Technology – Page 31 – Chris Koerner

FriendFeed

I use quite a few services to update friends and family about my life. I often use a combo of a few different tools.

Moodblast to update Facebook, Twitter, Pownce and Adium (for Gtalk/AIM status messages) all at the same time. Very hand free app that keeps me connected to friends as I work.

I use a ‘post to del.icio.us’ bookmarklet to share interesting sites and links. Which, when working properly also cross posts to this blog.

I use flickr to share photos as well.

iScrobbler to track my music playback on Last.fm.

Unfortunately not all updates go through all services. And you may not know where I’m updating and when.

Which brings me to my newest tool that hopefully will help coalesce these various tools.

I just signed up for FriendFeed. Which allows me to collect all my updates in one location. Now when I update one of the various services I use they are all aggregated to my FriendFeed. So, instead of trying to track me down all over the internet you can simply stalk me find my updates here!

Sent from my iPod

This post was written from my iPod. I wish this application would rotate to landscape orientation. I suppose they’re saving something for the next release!

They’re watching me

View Larger Map

Google Maps drove by my house. You can see my truck and car and the beginnings of the shed being built. Pretty neat stuff!

Not Home Again

An often overlooked design choice for mobile platforms is the Home button. Usually this button will instantly return you to the main OS screen for most major PDAs and smart phones. For as long as I can remember the most often used icon was that of a house.

And while the HTC Touch forgoes the Home icon on the ‘main menu’ button it does include it in the OS itself.

(update!) My good friend Josh tells me that the HTC Touch’s physical button is not a home button. It’s actually a big honkin’ Enter button. As in Select/Accept/Return. Wow. Even worse that I thought.

As you can see, even very recent devices use this house as a home icon approach. I understand where the designers are coming from. Humans are comfortable with their homes being the space that is their physical center. But it doesn’t make any sense from a UI perspective. (Or in the modern world where home takes on so many different shapes and sizes, not to mention the increased time we spend away from home, but I digress.) Home is where you launch everything from? Home is escape from this program?

Now let’s take a look at what Apple has done with the iPhone and it’s little brother the iPod Touch.

The icon used to return to the main OS screen. (Call it the desktop, springboard, etc) What does it represent? At first glance it’s just a trendy rounded-cornered box. Second glance, it’s a representation of the shape of the device itself. But even that is a bit off, as the device is rectangular and the icon is visibly square.

But wait, what do all the applications look like in the moblie OSX environment?

Small rounded-cornered boxes. Just like the main physical button on the device. Simple, clear iconography.

First Portable TV for under $100

I was at a Historical Society meeting the other night and came across this gem. Part of the evening’s activities was a Show and Tell where various members brought some items of antiquity. Marlin Makley brought in this TV.

Look at that screen size!

For the full details including the history of this portable TV head over to the Fenton Historical Society. They should have an article up in a few days covering the details.