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Recently, Microsoft announced the newest version of Windows Mobile… awkwardly titled, “Windows 7 Phone Series”.  While I agree that it s by far the best looking release of Windows Mobile to date, there are a couple funny quirks that people are finding as details are discovered.  For instance, there’s no copy and paste, nor is there multitasking functionality.

I’d like to know what the Microsoft devotees say about the lack of copy/paste especially.  Back in 2007, everyone was bashing Apple for not having copy/paste on the iPhone.  When version 2.0 rolled around in 2008, notably absent from the feature list was copy/paste.  The Microsoft fanboys began to continually bash the iPhone, as it was missing such features as copy/paste and multitasking.

Hmm, looks like their favorite phone OS won’t have those either.  Or is Microsoft maybe taking the stance that Apple takes- the stance of, “We won’t do it until it’s perfect.”  When iPhone 3.0 was available in mid-2009, copy/paste functionality came with it.  And it was an incredible implementation.  Everything about it was fluid and very native feeling- it worked in every application that accepted text.

Compare that to Android- it had copy/paste functionality from day 1- but it was awful.  Not every application supported it, selecting text to copy was a pain, and the whole thing overall was a very poor experience.  Today, most people say that Apple’s implementation of copy/paste is the best one out there for mobile handsets.  While I have not used other handsets, I have to say that I’d be hard-pressed to find a solution that worked better than the one Apple instituted with iPhone 3.0.

When Apple waits, it’s because they want to get it right.  And typically they do.  Is Microsoft perhaps waiting until they have a half-decent solution?  After all, the currently available version of Windows Mobile (6.5) does have copy paste- but it is pathetic.  If you are using a non-touchscreen phone, it’s about a 6 step process to even select the text you want to copy.  The version used on a touchscreen is a bit better- it only takes 3 steps.  Once you want to paste, the process is still somewhat kludgy- you have open the program you want to paste into and get the cursor positioned correctly.  This isn’t too hard with a touchscreen, but with a non-touch enabled phone, it involves another 3 step process.

Even if you have only seen a video of the copy/paste procedure on Windows Mobile 6.5, it’s not that hard to see that this is not exactly an enjoyable experience.

To employ copy/paste on the iPhone, simply double tap the text you’d like to copy.  A software loupe will pop up.  You then drag this over the text you’d like to copy.  Then you let go, and tap copy (or cut if you want).  Then double tap where you want to paste.  And tap paste.  That’s all there is to it.

What else is Microsoft changing in the model?  Well, all programs will be sold through a central store, where they must all be approved before being sold.

Hmm, sounds just like the iPhone app store.  In fact, the more I find out about W7PS, the more it looks like the iPhone system.  Will the Microsoft fanboys drink their kool-aid as fast as they accuse us Apple geeks of doing?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a couple bones to pick with some Windows Mobile fans…

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As some of you may know, I had the opportunity to run projection at a conference this past weekend.  It was quite the exciting venture- I run projection at our church about  4 out of 5 Sundays, but I’d never before been the primary operator at a large-scale conference.  Needless to say, it was a very fun experience.  Thankfully, there were no errors either- but that’s not to say they didn’t try to appear.

At our church, we use the software EasyWorship for projecting our lyrics and sermon notes.  It’s a great piece of software, though it does have its quirks (Can you tell I want support for .png?).  However, one of the hardest things to combat is EasyWorship’s auto-resizing text feature.  I know there’s an option in the preferences, but I’ve never found it to work in the way I want.  As I had received instruction from my pastor saying that we wanted everything to be as distraction-free as possible, I set about my mission: hacking EasyWorship.

The sheer simplicity of the hack makes it very easy to implement.  That is, provided you have the right font.  Font?!  I thought this was a hack, not a font change!  Oh, but it is- and the hack is provided in the font.

Here’s the dilemma: We had one song that had very short lines in the lyrics.  EasyWorship likes to fill the screen with as much text as possible, so it goes about that by blowing the text up to a huge size.  However, since our screen was on the ground, this would not be a helpful thing- I find that the really tall people tend to sit in the front.  This prevents other people from seeing words that are not at the very top the screen.  So that’s one reason not to use a large font size- you won’t be able to see part of the verse from the back.

The second reason goes along with the distraction-free memo mentioned above- the very next song had really long lines.  To make sure that the entire line was displayed on, well, one line, EasyWorship did some more auto-resizing- this time, the text was very small.  However, this size also made the text all appear at the top of the screen; exactly what I wanted it to do. And the text was still very readable- this song was good to go.  The next step was to make the other song follow this pattern.

I returned to the previous song.  The huge text stood there, grinning in what appeared to be apparent victory.  In the past, I’d been able to bump text up to the top by making a new verse and filling it with gibberish until the song was moved to the place I wanted it.  I would then make that gibberish a black color, preventing it from showing up if the slide was accidentally projected.  Unfortunately, this solution would not work at the conference-  we were using a textured green background.  EasyWorship does not support transparencies in text coloring- but even if it did, an outline would still appear around the letters.  A new solution must be found.  And find it I did- in a cheap, downloaded font.

