WhistlinDixie

Twitterific!

I started Twittering last weekend in response to Leo Laporte offering any follower of he and John C Dvorak a chance at winning The Ultimate Gaming Machine. Seeing as this computer could easily top $5,000 (USD), I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that I wasn’t too big on the web UI for Twitter. I noticed that a couple of the people that I followed used a program called twhirl. I gave it a try and really liked it. I also discovered FriendFeed, which is basically a way to aggregate all of your online personas that are stored within online services like Twitter, flickr, FaceBook, del.icio.us, YouTube, Amazon.com wish lists, and even blog feeds published in either RSS or ATOM. The cool thing is that I can watch both Twitter and FriendFeed through twhirl.

I have decided to integrate these services, to one extent or another, into this site. If you notice, in the sidebar (at least on the main page), I have my newest tweets listed. I am going to leave my tweets separate from my actual blog content. I have also placed a link to my FriendFeed at the top of the page.

Hope you have fun getting to look at little more at what is going on in my head.

How to Ace a Job Interview

Do you think this would work, Chris?

I Hate Lotus Notes

And so do a large number of its users. One user quipped (and I paraphrase) that, of all the people he worked with, only a few disliked Notes; the rest hated it. It is so bad that it has spawned a Notes hate site. It is dedicated to all of those stupidities that Notes exhibits, such as non-standard UI and crappy email and calendar applications.

According to someone with IBM (the makers of Notes), they made the UI different to create an identity so that users would know that they were using Notes. This is stupid reasoning. Users want to use your application. This is nearly impossible when it does not follow any UI paradigms that they have learned from using PCs for their entire life. Nothing acts like you expect, hotkeys are completely different, terminology is misused or made up (WTF is a hotspot?), and basic organization is from another world. I am an experienced computer user and am used to somewhat obtuse UIs (due to being a programmer and user of free open source software), but even I am completely stumped by Notes. I often have to go ask questions of other people who have been with my company for longer than myself, including my floor’s Notes wizard, and even they can’t answer my questions. And these shouldn’t be difficult questions. That is how bad Notes’ UI is.

Not only is the UI bad, but the built-in email and calendar applications are horrible. When I worked with UPS, I got to use Microsoft Outlook (with Exchange running on the back end). While I was not a huge fan of it, I realize now what a blessing it was to have got to use it after being forced to use Notes with my current employer. In the back end, Notes is really just a bunch of funky object-oriented (not relational) databases. This means that the email application is just a bunch of databases (or perhaps just one) that are replicated from the Domino server to your computer. This is not how email works and this leads to counter-intuitive UI for dealing with emails. For example, in Outlook, your Sent Items folder was a folder, just like your inbox. If you wanted to move an email from your Deleted Items folder to your Sent Items folder, you just click and drag. In Notes, this is impossible. Actually, you can’t drag anything to the Sent Items folder. This is because the Sent Items folder is actually a database view: a dynamically generated list of emails. It is not a physical database like the other folders. Database views, by nature, cannot be inserted into since they are nothing more than saved database queries. Of course, you cannot tell this by looking at the UI because the Sent Items folder looks just like every other folder in the email application.

There are many other issues with Notes that I won’t go into. Instead, you should check out the Lotus Notes Sucks site. While the author might be a little too harsh, he is still right on the mark when he concludes 81 times that

Does Apple Think We’re Stupid?

Sorry, stupid question. Of course they do. Why else would they be trying to patent instant messaging? That is what they are trying to do with the iPhone. For some reason, Apple believes that instant messaging on the iPhone is somehow unique and, therefore, patentable. Nevermind the prior art of instant messaging on Windows Mobile phones, or on pretty much any smart phone, or instant messaging in general. For some reason, Apple believes that instant messaging on the iPhone is a new invention.

Of course, the US Patent Office will blindly grant the patent to Apple. They seem to be completely incompetent when it comes to technology patents any more, especially when it comes to software patents.

When the US Patent Office grants the patent to Apple (and why wouldn’t they?), Apple will become the only company that can offer an IM application for the iPhone. At least, the only usable IM application. Third-parties can make IM applications for the iPhone, but with the restriction that it cannot run in the background. In other words, a completely useless IM client.

This patent will create a monopoly for Apple on the iPhone. If Microsoft did this, everyone would be up in arms and the EC would be banning Microsoft products from all of the EU. For some reason, Apple gets a free pass. Why this is, I don’t know. They have gotten to the point where they are worse than Microsoft was in their heyday. Yet, no one with any voice will call them on it, and those who do are labeled as Microsoft shills.

What I really don’t understand is why Apple users put up with the walled garden that Steve Jobs foists upon them. Windows is built upon choice, to an extent. Apple, however, would like nothing more than for you to only use their software in the ways that they prescribe. Even harder to understand is why developers still flock to Apple when they are actively being undermined by the very company that they depend on for their livelihood. Apple wants to be the only company that makes software for Apple computers and this patent makes it clear that they want to prevent third parties from filling any voids that they leave.