David Herrold

Disposable iPhone apps

Posted by Dave | Filed under Apple, Mobile, Software

I’ve recently noticed several conventions, festivals and movies spending their marketing dollars on iPhone development.  This is an interesting trend that we will see more of in the near future.

iPhone applications built for specific events have brief windows of time where their content is relevant and useful to the customer.  Syfy’s San Diego ComicCon (iTunes) and the Lollapalooza music festival (iTunes) apps contain extremely useful features for time sensitive events.  Schedules, maps, personalized calendars, photo galleries and photo sharing features are contained within these apps, making them very handy for a short period of time.

The ComicCon app was released July 12th, only 11 days before the convention; and the Lollapalooza app was released July 19th, only 20 days before the music festival.

At first, I thought this was a waste of advertising dollars. Why go to the trouble of building an iPhone application that would only be useful for a short period of time? That’s silly, isn’t it?

Well, not really.  There are three excellent reasons for these “disposable” iPhone apps.

1. Usage window

Pinch Media released a report earlier this year revealing statistics they collected from 30 million downloads at the iTunes App Store.  They discovered only 5% of apps were used 3 weeks after they were downloaded (slides 12 & 13). This timing seems like a good match for event marketing. Right?

2. Engagement

Smart phones make up only 12% of the phone market worldwide. However, that small percentage of users generates the majority of engagement in the mobile world.  They are constantly downloading mobile applications, surfing the mobile web, sending emails, snapping photos, recording video, etc.

iPhone users, in particular, are extremely engaged in the mobile experience.

3. Understanding your audience

What if you could discover information about your audience that helped make your product or event better the next time? Did your concert audience enjoy the venue?  What did your convention attendees think of the hotel or the food?  A mobile application can collect that feedback from your audience and help make your product better.

If you compare these to traditional advertising vehicles like TV, radio and newspapers you’ll see why iPhone apps look like a great option for event promotion.  You can build several iPhone apps for the cost of a single minute of TV advertising.  Also, traditional advertising platforms are typically a one-way communication to the audience, while mobile applications offer an easy dialog of feedback and communication.

I’m curious.  Have you or would you ever consider downloading a “disposable iPhone app” for a specific event?  Let me know in the comments.

Tags: applications, apps, Blackberry, iPhone, Mobile, Software

Back ups outside of Dropbox

Posted by Dave | Filed under Apple, Linux, Productivity, Software

I’m a pretty big fan of DropBox, the remote back up service with version control and file sharing.  It works on Mac, Linux and Windows.  I use it nearly every day to back up important files and pass documents to colleagues in a safe version-controlled environment.  (I wrote a brief explanation of DropBox last summer if you’re interested.)  There is also a web interface that allows access to your files no matter what computer you happen to be using at the time.

The only problem I saw with the service was its inability to back up files residing outside your DropBox folder.

I found a solution to this problem recently on the DropBox wiki.  The solution is brilliantly simple, but requires a short Terminal command to create a symbolic link.  Let’s say you would like to back up a folder called “Projects” that lives inside your “Documents” folder.  Open your Terminal and type the following command:

This command will create a symbolic link of your Projects folder into your DropBox. I have tested this in Mac OSX and Linux (Ubuntu) and it works beautifully.  There is a hack to make it work in Windows as well.

By the way, I’m not affiliated with DropBox in any way, I just happen to think it’s a beautiful piece of software.

If you’re interested, you can get a free DropBox account here.

If you already have a DropBox account, do you have any tips or tricks to share in the comments?

Tags: backup, dropbox, Linux, OSX, version control

Want fewer emails?

Posted by Dave | Filed under Business, Communication, Networking, Social Networking, Software, Technology

Here’s a quick tip for reducing the number of emails you get in your inbox every day…

Send fewer emails.

Yep, that’s it. That’s the entire secret rolled into one sentence. For every email you send out, there is a good chance you will receive a reply. If you’ve copied multiple people in your outgoing email, you will probably receive numerous replies.

We live in a world with numerous forms of communication, yet most companies disproportionally rely on email for the majority of their contact throughout the working day. Depending upon the situation, email could be the worst form of communication to use with your coworkers, clients and business partners.

Here are some alternate forms of communication you should consider before firing up your email program: face-to-face meeting, collaboration tools (wiki, BaseCamp, Salesforce.com, Google Docs, etc), instant messaging (AOL, GTalk, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Skype, etc), social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), phone call, text Message, video conference, video chat, blog, fax and last, but not least a good old fashioned hand-written note.

