james & internet

The Play Well Cup AU 2011: Grand Final: SEGA vs. CBSi - Livestream Tonight!

playwellcup:

We’re coming to the end of the tournament, and we’ve got the Grand Finals tonight!

A very black day.

Can I just relate a quick story about this post? I took this screenshot. Then I retook it in Safari, because it seemed appropriate. Then I retook it with a different wallpaper background, because it was too bright, and didn’t reflect the mood. Then I retook it, and pulled the window corner up to get rid of the white space. Then I retook it, hiding the bookmarks bar. Then I re-did the post, and changed the type of post from photo to text, because I couldn’t put a title in a photo post.

Details matter. Steve taught me that.

http://yuvizalkow.com/blog/failed6/

“This is my video tribute to a great talk at SXSW in 2009 between John Gruber and Merlin Mann about obsession and voice. Here is how it has affected me as a neurotic novelist.”

Rewatch this again and again.

I’ve been really pretty busy over the last couple of months, but I just thought I’d pause for a second to put this here as a marker in my life, of sorts.

A few months ago I thought of an idea. It was one of those half-formed things that rolls around in your head, and you go, “man, someone should do that.”

If you’re a nerd like me, you might register a domain, check a twitter username availability, or you might jot it in your current GTD list, under “someday” (which kind of really means “I will regretfully delete you in 6 months”), or you might tell a mate over a beer.

Fast-forward six months, and someone else has done your idea, completely independently of you. They’re really making it happen. It’s great. It bums you out.

Your mate says, “Oh, hey remember how you said that thing about […]? Well check it out, here it is!” That bums you out too.

I’ve done that plenty of times. So very many times.

But not this time.

So I’ll preemptively excuse myself on this blog, as I’m probably going to shamelessly plug the Play Well Cup for the next 8 weeks. But you know what? I love the game, I love the cause, I love the community, and I’m a massive fan of the people who are helping me out by playing.

And sssssh —keep this bit to yourself— I’m also kind of secretly pleased with myself too. Because this was one of those times where I thought, “someone should do that.” And you know what? I’m someone; we’re all frickin’ someone.

So I did it.

Put This On is a great blog, and a fantastically well-made series. Not that surprising, because Jesse Thorn & Adam Lisagor are behind it — two people whose hallmarks are unquestionably good taste, and attention to detail.

It occurred to me sometime at the beginning of April that I’d completely missed the anniversary of when I started in TAFE. It was 5 years ago, on the 23rd of March in 2006. 

I don’t want to make a huge fuss about it, but it has come time for me move on from TAFE Queensland. I’ll be working for the Mining Industry Skills Centre, as a learning technologist. I must confess, I don’t know a lot about the mining industry… but, then again, that might be why they hired me! It will be a small team, which will mean a lot of responsibility, but also a lot of freedom to be agile.

If I’m honest about why I’m moving on, it has been that agility that I’m missing from my current role. I read an interview with Mark Zuckerberg a while ago where he said that Facebook’s unofficial motto was, “move fast & break things.” TAFE Queensland is a great place to work, but it has a real fear of making mistakes; that bold moves in any direction could be the wrong ones. I’m not going to argue whether that’s the right attitude for the public sector to have or not, but I’ve begun to realise that I need to work for a business where we can build things quickly, make mistakes, learn quickly from those mistakes, and improve.

I’m truly excited about my new role. We’ll be developing learning resources for mining companies & training providers, with a particular focus on mobile technologies. I’m especially psyched about some of the interesting challenges with training in the mining sector & I’m hopeful I can bring a fresh perspective to the table.

Thank you to everyone I’ve worked with over the last 5 years. I wish nothing but the best for the future of TAFE Queensland. There are incredibly talented & passionate people working in every TAFE institute in Queensland. If I can armchair coach for a second; I know that TAFE Queensland has the potential to be innovative, but I think it first must realise that the online world changes quickly. Like, really really really quickly.

So don’t try to be innovative. Be agile first, and innovation will come to you. 

