The more things change...

I can remember having this exact same thought when I was in high school. And again in college. In fact, it's what drove me to pick my Capstone project. When I was sixteen, I started using Linux in a dual boot environment for the first time. I remember the geek in me being awestruck by this platform and wanting to explore it, break it, fix it, promote it. But it had a serious deficiency(two actually, but the second one wasn't a dealbreaker). There was no good media player on Linux.

Gnome had Rhythmbox; KDE had Amarok. Mozilla had just released a very early beta of Songbird at the time. And, while it showed great promise, it was plagued by random crashes and a huge codebase. On Windows, I had used Winamp pretty much religiously, followed by Foobar. But on Linux, I was left wanting. 

It's funny because today, I have those same thoughts about Android. There is no good media player on Android. There are a few that are "good enough."  But "good enough" isn't good enough. Google Music is a joke. While the locker service and the web app are excellent, the Android application makes me want to cry. Setting aside bugs(and one of them is a HUGE problem), there are serious usability issues. 

First of all, the Google Music player looks at every audio file on your device, but doesn't allow you to categorize them. So, if you are like me, you have podcasts that you have been syncing to your device. These show up in the Google Music player. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but since there is no way to distinguish them from music, a "Shuffle All" button willlead to these podcasts playing. 

Now if you look at the competitors, of which PowerAMP is a pretty good option, they don't always solve the problem. PowerAMP can't read any information about the music that you have synced with Google Music. Which is a problem for audiophiles like myself that take great pains to make sure all the tags set up properly and album artwork is correct. 

On Linux, many solutions to this problem arose. Banshee is by far the best music application for the average user. Amarok's redesign improved it by quite a bit. But it took years. Android has a far greater adoption rate than Linux did. I think it's time for a music renaissance on Android devices.

We'll Never Fix The Email Problem

I had to say it. Everyone seems to be talking about the "Email Overload Problem." We need to be rescued from the onslaught of emails we receive everyday. The truth is we'll never fix it. Email might be broken, but its entrenched. I mean I love Sparrow. It's a great email client and makes email simple. I even tried four.sentenc.es for a while. And I have a shortmail account. But the email problem will never be solved by trying to solve the email problem. It will be solved by trying to solve the "Communication Problem."

2012 New Years Resolutions

I have compiled my New Years Resolutions for next year. First, let's take a look at my success (or failure) from this year: 

1. Dont eat fast food.  - SUCCESS
2. Use only fresh food.  - FAIL
3. Limit myself to one cup of coffee per day - FAIL
4. Buy a car - Pretty much planned for the end of January - SUCCESS
5. Create a web app using HTML5 that is social and uses game mechanics. - FAIL
6. Go Skydiving during the summer - FAIL
7. Learn to Snowboard - FAIL
8. Contribute to an open source project - FAIL
9. Don't worry so much. - FAIL

Giving up fast food was pretty easy. With a supermarket right across the street at work, it was simple to give up fast food. I actually have no desire to eat fast food anymore. My 1 cup of coffee a day limit was successful for a while, but eventually I caved in for more. However, I am only drinking two to three cups a day, which is dramatically fewer than last year. I didn't get to go skydiving, but I picked up rock climbing, which I think is a good substitute(in addition to being a ton of fun).

For 2012, I am going to limit my resolutions. I think keeping it at three or four will make it easier to achieve all of them. So here are my 2012 New Years Resolutions:

1. Launch an HTML5 project
2. Eat Dinner at restaurants not more than twice a week
3. Have my doctor's appointment and be more health conscious
4. Go to The Climbing Wall at least once a week

So there you have it. My short list of the things I want to do right in 2012. 

So You Got Invited To Google+?

A few of my friends were asking me questions about Google+. Since they were all basically asking the same questions, I thought I would put together a blog post about the service, how to use it, and what it means for the future of Facebook.

What Are These Circles About?

Google plus is an application that allows you to share posts, pictures, videos, and links with people on your own terms. It is important to understand that while Google+ is different from Facebook, the concepts are not new. It's all about understanding the purpose of the software. On Facebook, you create and manage connections with your friends. On Google+ you create and manage audiences for the stuff you want to share. This is an important distinction to make. On Google+ you can add someone to your circles. And anything you post to that circle will be visible to them. It's a one way relationship, whereas Facebook is a two way relationship. 

You can think of using Google+ as determining what you want to share with different groups of friends and then sharing it with them. A Circle is a list of people based on how you see them, not on how they see themselves. There have been quite a few people comparing Google Circles to Facebook Groups. However, I think these people are making a terrible comparison that serves to confuse people. Think of Circles like Facebook Lists. The Circles are how you organize your friends, acquaintances, family members, people you follow, etc.

About last night...

So lets say you have some embarassing photos of yourself acting completely obnoxious and out of hand at a bachelor party. It happens, you have a few too many drinks and next thing you know, you wake up in a strange room in Bangkok. Now you probably want to share these photos with the other three members of your wolfpack, but you don't want to share them with anyone else. Well never fear. Google+ to the rescue. 