Here are a few instances when email is NOT the best tool for the job.

1. When you need a simple yes/no answer. Use an instant messenger, text message or Twitter direct message. You’re in and out and nobody loses much time in the process.

2. When multiple colleagues need to edit and/or approve a document. Use collaboration tools like Google Docs, BaseCamp, a wiki, etc. Emailing a Word or Excel document to six of your coworkers to edit is shear insanity. Stop the madness. Seriously.

3. You sent an email to several colleagues and you got a reply from someone who clearly confused. Unless you are absolutely sure one simple email reply will clear up the confusion, pick up the phone and call this person. Chances are, one 10 minute phone call will prevent 3 or 4 more emails.

4. You need to sell something. Whether you’re selling a product to a client or an idea to a supervisor nothing beats a face-to-face meeting.

5. Someone just emailed you the funniest joke along with a hilarious photo of a kittens. I beg of you. If you really need to tell the world just how funny this joke is, post it to your blog. Please, under no circumstances should you forward this joke email to your entire address book.

So tell me, are there any communication tools you use (other than email) throughout the day?

Let me know in the comments.

Photoshop toolbar evolution

Posted by Dave | Filed under Design, Software, Usability

This is an eye-opening example of how software can become bloated over time.  These images represent around 10 years of Adobe software development.  It’s ironic to me that the earlier toolbars appear more user-friendly than the new ones.  I suspect the UI & UX gurus at Adobe made a conscious effort to simplify the CS3 toolbar (bottom one) and stop the madness.

Which toolbar would you rather use?

(Image credit – http://dezignus.com)

Tags: Design, feature creep, photoshop, software bloat, UI, Usability, user experience, user interface, ux

LinkedIn’s launches application platform

Posted by Dave | Filed under Communication, Design, Development, Productivity, Social Networking, Software

LinkedIn has launched its application platform to function much like Facebook, but for professionals. But unlike Facebook, the a LinkedIn application will be required go pass an approval process to be included on the platform. Users will also be limited to a maximum of 15 applications on their profiles.

According to TechCrunch:

“Beyond the quality assurance process, LinkedIn is also limiting the flexibility apps will have when it comes to monetization. Apps won’t be allowed to use third party ad networks – instead, they’ll have to work with LinkedIn’s ad system. For now applications will only have access to LinkedIn’s current ad inventory, which could make targeting ads less effective (though it sounds like there will be more options for targeted ads in the future).”

I’ve always thought the elevator pitch for LinkedIn was “a Facebook for work.” This solidifies the metaphor. I wonder how many newspapers would be interested in creating LinkedIn widgets?

Wanna place bets on how soon the Wall Street Journal launches a LinkedIn application? Or Monster.com? BaseCamp? I’m guessing pretty soon.

I’ve already installed a Slideshare.net application showing my most recent mobile presentation. The Slideshare application is a pretty simple one, but cleanly designed.

You can see it here on my profile.

Current available applications (at the time of this post) are: Slideshare, Box.net, Google presentations, Amazon reading list, Wordpress, Blog Link, Company Buzz, My Travel and Huddle Workspaces.

The applications FAQ can be found here.

What applications do you think would make the biggest impact on LinkedIn’s platform?

Tags: applications, linkedin, slideshare, Social Networking

Richard Stallman on “cloud computing”

Posted by Dave | Filed under Google, Networking, Software

The Guardian published an interesting interview with open source stalwart, Richard Stallman.  He speaks his mind on the concept of “cloud computing.”

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control,” he said. “It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.

You can read the entire article here.  Needless to say, he doesn’t like “cloud computing” very much.

Photo by Han Soete

Tags: cloud computing, Google, open source, richard stallman

My essential (Mac) software

Posted by Dave | Filed under Apple, Productivity, Software

I am always fascinated by the software that my friends and coworkers use to get things done on a daily basis.  I’m constantly wondering if there is a better tool out there to make my job easier or more efficient.

Below is a list of software I consider my “can’t live without” applications.  In order to qualify for this list, I have to use it routinely every day.

1. Adium (price = free) – http://www.adiumx.com/

Adium is possibly the best chat client around today.  It supports a ridiculous number of services (including AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, etc.), OTR encryption, file transfer, etc.  The UI is extremely intuitive and contact management is a breeze.  I am shocked Adium is free.

