My Android Homescreens
Jun 18th
I figured it was time to do a post on what my homescreens look like, especially after upgrading to android 2.2. So, here you go:
Center Screen:
This is the default screen on my Droid. From top -> bottom, L -> R:
Search Bar: It searches things
NewsRob: Google Reader app, works very well
Mint.com: Keeps track of the money
Listen: Google’s podcast app, works very well
Dropbox: File sync with my Mac, and the cloud. One of my favorite companies
Facebook: Facebook App
Twitter: Twitter app
Foursquare: Foursquare app
Voice: Google Voice app, for managing my GV number
Gmail: Duh
Gallery: Duh
Springpad: Online notebook/task manager/external brain. Replaces an old love, Evernote
Assistant: Keeps track of some accounts for me, like my frequent flyer miles and netflix. Serves as a backup to Mint too.
At the bottom, you see something new from FroYo, which is the launcher. The phone and browser icon are VERY nice to have there, and the app launcher is now the 3D scrolling one from the Nexus 1, rather than the drawer it used to be.
The rest of my screens:
Have a question about any of these apps, or need a recommendation? Let me know in the comments.
Where to follow me
Jun 16th
Android 2.2 thoughts
Jun 15th
I have been running the newest version of Android-2.2 a.k.a. FroYo), and I think it really might be the best phone OS out there.
Random, unordered thoughts:
- Holy shit, this thing is FAST. Like, while my phone would regurarly lock up trying to archive more than 30 emails at once, on 2.2 it did 50 without even blinking.
- I visited several flash websites, and they were just as fast as my laptop (Mac-10.6.3-Google Chrome Dev Version)
- The launcher is very nice.
- There are a ton of small improvements that no one is talking about. Things like the “switch accounts” button being better, the UI greatly improving, and the addition of more drop-down options (like when you click on an image in the contact screen, but now everywhere on the phone)
- This feels a lot more like using a computer, and a lot less like a phone.
- I ran some benchmark tests (while waiting for downloads to finish). 2.2 is 30% faster than 2.1 on my device (Motorola Droid)
- While the process to root it was a lot more complicated than with 2.0.1, it was still very easy.
If anyone has any questions about 2.2, let me know in the comments and I will figure it out for you. Its safe to say, 2.2 and iOS4 will be a fun fight to watch.
The Whole Privacy Debacle
Jun 13th
So, tons of people have been all up in arms over privacy online. This is mainly headed by Facebook, but it comes up anytime information is shared, whether it is being shared with other people or with advertisers.
However, I have a huge problem with this. Like, boil my blood, go crazy frustrated. Users seem to miss a few MAJOR points when they get mad about this:
- Ultimately, it is the users fault. If they dont sign up, nothing is shared. If they dont share something, it doesn’t get out in public. If they dont read the notices on their accounts, its their fault.
- Sharing information is GOOD for the person. I prefer to share things like my location and information about my interests. Why? Google Latitude will tell me about my traveling. As will TripIt. Facebook will serve me more relevant ads, and Google will tailor my search results to my location. All networks, knowing my social graph, will allow me to leverage my friends even more.
- The downfalls of sharing have not shown themselves to me. If you are able to point them out, please post them in the comments.
Many people’s objections are not about the sharing itself, but how networks manage privacy. It more of a meta-getting pissed off about privacy. I cant describe how selfish and stupid that argument is. Facebook has 400 MILLION users. How is one, or even 30,000 (the number who participated in “Quit Facebook Day” ) user’s opinion enough to sway Facebook.
So people, figure out the settings. Look through the settings, play with them, and only share what you want. You are 100% in control of you, and your online persona.
Super simple screen scraping in PHP
Jun 7th
I recently put together V2 of the “Who’se Here” section for the CoCoMSP site. The first one, which I wrote several months ago, relied on Twitter posts from the location. However, this happened to coincide with the fad of posting Foursquare updates to Twitter ending. So, I just put together a new version, which does this via scraping the most recent avatars from the Foursquare venue page.
Here is the class to handle the scraping:
And the actual file:
What these do is go to the venue page, grab the table with the pictures, add in the link to foursquare because Foursquare uses relative URL’s, and output it.
Owners of Data
Apr 27th
Many people think that the next big leaders of the web are going to be the curators of data.
While I agree, I think that you are overlooking a very important group.
Data Owners.
This all came out of a thought that I had while driving from a meeting, listening to the Twins game. I started thinking “I am 100% at the mercy of the announcers. They could be 3 pitches behind, and I would not know”
This also has been on my mind while developing our webapp @smcpros. We are 100% at the mercy of the providers of data, whether that is the @twitterapi or @gnip. We can only do, leverage, and analize what is given to us.
