Nivas.hr blog

I know that for some of you this might be stating-the-obvious, but I will say it anyhow: absolutely no other device will be able to rival iPad in the foreseeable future.

Many will try, but all will fail.

What everyone else is doing (as far as I know, maybe someone will surprise me) is try to replicate the hardware iPad has – sleek tablet-like touch screen device, and then on top of that they slap Windows / Linux / any other operating system.

And this just does not work.

Those operating systems are made to be used with mouse and keyboard as primary interface devices, and as such absolutely cannot function in a world of touch interface. How do you scroll a website in a normal browser? You use mouse scroll wheel. And if there is no mouse scroll wheel, then you click and drag a scrollbar. Now take your finger and place it close to the scrollbar of your monitor – it is at least double or triple the size of it!

How would you close tabs with touch interface? Trying to poke into that small [x] is just impossible and impractical.
Let’s say that you want to access some software that is running from your Windows system tray (for the new ones: that’s the little row of icons at the bottom right). Try tapping on that with your finger. There is no way you could do it without accidentally hitting two other icons.

Windows and similar systems are made to serve environment where keyboard and mouse are present, and that is OK, since they were thought of and developed to serve that purpose. iPad and iPhone was developed from zero to serve touch interface.

But besides these obvious interface problems that cannot be easily solved for Windows based tablets, there are more issues that users will just not like. First of all, if your tablet runs Windows, it will require constant maintenance. You will need to install antivirus software, run periodic hard drive defragmentation or at least registry clean up, and install all sorts of addons to keep the system alive. Whereas iPad OS requires basically no maintenance at all.
Furthermore, Windows based devices have boot up time. Even if you have put it into sleep mode instead of full shut down, it still requires some time to wake up. iPad – swipe unlock, and you are ready to go. In normal day to day use iPad is always on, so to speak.

And that is just the basics of operating system and primary logic behind it. If you look more into software you use in your normal day, you will see how Windows based touch devices are just not possible. Scrolling through that Start Menu with your finger? Outlook? Word? MSN messenger? Photoshop? Insane & impossible.

iPad's hardware, operating system and all applications are designed from scratch to be used through touch interface. Current competition just focuses to make hardware that is portable and has touch screen, completely ignoring software. What Microsoft and other should be doing is create competition starting from the operating system and usability logic, and the hardware part will easily come then.

MORE:
Check out this review of Slate PC from Stantum on Wired.

Could Google fail more?

Their latest creation Google Buzz is so wrong on so many points that is is just hilarious. Google tried to improve Twitter by adding more features, and failed so horribly that this fail will be retold by the generations to come. "Hey grandpa, please tell us again about the epic fail that was Google Buzz back when you were young."

1. Integrating Google Buzz into Gmail is conceptually pretty bad idea. If you are a hard core Gmail user - having Gmail (or Gmail interface) as your main email - you will have your inbox flooded during the normal work day. So why add more pressure on the user by making a FOLDER named Buzz which contains more to read? On the other hand, if you are not a Gmail user, you will most likely not have must to Buzz about, or will just not be interested in this. If Google made Buzz a stand-alone service that users could perceive as a separated software, Buzz would have better chance.

2. Google obviously failed to realize why Twitter is so good. Hint: it's the 140 character limit. Through Twitter information flows quickly. There are no old threads to which you can reply, they just quickly go into the oblivion of the past. Buzz tried to "improve" Twitter by not limiting post characters, and by having Comments on each thread. Comments just force users to constantly return to the past to check if maybe someone commented something that was said 2 days ago.

3. Massive amounts of text and different media are just impossible to translate into mobile devices. Look at this screenshot, this is the first Buzz that appeared in my Buzz-inbox:

You will notice the comments. Expanded, it looks like this:

Does Google really expect me to follow this amount of text being pushed to me every 5 minutes? I can only imagine how Buzz-inbox looks like for hardcore Gmail users. It must be like the Matrix - letters and numbers scrolling down on screen at the speed of light. Maybe after some use you do not see the text any more, you just see a redhead chick here, and a lolcat there embeded in all that code, pardon, text.

On the other hand, this is a screenshot of Tweetie, a supreme Twitter iPhone client. Buzz will absolutely NEVER achieve this simplicity of communication.

Can you imagine Buzz App that is simple to use and simple to read? Neither can I.

4. Two days after Buzz appeared, the hottest topic on the net was how to turn it off. How to block people, how to remove all posts, etc.

The Google engineers live in their little Ivory Tower totally separated from the world. They think that everyone is like them - a techno crazy people who can visually parse tons and tons of code, pardon; text. Starting with Wave, now continuing to Buzz, they are just showing us that they have completely lost all grips of reality, and real user needs. We need simplification of processes, aggregation of existing services, and order in chaos. Google is pushing the ball the other way, and the users say: "No you don't."