Flash is certainly still a contentious issue in the web development community. Many people believe that Flash is the past, and is in decline. Others firmly believe Flash is the future of writing applications for multiple screens, be they mobile, tablet, desktop or even TV.

Both sides have smart, reasonable arguments about the technical aspects (or deficiencies) of Flash. However, one thing I haven’t really seen argued around Flash is something that many nerds instinctively feel; that the experience for users on a touchscreen is going to be sub-par.

I believe lots of that experience breakdown comes down to how interacting with a flash object in a page on any touchscreen device would badly break the mental model for actions already established in a users’ head. Here’s why.

Lots of Flash content could easily be described as badly-behaved. That is, there is no standard model of behaviour that a Flash object adheres to. Whatever the Flash developer wants in that object, that’s what goes. Do you want your object to scroll up and down with its own custom scrollbar? Do you want the cursor to disappear? Do you want rollovers to trigger an action? No problem!

This freedom from standard conventions means that everything that happens in a Flash object box needs to be separated out by the browser. Think of it like an embedded mini-webpage, where all the normal rules for interaction don’t apply. 

This isn’t really an issue on the desktop (maybe because we’re used to it), but it certainly is an issue on a touch-based device. The reason is that many crucial actions (like scrolling, or zooming) can be initiated from anywhere on the page. You can start a pinch zoom from any 2 points on the screen, and as long as your fingers are moving together relative to each other, it will zoom. A page scroll is even simpler; it’s a swipe that can be as long (or short) as you like, and it can start (or end) anywhere on the screen.

Uniformity in those actions is critical to the user experience on the web. It’s one of those things about the iPad that makes web-browsing an extremely pleasurable experience. I believe that the occurrence of Flash objects would break this uniformity.

Consider scrolling; what happens to a Flash object that has a scroll initiated inside of it? Does the object scroll? Or does the webpage around the object scroll? What likely occurs is it becomes a splitting point; half your users may have wanted the page to scroll, the other half may have wanted the content in the object to scroll. Either way, the overall experience suffers for half your users. That’s bad.

Another example is gesture overlap. Let’s assume flash objects can scroll via gesture — what happens if your scroll begins inside a Flash object, but then strays outside? Does it stop recognising as an object-specific motion? Does it carry on?

These kinds of interaction inconsistencies would be rife with the introduction of Flash. Other examples include:

• Why can’t I zoom inside this object?
• Why can’t I long-press on this link to open it in a new tab?
• Why can’t I long press on this image to save it?
• Why can’t it find the in-page text I’m searching for?
• Why can’t I select this text?

The bottom line is that Flash would split the user behaviour model on touchscreen devices; one set of rules for webpages, another for Flash objects. Considering most users would not know the difference between the two, the end result would be user frustration. Even worse, user frustration that’s very difficult to articulate —you don’t know exactly why, but it just feels bad.

There are many reasons why Apple does not include Flash on iOS, but I can’t help but think that these kinds of user interaction problems are much more weighty & difficult to solve than the technical. That other device makers are including Flash in their experience without fully thinking through these issues serves as an interesting bellweather toward their overall user experience.

Maybe I’ve been working in education too long, but the first thing I thought when I saw the iPad 2 this morning: this is going to be a killer device for teachers. My immediate 2nd thought: this is a device that is going to get killed by students. Let’s look at what’s new!

The Digital AV Adapter

• Pro: Announced this morning, this allows an iPad 2 (or original iPad too) to be hooked up to an external display via an adapter. They’ve also turned on what they’re calling Video Mirroring. Seriously, this will be a complete game-changer for the iPad in classrooms. Most people who have wanted to show a display for iPad have had to rely on clunky document cameras, iPad clamps/stands, or other DIY rigs. This eliminates the need for all of that, and replaces it with a simple HDMI cable. Unlike the previous adapters, this will show the entire iPad interface on a projector, not just movies, presentations or photos like the prior model.
• Con: I don’t know about you, but almost all the projectors that I’ve used in schools or classrooms are bottom-of-the-range, how-cheap-can-we-go-and-still-have-a-projector projector. These kind generally only have a VGA input on them. That means that a teacher will need to adapters; one to go from the iPad to HDMI, and one to go from HDMI to VGA. It’s definitely possible, but somewhat annoying, and another small piece of hardware to lose.