2. Adobe Creative Suite (Price = $1,800) – http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/

After getting over the fact that CS3 costs twice as much as my first car, it’s simply the best set of tools for design out there.  If you plan on designing websites or working with web designers, you should make the investment.  If you are a student (or know a student) you can purchase CS3 at a significant discount (around $500).

3. Coda (price = $99 [free 30-day trial]) – http://www.panic.com/coda/

Since the release of Coda 1.5 update last week, I can safely say that Coda is my web design tool of choice.  Coda combines several different applications necessary for web design into one user-friendly package.  Coda is a text editor, FTP client, SSH terminal, CSS editor, Subversion client and your new bicycle.  You can even kick the tires for free.

4. CyberDuck (price = free) – http://cyberduck.ch/

Cyberduck is a free open source FTP client that supports FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, remote editing, etc.  When I need to move a lot of files to or from a remote server I use Cyberduck.  It has Quicksilver hooks as well as Growl integration (so I am able to minimize Cyberduck and allow Growl to notify me when my transfers are completed).  Cyberduck also integrates Textmate for remote file editing live on the server (if you enjoy living dangerously).

5. DropBox (price = free for now) – http://www.getdropbox.com/

Dropbox is a remote backup service with version control.  I wrote about DropBox in a previous post and have been using it ever since.  I suspect there will eventually be tiered levels of service, but for now, I am using the free 2GB verion for free to back up this blog (as well as other important files).  Sign up for the beta release here.

6. Firefox (price = free) – http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

According to my blog stats, there is a 50% chance that you are using some version of FireFox to read this post right now.  If so, you already know how useful FireFox is.  The latest version of FireFox includes some new functionality for the address bar (dubbed the “awesome bar”) as well as a new user interface.  I would have a very difficult time doing my job without this browser and it’s 3rd party add-ons.  If this list were ordered by importance, FireFox would be very near the top.

7. Growl (price = free) – http://growl.info/

Growl is a notification system that informs you when certain things happen on your computer.  For instance, you can configure Growl to alert you when you finish an upload or download, received mail, downloaded a podcast, etc.  There are numerous applications and system tools supported by Growl.  You’ll want to configure it to fit your needs.  When I first installed it, I got way too many notifications and almost uninstalled it.  However, after a quick configuration (reducing the number of alerts), I now really love it.

8. iStat Menus (price = free) – http://www.islayer.com/

iStat Menus is a monitoring application that lives in the menu bar at the top right corner of my screen. It allows me to monitor things like CPU action, RAM usage, temperature, fan speed, network usage, etc.  Great information at a glance.

9. iTerm (price = free) – http://iterm.sourceforge.net/

My use of he terminal is not nearly as thorough as my colleagues at chron.com.  However, when I need to ping, trace route, perform a “whois” search or a quick MySQL database search, nothing is faster than the terminal.  iTerm adds useful things like a bookmark tray and the ability to use multiple tabs.

10. Mail (price = free [comes standard on all Macs]) – http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/mail.html

Mail is simple.  Mail works.  Use Mail.  Nuff said.

11. Quicksilver (price = free) – http://www.blacktree.com/

Saying Quicksilver is just an application launcher is like saying a Porsche is just a car.  Quicksilver can access a multitude of applications to perform some amazing feats (if you can remember the key combinations, which I usually don’t).  You can send mail, move files, take notes, delete things, play music, etc.  The list goes on.  By the way, Quicksilver is also a great application launcher.

12. Skitch (price = free) – http://skitch.com/

Skitch is the best screenshot application that I have found for the Mac.  Skitch allows you to capture an image of your screen and then crop, resize, create shapes and draw on top of the screenshot.  The most useful part of Skitch for me is the remote file sharing Skitch provides via your Skitch.com or Flickr account.  Great way to share a screenshot with friends and co-workers.

13. Superduper (price = $27.95) – http://www.shirt-pocket.com

We all know how important backups are, right?  Apple has made good progress with Leopard’s native Time Machine for incremental backups.  However, if something bad happens to your startup disk, Time Machine’s backup won’t save you.  You need a bootable backup.  That’s where SuperDuper steps in and saves the day.  If you ever need it, it will pay for itself many times over.  It’s already saved me once.

14. Textmate – (price = $58) – http://macromates.com/

Textmate is the mother of all text editors that offers some unique tools for people who edit code for a living.  With Textmate, it’s all about the “bundles”.  Bundles are the terminology Textmate uses for small macros that specialize in making tedious jobs a little easier.  I keep all my blog ideas in a Textmate project and edit the posts in Textmate before I post them.