I am a long time Logitech fan. To put things in perspective, I used Logitech mice while they still had a ball in them, that was some 10 years ago, I believe. Over the time Logitech managed to always out-do themselves, and be on the very forefront of input technology.

Not to mention that their customer support is awesome. When I bitched about my mouse falling apart, they saw that on this blog, called Nivas office and offered to mail me new one ASAP. Amazing.

But what is really amazing is that Logitech really gets *it*. They really do, and they blew me away with their latest product. It is called Logitech TouchMouse, and it is not a hardware. It is an iPhone App that hooks to your computer via wireless network (and small Mouse Server software you need to download).

Then through your iPhone you can control mouse pointer and keyboard input. And it works like a charm, smooth and precise.

But what really shocked me (in a positive way) is the concept behind this. This free App just replaced my need for wireless input devices. Logitech wireless keyboard that people use to control computer from bed while watching a movie just became redundant, as well as many other devices that Logitech is selling.

Someone at Logitech actually had the balls to conclude the following:

Even if this means less sales for their main product line, they still released this software. What balls, eh?

Furthermore, this concept of iPhone controlling your computer could be taken to the next level. Take any driving game (Need for Speed, or whatever) - make it use iPhone as steering wheel input device. It's that simple. I bet you that in the next 6 months we will see games start using iPhone as input device, based on this proof of concept Logitech handed to us for free.

Apple will never, or at least not in the foreseeable future, enable Flash on iPad and iPhone.

So far, none of the internet theory-crafters did not manage to hit the nail on the has as to why does Apple hate Flash so much. People are talking about CPU/battery consumption, they are talking about Flash being too slow to run on iPhone, and all sorts of different technical reasons.

Technical reasons are the least of Apple's worry.

Let me put this simple: enabling Flash on iPad/iPhone would seriously harm App Store. That's right. Think about it - the majority of games and Apps can easily be replicated in Flash. OK, I must admit, games using 3D engine, and Apps using camera could not be replicated to Flash (at least to my humble knowledge), but the major volume of income for Appstore comes from retarded small fart-apps, and from simple easy to play games. Games like Bejeweled, Lexic, apps like Tweetie, TweetDeck and Things could all be available via Flash applications as well.

Not to mention that Flash could enable even better UX than iPhone native apps due to effects such as blurs that would enable motion-blurring of items that move in and out of the screen, perspective blur for items that are in the "distance", etc.

All that would remain then is to create a central marketplace and viable business model (flat rate Apps?) that would allow users to create account and leave credit card number and purchase Flash based Apps. Hell, why one, why not many! Competition is always good!

No, this would not kill Appstore outright because there are some things only native iPad/iPhone App can do, but it would be a huge chunk in it's revenue. Just check your iPhone, and see how many of Apps you have could be easily recreated in Flash, and see for your self what Flash would do to Apple.

Apple introduced iPad. The world is in shock. In shock of how much it sucks. It does not cure cancer on command, and it fails to live up to the silly expectations people had.

But, what people do, and that's wrong, is compare it to iPhone or Notebook. The iPad is none of that. It is new product targeted at specific market. That market is not you and me, since you are here reading this blog located on web developer company. iPad target are people who are casual users that use electronics and gadgets in a casual mode, focusing on one thing at a time - view little YouTube, read few pages of a book, check what's new on their favourite website, and just turn the damned thing off. iPad is an awesome thing if you were your father/mother. It's like an out-of-the-box computer that our parents can actually use!

Looking from that perspective, if you can downshift into this mindset - iPad is AWESOME. Of course, there are some things that it misses to make it supreme consumer toy (such as camera to take photos, true GPS) but remember iPhone - all that will come in second or third generation. Apple wants your cash too, they are not here just to make the world a better place.

For us, the powerusers that chill out from time to time, one thing is missing. This:

Give us ONE "window" to run native iPhone apps that floats above iPad. Just one. I do not ask for more. This way I could check Tweetie, or Things to-do list, or use the bloody calculator without the need to exit main app I am using. Just one!!!

But, I got some bad news with this as well, from the developers point of view.

iPad has a resolution of 1024x768. This resolution is here to stay, they will not increase it in second generation. The Apps developers will build in this year will fit this resolution, and as with iPhone, once Apps are massively developed for this resolution, it would just be bad to introduce bigger/different resolution.

