Apple, The One Button Mouse And Gestures (Short Take)

One of the things that has always frustrated me about Apple is the one button mouse. There is no doubt that Steve Job's is a genius in many different ways but that particular decision has never made sense to me. Yes, it's simple to the first order but it leads to additional complexity quickly in the UI as you have to make that one button do a lot. It's analogous to the difference between entering text on a full keyboard versus the old non smart phone keypad methods. It can be done, but it's not going to be as fast unless you spend a LOT of time gaining proficiency.

This approach is replicated on the iPad as well, though at least you have gestures and multitouch there. On the iPad it took me for ever to discover that pushing the button twice gives a list of running apps. Yes, I probably should have read the documentation but it's an Apple product and I'm a veteran geek, why should I have to? (That last sentence is meant to be somewhat but not entirely tongue in cheek).

I always feel like I've had part of my brain removed when I have to use a mouse with less than three buttons. Part of this is the fact that I still use the X-Windows system native to Linux/Unix on a regular basis. X uses all three buttons. No middle button means the normal paste functionality doesn't work. This makes coding and pretty much anything else a lot more difficult.

The thing I really find ironic is the fact that for some reason Apple/Jobs decided that multitouch on touchscreens is totally cool. In fact you can apparently do up to ten finger multitouch. They even have the magic mouse which apparently allows multitouch of some sort. Why is it user friendly and intuitive to use ten fingers on a touch screen but not more than one mouse button on a mouse?

OK, you probably could argue that touch and gestures are more natural to humans than pushing a button. I won't argue that point but is dealing with a button ten times more difficult than dealing with complex gestures that require a fair amount of dexterity and practice? It may be a sign of my age, but I'm still not all together comfortable with even two finger gestures. The thought that I can use three or more does not give me any comfort at all.

With the invention of devices like the Kinect though this is probably the general direction we can expect things to go in. Human computer interaction is moving away from the simple ones and zeros represented by button clicks and towards a more analog, or real world model. Having said that, the kinds of gestures currently supported by touch screens seem too abstract and complex to me. The Kinect essentially moves gestures from 2D to 3D. I'd expect touch pad like devices to have 3D gestures in the next decade. No doubt I'll be complaining about them as well if I'm right.

Image via CrunchBase

Engagement And Social Networking

I've been spending a lot of time on my side project over the long weekend which didn't leave much time for blogging. Now it's time to go back to the day job so I'm not sure how active I'll be here over the next few days.  I learned how to multitask and be productive while pursuing my MBA and working full time but there are only so many hours in the day and something has to give. So far it's been my guitar making and this BLOG.

I'm starting feel like less of a neophyte in the social networking space. I won't say I'm an expert but that early feeling of "what the heck am I supposed to be doing here?" has faded and I'm making decent progress. There are still surprises occasionally like when I checked my Klout score a couple of days back and it had dropped three points for no reason that I could discern. I've since recovered plus a little so whatever it was seems to have passed.

My big success has been on Empire Avenue where I managed to pass the one million Eave mark a week or so ago and have seen steady share growth for nearly a month. Eaves are the virtual currency of Empire Avenue. In theory that success means I'm doing well at the social networking game. In practice I'm not entirely sure that is the case. As I said above I feel like I've made a lot of progress but I'm not confident I'm doing as well as Empire Avenue seems to indicate.

Figuring out Google+ is kind of impossible since it's changing rapidly and people are still working their way through the best way to use it, myself included. I'm still annoyed by the who real names controversy but have decided not to cut my ties as there is a chance it's going to be a really useful tool and I like the platform in general. I'm also building a network of interesting people to hang out with and chat which is kind of the point of social networking. I do wish more of my Facebook friends would join up though.

Twitter momentum has been kind of minimal. I think it helps to have a larger than life personality on Twitter and that's not me. The one hundred and forty character limit also makes it difficult to have real engagement. It's really just a series of sound bites and brief asides intermingled with links to interesting articles. That isn't a bad thing but it does limit the scope. I tweeted this past week that Google+ is what Twitter should have grown up to be. Twitter did introduce the ability to auto post tweets to Facebook this week. I suppose that's cool but I don't see the point. For me the two services have completely different use cases.