15. Twitterific (price = free w/ads or $14.95 w/o ads) – http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific

Twitterific is a Mac OSX desktop application for Twitter.  It has a very simple user interface and (the free version I use) contains very unobtrusive ads.  I tried Twirl, but found the UI a little cluttered, so now I’m back to Twitterific.

16. iTunes (price = free [comes standard on all Macs]) – http://www.apple.com/itunes/overview/

iTunes is a pretty good music player but a lousy pod-catcher.  With the recent upgrade to iTunes 8.0 the Genius sidebar makes suggestions for you based upon music in your library. Very cool.  I still don’t think iTunes is a great podcatcher, but I haven’t found anything better yet.

Honorable mention

(A list of applications I use on a weekly basis, but didn’t make the daily cut).

CocoaMySQL – (price = free) – http://cocoamysql.sourceforge.net/
Colloquy (price = free) – http://colloquy.info/
Flickr Uploader (price = free) – http://www.flickr.com/tools/uploadr/
Google Earth (price = free, plus = $20, Pro = $400) – http://earth.google.com/
iWork (Keynote, Pages, Numbers) – (price = $79) – http://www.apple.com/iwork/
Voodoo Pad (price = $29.95) – http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/
VMWare Fusion (price = $79.99) – http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/
Minuteur (price = free) – http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19356
iPhoto (price = free [comes standard on all Macs]) – http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/

What are your software tools of choice?  Let me know in the comments.

Tags: applications, essential, mac, OSX, Software

BarCampHouston3 recap

Posted by Dave | Filed under Design, Development, Marketing, Mobile, Networking, Social Networking, Software, Technology

Photo - Best name tag I saw at BarCampHouston.

Justine and I attended BarCamp Houston at the Houston Technology Center yesterday and had a great time. A big thanks to all the organizers (Marc Nathan, Kelsey Ruger, Josh Tabin, Scott Stolz). You guys made the event a smashing success for everyone. And thanks to all the sponsors for helping to make BarCamp Houston possible.

For those who don’t know what BarCamp is, here is a brief explanation:

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. – Wikipedia

This can be simplified to “day camp for nerds.”

I watched some great presentations and participated in some interesting discussions throughout the day. BarCamps are only as great as their participants, and we had some great participants this year.

Ed Schipul’s presentation on PR and social media was sharp. His creative use of a green laser pointer kept the crowd in line (as much as possible) as he explained how to “put the relations back in public relations” using social media. It’s a pleasure to watch a pro on stage engage the audience as well as Ed does.

Josh Tabin spoke about how start-up funding works. I found his discussion about the ins and outs of financing to be pretty enlightening. I left the discussion knowing a lot more about how start-ups make that initial leap into businesses.

Tracy and Imelda whipped up an impromptu discussion on digital photography and social media. I’m pretty sure there should have been a cover charge for the room and IDs checked at the door. Tracy had the room in stitches for a solid 30 minutes, while feeding them great advice for managing their photos in Flickr.

Katherine Druckman also jumped into the mix with an impromptu presentation about Drupal, the open source content management system. The crowd had lots of questions and she fielded them like a pro.

Wynn Netherland and Jim Mulholland from Squeejee.com gave a great presentation on virtual collaboration tools. I’ve gotten used to keeping much of my work “in the cloud” and Wynn and Jim did a nice job of rounding up the most useful tools for working with teams spread across the globe (they even did their presentation live on Google Docs. Cool.)

Here’s a photo of the schedule board in the lobby. A little something for everyone.

My own presentation about mobile web design & SMS went pretty well (at least I think so…it’s hard to gauge while standing behind a podium). I used a live SMS poll to determine how the crowd used their phones the most (talking, email, text messaging or mobile internet). Email and WAP came out on top, which isn’t surprising given the technologically savvy crowd at BarCampHouston. (Screenshot of the BarCampHouston3 mobile poll results.) I also posted some photos on Flickr yesterday.

(Update: I just found out my presentation deck was featured on the homepage of Slideshare today! Woot! Here’s the screenshot.)

Have a great Sunday, everyone!

P.S. – Bill Shirley posted a nice BarCampHouston update, too. Check it out.

P.P.S – Steve Evatt also recapped BarCamp Houston and took some cool photos as well.