And what that means for us, website developers? We are back to square one with our wishes for increased monitor resolutions. All of the developers were looking into Google Analytics for the past 3 years, and watching the 1024x768 resolution go down, as 1280 increased. We were just waiting for the point to start thinking bigger. And now, BAM on the head, we cannot any more. For the next 5 years, if iPad explodes into general population, all of our sites will have to be created to be optimized for 1024 resolution. Even if desktop monitors go to million by million, we will need to deploy our websites onto iPad.

Have a nice future, you silly web designers.

////
Nivas White

////
Worship

Or, if you have some troubles downloading, here are the direct links:
Nivas White
Worship

What has Apple done to all of you punks, eh? They didn't even properly announce their new product, yet entire world is naming and renaming products - slate.

For the sake of argument, let's pretend that the new product will in fact be called "iSlate" and that it will in fact be a tablet-kind of a easily transportable computer.

Entire internet is trying to guess how will it look like, and (almost) entire internet thinks it will be an oversized iPhone. Now listen up, you ignorant fools! Do you all have attention span of a goldfish in a bowl aquarium? Do you not remember how your last predictions ended up?

Rewind time few years back ... and we are here with the almighty iPod, and Apple announced iPhone. Everyone, thought iPhone will be a glorified version of iPod, just with an capability to call someone. There is even an archive of your ridiculous attempts, check it here at http://appleiphone.blogspot.com/.

What can you first notice in those concepts? They are all based on iPod (or are completely nonsense). And do you know why is it like so? It is because people in mass are not product designers. People, in general, cannot create NEW things, but can just recycle what they have seen and add on to it something that they think. If you could create NEW things out of thin air and your own imagination, you would probably be working for Apple or some other hard hitting techno company. But you cannot. So you think that iPhone will look like iPod on steroids.

And the same thing is now happening with iSlate. People, yes you, cannot create new things, so in lack of imagination everyone is taking iPhone as a relevant starting point, and just build up from there.
Let me tell you something really short: I will be bloody surprised, shocked and somewhat disgusted if iSlate turns out to be oversized iPhone. That would mean that Apple did not try hard enough to make new and original product, and has instead gone "The Porsche way". You know - every car looks the same since 1963, only a bit tweaked. The laziest designers in the world.

And there ends my theory on the looks of iSlate.

What is more important is what will iSlate do. What has become a norm, a MUST, is that the slate line of products from any company needs to be able to connect to the internet. If the slate is not connected, it is useless. The ergonomic nature of that shape prevents some normal work activity, slate is not laptop. There is no keyboard, and perpendicular to it - a screen. Rather, it is just one surface with onscreen keyboard. And that layout makes it basically impossible for anyone to do some serious work on it. You cannot type text easily, you cannot do a quick Photoshop action, you cannot create presentations, etc. The only thing you can easily do is what you now do with iPhone: use applications that have simple touch interfaces to do things that are in the cloud. Twitter, Facebook, read blogs, read news through their aplications, watch video, listen to music, play some games, but all that through, I repeat, simpe touch interface.

And for all that to happen, iSlate needs to be connected to the internet, and needs to do it on the move (not just wireless in your home/office)! Who needs iSlate in closed desktop environment - I have my own computer in such environment.

And this opens up a Pandora's Box of problems.

How will iSlate connect to the web on the move? You cannot just insert SIM card into it. And even if you could, would you want to? SIM card means that you could basically perform phone calls with it as well, and I seriously doubt that iSlate will be oversized iPhone. SIM card would mean one more thing: contracts with operators. Meaning iSlate would not be out in the open market, rather, it would be bound to operators. And that is bad. And let’s face it, iSlate without internet connection is only good to use as a plate holder for your lunch.

So what then?

One word: iPhone. The iSlate will be, I am 99% sure, heavily bound to iPhone. It will use Bluetooth, or Wireless, to connect to iPhone, and through it tether to the internet. Knowing Apple, this bond will be seriously tough. Like, superglue that NASA uses tough. That bond would also enable limitless options. For example, Apps for iSlate could be bought on the move via iPhone, and when you pair them up, iPhone could transfer it to iSlate. They could share movies and music. iPhone will act as a remote control for iSlate as well. Hell, they could even share battery power, why not? I could think of millions of other ways iPhone and iSlate could be connected, but I will leave that to Apple to figure out.

But this also means that iSlate will be in offer at mobile operators as well. You would have it in bundle with iPhone, subsidized.

And now tell me that does not make you all sparkly inside: iPhone, iSlate, good internet connection, subsidized price, let’s say: $500. Yes, there is a monthly charge, but monthly-schmontly.

I admit it. I do not see the purpose of Gowalla for me as a user. I have been using it for 3 weeks, and I just do not see what is the end game.

