ThinkSketchDesign

I hope this article embeds an idea into your head about a feature that you really want on your smart phone.  I  hope it leaves you frustrated that you don’t already have it, and then, I hope smart phones soon integrate this feature into the interface, and you will wonder what you ever did without it.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just tilt the phone to slide the text up and down the page?

This is what I have always wanted when reading an article on the New York Times App. I’m not so much complaining that it’s a huge burden to flick my finger across the page every few seconds like a windshield wiper clearing away the old text and pushing new text into view for my brain to consume.   It’s just that it would be so satisfying and natural to use tilt scrolling.

This “finger free” tilt scrolling feature would use a smart phone’s accelerometer to scroll down an article automatically as you tilt the phone.  I think this feature would be so useful that it should be built into the iPhone at a low level – or maybe made available as a pre-packaged UI tool for developers.

After thinking about this idea for while, it seemed so natural that I thought someone must have already implemented it somewhere. After some searching – sure enough I found that Instapaper has a nice video showing how they do it.

Instapaper Pro tilt scroll demo from Marco Arment on Vimeo.

I just downloaded the free version of the Instapaper iphone app, but I could not easily figure out how to enable their tilt scrolling – maybe it’s a pro feature…  (Their setup process is actually quite cumbersome.  Although at least they do a good job making the long process easy to understand.  They also have a nice apology as to why it has been difficult to create a better solution.)

In any case, I think this kind of tilt-scroll interface should be in every smart phone text browsing tool.  Here are the details of how I think it should work:

You should be able to have the phone at any angle – you would hold your finger down for a second to ‘zero out’ the angle and then be able to tilt relative to that angle.

To ensure that the text only scrolls when you want it to, there should be a tilt range of ‘no movement’.  If you tilt beyond that range it should scroll the text at a speed proportional to your tilting.

It should also have a smart algorithm to sense if you momentarily put down your phone which would automatically disable the scrolling.  Another brief finger hold would enable it again.

IE6 needs to die and everyone knows it.  The outdated browser is slow, has security holes, and drives developers bonkers.  In recent news, there are some new efforts to put it to rest for good (links listed below).

But in the meantime, here is my favorite idea for how we could instantly make IE6 a moot problem.  Instead of hacking your site to make it compatible for non-complaint IE6 users, why not just create a pixel map of how your site looks in Firefox and run an emulated version of the site in a flash player?  Sure this might be sketchy and maybe even illegal, but think about how much time we waste creating work-arounds for the buggy IE6.

Think of it as if the user is running a remote desktop sharing session with their future post-browser-update self.  Yeah it kind of feels like a glorified phishing attack, but hey – IE6 users are already at risk, right?  And after all, there is a really easy way they can avoid the whole mess in the first place – they can get the free upgrade!

(click for large image)

So is this such a crazy proposal?  Why should it be our problem if they don’t want to upgrade?  What if instead of wasting our time designing work-arounds, we could just inform them about the problem and let them deal with it?

Recent news about efforts to end usage of IE6:

A Downing Street petition is calling for the UK government to drop Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6).

Google Twists Knife In IE6, Pulls Support From Docs And Sites

A quote from http://www.ie6nomore.com

“As any web developer will tell you, working with IE 6 is one of the most difficult and frustrating things they have to deal with on a daily basis, taking up a disproportionate amount of their time. Beyond that, IE 6’s support for modern web standards is very lacking, restricting what developers can create and holding the web back.”

[edit 2010 02 01: The links to Rinich's blog no longer work because he has shut down his blog]

Here are two articles via hacker news by rinich.com and danieltenner.com that I think have convincing perspectives about the ipad’s target market.  Some techies are disappointed in the ipad’s lacking features – no flash, no multi-task etc.  These articles respond: This thing wasn’t made for you, techies.  Get over it.  You’ll probably buy one anyway, but so will the average non-techie.

Like your home fire extinguisher, automator is a tool that you probably don’t think much about, you might never use, but still, you feel good knowing it’s there if you need it.  Recently I found my second use for it – renaming a whole website of files and folders to sanitize URLS for a fresh start.

In one fell swoop, I replaced spaces with dashes, changed uppercase to lowercase – all that good stuff.  I setup automator, hit the “do-it,-robot-guy” button, and sat back in my chair to wonder about just how much of a pain the task could have been.

So yeah, automator is great.  Except there was one hitch.  I thought I could rename all of the files and sub-folders using the ‘Get Folder Contents’ option – but with this option automator doesn’t rename the sub-folders themselves – it just renames the files in the folders.  (see this comment thread #14 & #15 for details)

So here is my workaround: Instead use “Find finder items” as a filter to catch everything.  To make sure I get every file and folder, I just set the filter to exclude files with an unlikely name (I was pretty sure that none of the files had “pirate-butt” in them.)

And that should do it – it will rename all of the files and folders.  I used this same filter to run a few different functions like making everything lowercase etc.  It’s definitely a hack – if anyone finds a better workaround let me know, but this gets the job done just fine.  Have fun.

