Category Archives: Technology

The New Flickr

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Dear internet.. We <3 you -Flickr

 

Here are some points on the new flickr update:

This update is long overdue. The update is good, probably a much needed update, but at least three years too late. Three years ago this would have been revolutionary, but today it seems to be following the latest trend. Don’t get me wrong, the trend is good (from my perspective) but it is following the trend.

The update was poorly initiated. You have to forgive flickr for not being up to speed on how these things happen. They have only had one or two major updates since the site began over 10 years ago. Over the years, Facebook has learned that it needs to announce changes and allow people the opportunity to try them out and opt into them before they throw the switch. Surprised updates are what kill. People don’t know it’s coming and the initial reaction is always going to be “put it back I didn’t ask for this what is this I don’t even”.

Whenever you make a change you need to ignore the initial reaction and wait for the calmer heads to prevail. You need to allow a few days or weeks for people to go through the grieving process and realize what changes are actually for the best. (Granted, you’ll want to keep up with the bug fixes.) It appears that flickr is waiting to see the reaction before it says too much, but this lack of communication, coupled with the poor reputation Yahoo has earned for destroying things, is not doing them any favors.

Along with the lack of response from Yahoo and flickr about the changes, the FAQ pages do not seem to adequately respond to many of the questions and confusions that most people have. There are a lot of vague phrases that discuss “reoccurring” pro accounts and accounts being “eligible”. It does not say what any of this means, this makes people more scared and confused.

What’s more, the new pricing scheme doubles the “pro” fee fo $25 a year to $50 a year for “ad free” but doesn’t say if it is ad free for the people looking at your photos or just for you as you browse the site. This change is not well documented and due to limitations in the English language and the writing style of the FAQs, many things remain unclear.

Right now all flickr users should be rejoicing because Yahoo just confirmed that flickr is not going away anytime soon. They just sunk a bunch of time and resources into making flickr better and ensuring the longevity of the service. They made the free account easier to use so that more people can use the service. Where Yahoo bought and killed off many other services, it will not be the case with flickr.

Is every new feature with flickr good? Maybe not. Should some things be changed either back to the way there were or to something eles, possibly. But to cry out in outrage because Yahoo is showing dedication that they should have shown years ago is not going to help anyone at this point.

The biggest problem with the update was how it was handled. Even worse, though, was how the user base handled the changed. This is the internet, and that means change. Find me a website that doesn’t change it’s layout to keep up to speed with the latest trends and I will show you a website that isn’t worth visiting. ( Remember this, anyone? )

The Invisible Implementation of iTunes Match

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Syncing services by their very nature need to be somewhat transparent. They need to happen in the background. Hitting “sync” every 10 seconds after you make a change makes for a poor user experience.

In the case of iTunes Match, the concept is relatively simple:

  1. After subscribing, music from iTunes will be available for you to stream to any device you are logged into. Your playlists and albums will all be at your fingertips. If iTunes does not have your music, they will upload it and store it for you to provide the same results.
  2. If you add music to iTunes they will update the music in the cloud to reflect the changes.
  3. If you change music on one device, changes will propagate to all your other devices.
  4. This will all happen seamlessly without any intervention on the part of the user.

This looks really great on paper, but real life is rarely made of paper.

I’ll readily admit, I’m not “most people.” There are probably a lot of people for whom this works really well. It has not been so for me.

I have roughly 12000+ songs in my library. ~1500 of them are from iTunes or other CDs. ~9000 of them come from video game soundtracks or remixes. (Yes, I know…)

So yeah. Apple had to upload a lot of my music. What’s the problem.

I’ve had several problems and all of them come down to the fact that iTunes Match has no user interface for me to go in and make changes or choose settings or anything else. Arguably, it shouldn’t have these (it doesn’t.) Arguably, it shouldn’t NEED these things (I think it does.)

Duplicate Songs.
I have some songs which iTunes claims are duplicates. It refuses to upload these to iTunes Match.

This confuses me, because playlist wise… If I have the same song in a playlist twice, it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s a second instance of a song I already have. But somehow, I have two copies of the same song imported into iTunes. I always assumed that if I copied a song I already had into iTunes it was smart enough to not need to copy the song again. (Sometimes I thought it appeared smart.)

So somehow I have two copies of the same song. Big deal. So how do I deal with this?