Just in case you have been living under the rock in the last months, Gowalla is new game-social-attentiondeficitdisorder internet thingie with an edge for locations. As you walk through the city, you can check-in into a location, like your favourite pub or restaurant. If that place is not yet Gowalled, you can easily add it right there, and neatly categorize it. The base platform for Gowalla is iPhone, preferably 3GS so Gowalla can pick up the fine GPS coordinates. The website is here just for the registration and some tweaking of location (for example, if iPhone missed your location).

With all this comes the game element of collecting items and pins. When you first create an account you get a few random digital items, like boots, pizza slice, toy robot. You can drop those items on locations, or swap them for items someone else dropped there. Basically, you can collect some digital items.

By doing some combo check-ins, you get pins like awards. I collected a couple of pins, I am "Wanderer" and "Explorer" and got some pins for creating 10 spots, and all that. That is neat.

However
I am not sure what the end game benefit for me as a user is. Why would I use Gowalla? Twitter has uses - it keeps me informed about stuff happening in my city, in my country, in the world, and on the internet. Facebook also has uses, there is a benefit for me as a user in it. But I just do not see benefit for me as a user in Gowalla.

First of all, it requires work from my side, but let's say we got that covered. I, as well as many of my friends, are early adopters, but more than that, we are willing to help for a good cause. It is not a problem for me to walk around my usual routes and just mark all the locations so that later generations of users can see them.

But what after that?

Checking into locations becomes just a boring task that I need to do, with no real benefit for me. I check in Nivas every day. I check in restaurants and apparel store. So what? I sometimes find digital items there. So?

One good thing that I have managed to find in Gowalla is that it could force me to visit some locations that maybe I would not visit on my own. But walking around the city just to get some digital pins; I do not see it happening.

The more I use Gowalla, the more I fail the see the point in it. Can you enlighten me? Tell me why is it good?

Apparently this is a real AD running now on TV channels in Sweden.

I've had some spare time before bedtime to put into digital form something what I discussed with the guys at the office - inconsistent cross browser behavior of default tooltip functionality.

First, a little introduction to the subject of tooltips:

The tooltip is a common graphical user interface element. It is used in conjunction with a cursor, usually a mouse pointer. The user hovers the cursor over an item, without clicking it, and a tooltip may appear — a small "hover box" with information about the item being hovered over. (Wikipedia)

In your regular computer usage, you see tooltips every day (all day) and chances are that you don't even notice them anymore. All browsers display the title attribute of an HTML element as a tooltip when a user hovers the mouse cursor over that element. Some browsers will also display the alt attribute of an image as a tooltip in the same manner (if a title attribute is also specified, it will override the alt attribute for tooltip content).

On the wide spaces of world wide web you can also find custom generated tooltips (eg. in javascript or Flash or just by absolutely positioning of elements via css), but they are not the subject of this post. I did my fair share of tooltips in different Flash projects I was working on, and each time we did a new tooltip type, we tried to make tooltips an integral part of visual part of design having in mind usability.

From user stand point - I never paid too much attention to browser tooltips. Probably because I got used to them. If website I am visiting is done well, if I hover something (probably an image) - a default browser tooltip will appear over that element. That usual and expected behavior was enough for me to put browser tooltips somewhere in back of mi mind. But, recently something about tooltips started to bother me and I couldn't pinpoint it.

Just around the time when we were working on release of Globus portal, I finally did figure out what was wrong with tooltips - tooltips in Firefox to be exact.

Firefox (tested on 3.5.5) has a nasty bug which causes hovered element to fire up onmouseout event when you rollover a default browser tooltip which that element invoked. When you rollout of the tooltip (because tooltip disappears), the browser element fires onmouseover event again, and that can cause some really nasty behavior.

Firefox 3 tooltip bug

(i've recorded this behaviour. you'll need flash player to see the video. if you can't - try MOV or AVI file.

On Globus that bug caused so much problem in elements which change layout when you hover them - that we had to remove title tags completely. And that from SEO standpoint is a BIG inconvenience. I've tested tooltips in all browsers, and AFAIK only Firefox 3.5 (Win) tooltips are "working" that way. I've submitted this bug to Bugzilla so will see what they'll say about it.

While doing tests in browsers I had around (Firefox, Safari, Chrome and IE8), I've noticed another inconvenience. Not a single browser did not displaying the tooltip the same way.

I've put up a little html demo for you to test by your self (ignore my css 'skills'). The 'demo' contains one div with image inside it with a link. If you hover the image, the link's title will show up in a default browser tooltip. Take notice how tooltip:

1. appears when you roll over element
2. disappears when you roll out
3. behaves when you move around element
4. behaves when you try to rollover the tooltip it self

You will notice that not a single respected browser currently available on Windows is not displaying tooltip the same way.