NeoTech to the rescue!

NeoTech is a free font I encountered through the world of iPhone theming.  A nice looking face, I had downloaded it to create some graphics for my iPhone.  Sadly, I found it would not work for all that I needed it to- it did not support characters other than the alphabet, numbers, and the period and comma.  Oh well- it was a cool font anyway.  I kept it around.

Therein was my solution found.

When you have a font that does not support a certain character, you are usually presented with one of two errors- you either get a rectangular box, or else you get nothing at all.  NeoTech displayed the latter of the two- an apostrophe typed in the font did not register as anything at all.  But EasyWorship saw any character typed as a character- whether it could be displayed or not.  And if you stack enough invisible characters… you can dictate the size of the text for the rest of the song. Here was my solution.

I typed up all the songs in Myriad Pro font.  It displayed nicely and was a very clean font overall.  If a song’s text was too big, I employed the hack.  I created a new slide, put an apostrophe on one line, hit return, and repeated the process until there was usually a list of about 8 apostrophes or the song’s text had shrunk to the size I wanted.  Myriad Pro was happy enough to display these apostrophes, should I want it to.  But NeoTech would throw up the denial flag.  I highlighted this dummy slide, and changed the font to NeoTech.  Instantly, all the apostrophes disappeared from the preview.  I had won.

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So there you have it.  It was a beautiful hack- you’d never guess there was any hacking involved unless you were in on the story.  Which you now are.  I myself fully intend to use this hack whenever necessary.

We’ll compare three opening screens below.

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#1: The Good

The Iconfactory is known for its beautiful interfaces. Their game Ramp Champ features phenomenal graphics and an excellent UI. The above shot is their loading screen. Nowhere are there any buttons to suggest that the user can take action. This is a perfect example of how the loading screen should look.

#2: The Bad

This is a shot of the built in calculator. It suffers from an awful loading screen. What is there in this to make you think that it is loading? Indeed, it looks fully functional- all the buttons are in place- it looks identical to when you can actually use it. As a result, you may end up tapping buttons before they have any effect. Never use a screenshot of your application as the loading screen.

#3:  The Ugly

This last image is what the Remote application spits out upon opening.  It’s also the image presented by the iPod.  And Tweetie.  And the App Store.  And the iTunes Store.  Are you beginning to see why this is ugly?  This last method is the most prevalent in application loading screens.  The reason behind such logic is uncertain.  This tells the user nothing.  It looks more like the application is crashing than loading.  A blank screen is bad feedback for the user’s actions.

So there you have it.  A good rule of thumb is this:  Specifically create a unique loading screen.  It will add polish to your application and make it more presentable over all.

1) Twitter makes it much easier to connect with people that you’ve never met. With Buzz, you must know the person’s email address to connect. It’s much easier (and safer) to give out your Twitter handle, as it is simple to block someone that you don’t want following you. If you post your email online, you are simply asking for spam.
2) Twitter is more open. You can simply sign up with any email address from any service. Buzz necessitates a Gmail account- which not everyone wants or has.

3) Twitter isn’t owned by Google. Sure, this is kind of my paranoia coming through, but I’m trying to limit what of my communication comes and goes through Google.

4) Companies are not going to use Buzz the way they use Twitter. Refer to point 1. A company can reach a much broader audience through Twitter, as you can look at their Twitter feed without having an account. This is the same reason that I hate Facebook- everything is so locked down- to the extent where you really can’t use it unless you have an account. If you’re interested in a certain company, yet you do not want to have a Twitter account, you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed.

5) Twitter has the ability to be more private. Sure, you could just send an email, but Twitter will allow you to send a private note to anyone who is following you. Thus, you won’t need to give out your email if you want to carry a private conversation on with someone you don’t know. (see above)

6) Weakest point- Twitter has an API (Application programming interface). It’s easy enough to use Twitter in a different client than the version presented on the web. I do not know if Google plans to make an open API or not. If they choose to create one, this service could be much better.

So there you go.

All in all, you may not agree with me- which is okay. I for one will keep most of my short posts at Twitter.

Previously, I’d been storing my iPod/iPhone peripherals in an old washable marker package.  It worked well- at least, until the case got put with the art supplies.  It took me about two weeks to relocate the package- a very tedious and inconvenient thing to have to do.  However, with the arrival of my TwoZip, I’ve been able to transfer everything from the “Bag of Doom” into this new case.

Overall, I’m very happy with the build quality and the look- another great product from Speck!

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A while ago, I wrote a review of the official Flickr iPhone app.  While it has been updated and optimized a bit more since that review, it is still a very sluggish application.  However, at the time of that review, there was simply no other good alternative.  However, that all changed.

One day, I got this message.  Even though it suffered from many bugs (being a very early beta), I was already sold.  For starters, it was so much faster than than the app from Yahoo! was.  It looked better to.  I instantly scrapped the official Flickr app and haven’t looked back since.