Well I can “keep duplicate” or I can “delete duplicate”. What does this mean? Does it delete the file? Where is the duplicate? If one of these songs is in a playlist, I’d like to keep the song in the playlist. But now I have to manually search out several dozen duplicate songs and put them in the right playlists? (Why did the “find duplicates” option disappear from the new iTunes?) What if I can’t find the supposed duplicate? Do I have to recreate all my playlists?

Nested Playlists.
Because of how my library is setup, my video game music lives in it’s own little folder, separate from the other stuff I listen to. So naturally, any smart playlists for my game music should only pick up game music. With so much music I have playlists to keep track of my most played songs, my highest rated songs, songs I have yet to play, and songs I really like but haven’t listened to recently. All of these playlists rely on my folder structure so that only songs from my video game soundtracks list show up in the playlists.

But on iTunes Match, these playlists are empty. I don’t necessarily want/need the smart playlists to be auto updating. But why can’t the playlists be updated statically?

This Playlist is not Eligible
I have a few odd song types which I should really sit down and convert into CBR MP3 files. However, if a playlist contains one (or more) of a “non-eligible” media type, the entire playlist is rejected from iTunes Match. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater here.

And finally: Where’s the master copy?
Since signing up for iTunes Match I have added new music to my library. Often times I will add it to a playlist I already have setup. In more than one instance, after adding the music to my playlist, I will return later to find that it is no longer in the playlist I put it. The music is still in my music library, but it’s not in my playlist.

I will admit. This might be partly caused by the horrible, horrible internet service I am stuck with. And *maybe* this was a bug that was fixed with the latest update. But this leads me to my concern.

iTunes Match was built to be the master copy. For me, my iMac is the master copy. So when I add music to iTunes, I want to see where it goes and I want it to stay there. But Apple could very easily tell my iTunes to match the cloud and take whatever it wants out of my playlists.

Is this really happening? I don’t know. But I know that multiple times things have disappeared from my playlists. Hopefully, this is a bug that is or will soon be fixed.

Yet this all comes down to a transparent interface. No where can I go and see how iTunes match is coming along. No where can I go to tell iTunes match to check/upload a playlist. No where can I go to tell iTunes match to ignore a song or playlist. (I would love to make a folder in iTunes for temporary file conversions or testing and not have iTunes upload the songs to the cloud.) Where can I go to tell iTunes to take music out of the cloud?

iTunes Match is a phenomenally convenient and theoretically seamless idea. But it was designed without a user interface. It was built to be seamless in an environment that could use a few seams. I have full days when the little cloud icon in the corner of iTunes is loading away or the bar along the top says “Matching your music…” for hours, even though I know it already told me I was up to date. How can I check up on that? How can I see the progress? As a power user, I’d like some more options. And I know… Apple’s bad with options. But they also don’t seem to be very good at being seamless. So where do we draw the line?

Tap to Jump

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Philosophical and Intellectual Background Musings:

Run and jump side scrolling games have been a staple of video games since their early creation. The concept was always very simple. Use the control arrows to run back and forth, press a button to jump. These simple games are easy to pick up and can be quite addicting for short casual gaming.

Touch interfaces lend themselves nicely to this type of game, with one exception. It’s not easy to have directional controls. As with a console game or hand held, you would have a direction pad, but on a smooth surface of a phone or tablet, that isn’t the case.

The solution of course, is simple. Just run one way.

This is an elegant solution because it offers a new level of simplicity. Now, the only thing the player needs to do is “tap to jump.”

More Relevant Content:

Since buying my iPod Touch back when they first came out and following through to my iPad and iPhone I have found three tap to jump games which have really stood out and caused me to spend a lot of time relaxing. (I refuse to call this time wasted, but that’s a different blog post.) Here are the three I really enjoy.

Canabalt – $2.99

I got Canabalt back when it first came out in 2009.

The concept of the game is pretty simple. You are a small pixelated guy running across the rooftops of an endless city in the middle of the apocalypse. You tapped the screen to jump and tried not to fall off or get hit by some of the different obstacles. As you went along the background moved slowly, depicting two large mechanical creatures facing off.

What makes games like this so addicting is the feeling of possibility. Every time you jumped wrong and hit a wall you always felt like you were really close to making it. You had to try again, because clearly, that was just a fluke and you could do better next time. You only needed to tap the screen if you wanted to try again.

Jetpack Joyride – Free

Jetback Joyride was the second game of this sort which I encountered. It also had a simple storyline. You begin, having broken through the wall of a top secret research facility, steal a jetpack, and ride it until you crash and die.

When you say it that way, it doesn’t really sound all that exciting, and some days, it maybe isn’t. But again, you are always left with a feeling that next time, you’ll do better.