Chrome 3 toolip
- lazy (shows and dissapears with an delay), you can rollover it with your mouse without any side effects. The fact that you can rollover tooltip in combination with rather long hide delay can be inconvenience.

(MOV | AVI)

Internet Explorer 8 toolip
- pretty standard windows based tooltip behaviour. if you hover a tooltip - it will disappear which I think it's best behavior.
- has a nasty habbit of blinking two times when you hover an element. it doesn't produce other nasty effects to dom events

(MOV | AVI)

Safari 4 toolip
- has a nasty habit of disappearing and reappearing while you are still hovering the element. it doesn't produce other nasty effects to dom events

(MOV | AVI)

I haven't tested Opera on purpose. It's market share is just too low.

I have no idea why not a single web browser doesn't have tooltip behavior configuration setting like follow mouse, delay in ms, different show/hide effects etc. I think that would be cool.

Feedback is welcome!

Last year, precisely - November 2008, I wrote about traffic lights with progress bars that would visually signalize how much time there is until the switch from green to red (or vice versa).

Recently, an idea about progress bar traffic light got a Red Dot design award for safety and ecology. You can read about it here:

• Red Dot official site
• Relogik - designer's website

I am quite willing to accept the fact that more than one person can think of an idea at the same time in the world, after all, there is over 6 billion of us chillin' on this planet.

I am also quite willing to accept the fact that on Relogik site, only the traffic light concept has a little disclaimer under Project info saying: "Date:Apr, 2009 (initial sketch: 2006)", clearly stating, for just that one project, that they thought of this at 2006. All other design ideas are, I guess, an instant thoughts that get thought of, concepted, visualized and created in the same day and do not need further disclaimers. But I digress.

What I absolutely cannot accept is the fact that such traffic light is NEITHER SAFE OR ECOLOGICAL.

Let me elaborate on Ecology part, it is simpler:

The project proposes that people should turn off their car engines when they see there is a lot to wait at the red light. I call bullshit. First of all, turning off your engine just to restart it again after 30 seconds is not that much of a save. Most modern engines are very ecological when idling. Googling just a little on this subject you can get a good read. I recomend this article on Slate about turning engine off.

But what is probably the biggest point why NOT to turn the engine off is the fact that a car with engine off does not have power steering and power breaking and on most cars - airbags will not deploy. Let me repeat that for you: if you get hit by a truck with your engine turned off, your airbags will most likely NOT deploy. You will not be able to steer, and your breaking power will be minimal. This is why in most countries turning your engine off on public roads is ILLEGAL. So, thanks, I will just keep my engine running.

Also, the wear and tear of your car's starting system and battery will in the end produce more carbon output than if you just keep the engine running. If you have to replace your battery sooner than regular - you have just polluted the world A LOT.

Second point, the Safety.

By showing timer, this concept gives drivers an ability to predict and speculate how fast they can go. Imagine this scenario; you turn around the corner onto the main street, and 50 meters in front of you is a red light with progress bar almost empty (meaning it will be green soon). What do you do? You speed up knowing that the red light will go off soon and that most likely you will pass that intersection at green. The words "most likely" are the catch. Because you could as well misjudge the timing and distance and cause crash.

The more you give to the drivers to speculate and calculate the more accidents there are on the streets. As simple as that.

On the other hand, the traffic lights already have timer, it is called: yellow light. It acts as a progress bar - it tells you that pretty soon the red will turn to green. And, if you are an experienced driver, you know that most intersection related crashes are directly linked to the yellow light speeding cars (be it yellow going to green, or yellow going to red). This is a clear indicator that even a simple progress bar, represented by yellow light, is obviously problematic. Giving more flexibility in misjudging time would just cause more accidents.

Furthermore, the signalization in modern cities is not done by "stupid" fixed-time traffic lights, but by smart traffic light systems that change the timings according to traffic load. The system can determine that the traffic load is low and can instantly switch to green light - rendering the timer useless.

Institute of Transportation Engineers
If anyone had any doubts, there are institutes all over the world that devote their full time on research of public signalization. It's not like someone invented traffic lights back-in-the-day and now noone is looking further into development of signalization. There are people who work on this 24/7 and if they did not conclude that progress bar traffic light is good, I believe that stands for something.