(Edit: The original iPad, iPhone 4 & 4th gen iPod touch will all work with the digital AV adaptor, but not mirror the display)

The ‘Smart Cover’ Case

• Pro: The Smart Cover is a seriously beautiful, smart, and well-thought out piece of design. The design, the folding mechanism, magnet attachment, and the fact that the iPad wakes and unlocks when you reveal (and sleeps when you close it) it is truly inspired. Go watch the video — it’s amazing.
• Con: This case does not protect the iPad in any way. The screen is covered, but the rest of the device (ports, switches, back) is still exposed. I would have serious reservations about throwing this in a bag. If these were handed out to students, the iPads would look like banged-up messes in about, oh, a week? There will obviously be a slew of 3rd-party cases to choose from, but not having one from Apple that is a protective case is kind of a bummer.

FaceTime

• Pro: A hugely untapped resource in the classroom; simple, seamless & (most importantly) handheld video streaming. Sure, there are solutions (lots & lots of solutions) out there, but none I can see have the potential to become so easy to use that it becomes transparent, for both student & teacher.
• Con: iOS devices are becoming one of the most ubiquitous mobile platforms in Australia, but Facetime is still limited by its mobile origins. Apple recently released a FaceTime app on the Mac App Store; it needs to go further. There needs to be a Windows FaceTime client for distance students (or teachers) on the desktop to be able to truly take FaceTime mainstream.
• Con: As far as I can see, Facetime is still only a 1-to-1 protocol. Sure, you can have a device on FaceTime passed around in a classroom, but a single stream that can be accessed by many people would be an extremely valuable thing to have. There are other streaming solutions like the uStream app available, but the ease of use is still lacking. Facetime has the potential to be so brain-dead simple that it could just push this technology over the edge into the mainstream.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Server - Profile Support for iPad

Here’s one kind of out of left field, but the Apple site has a teaser for its upcoming OS X 10.7 update. In it, they state that a profile manager is in the works. It is described as:

“Profile Manager delivers simple, profile-based setup and management for Mac OS X Lion, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. It also integrates with your existing directory services and delivers automatic over-the-air profile updates using the Apple Push Notification service.”

• Pro: IT Managers across the country will be rejoicing at a unified, server-based approach to managing iPad profiles.
• Con: Fraser Spiers wrote an excellent post on the iPad in classrooms entitled, “How the iPad Wants to be Used”. In it, he argues:
   
  “The iPad is an intensely personal device. In its design intent it is, truly, much more like a “big iPhone” than a “small laptop”. The iPad isn’t something you pass around. It’s not really designed to be a “resource” that many people take advantage of. It’s designed to be owned, configured to your taste, invested in and curated.” 
  
  I’m worried that if IT Managers in education can lock down the iPad, they will. In doing so, they will inadvertently break the mechanism that makes it such an compelling device in the first place. 

It is said that to a hammer, everything is a nail. Well, I’m a gadget hammer, so it is likely that my opinions on this are be totally biased. When I throw my weight behind the iPad in the classroom, in my brain it is probably equal parts cool new toy, and practical appeal.

However, when teachers—actual, real teachers, right on the front line—start telling me stories about how they used an iPad in the classroom, and how great it was, I start to think that maybe it’s not just me. And I’m hearing those stories more and more. Obviously, so is Apple.

[Photos courtesy of Apple.com]

“It’s imperative that Intel and our innovations are kept in front of the global youth culture that embraces new devices and new forms of communication and entertainment,” said Deborah Conrad, the Santa Clara-based firm’s head of marketing in a statement.

I disagree.

Also, why does Will.i.am have a handbag?

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