Year 2009

Google Wave Developer Sandbox

I’ve been granted access to Google Wave for a bit less than a day now, and from my limited time with it I can say the following: It feels much more like an application than a web page. This is contrary to most other ‘apps’ by Google, including Google Docs, Maps, GMail, Reader etc. where […]

About the same, or even faster

John Gruber writes about hardware (i.e. physical) keyboards on mobile phones. I mostly agree with him on this one: they are, for the most part, useless and the iPhone is --- at least --- not hurt (in my view much better off) without one. There are, of course, some distinct advantages to having any form of physical controls on a device, including using the device without looking at it, but there are several drawbacks too, while at the same time the numerous advantages to having an on-screen 'virtual' keyboard more than make up for the lack of a physical one, both for design and usability reasons. In the end it's probably a personal preference thing, but I for one have been waiting for an all-screen, no-keyboard device like the iPhone for years and I'm sure happy it's here the way it is. Oh and by the way, I probably type faster (and more accurately) on my iPhone than I would ever type on a BlackBerry device or Pré with their miniature keys that seem designed for children and the relatively tacky feel; it took less than a few days after getting my iPhone to getting used to the auto-correction system and a few more days before my typing performance stabilised to an acceptable level for dealing with emailing etc. Finally, the auto-correction on the iPhone seems to work admirably well with Greek too [for those eager to remind everyone that Apple has a parochial mindset; it does, but it doesn't apply here].

Γιού Τέρν.

Μια φορά και έναν καιρό… Πριν από λίγο καιρό στο podcast που κάνουμε σε ημι-σταθερή βάση με τον Παναγιώτη, τον Γιώργο, τον Αστέρη τον Δημήτρη και εκλεκτούς προσκεκλημένους, μιλούσαμε για mobile internet. Από τη συζήτηση δε θα μπορούσε βέβαια να λείπει το iPhone, μια συσκευή που ανεξάρτητα από τα δικά της πλεονεκτήματα έφερε σημαντική ώθηση […]

Naïve Brilliance

If anything can be said in retrospect about Robert McNamara is not that he was hawkish, evil, corrupt or duplicitous, but that despite his sophistication, the statistical prowess and scientific rigour that he showed in his work, his all-around intellectual capacity (or perhaps, in a way just because of all these) he exemplified the naïve brilliance that often accompanies highly intelligent people that fail to take that macroscopic view and consider where they place their focus and energy and why they do so. His 2003 'apology' film, the Errol Morris documentary 'The Fog Of War', as well as his 1995 'In Retrospect' book, both indicate that wisdom came late to McNamara; a clear and very welcome difference, nevertheless, to most of his contemporaries.

Does Parliament Control the Government or Do The Whips Control MPs?

Ίσως η πιο σημαντική, η πιο καίρια ερώτηση που μπορεί να κάνει κανείς σε μια δημοκρατία. Η απάντηση, του Βρετανού σοσιαλιστή του ‘παλαιού’ Labour, Tony Benn, προφανώς αφορά τη Βρετανία, μια χώρα γεμάτη πολιτικές αντιθέσεις που όμως χωρίς αμφιβολία έχει ένα σαφώς δημοκρατικότερο σύστημα από αυτό της Ελλάδος. Αναφέρεται στο κομματικό μαστίγιο [whip], την δική […]

Æsthetics, Usability and Determining Who's Boss.

Æsthetics and usability go hand in hand. Because many people are visual beings, they function better when they work in a beautiful environment. And that extends to computing. So those two go together. In typography this is pretty obvious whenever you’ve got to use (even for a short while) a Windows machine: Cleartype, now the […]

Compared with the Blackbird, they are hardly art at all.

SR-71 Blackbird.
And history the planes have become. However advanced they were, time and technology overtook them; in 1990, as satellites appropriated their mission, operational flights ended. Today's unmanned orbital droids may represent the state of the art. But compared with the Blackbird, they are hardly art at all.
A quick look back at the legendary SR-71 Blackbird. [via kottke]

Slammin' Magnatune [For No Good Reason]

For some unknown reason someone [or a group of people] have been hitting Magnatune hard with credit card fraud, to the point where the company was dropped by their payment processor. This is a great example of how a good company [and one that helps artists worldwide] gets harassed by 'criminals' only to find itself punished by the very same people whose inadequate systems are responsible for the mess in the first place: Visa. John Buckman reports that Magnatune saw ⅓ of its subscriber base disappear due to this change [Magnatune is now depending on PayPal for its credit card transactions and the fact that each payment goes via another entity makes it slightly harder to charge the recurring fees subscriptions bring, without asking the users to register with PayPal etc]. As regular readers may have noticed, I am a great fan of Magnatune; both ethically and artistically I find their effort and business commendable and I have, over the years, found several excellent albums from that company. I hope that things get better for them soon. As a sidenote, I really wonder why someone would hit Magnatune in this manner. Clearly it's not aimed at getting hold of the music, given that you can get the tracks for free anyway...

No Upgrades Here.

I'm not sure if this is a political stunt by Microsoft, or if they are really going to go forward with it. If they are it is insane: By not giving Europeans the capability to upgrade their operating system, like it has done for more than twenty years and at the same time trying to put the blame on the European Commission for doing so (while not providing any specific reasons for doing so), Microsoft is really shooting itself in the foot; from a PR point of view it's a pretty bad strategy that's almost certainly going to backfire. At any rate, I feel so sorry for all those people that are going to want to upgrade from a poor OS like Vista to a mediocre one like Windows 7 and having to do a full reinstall [let alone pay the premium of getting the full version].