Read more:

• Information Aesthetics (read the comments)
• Alternative traffic light (read the comments)
• Institute of Transportation Engineers
• Slate - turning engine off

Great news, great news indeed. Couple of months ago, I started an open initiative to finally add support to MySQL for proper ordering using Croatian alphabet. We tried doing it on our own, but we needed to rewrite MySQL's Unicode Collation Algorithm, and for that we really needed help from MySQL development team. How we managed to get it? Using good old "Balkan way" - the schnapps aka. rakija black vodka.

My mate who was working with me on our initial implementation - Ante 'Ivoks' Karamatić (Chief executive at Init) got drunk with Kurt von Finck (Chief Community and Communications Officer for Monty Program Ab) in Dallas last week, who passed a good word to Michael ("Monty") Widenius (MySQL's original author and co-founder of MySQL AB) to listen our cries for help. Monty convinced Alexander Barkov (Lead software developer at Sun Microsystems working on MySQL) to give us little help on whole Croatian ordering issue. As a result, utf8_croatian_ci and ucs2_croatian_ci collations were created and added to MySQL 6.

After a pleasant chat with Monty and Bar, they were good enough to help us with a MySQL 5.1 patch which implements full Croatian ordering in utf8_croatian_ci and ucs2_croatian_ci collations. Woohoo!

But the bad news is that it will take fair amount of time before MySQL-5.6 (or 6.0 for that matter) will go GA, so one have to wait before it will be possible to download a production version of MySQL with "real" Croatian support.

If you really need Croatian support, you can try patching MySQL server as we did.

More details about the patch can be found here:

• Bar's eplanation: http://www.collation-charts.org/articles/croatian.htm
• Bar's patch for MySQL-5.1: http://www.collation-charts.org/articles/utf8_croatian_ci.diff

Since Alexander Barkov was so kind and provided a patch for MySQL 5.1, Ante created packages for Ubuntu. He also slightly (needs further testing) modified that patch so it works with MySQL 5.0. If you need this feature, go add this PPA to your sources.list: https://edge.launchpad.net/~ivoks/+archive/mysql-hr/.

After you apply the patch, you can try it out using my test database dump. If everything went ok "use croatian; SET NAMES 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_croatian_ci'; select rijec from test_croatian order by rijec;", should produce output like this (switch browser view to utf8).

Any feedback from the Croatian MySQL community is greatly welcomed. Please write your comments to <Alexander.Barkov[at]Sun.COM>. Thanks!

Proof of conecpet:

mysql> select version();
+-----------------+
| version()       |
+-----------------+
| 5.0.51a-hr1-log |
+-----------------+
mysql> use croatian; SET NAMES 'utf8' COLLATE 'utf8_croatian_ci'; select rijec from test_croatian order by rijec;
+--------------+
|  rijec       |
+--------------+
| Aboriđin     |
| Aboriđini    |
| Ante         |
| Branimir     |
| Cipela       |
| Čazma        |
| Ćevapčići    |
| Džak         |
| džak         |
| Džamija      |
| džamija      |
| Đak          |
| đak          |
| Đevđelija    |
| Inat         |
| Init         |
| Inozemstvo   |
| Interes      |
| Injekcija    |
| Ipsilon      |
| Kutina       |
| Livno        |
| Lovor        |
| Ljubav       |
| Ljubljana    |
| Neven        |
| Nivas        |
| Nosorog      |
| Njivice      |
| Onomatopeja  |
| Šišmiš       |
| Zagreb       |
| Žaba         |
+--------------+

For the heretics that never saw this game, here is a nice demonstration:

During the past 2 months I have tried quite a lot of iPhone games claiming to be "the best" or "really must have" and whatnot. I can tell you one thing with confidence: 99% of them turn to rubbish after just 2 minutes of gameplay.

Of them all, EDGE, turned to be the one game that shines on all points. Hell, it invents new points and shines on them too. And laughs in the face in all other iPhone games. Let me elaborate:

1: The idea
Whereas most of iPhone games are just clones of normal PC/Console games shrunk down and made ugly due to lack of true processing power, Edge goes original. Developers, Mobigame, thought of the limitations of hardware and set that as their boundary: make something that is original AND can smoothly run on all iPhone platforms. So they made an isometric world that consists of low polygon objects - cubes, added some life to it and a twist (being able to "levitate" the main cube on it's edge).

2: The feeling
What Mobigame really understands is psychology of games for iPhone. You see, the demographic of people that use iPhone the most today can be summarized into one sentence: the geeks that played games on Commodore 64 and Amiga. The people who were 15 years of age back then are now about 30ish, have cool jobs (see, all that geekines paid of - screw you captain of the football team) and run around sporting their iPhones. Edge is the perfect example of a game that was made for that demographic. It has a feeling like you are still playing Amiga game, only much smoother and fancier. It is a true future retro.