When you post anything on Google+(status, photos, videos, or links), you will see this underneath the "Share what's new" box:

Right now its set to send the post to my "Friends Circle." If you click on "Add more people," you will be able to add other Circles and even individual people that will be able to view your post. If you want to prevent someone from seeing the post just don't include their circle or their name.

Isn't that brilliant? Facebook's model starts with everything public. It's then up to you to restrict access to your posts. Google+ takes an opt-in approach as opposed to an opt-out one. With Google+ you specifically say which circles you want to share a piece of content with. 

You can also manage these settings when you post photo albums. And the best part about Google+ is that even if you make a mistake and show a photo album to a circle you didn't intend to, you can change the audience after the fact. You can also edit posts after you've made them and control whether people can comment on your posts, or share them to their own stream:

Other Stuff

There are a few things that I need to cover, but don't deserve a whole lot of depth. Perhaps the best feature of Google+ is hangouts. I have a few friends that live across the country from me. They are all on Google+, so we can use the hangouts feature to have group chats. Its basically Skype on steroids for free. What is good about hangouts is that your friends can jump when they see you hanging out with other friends.

The Stream is the The News Feed. "+1" is Google+'s equivalent to the "Like" button. "Share" works like it does on Facebook, except that you can share pretty much anything. If you are familiar with Twitter think of sharing like retweeting. There is no equivalent to posting on someone's wall for Google+. The closest you could come would be to post to your own stream and have that person being the only one who can see it. However, if they haven't added you to a Circle, they won't see it unless they view their "Incoming" stream.

If you have an Android or iPhone, you can get the Google+ app which includes all sorts of features that you might find useful. I can't speak about those Apps because I haven't used them, but it's worth checking out.

What About Facebook?

Google+ has a lot of people talking about the demise of Facebook. The popular argument is, "Facebook took down Myspace. They can fall too." While that is true, Facebook is very established. I think that Google+ is the first legitimate competitor to Facebook. It's clean, simple design and focus on opt-in sharing are just the thing that many Facebook defectors are looking for. A lot of people are tired of Facebook's continuous privacy debacles. That coupled with the ill sentiment that many feel towards Facebook are why I think Google+ has a chance.

My prediction, however, is that both companies will battle it out for market share. The competition will make both products better and in the end we will see two social networks.

We are looking at the Apple/Microsoft rivalry of social networking. And this is just the beginning. 

Windows 8 Ideas

The not-so-recently released video below peeled back the curtain on Windows 8. It gave a first glimpse at future of the Windows platform.

After watching this video, I wasn't sure how to feel about the future of the platform. The UI is very similar to that of Windows Phone 7. In fact after the new Xbox Dashboard refresh, it's easy to see Microsoft has unified their interface direction. Icons are out and tiles are in. 

I've had some time to contemplate the changes in Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Xbox, and I have some theories and ideas to share.

Javascript Ported To .NET

Many .NET developers were confused and angry about the comments made in this video concerning Windows 8 development. The Windows 8 applications will be fullscreen HTML5 applications running on the machine. This is a sharp difference to the .NET Framework that is used to write most Windows applications today. However, the change does make sense. 

Microsoft is making the same move that Palm made when designing WebOS. Using HTML and Javascript to write applications allows them to appeal to a very large number of developers that know how to use those technologies well. Aside from that, HTML and CSS scale very well between screen sizes and would (theoretically) allow developers to change the interface based on the screen size. 

One important point worth noting is the ability of Windows 8 applications to use the filesystem. It is also reasonable to assume that Windows 8 apps will use other device hardware. Microsoft has said that Internet Explorer would never support the WebGL standard because they can't meet their security concerns. But the news applications should be able to make use of video hardware. 

Since much of the hardware will be available to these apps, I think that Microsoft will be porting Javascript to the .NET framework and releasing APIs to allow Javascript to take advantage of the hardware underneath the operating system. I also think this will alleviate many of the concerns that developers have over the platform. 

Webless Web-Apps

Since all of the applications native to Windows 8 will be written using standard web technologies, it made me think of this post I made about how Web apps should feel native to the operating system. I have always thought that the web would enable incredible applications that connect users to each other in awesome and amazing ways. But I always wanted the experience to be integrated somehow into the desktop shell. 

Microsoft seems to be going with this approach. But I take serious fault with idea that these applications are always going to run in fullscreen(or even just half-screen), is absurd. Windows 8 will give a view for the "legacy" desktop, but I don't think it will be default, or even configurable that way. And Windows 8 apps appear to be completely separate from the Desktop interface. The fullscreen metaphor works well on a 3 inch phone screen or a 10 inch tablet. But what about my 24 inch desktop monitor? The fact is that I don't need a 24 inch weather application. I need a 3 inch weather application that i can drag around and size just like I do windows in ... well Windows 7. 

But I doubt that will happen. I think Microsoft is missing a golden opportunity here to do something great with Windows 8. I will wait to pass judgement until I see the final product. However, I really like where Mac OS is headed. My Macbook is pretty much the only computer I use and I am converting my desktop into a virtual server lab. I really doubt that Windows 8 is in my future.