Curators are also at their mercy too. They can only curate what the owners provide.
Playing with @Anywhere
Apr 14th
I will be testing, playing with, and quite possiably breaking @anywhere on this site tonight. So, hover over things with the @ symbol and we shall see how it works.
For testing, @mitchellhislop @smcpros @anywhere
iPhone 4.0 guesses
Apr 7th
So, tomorrow there is a preview event for iPhone 4.0. This is going to be a list of guesses, and will get updated for accuracy after the event. Also, you should leave your guesses in the comments below.
A quick note-these guesses may just sound like I am naming things from the iPad. Its important to remember that the iPad is actually running a version of iPhone OS that is newer than the one on the iPhone-many of my guesses will be centered on making those features OS-wide.
UPDATE: Looks like I nailed it….
Onto the guesses:
- User-selected wallpaper: Yes, I picked the easy one first. This feature has been around for like a decade, and the iPad can do it. Seems easy to me. YUP
- Multitasking: Or rather, Apple’s version of it. I think it will be more just a better way to switch between apps, but opening a link in an email needs to not close mail, it needs to open safari, and there needs to be an easy way to get your main message on the NEXT screen you see-not having to close out to the home screen, and then open mail. YUP
- Support for BT keyboards: Another thing that the iPad can do, and I know several people with Apple BT keyboards that would love to use them on their phones. YUP
- Speed: The iPad is FAST. Many time, the iPhone is not. I am guessing this will get fixed. YUP
- Unified Inbox: Or at least the option for one. Currently, Apple’s mail app sucks. Another thing that needs to be fixed. YUP
- Mobile Ad Platform: I think this will be during the same event, and it will be called iAd by millions of people, though likely not being officially called that. YUP
- Better notifications: Apple, if someone has an alarm set, their alarm should go off EVEN IF THERE IS A NOTIFICATION ON THE SCREEN!!!. Also, having every notification pop up in an interrupting manner is VERY annoying. Thats why I love the Android notification screen-so unobtrusive YUP
For the rest of the announcements, check out Engadget’s liveblog of the event
Like I said, I will update this tomorrow, and see how I did. Want to join me? Leave your guesses in the comments
Lacking Context
Mar 31st
The other day, while writing code to work with Viralheat (for an SMCpros client), it hit me. The flaw, the thing that I dislike about ANY social media monitoring tool (although, I do love ViralHeat, because their RESTful API kicks some serious tail).
Its a lack of context.
No tool out there (and I have demoed most of them) can give context to a tweet. They assign sentiment based on a database of wordlists of what is positive and what is negative. They have no way of telling if someone is just being snarky, if they are in a foul mood, or even if they use pronouns. If I tweet “Man, @twitter is the best company to work for” followed by “They really know their stuff, great job”, all tools will only grab the first one. Same goes if I am tweeting bad things. This issue is joined with the issue that there is not a ton of follow up-when a rep from a company responds to someone tweeting, not much is done to see how it changes the sentiment regarding that company. Mentions of a brand are treated like islands-concise, self-contained bubbles of information, not a chain of data.
Now, being someone who sits right at the intersection of Social street and Developer drive, I am going to fix this. I cant tell you too much about it (believe me, I will when I can), but know that we are making a solution. We want to provide context, and more layers and views of data, to the social sphere. More abilities for people to view data, more ways to use all the data that is being generated by everyone.
Published Code
Mar 28th
Over the last few weeks, I have been doing quite a lot of coding. I want to tell you about two of the bits I have written, that I am willing to release-some of it is under lock and key for work. If you use this, all I ask is that you either give me some sort of credit, or just a shout out/thank you. (basically, CC-attrib.)
Foursquare “Whose Here?”
This bit of PHP that I wrote can be found on the CoCoMSP site (disclaimer-I am working with them as a community-manager type role, sort of. Damn FTC and your vague guidelines). All it does is pull the people who have very recently checked in at a location on Foursquare and displays their avatars. I wrote this because there is no easy way to pull a recent list-and, it is easier to fully integrate this into your design, rather than a big clunky widget. I will be updating it with Gowalla in the very near future, so be sure to stay tuned.
CSS Bar Graphs
This one is for WordPress. You can find an example at the site we did for the Overnight Website Challenge. This code pulls data from a custom post field called “status” (super easy to change), and displays a bar graph with the percentage given filled in. You can easily mod this to do more, but that is all was required.For instance, you can use it with voting buttons, store the votes in variables, and do some simple math to display the percentage.