3: The graphics
There are no fancy 3D models, no shiny objects, no pixel pushed characters. Just smooth straight surfaces shaded in perfect gradients. Visually minimalistic, yet still this game provides orgasmic eye stimulation beyond measure.

4: Learning curve and skill factor
Where most iPhone games fail is learning curve. Take for example Aera, a 2.5D aeroplane game. I, a gamer, was able to complete level 2 only after about 15 minutes of play, and I decided to delete the game on level 3. It is just insane. Edge - smooth as a 20 year old whiskey. It drags you in. And then, once you comprehend how the game functions, it takes some time for you to really master it. The skill is a factor in this game, unlike most other games that once you "get" them - that's it, you can finish them by just pressing the A button fast enough.

5: Time investment
There are some great games out there. Real Racing comes to mind. However, the developers sometime go too far and make you invest at least 45 minutes per session in order to achieve anything! People do not have that amount of time! I bought Real Racing, it is impressive, and I just do not play it. I do not have a chunk of 2 hours on my hands in order to learn a track and then race it a few times in order to finish first. I guess people forget that iPhone is a telephone as well, and if someone calls you while you are racing and about to finish FIRST THE GAME JUST SHUTS DOWN AND WWHAAAAAAGGRRRAAAAAA PAIN AND SUFFERING ......

Edge session can last 5 minutes, and can be fun even after an hour of playing.

6: Re-playability
This, perhaps, is the single point where almost all iPhone games fail. Once you complete them, there is just no reason to try again. Edge provides full set of things to do on each level in order to out-do yourself and the rest of people playing it - how fast can you finish the level, can you find all the hidden pixels to collect, and keeping the death count as low as possible. Finishing fast, while collecting all the pixels and not plummeting to death can be REALLY challenging.

7: Fine touches
On one level you become a head of a robot that walks. On some levels you control by moving left/right switches that operate legs of a quad-walker. Crazy themes that go through the levels are just insane. Level design is awesome. The music is custom made to fit the retro feeling of game, yet is modern enough to listen as a regular music. Actually, Mobigame gives soundtrack as a free download. It's like ... a cherry on top of a supreme ice-cream!

Go get it now, you can thank me later.

Composed and performed by Scott Ward from with.us expirienced by all of us.

Among all the huge monsters that we have been building lately, there was time to create one visual identity and super small site.

Honey Moon ( Medeni Mjesec ) is all about organizing honey moon trips. Apparently, they are capable of full service organization no matter where does the couple wish to go, or if they have no idea where to go - Medeni Mjesec will conjure and think up of a supreme location suited just for them.

Sounds like fun. Now, all you need is a wife. *wink* *wink*

GPS satellites orbiting the Earth

Few days ago Google announced their free turn-by-turn GPS. The internet went crazy, especially the geeks. Getting out from the safety of your home, and all the comforts of the nearby kitchen, now that you have free turn-by-turn Google's GPS was never easier!

Following that news, Garmin's stock fell by 20%. Crazy!

Wham, let the stock price hit the floor

No, what's crazy is how the market reacts without thinking. The stock price is based on a lot of factors, but in this case the major factor is people's willingness to continue to buy Garmin's products when Google gives similar product for free (well, similar effect). And this just proves how people in general, en masse, are not very smart.

What you need to know is that Google's GPS relies on your connection to the internet in order to download maps and data. On the hardware side, yea, the software will use your device's GPS antenna and GPS constellation to detect it's location, but that location is meaningless until you see it on a map. And that data will come down via internet. On the other side is Garmin, who has maps stored inside the device, and Garmin does not rely on the internet. All the data is physically stored inside the device. This has it's drawbacks, main one being that you need to actually buy detailed maps in order to load them into device.

But think about this for a second. Better yet, check this map:

The areas marked blue on this map, so called - sea, is where there is no mobile internet coverage. I will save you the Wiki, that's 70.8%. Basically, you can forget Google's GPS there.

Then, let's get real for a moment here, and admit to ourselves: the availability of sufficiently fast mobile internet is limited to the city areas. Even inside cities (at least here in Zagreb) the 3G coverage is so-so. Even if "ordinary" mobile internet speed was sufficient to use Google's free GPS, that speed will only be sufficient to download data at walking speeds. If you are driving in your car on the highway, the combination of your speed plus lack of real broadband will lead to serious problems. Google's software will say "TURN LEFT NOW" and you will already be in the next city, not the one you wanted to go to.

And I do not see this changing in the nearby future. I just cannot imagine telecoms saying: "Yea, it is a great idea for us to invest millions of dollars in hardware just so you could have wireless broadband internet in the middle of the Amazonian forest."

