Semiconducted

Mozilla Labs U

Mozilla Labs is working on a pretty interesting application to leverage existing open APIs and web services for all of us who live in our browsers. Called ‘Ubiquity’, it allows quick access to disparate web services through a text-based input. It is similar to Quicksilver and other productivity apps by being geared toward the expert user / tweaker set.

As one who has fully embraced cmd-spacing to launch apps on the Mac (Spotlight), I welcome this interaction. It will be interesting to see if this method of interaction catches on in the mainstream.

Quote:

Ubiquity 0.1

* Lets you map and insert maps anywhere; translate on-page; search amazon, google, wikipedia, yahoo, youtube, etc.; digg and twitter; lookup and insert yelp review; get the weather; syntax highlight any code you find; and a lot more. Ubiquity “command list” to see them all.
* Find and install new commands to extend your browser’s vocabulary through a simple subscription mechanism

http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

ok let’s cancel

So, which one is the right choice?

I got this alert dialog today while installing the Firefox 3.0 add-in “Foxmarks”.  Nice one…

Del.icio.us Bookmarks for July 10th through July 30th

• WHERE » Widgets, meet GPS. WHERE GPS Widgets.
• Nokia - Beta Labs - free mobile software
• openmoko.com | Products - open source linux mobile touchscreen phone
• design QR codes - embed logos and pictured into a QR code -
• QR Code and semacode/Data Matrix barcode generator -

OpenMoko UX Design

OpenMoko has recently released the Neo FreeRunner, an open source mobile phone platform geared towards the DIY developer set. Who else would want a terminal app on the homepage? The initiative is great, but this incarnation has a long way to go towards delivering an enjoyable (and dare we say even usable?) experience.

Unless I’ve misinterpreted, “home” apparently is a blank screen and the “plus sign” is this list of applications…

Great to know that the “Contacts” area is the “Address Book”. I would have never guessed. These redundant descriptions are apparently just the beginning.

The horror, the horror…

OpenMoko Train Wreck from Dave Fayram on Vimeo.

Bookmarks for June 18th through July 9th

• Flixwagon - live mobile video streaming
• QIK | Streaming video right from your phone
• DOPPLR - frequent travelers location sharing
• Sender 11: Fonts for prototyping mobile UIs

Mobile Communication Patterns in the EU

* Users are increasingly switching from fixed to mobile phones with
around 24% of EU 27 households just using mobile. The proportion is
significantly higher in the new Member States (39%) than in the EU 15
(20%), with the exception of Finland (61%) and Portugal (48%). In some
Member States this increase is accompanied by an increased use of
wireless access to the Internet via the mobile phone network or
satellite (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria and Italy).
* 22%
of European households with Internet connections now use their PC for
making phone calls. This figure is twice as large in Latvia (58%),
Lithuania (51%), Czech Republic (50%), Poland (49%) and Bulgaria (46%).

* 29% of European households buy two or more telecom and media products
from a single service provider (an increase of 9% since winter 2007),
the combination of fixed telephony and Internet access being the most
common.
* Almost half of European households have access to the
Internet (49%) and an increasing majority enjoy a broadband connection
(36% of EU 27, an increase of 8% since winter 2007). Most connected
households access the Internet via an ADSL line (59%, an increase of 4%
compared to last year). The main reason quoted for not having an access
at home remains the lack of interest in Internet (50% of respondents).

http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/19684

Omnigraffle 5.0 - New Features Summary & Tips n Tricks

Preface – some tips on what I’ve come across from playing with Omnigraffle v 5.x., and some other general tips to enhance your productivity.

BIG CHANGES for version 5.x:
Shared Layers
Pros:

• Enables multiple shared layers per canvas
• Can edit any shared layer in place at any time
• These shared layers can be stacked in any order (Master Pages were always behind everything else)
• Old Master Pages are automatically converted into shared layers

Cons:

• Page numbers not shown in canvas list anymore. (They will probably change this due to popular demand.)
• Many layers can get unwieldy
• Selecting layers could be easier – one can select objects on any layer, but will paste within the ‘active’ one, so be mindful to know which layer you are pasting into!
• Layers cannot be collapsed into single ‘layered masters’ like in Visio
• All shared layers must be placed in a canvas, so ‘unused’ master pages from 4.x and earlier templates will not exist if opened in version 5.x.

Faster Tool Access

• Mini inspectors in the ruler area allow for adjusting stroke, fill, drop shadow, dimensions
• Bottom bar inspector allows for easier copying of object styles to other objects.
• Goodbye drawer! Now see Canvas and List view simultaneously
• Can turn “extras” on/off

Others:

• Bezier Lines
• Visio Import (.vsd)
• “Paste and Match Style” for text, e.g. from a copy deck. Just make sure you have the text cursor active.

Tips and Tricks for all versions:

Shapes

• Moving things around – The ‘snap to’ grid allows for easy alignment, but sometimes conflicts with the smart guides. When ‘snap to grid’ is on, arrow keys move objects by one ‘minor grid step’ (e.g. 10 px) while shift-arrow increments in single units (e.g. 1px). With ‘snap to grid’ turned off, this key combination is reversed.
• Select an object, then several more objects to make them all the same size as the first: right click > size > make same <width, height, or size>
• Edit > Shapes to combine shapes into weird shapes or make a shape editable (e.g. make that half-roundy tab you’ve always wanted)

V5 stencil browser

• Now you can search for specific stencils locally or on graffletopia!
• Harder to scale than previous UI; encourages smaller stencils
• Put stencils, templates, etc into their appropriate folders within:
• “/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/OmniGraffle/”

Images

• You can get images into the canvas by ‘file > place image’, dragging it to the canvas, object, or image inspector ‘bucket’. To link to or replace an image, use ‘file > place’ or ‘select image’ from the image inspector.
• To crop; in the image inspector, use ‘natural’ image display and the enhanced scale and shift sliders (previously you had to paint by numbers).