What made this game a little bit more fun was that it also included an aspect of coin collecting and missions. As you play, you are given missions that you can choose to complete in order to get stars, level up, and ultimately get more coins. The coins can be used to buy upgrades and also superficial cosmetic things, like clothing or jetpacks. My favorite jetpack is the “Golden Piggy Bank” which propels you into the air by firing dollar bills at the ground. The game describes it as such: “Powered by firing 1928 issue $1,000 bills, this jetpack is probably the most wasteful machine ever created.”

One last feature I enjoy with the game is the “free to play/support us later” which is becoming more common. The game is free to play as long as you like, fully featured. But you always have the option of going in and buying coin packs, should you want to get a bunch of upgrades without all the annoying coin collecting.

When I get a lot of enjoyment out of a free game, I will often look for a way to support the developer, and in the case of Jetpack Joyride, I eventually purchased the “Counterfeit Machine” for a couple dollars, as a thank you for the hours of fun I had. The thing I like about Halfbrick‘s game is that they don’t try to sell you anything. The “buy” page is a few levels deep, so you never feel annoyed or pressured to take our your wallet and give them money.

Extreme Road Trip 2 – Free

This is the latest game I have been playing. Technically, it’s a bit more advanced that the last two, but it follows the same rules. The premise is that you are driving a car along an off road terrain. If you tap the bottom left corner, your car tilts back. If you tap the bottom right corner, the car tilts forward. As you drive along, your goal is to do flips in the air to gain Nitro and go as far as you can before you crash (explode) or run out of gas (and explode.)

I was first introduced to the game when I found out that Jimmy Hinson (Big Giant Circles) did the soundtrack for it. It’s a simple soundtrack with just a few songs, but it really captures the high speed pace of the game. Very enjoyable to listen to.

Beyond the standard car upgrades and purchasing of extra coins the game has a few other neat features. If you connect up with GameCenter you can see the “ghost” cars of your friends who have raced. That way you can compare your performance and distances as you go along. You can also compare your current race to your old race ghost.

The game isn’t perfect, there are a few too many ads and “free coins if you do this” buttons that clutter the main page, but the actual gameplay is rather intriguing. It’s probably one of the more complex tap to jump games and certainly the most challenging I have found in a while, but I keep coming back because it’s so easy to sit down and play.

So those are my current casual “go to” games. Which tap to jump games do you enjoy?

July 2012 App Roll Call

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I’ve recently had some computer problems with my iMac which have resulted in a clean install of my system. It had been a couple of years and I figured it was time to clean house and start again.

My old system had hundreds of apps installed over the years. Many of them I didn’t need, others I never used. So now, with my new install less than a month old I thought I would take a look at all the apps that were required when I made the migration. In no particular order:

A Better Finder Rename by publicspace.net

This is one of those rare tools that it’s nice to have in your back pocket. I don’t use it much, and frankly, I’m surprised it made it back on my system in under 3 weeks because it’s been years since I’ve really needed it. It costs $19.95, but you can get it from the app store. If you are willing to spend a little extra ($10) you can also get free updates for life. This utility is a must have if you do any sort of file renaming en-masse. I use it to rename series of photos so that my time lapse software will stick all the images together. (Quicktime gives up if they are not sequential.)

Audacity on Sourceforge
This is one of those no brainers for any type of audio editing. There isn’t much for me to say about it. It’s fairly easy to use and it’s free. One of the first things back on my system. I sometimes use it to record TOP.

Auditri by Mauricio Santos
This is a neat little utility I found in the Mac App Store. It batch converts a number of different audio types to other audio types. I originally used it for converting a bunch of WAVs into MP3s. It’s $3.99, but if you want a push button solution that can batch your audio files, this worked very well for me.

CSSEdit by MacRabbit
I was so irritated when I found out this doesn’t exist anymore. (Which is why you always backup before doing any new installs.) I bought CSSEdit many, many years ago and it is my go to app for working with CSS. I love it because it’s super light weight and doesn’t bog down my machine. I don’t do enough web work to justify MacRabbit’s new Espresso app, but it also looks too heavy for me.

DaisyDisk by Software Ambience Corp.
DaisyDisk is a nice little utility for visualizing the usage of hard drive space. I know there are other apps that do the same thing, but I got this as part of MacHeist and I really like it. It’s not a tool I use everyday, but every now and then it’s nice to drill down into folders to see where all your space is going. At $9.95 it’s maybe a bit pricey, but it will serve you well for a long time.

