Just because Apple created the in-out homescreen experience doesn't make it right & it doesn't need to be something apps adopt. But alas, apps feel that users would love it they jumped from homescreen to another just to execute the task the app is meant to truly deliver.

Never mind the wild concept of the app instantly delivering what the user wants to achieve, let's them leave to choice from 5 different options before they can actually achieve something.

Like this shopping centre app, I imagine the idea of a shopping centre app when you launch is when you need to find a certain shop. Maybe right away show a directory or a map showing where you are in the centre with an obvious search bar to quickly pinpoint your destination?

Let's be honest, how many people who go to a shopping centre care about sharing it with their friends or reading some news about a shopping centre? If you're going to try and build an experience around your shopping centre don't palm it off to a section of your app; from the moment you start the app have it all connected. You open the app with a map of the place, a convenient search bar to quickly locate places and place pins on the directory map showing where cool sales are on offer.

And don't create a homescreen if you haven't go enough icons to fill it, making it look like it's my job to somehow fill the homescreen with your pseudo apps. I was really disappointed by the switch in design by Urbanspoon to the homescreen design. You use Urbanspoon to find cool places to eat at when you're stuck or in need for something to eat; so that's what it should open with. Open with the Shake to find feature and then use the tab bar at the bottom to offer other features like search and nearby. Urbanspoon bills itself as being able to help you find places to eat it; so it's not really helping when the user has to make a decision on what do in the app before it can help you.

Then kill me, kill me now. I don't want to waste my high resolution screen on some awful default Wordpress theme or some annoying OMG ADD THIS TO THE HOMESCREEN NOW.

Let me preface this by saying, thank god for Reeder and Google Reader.

We have the choice of default Wordpress themes that try to make you feel like you're in some pre-retina display iOS app, you know the theme you see everywhere.

But don't worry, we'll just change the colour scheme -- it's all good.

Let's make the assumption that you're using Safari and you are happy to deal with this annoying add-to-homescreen spam before you can enjoy the site you came to see. It's irrelevant if you're in an app using UIWebView and there isn't an add to homescreen button. Also what the hell is with the caps?

Ads are meant to look good and be unobtrusive, right?

Been messing around with the new version of Pixelmator, really great app for OS X. I've been wanting to work on textured backgrounds as complements to iOS apps, so here is a first attempt at some texture.

(Designed for the iPhone 4/4S retina display)

Fork MongoDB and add Vinyl, Tape, Polaroid, and Broken Memories as data types.

Considering the state that Windows tablets were back when Windows 7 was touted as a touch capable operating system, I have to admit I'm very impressed in the jump from Windows 7 to the developer preview of Windows 8. It's very exciting to see Windows losing its reliance on the start+taskbar paradigm that we've seen since Windows 95.

Metro

It's a design concept and I hope it's one Microsoft is going to invest heavily in training/education/certification to allow developers to understand how to develop applications that actually suit Windows 8 and suit touch gestures. I'd say it would be better for Microsoft to loosen the focus on .Net certification and ramp up the emphasis on great design in Windows 8 applications.

JavaScript+HTML+CSS

With the demise of WebOS I thought we would be waiting a few year before we see another platform enable web applications to be first class citizens on a platform. It seems with the WinRT layer JavaScript joins the ranks of C# and C++ for enabling Windows developers to build rich applications.

I think web development and design is an exciting realm to be in and with Microsoft opening Windows up to JavaScript API calls it is only going to strengthen the importance of open frameworks and web development. I hope it exposes more and more students to JavaScript as an alternative to the dry "Intro to Java" curriculum we see now (or even the awful institutions that still teach VB).

Change at the .Net shops

I'm curious to see how the .Net shops respond to not only JavaScript as an increasingly power language but also the Metro concept. Based on my small experience in .Net consulting companies most of them aren't interested in the UI development stage; it's all about the code and maybe a simplistic design template.

I hope they realise that a Metro styled application isn't just the default template provided by Visual Studio; it's about building applications that suit the method of input, designing screens that aren't cluttered and making the app something a user wants to use and not something they are forced to use to get the job done.

The worry

I really hope the default state of Windows 8 (at least on tablets) is that you never see that awful Windows 7 desktop no matter how hard you tried; I hope Microsoft pushes developers to change for new paradigms and not just rely on the old concepts that have existed since Windows 95.

I'm a little worried about the consulting shops that will understand Metro enough to use the templates but not enough to actually put the effort in to build distinct apps that conform to Metro but don't feel like any other Metro app. I think this is the beauty of iOS where I can jump from Facebook to Tweetbot and be in two amazing different world; I'm worried that Metro will be just a feature that developers enable and never care about.

One things for sure

I'm excited to see Windows 8 replace those awful touch displays at shopping centres, it seems killing Flash is a joint effort from all parties (except RIM...).

Baidu (the Chinese based web company) has shown off its demo video which details its mobile OS based on Android. It has no originality whatsoever, it's borrowing UI elements from Apple and Google.

Is it so hard in China to find creative agencies or local designers that companies (Meizu, Baidu) are forced to take individual bits from iOS and Android to create this Frankenstein OS?
I am honestly curious as to the state of product and user interface in design in China. China's rich history shows us how creative they are in their inventions and ancient art but when it comes to today's modern technology it feels like China is just playing catchup. They are capable of producing the behind the scenes hardware that powers these beautiful operating systems but can't invent their own ideas for what a phone should look and feel like?

Check out the video at YouTube

If you're going to copy the iOS Messaging app, at least change the colour

An obvious clone of the Google mobile web app

Apple isn't the only one to implement the great UITableView

Always been a big fan of the UISegmentControl

When it doesn't matter what hardware or software you run; you can take an application and be able to throw it out there and it just runs. It isn't picky whether it runs on Windows, Linux or Mac; there aren't any Apache modules. It just runs.

That way people can just build things that matter and let the hosting platform scale it out as needed.

Peeps like Heorku are doing that, with more than one language.

So here’s what IDC is predicting the smartphone market will look like in 2015.

Basically IDC is assuming

• Windows Phone will just take the place of Symbian because of the Nokia deal. Assuming that the Nokia brand is so strong that it demands loyalty and Nokia will continue being one of the very few players that can manufacture cheap smartphones that people will flock too.
• That assumes Nokia is the only one capable of getting processor intensive Windows Phone to run on dirt cheap hardware.
• BlackBerry who seems to be pretty much dead in terms mindshare amongst consumers in 2011, either is able to keep on limping long enough to have some market share in 2015 or has some ace up its sleave that IDC knows about.
• iOS will somehow slip more places that BlackBerry

I think the only thing they got right is that Android will be the dominate player, purely by saturating the makret and nothing else.

If I was a company using IDC for business intelligence, I’d start looking elsewhere.

IDC Press Release

I’ve recently begun work on a fun little open source project that I hope some people will enjoy using.

I am calling it Plank, it is a small discussion board that uses a standard folder on a file system as a database. This allows people to use sharing solutions like Dropbox to have a central database for their discussion board without the need for a centralised public server; instead each person wishing to access the forum just runs Plank locally on their own computer and accesses the board through their web browser.

I am trying to make Plank really simple to get going with a shared folder from the command line, all you have to do is start plank from the terminal with the shared folder as your directory then Plank will automatically provision the folder with a database and fire up the server at http://localhost:4567 for you to setup your profile and start posting.

Plank uses MessagePack to store each entry of each class as a file in the shared Dropbox and uses a simple Sinatra web instance to serve up the local discussion board.

You can check it out at https://github.com/callumj/Plank.

Everyone wants to be like Apple.

Actually, the unveiling video is probably the best part of this weird scripted fake mess.