Speaking of different use cases, I'm running into issues trying to decide how to use foursquare. Generally I break social networking sites down into two categories. The first is ones where I primarily engage with people I know personally. Facebook and foursquare would fit in this category. The second group is of course sites where I engage more broadly. That would include pretty much everything else.

The problem with foursquare is that I can see it working in both scenarios. Somebody on one of the Empire Avenue forums posted that they check in via foursquare when they are giving a talk for instance. These check ins effectively become subtle advertising. I'm not planning on getting into public speaking but hearing this idea did point out to me that foursquare might be useful with a broader audience than I'd been envisioning previously. Then again, I really don't want to spam people with my trips to the grocery store or my favorite restaurants. I'm going to have to spend some more time thinking about this one before I come to any conclusion.

Time to get ready for work. It's a virtual Monday here in the US. Hopefully nothing broke at work over the long weekend. I'll know soon enough.

Image by kristiewells via Flickr

Whatever Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong (So Think Ahead)

I've talked a bit about my side project/venture over the past few weeks. I've also mentioned some bumps along the way. I've had two more in the past twenty four hours. Nothing major and I'm continuing to make good progress but the number of problems has been higher than normal. I feel a bit like my resolve is being tested. I'm doing well if that's the case. Adversity isn't a whole lot of fun but it's inevitable.

I'd been doing my main development and testing on a Linux VM running on my laptop. It's a beefy machine with eight gig of memory and a quad core i7 Intel processor but I'm doing a lot of database related work and the IO was really killing performance on both the VM and my Win 7 host OS so I made my first semi large purchase for the business, a low end Acer desktop system that is quad core AMD based with four gig of RAM and a 1TB disk. The new desktop/server is arguably a bit slower than the laptop but it gets to use all four CPU's and doesn't have to go through the overhead of running on a VM. I'm also fairly sure the disk IO is significantly faster based on the performance I'm seeing which is what I'd expected.

The first problem I ran into was installing the server edition of Ubunto Linux 11.04. I downloaded the image, burned it to a RW DVD and it booted to the initial install screen just fine. Soon after I told it to start the install though it would lock up. I tried disabling various options but the result was always the same. It turned out to be a bad image write. Somehow I'd missed the error message on my laptop when I did the burn. Not a huge deal but I lost an hour or two to debugging the issue.

Once the install was done I was able to transfer everything over to my new server without issue. I had to install a few additional optional packages to get things to work but I was up and running by midnight. With a sigh of relief I decided to call it a night since it had been a long day and I was beat.

Another problem I've had along the way is my wireless router. It is less that a year old but it loses its mind periodically and needs to be power cycled. The server wasn't plugged into it, but my laptop does use it get to the network. About thirty minutes after I called it a day the wireless decided to stop working. In theory this shouldn't have been a problem. Unfortunately I had started everything up while remotely logged in from my laptop and when the laptop dropped off the network the jobs I was running to gather and process data died. Luckily I woke up at 6:30AM and was able to get things working again quickly but I lost six plus hours of data gathering which isn't fatal, but painful since the project I'm working on is highly dependent on data.

The tough thing about any task is that the devil is in the details. In both these cases I neglected to take into account a potential failure scenario and I got bit. I could argue that chance didn't favor me but at the end of the day that doesn't matter; what matters is results.

I've mitigated the odds of my second failure repeating by running all of my tasks in the background via a handy program called "screen" that lets me detach my virtual terminals and reattach from any place I can log into the server from. The screen program is extremely venerable but still useful in circumstances like this.

Time to get back to work. Number one on the agenda is some sort of reliable data and code backup solution. Chance clearly prefers those who ask it few favors.