Disco by Austin Sarner and Jasper Hauser
Disco is my preferred method of burning disks. I can’t tell you how many times I have accidentally burned an .iso file to a disk, because I forgot Finder is stupid about these things. With Disco you just drop the .iso or .dmg into the window and hit burn. It also does a nice job of letting you do multiple copies if required. The smoke that animates off the top of the window is a little odd (though it is customizable) but the app is now free for download.

Dropbox by Dropbox
I almost feel like this is too much of a “well duh” app, but it’s on my list of installed programs. If you don’t know it, it basically lets you do internet based folder syncing between computers and mobile devices. I only use the free account, it has plenty of space for my small documents. Also, I use several iPad and iPhone apps which save their data to it for easy backup and syncing as well.

Evernote by Evernote
I actually don’t use Evernote, but part of me wants too. I feel like it would be a great tool if I used it more, but I always resort to dropbox for syncing and other apps like textmate or plaintext for typing. I installed it anyway. I think maybe I just need to delete all my Evernote files and start over. That might help me get invested in it.

Google Chrome by Google
Google Chrome is by far my favorite browser. I use a number of plugins (like Last Pass) and to have those, along with all your tabs, bookmarks, and settings synced across multiple computers and mobile devices is simply amazing. (Plugins don’t work on mobile devices, least not that I’m aware of, but tab syncing is down right nifty.)

iMessages Beta by Apple
I am finally reaching a point where the core of my friends who I typically chat with have iPhones or iPads. This makes iMessages invaluable. I’ll be working on my computer and have my iPhone and my iPad buzz a new message at me. Rather then try to type out a message on a small screen, or go find my bluetooth keyboard for my iPad, I can just launch iMessages and respond quickly. Still a few bugs with the notifications and the icon badge, but the feature set is perfect.

iStatMenus by Bjango Software
I can’t live without my iStatMenus. This was one of the first things I installed. To have processor usage, memory usages, network traffic, and temperature in the corner is priceless. For the most part, these things probably don’t matter much but I use them all the time to checkup on things. When I am on a computer that doesn’t have iStatMenus, I find myself looking into the corner and continually being disappointed. Current version is $16, but if you have a mac running Tiger you can still download the older versions for free.

Kindle for Mac by Amazon
I don’t do much reading on my Mac but every now and then it’s nice to pull up a book as a reference. I think if I didn’t have an iPad or a kindle I would use this more, but who knows. Maybe I’ll use it more anyway.

MPEG Streamclip by Squared 5
MPEG Streamclip is a wonderful little app to convert video. Pull video in, export video out. It’s interface is a little messy, but it’s a free app. One thing I like is that you can select a portion of video, then do a “command+x” (cut) and pull that section out, then export the remaining section without a hitch. Also, I’ve occasionally had an error popup that tells me “MPEG Streamclip doesn’t recognize this file type. Open it anyway?” Typically, it’ll open the file just fine. That’s the type of go-get-em attitude that other video apps are lacking.

Piezo by Rouge Amebea
This is a small little app I ran across when we were starting out TOP. It’s a simple lightweight program from the app store and it only costs $10. It records audio coming in from any program and has a fun little interface. It’s pretty reliable too. I’ve had my mac kernel panic in the middle of a recording and the entire conversation up the crash was saved in MP3 format in the correct folder.

RDC by Microsoft
This also is a limited use app, since Mac has built in screen sharing that works just fine. That said, this is also a free download and sometimes is a little more reliable (and has a few more options) if you are connecting to a remote Windows computer.

Skype by Skype
This is another no brainer app. But I felt I should still include it. With the new facebook integration it actually is a really nice way to keep chatting without needing to have a browser window open.

Soundflower by Cycling 74
Soundflower is a small little utility that comes with Peizo. I actually just recently found out you can use it for various sound routing and combining purposes, but I haven’t had time to explore the possibilities yet. If I did not know about the deeper application of the application I probably wouldn’t have even put it on my list but I think it has potential.

Soundsource by Rouge Amoeba
This is another small free utility I found from Rogue Amoeba. I actually didn’t have it on my last system and it’s new to me now. It gives you a small little menu item where you can choose inputs and outputs for sound. It’s almost superflouous because you can do the same thing by option clicking the volume meter, but this offers individual volume controls as well so I thought I would give it a mention.