The first time I saw “twig”, a type of ad widget by VideoEgg, I thought it was pretty cool.  Twig is a When you hover over the ad it shows a 3-2-1- countdown and then displays a multimedia video that is highly engaging.  For a little while, videoEgg will just be serving their promo ad on my site, and then we’ll see what they serve me.  Here is one example of a cool ad that they are showing on their site – an ad for Tim Burton’s exhibition at the MOMA:  http://share.videoegg.com/MoMA_Burton.

Anyways, what you think?  Is ‘twig’ cool?  Or is it just really obnoxious?  Leave a comment and let me know what you think -thinksketchdesign

Update: It looks like the VideoEgg ad will only be showing up if it finds appropriate content – otherwise, the ad will just be a regular google ad for now.  Also, I was a little unclear about the name “twig” that VideoEgg gives to some of their ad-types.  Turns out that “twig” is only the name for the slim banner ad that stays static at the top or bottom of the page.  The other ads are not called ‘twig’ ads.  Makes sense when you think about it, but their website and promotions made it kind of confusing.

Anyway, this post is a big mish-mash now.  I will write a new post about VideoEgg later – after I collect some stats and see if any readers send responses about their ads.

When Cooliris first launched their image viewing environment (originally called Pic lens), I was an instant fan.  I sometimes do graphic design work and often need to browse through many images to find just the one I’m looking for. Rather than flip through them one ‘Google lmage Search’ Page at a time, Cooliris lets you browse through an endless hall of them in their 3D environment.  I use their firefox add-on.

Recently, Cooliris just introduced a very interesting new advertising model.  They are embedding an add in their image results as shown.  I’m intrigued.  I love the work they’ve done to bring me this useful product – I hope this model is successful for them.

SW-CUT is an experiment for Google’s “Sidewiki” browser add-on.

This experiment is a proposal to use twitter style tags in Google’s Sidewiki

This experiment lets you easily make suggestions about how to improve any website or web-service.  All you have to do is open the Google Sidewiki panel, make your suggestion and include the twitter style tag #SW-CUT.  If the experiment is successful, it will provide easily searchable, productive feedback for companies, which will soon lead to the much improved web-tools that you’ve always wanted.  Any time you hear yourself saying “this site sucks because…” or “why won’t they just let me…”  Don’t curse it, SW-CUT it.  It will make you a happier web-surfer.

SW-CUT (Sidewiki Crowdsourced User Testing) is not affiliated with Google – it’s actually not even a program.  It is simply a proposal to adapt a common tagging practice online.  Just like twitter’s hash-tags, it is a loose evolving protocol that has the potential to become very useful because we can search for the tags and compile useful categorized lists of dialogues happening all over the web.

It’s not surprising if you haven’t heard of Google’s Sidewiki yet; it is very new.  But soon you’ll probably see it everywhere.  Sidewiki is simple – it is a browser extension that lets you write blog-style comments about any webpage while you’re reading it.  (learn more about google Sidewiki)

Many websites have a feedback section, but they often leave a lot to be desired.

1. The feedback form is probably not as quick and easy as it should be – after all, you’re doing them a favor!  Why are they bothering you with so many extra details?!
2. There is no standardization between sites, and the public cannot see meta data on website recommendations.
3. Recommendation categories are crude, and we don’t usually know who else and how many people share your recommendation idea.
4. Most importantly, it doesn’t usually feel like anyone is really listening.

SW-CUT gives users a loud collective voice to tell companies what they want in a way that is transparent, collaborative, and searchable for everyone.  Also, SW-CUT gives companies crowdsourced feedback that is not only free, but likely more powerful than what they currently have available.

As an example to show how SW-CUT would work, let’s make a suggestion for the Google Calendar site.  This site has thought of almost everything, but even Google knows they have room for improvement – that’s why they offer well-designed feedback forums.  But what about sites with crappy user feedback – the SW-CUT method works anywhere with Google’s Sidewiki

Example of how to use SW-CUT: Making a suggestion for Google Calendar (view the actual Sidewiki post)

Subject: #feature-request : I’d like to be able to hide certain repeating events that show up on the calendars I import. #SW-CUT @Google-Calendar

Body: I love being able to import my friends’ calendars so we can plan events when we are all free.

But I wish I could turn off some of their repeating events that aren’t relevant to me.  For example, my brother has a repeating event called, “street cleaning – move car!”.  The event shows up for every Saturday of the year, so it really clutters my calendar.  Could you offer a feature that lets me hide just this event?  Thanks!

*SW-CUT (Sidewiki Crowdsourced User Testing) is an experiment for Google’s “Sidewiki” that is unaffiliated with Google.  (read more: http://www.thinksketchdesign.com/sw-cut)

(view the actual Sidewiki post)

Future goals for SW-CUT:

If a lot of people participate in the SW-CUT experiment, then we will use Google’s API for Sidewiki to make a nice search interface for SW-CUT.  You will be able to search for what people are saying about web-services.  Companies will have a brilliant database of feedback that they can filter through to serve their own needs.