Image via Wikipedia

Amazon Touchpad/Venture Update (Short Take)

One of the interesting bits of news recently is that Amazon may be contemplating an HP firesale like price point for the new tablets most of us expect them to introduce soon. The thinking is that HP can afford to sell at a loss since they are primarily in the business of selling content. It's basically the same model that game console makers have been following for years and it's seemed to work fine for them. In reality I doubt Amazon will want to sustain $200 or more in losses up front per unit sold but $50 might be OK and that would put them at a very attractive price point. There are also rumors of a $99 Kindle. If it's color, that would be very cool.

I've been doing my early code development venture work on my laptop via a Linux VM. I woke up this morning to find that my laptop is feeling very sluggish as the VM is busy doing all sorts of database queries. This laptop is under a year old with four real cores (Intel I7) and 8 Gig of memory. I feel a sense of accomplishment that I've been able to bring it to its knees. :) I have an old desktop machine sitting around gathering dust that I'll be installing Linux on this weekend so I can transfer my work to there.

I've worked through some possibilities for the business side of the idea I'm working on and am getting excited about the possibilities. I don't think this idea is a complete dud which is nice. In any case I'm getting to learn some cool technologies and am excited about coding for the first time in years.

Image via Wikipedia

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What is a "Real Name" Anyway? G+ Fails

A few more thoughts today on the whole "Real names" Google+ debate. You can find my previous entry on this topic here. And yes, I realize some people dislike "here" links. Sometimes they are the most natural way to back link.

One of the things I've heard people say in support of real names is that they want to be able to search for a persons name and find out more about them. The problem with this assertion is that it assumes that everyone has an uncommon name. My first name is Mike, which has been one of the top two or three male first names in the US for decades now. My surname is Miller which is a very common surname in the US. I'll add an additional piece of identifying information.; I live in California. Now, do a Google search and pick me out. Hint, you wont find me on at least the first couple of pages. I'll throw in the fact that my middle initial is J. Again, you won't find me on the first few pages. You probably won't find me on the first hundred. My name is a lousy way to identify me uniquely if that is what you're trying to do.

If you search for emkey1 on the other hand the very first thing that comes up on Google's search is an entry from my BLOG.

If the point of this policy is to make it easier to identify people than it's an epic fail in the case of those of us who have common names. My "brand" is emkey1 which is a fairly unique label that is easy to locate.

Another issue I have is that even even if I acknowledge Google's desire that everyone be tied to a real identity I don't understand why anyone besides Google needs to know how to tie a public persona back to a real person. Can anyone explain that to me? Google could even share demographic data with partners without violating peoples privacy which is a big part of their business model so again, I'm perplexed why they think they need to have and enforce their policy as currently constituted.

I'm not a social networking superstar, but I am somebody with a modest presence and I wouldn't mind growing that presence. Google's insistence that I use my real name on G+ makes it more difficult for me to build my "emkey1" brand. Google is essentially asking me to put time and effort into an outlet that isn't furthering my personal goals.

Actually I have a confession. technically my real first name is Michael, not Mike. Nobody but my family calls me that though so hopefully Google won't insist that I use it on G+.

Image via Wikipedia

+1 To Facebook (Short Take)

One of the reasons competition is good is that it forces companies to make adjustments based on what the other players in their space are doing. Until the advent of Google Plus Facebook hadn't had any real competition since MySpace crashed and burned. Lack of competition is a lot of business people's fantasy but it's lousy for the consumer in the short to mid term and lousy for companies as well if it goes on for too long. It's easy to get arrogant and foolish in your decision making when there is nobody to chase or outrun in the competitive landscape. Eventually you become fat and lazy and somebody else comes along and takes a big chunk of your pie before you can react.

Facebook has made a number of enhancements to their platform over the past few weeks that are in obvious reaction to Google Plus. As an added bonus Facebook actually made these changes obvious to users and prompted them for their preference. Progress!

I don't know if Google plus will succeed but in the short term it has at least encouraged Facebook to take a smarter and more customer friendly approach to how they do business and that's a good thing for everyone.