SuperDuper by Shirt Pocket
SuperDuper is one of those awesome cloning tools that I have had forever. In recent years I have started using other tools for cloning and backing up, mainly because they offer more granularity and rules, but it’s still really nice to have SuperDuper for those times when you just need a drive completely duplicated.

TextMate by MacroMates
TextMate is the one program I cannot live without. I use it for editing php and html pages. (What little of that I do.) I use it for lists. I use it for anything that involves typing. I’ll write blog posts or emails in it before copying and pasting into a web browser or Microsoft Word. I love it because it’s so light weight and versatile. If iStatMenus is the first new install on my system, TextMate is second.

Transmit by Panic
Another reason I don’t want to spring for Espresso from MacRabbit is that I have a copy of Transmit from Panic. This FTP app is solid, and for $34 it better be. I’ve had Transmit for ages. It along with TextMate and CSSEdit make up my trio of light weight apps for webwork. (Not that I do much of that anymore.)

Typinator by Egronis Software
I use to use Textexpander from Smile software, but somewhere along the line (MacHeist) I got a license for Typinator so it was easier for me to start using that than pay to upgrade Textexpander. Both are great pieces of software, but I’m in the Typinator camp now.

uTorrent by BitTorrent
I listen to a lot of music from OCRemix.org and so a good BitTorrent client is a must for getting the latest album downloads. Very light weight and super easy to use. Also, free.

Apps that I will be installing as soon as I get other issues sorted out:

Chronosync by Econ Technologies
My backup software of choice these days relies mostly on Chronosync. Chronosync allows you to do syncing of drives, and folders with options for archiving deleted files, or setting up rules (such as don’t backup files or folders that have ‘SKIP ME’ in the spotlight comments.) I’ve used it for cloning drives on a schedule, and also backing up and syncing individual folders. It also has options for emailing you if there are errors. It’s also $40.

CrashPlan by Code 42
The second half of my backup plan involves uploading to the cloud via Crash Plan. I choose CrashPlan for a few reasons. My biggest complaint about Carbonite was that it didn’t support external drives. I keep most of my photos on an external drive (which I clone for a backup) and I wanted to be able to back those up to the cloud. CrashPlan allows that. Another thing I liked is that I could use CrashPlan for free, if I backed up to a local machine. I actually setup my Dad’s computer so that it would backup the important files to a different machine on the local network. In an ideal world, I would have this setup for the computers of all my friends and family, but I don’t have the money for extra hard drives right now and our internet connection is WAY too slow.

Apps that I usually install but have not yet:

VLC by Video LAN
I’m surprised this didn’t make it onto my system yet. I may just go install it now. It’s a wonderful alternative when Quicktime starts having a hissy fit.

Handbreak on Sourceforge
This is another great app for converting video when other applications fail you. I’m sure I’ll be installing it in the future, I just didn’t need it yet.

Cyberduck
If I didn’t have a copy of Transmit I would be using Cyberduck. First off, it’s free (unless you want to buy it from the Mac App store for $30 to show your support.) But it’s the most beautifully designed and easy to use FREE FTP client I know of. I’ve seen people use Filezilla which looks like a dozen Finder windows were thrown into blender, set to liquify for a minute and a half, then shoved in a shot gun and fired against a wall. I’ve seen vomit more well organized than Filezilla. Maybe that interface works for some people, but count me out.

A sense of scale

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I think one thing the internet does amazingly well is provide a sense of scale.

The Earth has ~7 billion people living on it, which is a number that is relatively meaningless, since most people (all people) have a terrible time finding a frame of reference for it.

But once you give these people, or even a percentage of these people, a means to connect, create, and share, you can start putting things into perspective.

Just poking around YouTube one encounters an overwhelming amount of video. Much more than anyone could possibly expect to watch in several lifetimes. (According to YouTube’s Stats page, one hour of video is uploaded every second.)

The Cheezburger Network has hundreds of sites devoted to single themes, and are updated multiple times a day, by user submitted photos. Even if you only follow one or two of their feeds, it’s almost a full time job to keep up with them.

The social network sites love to give us stats and numbers. But the number of tweets per minute, the number of visitors per day, the amount of content uploaded tends to be meaningless without reference. Fortunately, the content is visible, and the visible representation is something we can relate to.

Once we can explore the numbers. See the live tweets as they come in. Watch video for hours and realize that there are days of content left to see. Look through a friend’s photos and realize that long lengths of time have passed. Go down the wikipedia rathole only to forget why we originally surfed there. Then we start to get an idea of how big the world really is.

Talking numbers is vastly unhelpful. Experiencing them can be insightful.