Tags: barcamp, barcamphouston3, conference, houston, Technology

A List Apart industry survey

Posted by Dave | Filed under Design, Development, Software, Technology, Usability, Web design, Writing

A List Apart is posting their second annual survey for “people who make websites.”  The results from last year were very interesting.  If you are somehow involved in designing, developing, writing, producing, or managing websites, I encourage you to participate in this anonymous survey to help better understand the industry.

A List Apart article explaining the survey.
Link to the 2008 survey.
Results of the 2007 survey.

Thanks!

Tags: a list apart, survey, web survey

Mobile search

Posted by Dave | Filed under Apple, Hardware, Mobile, Software, Usability

We’ve gotten very good at finding what we’re looking for online. Ever since the early days of AltaVista, Lycos and DogPile we’ve become experts at finding Thai restaurants in Hoboken, NJ and singing telegrams in Anchorage, AK. Just type a few keywords into the search box and click the go button. Your best result will be on the first page, right? Pretty easy.

Fast forward to 2008 – and the proliferation of mobile phones, PDAs and palmtop computers that can access the web. Things become much more interesting.

There is an increased sense of immediacy based upon our physical location and actions. In the old world, we designed sites for users who were typically sitting at a desk with a keyboard and mouse. Today we design sites for people who are surfing the internet while walking the dog, boarding a plane, driving to work and cheering for the home team during the playoffs.  Mobile devices are with us all the time.

Good-bye keyboard.  Good-bye mouse.  We’ll miss you.

We are using our thumbs to type now. We are scrolling down our tiny screens with trackballs, slide-wheels and pencil-thin styli. We are clicking with phone keys, tiny buttons, pens and our fingers. We need results need to be simple, easy to read, accurate and light weight. And we need it now.

Mobile platforms need to distill web content down to the bare essentials, trimming away unnecessary page clutter while pushing relevant content to the top of the page.

John Markoff’s New York Times article sums this up more eloquently than I.

“The small screen forces you to be even more ruthless and focus on usability almost like a haiku,” said Barney Pell, Powerset’s founder and chief executive. “That’s what happens with design for the small screen. You have to think about what the most important thing the user is doing is.”

There are currently only a few methods of searching the web on a mobile device (although, there SHOULD be more, in my opinion*.)

The first method is the one we’re most familiar with.  We type search terms into a little box and hit submit for results. As long as the web server produces valid XHTML and mobile friendly CSS, most phones will display results without too much trouble. Many mobile sites that offer search, offer this method.

Another method uses SMS and allows users to search via text message instead of using web forms. This can be a faster way of getting results in some cases if you have little or no access to a strong mobile signal for WAP searches. Depending upon your carrier’s packages, SMS can also be used without a data plan (which is usually much cheaper than a full data plan).

A good example of this is Google’s SMS service. If you happen to have a text message plan for your mobile device, try this. Send a text message to 466453 (GOOGLE) with the message of “pizza and [your zipcode]“. You should get a text message back from Google with 3-4 of the highest ranking listings along with click-to-call links to contact the restaurant.

You can also send links to your users within the text message. A good example of this is our own classified ad platform on the Houston Chronicle’s mobile site. For another interesting test, try sending a text message to 24766 (CHRON) with a message of “ford mustang”. You will get a text message back informing you how many results this search produced and a link to the mobile search results (if you have a WAP access).

This is pretty useful, but still not perfect.

Within the last year location-based services have grown quickly in popularity. Mobile platforms like Brightkite, Google Maps and Fire Eagle are gaining ground with many mobile users. Using a mobile device’s internal GPS (or triangulation from cell towers if your device doesn’t have a GPS), the device determines your location and allows you to simply search for the word “pizza” to produce local results for you (since it already knows your location).

We will begin to see more of these services over the next few years. However, I think we can do even better than that.

As I’ve said in the past, our mobile phones are audio devices first and foremost. Let’s put that audio technology to good use.

* Allow me to speak “Find Starbucks” into my phone to trigger a Google Maps search or speak “Browse CNN” to auto-dial a browser bookmark. Surfing the internet hands-free might be extremely useful if I were driving a car, walking the dog or even peddling a bicycle.

With devices like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s upcoming Android platform the possibilities are nearly endless.

Let’s push the limits.

————————

Some resources that can help you get started with mobile web development:

Dev.Mobi – A website dedicated to mobile web development
Blue Flavor’s web development guide is a good start – and they’re nice folks too.
Mobile Web Development – by Nirav Mehta a more in-depth look at mobile development
Mobile Web Design – by Cameron Moll – a great introduction to the mobile web

Tags: Google, iPhone, Mobile, search, sms