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As seen in the screenshot above, the opening screen is very beautiful- clean, yet informative.  What’s great about Flickit’s contact management is that it only pulls from the contacts you tell it to.  This was another nit I had with the official application- if you had more than, say, 15 contacts, it was a chore to slog through new uploads.  Flickit changes that.  Upon first opening it, you are presented with the option to add to the contact list.  I added my favorite contacts and let it go to work.  As you’ll see in the screenshot, the tab bar at the bottom will tell you the number of contacts wit recent uploads.  The contacts with the latest uploads are indicated by a glowing blue orb next to their avatar.  This notification thing is persistent- it will not go away until you open their photo stream.  This is very nice in the event that you close the app and come back later to finish your browsing.

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Next, we come to what Flickr is really all about- pictures.  For a Flickr app to succeed, it has to produce an enjoyable way of browsing.  Flickit hits the nail on the head. In addition to providing the standard photo browsing found in nearly all picture applications, Flickit adds a new view- PhotoFlow.  To give you an idea of what this looks like, I refer you to Apple’s Time Machine backup system.  If you are at all familiar with the UI of Time Machine, you will be right at home with PhotoFlow.  For those of you not familiar with Time Machine, I’ll give you an idea of how PhotoFlow works.  Basically, you are presented with a vertical listing of your pictures.  By flicking your finger up or down, it scrolls through the photos.  There’s even a tilt function that allows you to scroll by effortlessly tilting your iPhone either front or back.  Unfortunately, this feature is still a bit rough, so I don’t use it too much yet.

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Flickit also possesses a very robust “Explore” section.  Tapping this tab will give you four options- you can search Flickr either generally or specifically through the photos of your contacts or your own stream.  It also provides easy access to Flickr Interestingness- the Flickr standard of cool.  Nearby photos provides a view of pictures uploaded or taken in the area around you- very cool, especially if you are in a place you are not familiar with.  Flickit also provides basic access to your groups.  It will not, however, show message topics for the group.  Some people may be disappointed by this; others may not care; I place myself in the latter bandwagon.

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And now we get to section that started the whole thing- the “Upload” tab.  It resembles its junior counterpart, Flickit.  On an iPhone, you are presented with two options; you can upload from the image library, or you can take a picture with the camera and use that.  The tab bar is updated with a badge to show how many images you have in the upload queue.  If you have to quit the application for some reason before you can upload the photos, that’s okay; Flickit will remember the photos in queue on the next launch.

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What could be improved?  My number one request would be to enhance the “Recent Activity” tab.  Currently, it only shows activity on your photos- not activity that may have occurred on other contact’s photos.  However, there would be no fun in waiting for new updates if this app shipped with no forseeable updates.  Most of my nits are on the fix list, so for now I’m happy.

If you’d like to know more about the app, I refer you to Mike’s official webpage here.

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Okay, so here’s a picture of my left hand on the keyboard of a laptop.  The laptop is running Windows- but I could put Ubuntu on it as well.  Both systems use the same modifier key.  Were I to force it to become a Mac (through hacking), the modifier key would change.  Thus, the hardware has no influence on which keys do what.

Notice how in the first picture my hand is resting on the home row.  But, as the second image demonstrates, to initiate a simple funtion (such as copy or paste), I have to move my pinky to the lower left corner.  This completely messes up my layout on the keys.  Sure, it’s easy enough to revert my hand to the proper form, but while I am pressing control, I have a limited functionality.

Exhibit two: OS X and it’s modifier.

Again, we see my hands on the home layout.  The second picture shows me moving my thumb to use the command key.  Here’s the important distinction: the thumb on either hand is used for only one key in a QWERTY layout- the spacebar.  Thus, it is essentially a “free” finger during keyboard shortcuts, as the spacebar cannot really be used in any shortcuts.  As you’ll notice, the only finger to move when using command is my thumb- the rest remain on the home row, happy as can be.  Again, just a small little touch to the hardware that makes it more convenient to use.

I once saw an Apple t-shirt with a simple statement.  It said, “Lose ctrl, gain command.”  I have to say, it’s a very-worthwhile action.  Your fingers will thank you.

]]> http://joshcalvetti.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/the-importance-of-properly-placing-modifier-keys/feed/ 4 Josh Others OS X http://joshcalvetti.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/a-visual-argument/ http://joshcalvetti.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/a-visual-argument/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:19:43 +0000 Josh http://joshcalvetti.wordpress.com/?p=271 ]]> So, we were instructed to construct a visual argument for our English class.  Here’s what I came up with.

(Please click the picture for a better view)

“Embraer’s flight [sic].”  Photo.  AviationNews.Eu  29 Oct. 2009.  17 Dec. 2009

<http://aviationnews.eu/2009/10/29/embraers-e-jet-fleet-reaches-3-million-flight-hour-mark>

Statistics of CO2 emissions calculated on <http://carbonbalanced.org/calculator.flights.asp>.  Flight calculated was from Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C., USA to Copenhagen, Denmark.