Image by ACE Foundation via Flickr

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Moles And Trolls Or Why I Dislike Google's Real Names Push

I'd been on the fence about Google's "Real Names" push on Google Plus since it's inception awhile back. There are pros and cons to both sides of the debate and I didn't find myself tipping strongly in either direction until now.

The title of this entry acknowledges that there are two kinds of anonymous posters.  Moles are people who hide their identity out of fear for their safety due to the opinions and beliefs they are expressing. Trolls hide their identity because they want to be jerks without consequences. They can be entertaining in a sick "look at this idiot" kind of way but they don't have any redeeming characteristics. Sadly to protect the first group you have to protect the second as well. I seriously doubt though that these two groups are Google's primary concern.

One of Google's central tenants is in theory "Don't be evil". Evil can come not only from action, but from inaction as well. I will suggest here that their real names push is in fact evil as currently constituted.

This wasn't actually clear to me until Google chairman Eric Schmidt made his "Don't like it, don't use it" statement. His point is basically valid, G+ is in fact optional. Then again so are Facebook and twitter and look at the number of times they've been used and cited in relation to helping coordinate and instigate profound changes in various countries. The ability for people to get on Twitter anonymously and discuss and coordinate has been used for much good and a bit of evil as well in the case of the London riots. Social networking has to be profitable for the companies creating products and services but these services are also providing important avenues for dissidents to be heard and encourage change. Some are willing to do this publicly and others are not. The fact that the first group are not infrequently beaten, tortured and killed explains the second group. Google is essentially saying "If you wan to use our service to promote change, you're going to have to do it in a very public way that might get you killed". That seems kind of evil to me, particularly when we explore the motivations for this approach.

As I've pointed out before, Google has  income already on G+ because of the information they can gather about us based on how we arrange our circles and who we choose to communicate our posts to. The value of those interactions goes up if Google knows more about the people on both ends of the transaction. This is in part why real names are so important to them.

The other reason they are important is that Google wants to build additional services on top of G+ that require verified identities. What Google is failing to acknowledge though is that there will inevitably be differing levels of verified. For instance, right now you don't have to have a credit card registered with Google to be on G+. Many of us do though since with have Android phones and buy stuff from the Android market place. That level of verification is clearly higher than "It looks like a real name and they've been around for awhile" or whatever minimal criteria Google is using right now. I can envision higher levels of verification that involve official ID's being presented, DNA testing, etc. I'm assuming of course that Google's next step will not be to require a credit card to use G+.

I can also envision a very low level of verification that is essentially no verification at all. This is where the anonymous types could and should exist. Clearly they wouldn't have access to many of the neat additional services that Google and their partners will build on top of G+, but that's OK.

For those worried about criminals using such this capability I'll point out that anonymity online only has a limited scope. Your online identity may not be obviously linked to you from a public perspective but there are all sorts of bread crumbs that companies save including IP addresses and email addresses that can be used in many cases to track down the real person if that becomes necessary. Technically sophisticated people can greatly reduce the odds of being tracked down but there is risk to them even in that case.

Of course verified identities or real names are only one half of the equation. Identity theft is relatively easy and common in both the real and electronic world right now. To do this right Google will need to provide some kind of token or smart card  technology to give a reasonable level of assurance that the person who is logged in to G+ is in fact who they claim to be. If this sounds complicated, well it is. A lot of this complexity could actually be hidden from the general public but in one form or another any identity service worth a dang is going to have to have gradated levels of identity and verification.

Currently Twitter provides an outlet for concise anonymous messaging. Google+ has the potential to allow for much richer communications in this arena since it doesn't have a 140 character limit. It may be over stating the case a bit to call Google evil for not allowing these communications but when you throw in the fact that their motivation for this move seems to be solely to support an overly simplistic business model the word evil becomes a bit more credible in my mind.

I'm not anti business. I realize that Google is a publicly traded company with tens of thousands of employees. Given their "Don't be Evil" philosophy though there are certain lines that they should in theory be reluctant to cross. This is one of them. They can in fact be an identity service without disallowing anonymous users. If they want to be a good identity service they'll need to account for varying levels of verification and authentication anyway.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

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