Nearly a year ago I hired a bright young man by the name of Will Sutton. Over the course of the following months Will and I made this – the official Saint Louis University iPhone App. (Which you are most welcome to download at iphone.slu.edu)

Will initially started from scratch, learning Objective-C and his way around XCode. Even more impressive was the fact that he really never used a Mac much before.

Like a fish to water he quickly had a rough prototype up and running. It was serviceable, but very, shall we say, rickety.

Then we were alerted to the existence of a great open-source app framework created at West Virgina University by then student Jared Crawford.

Will set about updating the framework with SLU specific data sources. We had to meet with legal, create icons and vet our data sources for reliability. With Jared’s awesome framework we were able to quickly turn around a tight first release of what I’m sure will be a vital asset to any SLU student.

Meanwhile the IT department was preparing to launch a mobile portal for some of the very same services. Like some superhero wonder group we joined forces and released our apps simultaneously. Being web-based their app has a much larger reach, but our app allows us to perform some hardware specific feats.

Our next step is to squash a few 1.0 bugs, update the app for the new Retina display and start adding additional features like dining information and athletic reports.

You can read more about the apps from this nice press release.

versus

The FBI agrees with Auernheimer’s assertion that this exploit is of national interest. So much so,CNET reports, that they raided Andrew Auernheimer’s home on a warrant (we assume “Escher” is a pseudonym). They found “illicit drugs,” and Auernheimer is now being held on felony charges.

I like hackers. They’re a needed group of nerds. But instead of going for the fame, contact the company and let them know in private. Don’t be a jerk and blab on about it. You’ll gain much more respect as a “freelance security research team”.

click to embiggen

I’m very much a visual person. So I whipped up this little graphic demonstrating the supposed* new resolution of the next iPhone. Just how big is 960×640 in comparison? I threw in a couple of other sizes – 800×600 was the resolution of my first desktop computer.

Interesting and maybe unrelated, but by default iMove 09 outputs ‘HD” at 960X540. A coincidence I’m sure.

*We’ll find out on Monday!

Anyone using Flash is in the content creation racket. I’m not just talking about video, but navigation, apps, games you name it. And if you’re creating content you’re most likely concerned wether or not people can see what you’re creating.

I do a lot of browsing on my Mac and iPhone and you know what happens when I come across a flash doohicky that doesn’t work?

I leave.

I don’t bookmark for later. I just walk away.

As someone who develops web content, if people are walking away from the stuff I’m trying to get out there because I have some egotistical hang up about the openness of (insert framework,language,codec here) then I lose  customers, I lose relevance and I lose the job.

If you’re a content creator and you can walk away from however many iPhone users and  iPad users there are, great. But I don’t know too many people who can afford to do that.

(Sidenote: Do you know which application is in the iPhone/iPad/iPod dock by default? Not the App Store, but Safari. What does that mean?)

I’m totally digging the Hipstamatic app for the iPhone. It’s a recreation of a camera developed in the great wilderness of Wisconsin in the early 80s by two brothers. The whole story is being kept alive by the older brother of the two Hipstamatic creators.

The app is very slick and plays a great homage to the cheap all-plastic cameras of yore. With the tiny viewfinder, different films and lenses and the always different results it’s a blast to watch your photos ‘develop’.

The best thing about the app for me is the high-pitched whirring of the flash when you turn it on. Perfect.

Nearly a year ago I wrote a blathering rant about how the common aspect ratios of video is largely irrelevant on the web. To quote myself:

Television has set the standard of common resolutions and aspect ratios for years, but not everything seems as smooth as it should. For one as we are becoming increasingly more web-centric in our distribution models why are we sticking by these ancient limitations of size and shape.  Isn’t there something inherently more flexible with the web? Let’s challenge those norms and create something new with video.

And then today I saw these:

Interesting, no?

Update: I clicked around a littler further and found the blog of the creator of the second video. On Jesse Rosten’s blog he shares very similar thoughts regarding nontraditional video.

Gruber:

It’s a demo of a concept. I’d wager money that we’ll never see an actual product from Microsoft that works like this.

I think the Courier demo is really, really neat. Watching that video makes me want one, now. Unfortunately it will never be as cool as what we’re seeing in these videos.

That’s a big difference between Apple and other tech companies. They demo a product a few months before it ships, in it’s near final form. Microsoft announces products years beforehand and by the time it arrives it’s behind the curve.

“You may have also seen a growing number of Palm ads on billboards, bus shelters, buses, and subway stations—all getting the word out about Palm.”

No mention of online advertising or even television? What is Palm doing in the advertising channels potential customers might actually see?

I really would like to see Palm succeed, they have a nice product and a great history.

What I’ve learned from interacting with most computer users, though, is that they do not give a rat’s ass about how computers work. They want to accomplish certain tasks, and will do this in the way that is most sensible and direct for them. And the way they end up accomplishing these tasks within the multitasking window motif is typically not the way I would do it.

The question being asked is ‘Who’s fault is this?’

Some would argue that it’s users fault, people don’t care enough or aren’t interested in learning more about how technology works. Others say that developers are to blame for making technology far too complicated.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently myself, we just finished a re-design of our website at work and I’ll soon be launching a mobile application as well. Both of these projects have very specific UI requirements and both projects have generated numerous hours of discussion and deliberation on how to most appropriately display our content.

So when we flip the switch and share our creations with the masses, who’s to blame when people are confused or upset?

My friend Tim and I have been busting each others chops over Apple vs Microsoft in regard to their differentiating paradigms of window management. As he told me once, “I don’t know how many times I’ve sat down at a public use Mac in a lab somewhere with all windows closed but 15 apps running.”

And he’s right, this is very confusing. And it’s coming from Apple, a company lauded for their slick user experiences. Who’s to blame?

Anecdotal Side Story

I know a professional who uses a computer for a large portion of her job. She sits in front of her computer the entire day. She’s not a power user, but the tasks she has on her plate all revolve around the daily use of various programs. Info management systems, email, browsing the web, web content creation, to name a few.

What’s interesting is how he interfaces with the computer. She uses her mouse rotated 180 degrees so that the buttons are at the bottom. Somehow, at some point in the past she sat down and started using a computer this way. She uses her fingers to grip the bottom edge of the mouse and clicks the ‘right’ button for  a left-click.

Is she doing it wrong? Why does she do this? Who, if anyone, taught her? Who’s ‘fault’ is it that she does this?

There’s no harm in how she’s doing it. There’s no advantage to teach her how to do it differently. There’s nothing gained professionally if she learns a new way.

As I’ve grown older and entered the world of professionals I have realized that all those dry cut things we were taught growing up are much more fuzzy.

Politics, bureaucracy, limitation of resources, available time  - all contribute to the mired relationship of technology and people. Everyone is to blame/no one is to blame.

It’s a series of large and small events that cascade to to the present situation. How we deal with it moving forward is the interesting part.