Just like you can browse twitter trends for twitter-style hash tags, SW-CUT lets users see what tags are most commonly used, and consolidate their feedback into organically generated categories.  Eventually, we can design a collective feedback forum like the Google Wave suggestion forum where similar suggestions are naturally consolidated into single suggestion that can be voted up and down.  Furthermore, because of how the collective forum works, the wording of the suggestions gets molded by the crowd into the clearest most useful language…

More to come..  Thanks for participating.

Google’s browser toolbar is sporting a new functionality that I think will have a big impact on conversation online: the Sidewiki.  In Google’s words, “Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that lets you contribute and read information alongside any web page.”   They have had the tool around for a few months, but they are now showcasing it with a prominent sidebar added to the Google browser toolbar.

This tool gives you a live stream of comments people have made about every piece of content on the internet.  Think of it like a twitter feed for every web page.

If you have google toolbar installed in your browser, you should soon see a side-panel with a little yellow pop-up-text icon.  You can use this tool to open a side-panel comment thread where you can comment on the page or parts of the page.  Here is the comment that I left on the Sidewiki ‘about’ page:

“Smart! This Lets us talk about the web In Situ : After all, why should we have to move our discussion somewhere else like blogs, twitter, or facebook? Sure, we can still compile lists of discussion in other places, but why not let the discussion live ‘right here’ in the web’s own natural environment. I hope this tool takes off -”

Of course, you can also view the commentator’s public profile and see their comment history:  For example, here is my public profile showing my comment about Sidewiki

learn  more about Google Sidewiki: http://www.google.com/sidewiki/intl/en/learnmore.html

The following post is comprised of some crude notes written yesterday and today.  Maybe it wants to be an essay later.

Notes about the development of complex language in the context of the interconnected evolution of both individuals and their social groups:
Preface:
Let’s start by considering bees.
You can consider ‘evolution’ or ’survival of the fittest’ a pattern which can be traced over generations of both individual life forms as we normally consider them (like an animal) or a colony/community of individuals like a bee hive.  Sometimes the colony develops traits which help it survive as a colony.  These traits are sometimes carried out by individual ‘agents’ even though it is counterproductive to the agents’ own survival.  For example, in the case of bees or ants, a soldier will sacrifice itself in order to save the queen.  This cannot be understood by only considering survival of the fittest solely on the level of individual creatures, but it makes sense if we understand it on a colony level.  We can say that in general, we can expect that individuals will act in a way that best continues the survival of their genes – and this sometimes means sacrificing oneself for the survival of close family.  Because ants and bees in a colony are all siblings of one another (from the same queen) we can understand that their individual sacrifices does aid the prorogation of their genes to a proportionally large degree compared to other species aiding one another.  This model has been used to understand altruism between individuals with varying degrees of genetic closeness in a way that agrees with our understanding of evolution.  We must only extend our understanding of ’survival of the fittest’ to include not only individuals as acting agents, but also the various interconnected patterns of social groupings.  These communities must be considered in their own right life-forms ’struggling for survival’

Pseudo-Hypothesis:
Let’s imagine a species of primates on the verge of rapidly accelerating their development of shared language between members of their species.  We ask ourselves how the development of complex language aids the survival of the individual versus how it aids the survival of the larger genetic family.  For example, if the development of mathematics helps the productivity of a society, how much does that increased productivity aid the individual and how much does it aid the society.  Of course these are very overgeneralized thought-experiments.  But maybe we can decide in general that any development of complex language will always benefit the community more than the individual.  Maybe the effects of language development aren’t felt for generations to come, maybe the individuals who impact the development of language are always those who already have high social status (and therefore ample free time) and don’t need to worry as much about survival – in other words, their motivation to develop language does not appear to be an attempt to improve their individual chances of survival.

With the development of money and social hierarchy it is obvious how development of language can lead to an individuals’ bettering their own chance of personal survival and the survival of their immediate family, but can we consider the issue on a more fundamental level?  Can we consider how complex language might have initially developed even before such systems of social currency existed?  Can we ask why complex language evolved in the first place?  In other words, the chances are slim – even on an evolutionary scale – that complex language was boot-strapped to benefit individuals only in the long run while in the short run taxing individuals mental energy without direct benefit to those individuals.  It seems that it is not enough to say that ‘complex language exists merely because people perpetuate it today – end of story.’  It seems that we have to consider an intermediately evolutionary advantage on the scale of the individual that would enable complex language to evolve.
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The short answer: because it lets me think.

Sometimes an idea seems weird, or stupid, but you can’t stop thinking about it because you keep suspecting there is something worthwhile buried in there somewhere. Usually in the process of thinking through an idea on this blog, I can realize the interesting parts by the time I click ‘post’. (Usually – sometimes the ideas still sucks and just sounds like nonsense.)

So keeping this blog lets me move on to better creative endeavors taking only the good parts of those persistent weird ideas. It stops weird ideas from being just a confusing messy knot cluttering up my brain.

The long answer?  Nobody says it better than zefrank.  Get those ideas out so they don’t possess you.

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