Either You Succeed or Explain

1st Gen iPhone Owners Feel Left Out?

Yesterday, Apple announced the third version of the iPhone OS. One of the main concerns raised by the critics is the fact that 1st Generation iPhone owners will not be able to enjoy some of the features like MMS and A2DP support. Some sites even started polls, asking how they feel about it, Guys, you need to wake up. 

I don't have an iPhone yet. I will probably get one after the next update (July?). I have a Nokia phone based on Symbian S60: 6120 Classic with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1. This is my second S60 device. My first device was the 7650, which was the first S60 device ever made. Symbian is the most common smart-phone OS out there. My 7650 was released in 2002, so it is far more mature and well rooted. 

Now, dear Nokia users, a quick question for you: did you ever get new features for your phone after you bought it?  No. You didn't. Because Nokia is a smart company. They can teach us all a lesson in marketing mobile phones. Every year or so there's a new version of the Symbian OS which is released only for newer models. Want more features?  Upgrade your phone. They want you to buy a new device every couple of years. 

I'm really surprised that 1st gen phones will even get that update. Apple should learn from Nokia. People like upgrading their phone by going to the shop and getting a new shiny device. Carriers like people to upgrade their phone and get caught up in longer term contracts. Apple should play along. We want the iPhone to bring in more profit, because than we will see more investment in the platform.

And a side note: Technical blogs are developing Tabloid-like qualities. They seem to care more about creating a provocation than stick to facts. After all, that what brings home the readers, right? 

Project Bespin and the Future of Web UI According to Google

Last week, Mozilla Labs unveiled yet another innovative project called Bespin. Bespin is an online code editor. I shared my opinion on Online IDEs in the past (here and here). They open new opportunities, yet, we are still far from the promised land. I don't see a great difference between Bespin and other attempts I encountered (Eclipse E4, Heruko, DevUnity). The idea is not new. Yet, there is something very interesting about project Bespin.

Project Bespin demonstrates the use of the Canvas HTML element. In a nutshell, this technique enables a completely free UI rendering. The code editor is rendered in JavaScript, not using traditional HTML tags. From the initial demo of Bespin, the UI looks very different than the UI one usually expects in Web applications. It is very responsive and very rich, much like a desktop application. It is innovative and not bound to the current browser paradigms (e.g. the auto-hiding scroll-bars).

This technology can be compared to Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash/Flex. In fact, I see it as a clear contender. I noted in the past that Google considers JavaScript to be the future of web UIs (the Chrome browser is a proof) and this is just another brick in that wall. Well, we know that "Mozilla... is a charitable arm of Google" (from TechCrunch), so the connection is quite obvious. Google uses Bespin to show the developers community that the future of JavaScript-based web applications is bright. No need to switch to other technologies, we've got it all right here.

The Canvas approach has its' drawbacks. The main caveat is that it is not supported in Internet Explorer, thus, will not work for the majority of the web users. That's where Google comes to the rescue with the Explorer Canvas project which enables the Canvas tag in Internet Explorer. I didn't test Bespin on IE with that extension from obvious reasons (I use a Mac). Let's suppose that in a couple of months, Google comes up with a better GMail UI, based on HTML Canvas: the result would be either a mass migration from IE to other browsers or IE adding native Canvas support. If I had to take a guess, I would bet on the former. Microsoft is already losing the browser war. IE does not need more nails in its' coffin. 

So what can we expect next?  Probably a GWT implementation which renders the UI using an HTML Canvas rather than plain HTML, taking GWT to the next level in terms of UI richness. Imagine the power of Java with amazing UI capabilities (much nicer than current Java UI frameworks) and a thin-client deployment model. That's the holy grail right there! 

Goodbye Bloglines

I have almost 200 feeds in my subscription list and I spend at least 30 minutes a day going over them, usually more. For me, reading RSS is a crucial part of my business. I've been using Bloglines as my RSS aggregator for almost 5 years now. That is a lot. I regret to say that it is now time to say goodbye.

Bloglines served me for at least half an hour a day for 5 years. That is roughly 40 straight days. It is like an old friend and it has become older and older over time. I had a surge of hope, about a year and a half ago, when the company announced their new beta. Yet, nothing has changed since, the company seems inoperable and the hard core users are jumping ship. Feeds are not being updated on time, read/unread status is being lost and feed counts are a mess. Not to mention frequent outages. 

Reading RSS is an important task and I tried many (most?) RSS readers, both web based and desktop applications (for OS X). The natural choice is Google Reader. I still think the Bloglines interface has some advantages, but the service has become totally unusable. Besides, Google Reader is moving forward while Bloglines is inert. For example, the main feature I was missing in the last time I checked Google Reader was the ability to manually rearrange feeds and it is now possible. 

So, what I am still missing in Google Reader to make my experience complete:

• In Bloglines, when selecting a feed that has no unread items you may select to show read items from today only, this week or (X) most recent. This is a handy feature if you want to return to a recent post after reading it without loading the entire feed.
• In Bloglines, selecting a folder would show all the feed items grouped by feeds. In Google Reader it can only be ordered chronologically. This is truly annoying. I would probably refrain from reading folders and stick with reading individual feeds. 
• Google Reader does not show site Favicons. Luckily, there's a script for that.

Other than that, Google Reader has some major obvious advantages over Bloglines. It will take me some to time to get used to it and make the most of the extra features.

Finally, I want to thank the Bloglines team for their service over the years. I'm thankful for what I got and really wish it would end differently. 

It's time to explain (as opposed to succeed)

The links in my blogs are broken. You can read the front page, but navigating further into articles will probably fail with a 404 or some other error. I'm aware of this problem and I thank the readers who brought this to my attention. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the TypePad technical team to solve this issue. 

If you're having trouble with my blog, I sincerely apologize the inconvenience and I hope this will be fixed soon. Your patience is appreciated.

In the mean while, I invite you to cheer up and have a laugh. Failure always reminds me of the FAIL blog. It's one of my favorites.

Google Chrome: "JavaScript Forever!"

It seems like every possible blogger wrote something about Google Chrome, so why should I be different. I'm looking at it from the developer perspective. I mean, the technical side, the process separation and JavaScript engine, is really what's interesting here. UI wise, it looks a lot like a bunch of features form other browsers, which is surprising considered Google stated it is trying to do "something else". It is possible to do "something else": check out the latest videos from Mozilla labs for some examples.

Google wants your JavaScript web applications to run fast, stable and secure and to feel much like desktop applications. You achieve that by downloading a different runtime engine (you can call it browser, but that name is totally obsolete). That sounds like the next generation RIA technologies: Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flash/Air and Sun's JavaFX. Google are sending a clear message: "we have a lot riding on JavaScript and we're not looking for a replacement anytime soon". 

The main differentiator between JavaScript and other RIA technologies will be reduced to the visual complexity. Google are separating themselves from the herd by sticking with the clear and functional design approach. IMHO, it is a matter of personal preference. However, I will not be surprised to find future GWT releases providing more visual enhancements out of the box. GWT can walk hand in hand with Chrome and we might expect future releases of GWT to be "Chrome optimized".

Silverlight/AIR/JavaFX can coexist with Chrome/JavaScript, but they have to be justified. This justification just became that much harder.