one has at least 1024 now and from the stats i've seen, 1280 is becoming the norm... The front page is wider, but the product pages are all 800px...

sigh, time for a Coopers Red

Gmail select unread emails feature request

When you select all messages on a page in Gmail, it will then give you the option to select all messages under that label. Neat :)



A little pet hate is that unread mail count inbox(2), and empty inbox gives a nice false sense of being organised :)

I just want to select them all and either read, delete, whatever just to clean things out, but searching for "is:unread in:inbox" feels pretty damn wrong and is way to geek for most people. (gmail search commands)

When i click on the unread link, i would love to see an option like the "select all 2834 conversations" above : "click here to select all 2 unread conversations in inbox"

My little Gmail 2 Wish list for Contacts

I just read about "5 little-known Gmail features you may not yet know about".

I like having you mail history working with the browser forward and back buttons. The keyboard history in your browser is usually Alt-left and Alt-right, great for flying thru you history. Control-tab flicks between tabs... the mouse is slowwww... anyway...

So here's my Number 6 little known hopefully awaited new feature.

What i am still extremely frustrated with is the new contacts. It's a bit better than the old one, but there are some simple things to make it a whole lot better.

My mate John just sent out an email saying his old age email address doesn't work anymore as he's now freelance, so i thought ok, lets clean up my contacts... eeeyyuuu......my response

Zac's Improved Gmail Contact Management Hitlist

1. Show both the contact's name and email address in the second column, like composing.. otherwise it's becomes very confusing
2. Get rid of the edit button! if i click on a contact in contacts, i am most likely going to want to see more detail.
3. Drag and drop contact merge, Auto Merge ?? "Are these the same person?"
4. Email Domain auto generated Filters like groups
5. There are two icons for adding users and groups. I didn't naturally get that one the first time i used it. Gmail has a text based ui. Every other button has a text annotation... come on.. there's enuff space
6. The group button, when no contact is selected, should still allow adding a new group

The Age Website redesign sucks

The Age has just recently redesigned their website.

Personally I find there is too much white on the page and I find it very uncomfortable to look at. The previous design had a nice blue page header and naturally guided the eye towards the content.

The content pages aren't quite so bad, but front page for one of the top websites in Australia is a joke

The new design feels like a 13 year pubescent boy walking backstage at a fashion parade for lingerie, you just don't know were to look!

Some of the font sizes are too small and i always get the feeling I am going to miss some interesting story.

I watched Media Watch on the ABC website last night, (which incidentally I find to be a really nice Web 2.0 ish (sic) style site) and they were talking about the amount of fluff stories being run instead of news.... Who cares if a dwarf got his penis stuck in a vacuum cleaner??? (I'm not going to justify it with a link either) and article was badly written too...

The ABC site is a good contrast to The Age, my eye falls nicely on the content and they make good use of tags and inline video content.

Why on earth the Age persists with spanning stories over mulitple pages I will never know... I would like to see the stats on how many people click on the single page link.... it's just so 1990's!!!!

ok, enuff ranting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!