Using outline mode

• The v5 layout engine is easier than before - shech
• Magnets
• Saving styles

Bezier Curves for lines

• There’s a new connector in town and it wackier than ever. Bend it just like you would a freehand shape.

Pasting tips

• Pay attention to the scaling ratios!
• When pasting to new layers / canvases, make sure the last thing you clicked on is the item you are copying. If you click elsewhere on the canvas, the pasted item will appear at those coordinates but always within the ‘active’ layer (the one with the pen icon, not just highlighted).
• Copy as pdf is useful to scale everything at once (text and boxes together) but removes editing ability.
• Resize all, then quick keys to enlarge or shrink text (Cmd/+, Cmd/shift/-)

Multiple Windows

• See the big picture with multiple views at different zoom levels

Behaviors / Presentation Mode

• Clickthrough prototypes can be created by attaching links and visible states to shapes using the ‘actions’ tool.
• You can export these to imagemap-based HTML prototypes, or use them in ‘presentation mode’

Export images for powerpoint etc.

• Suggest PNG, 150 dpi at 100%, then crop using a script in photoshop

Print / canvas size

• You can now select multiple canvases and “print canvas” that way.
• Watch for that little print icon on layers – if it is turned off, that layer will be seen, but won’t print. This is useful for comments or guide layers.
• “Print canvas on one printer sheet” checkbox on canvas size inspector.
• Useful for sitemaps and large canvases. Allows them to display at normal size yet still print out to one page. It works in combination with the “Auto-adjust the canvas size” checkbox, so the canvas will grow to accommodate new content.
• “Size is multiple of printer sheets” checkbox will add a new whole page (and a lot of white space) instead of growing continuously.

Wishlist / Bug Fixes:

• Allow the format painter to work across different layers (am I experiencing a bug here?)
• Manage layer selection better. Objects get accidentally pasted in the different layer than the source object, making it very hard to manage components strewn across many layers.
• Autoselect the layer of the selected object?
• Allow for a keyboard shortcut that doesn’t rely on the Fn key?. I don’t have that key on my bigger apple keyboard, so selecting the layers only with the mouse = pain in the butt.
• Allow one to convert a regular layer to a shared one, or vice versa. This may be a very logical reason for this, but I keep finding the extra copy / paste / realign action a bit tedious.
• Paste in place context menu item! Especially between layers. This sometimes seems to work between canvases, but often pastes everything offset 10×10 px.

My New Favorite iPhone Productivity Apps - SMSNotify, Offline Wikipedia

One of those things that I thought would be built into the iphone that I sorely missed in my old phone - the ability to have the phone periodically remind you of an SMS. The iphone has a relatively quiet ring and not-so-feelable vibrate mode; so I am often unaware that I have missed calls and text messages for hours.

Not anymore!

SMSNotify - vibrates the phone every 15 seconds when you have an unread SMS. One caveat is that it won’t remain active if the iPhone is asleep until email polling triggers.

Need to settle that bar bet?
Offline Wikipedia Reader - download Wikipedia to your iPhone!

Enable Time Machine on a Network Drive

On Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.x), there’s a nifty built-in backup program called “Time Machine”. By default, it only works with drives that are directly connected or connected through an airport extreme. The hack below allows it to at least see network drives, although there is no guarantee that the backup will be successful, depending on the drive format and network.

The steps:

1. Mount your network drive (check step-5 if you are getting error in mounting).

2. Change the preferences by running following command in a terminal window:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

3. Now turn on Time Machine.

4. Select your network drive.

5. If you lose your network mount, you will need to reset your preferences by running the following:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 0

Cultural Drivers Behind Mobile Usage in China

This study includes some interesting cultural observations about mobile usage in China. In recent years, the world’s fastest growing economy has exhibited a decidedly technological bias as urban conventions start to cascade into the rural areas as necessity.

In China, not answering your mobile telephone is considered rude, no matter where you are, whom you are with, the time of day or what activities you are engaged in. And voice mail does not exist. Despite this cultural imperative to be available anytime and anywhere, there is a simple work-around practiced by hundreds of millions of Chinese. Manually removing the telephone battery creates a message to in-coming callers that the telephone’s owner is out of range and thus unable to answer the phone. This regular subversion of the cultural imperative functions as an open secret, even playing a prominent role in a popular 2003 Chinese film called Shouji (”mobile telephone”).
…
Beginning in 1979 out of concern for overpopulation, the Chinese government instituted a one child policy that effectively transformed the composition of the typical family. A massive nation of single children has created unprecedented social effects, with family structures now described as “4-2-1″ referring to four grandparents, two parents, and one child. There has also been much discussion about whether these single children, nicknamed “little emperors”, are stressed from being the sole locus of family concern and aspiration, or spoiled from the attention and indulgence provided by six adults. Without a doubt, both forces shape this unprecedented generation of youth and young adults.

With almost every Chinese person under the age of thirty having no siblings, the implications for communication technologies are clear. From the earliest age, Chinese kids seek peer companionship outside the nuclear family.

http://www.receiver.vodafone.com/china-and-the-next-billion-mobile-customers