Internet based GPS cannot be used in cars, cannot be used on ships and aeroplanes. It can hardly be used in the nature, trekking, biking, etc. It can be used while you walk from your door to the pub around the corner. This could be useful when you get drunk - it could probably yell at you and navigate you back home.

From the very release of iPhone I was seriously against it. From the pesky idea that everything is locked to Apple (let's get real, most of the people do not have skill or confidence to Jailbreak it), over the "OMG I do not want to install iTunes", to the software keyboard which lacks feeling of clicking it.

A lot of people still think this way, and reject the very idea of having iPhone or iPhone-like device.

However, the main reason behind such reasoning is the idea that has embedded in our heads over the years of using normal, call it "stupid"-phone. We are used to the pattern of using our mobile phones to make calls and send SMS. If you love charts, here is one:

You see, when Apple released iPhone, people were furious about "how will we make phone calls, browsing the Contacts is hard, sending SMS is super-hard with no keyboard, ...". And yes, to this day, I still agree with this. It is pretty hard to send SMS while you are walking, practically impossible. It is pretty hard to find someone in the Contacts (mainly because search filed is not fixed at the top, rather you have to scroll up to get to it), and it takes ages from the moment you decide to call someone to the actual call if that person is not in your Recent calls list.

However, iPhone, and smartphones in general, are not mobile phones. They are computers that let you do whatever you want (more or less, let's not argue on this one) and making calls is just a small fraction of possibilities they offer. With that in mind, I will gladly send that 2 hard SMSes daily, and at the same time have super-convenient access to Facebook, Twitter, email and other communication services.

Continuing this rant, there was a nice post about iPhone not winning the game in the long run mainly because platforms that are coming in (Android and Maemo for example) will be more open to developers and to people using them.

I - STRONGLY - DISAGREE

If this all was happening 10 - 20 years ago, then yes, I would agree. The metagame was different then. However, as we as civilization make progress, we are looking more and more into DESIGNED objects and not MASS PRODUCED objects. The designers (all sorts of designers, industrial, digital, interface, ...) have enough knowledge today to produce really neat, almost perfect products and objects. The failures on the market will, soon, cease to exist. Remember Nokia's N-Gage? Sure you do. It was fail of epic proportions. Mistakes like that are very likely never going to happen again in any field any more. All new products are tested, designed, tested again, honed to perfection, prototyped, redesigned, and then launched out.

The people do not want to choose from 20 bad devices any more. People want ONE GOOD DEVICE.

People do not want to download 300 free software that is hard to use and poorly designed. People want to pay for ONE GOOD SOFTWARE.

Open type of thinking for Android means one thing: thousands, ney, MILLIONS of applications and phones that suck. On the other hand, Apple will have to at least look once at the Application before it hits the App store. I am not saying App store is full of diamonds and pearls, but at least everything there has been looked at before it went to the open world.

Not to go into territory of evil applications that do some malicious things while you are not looking. Deleting your contacts, using your phone as an SMS bomber device, and many other fun things that will happen on open platforms.

Being able to control Applications and it's hardware, Apple controls your user experience of iPhone. And they are doing it well. Do you think that multitasking (e.g. running Apps in the background) is disabled on iPhone because Apple programmers suck? No, it is disabled on purpose to give each application full processing power. This means that your experience with iPhone will always be the same - flawless. Whereas if you run apps in the background on your "other" smart-phone, you will have to think what to close in order to play that 3D game, etc ...

I firmly believe that controlling the User Experience - and that experience being REALLY good - will outmatch open type of unattended approach. Design will outmatch mass production. And time here is on the Apple's side - the further we progress, the more designed objects we will want.

Oh Lord.

Wolfram Alpha, that cool project noone uses for this reason or that, released iPhone App. The catch? It costs $49.99. Yes, that is fifty of your hard earned US dollars right down the drain because Wolfram Alpha can be accessed via iPhone's Safari browser, and it works perfectly. For $0 (not counting data transfer fees, of course).

The App could be a little bit more convenient than using WA through small browser, but still ... 50 bucks?

Cnet has something to say about that as well.

Also, funny thing, that this post is right above my last post that is criticizing Apps that do not perform better than their website versions. Gee...

Today I have deleted 2 very good iPhone Applications and replaced them with Homescreen shortcuts to mobile, iPhone optimized, versions of those sites. It's simple - web versions are just better! First one is New York Times, second is Facebook.

(i just hope Facebook Developers figure out they can use iPhone favicon =)

New York Times

The App just takes too much time to load and to process data. They have even added the X button in case you do not have 5 minutes to sit and stare into progress bar even when you are downloading via Wi-Fi broadband.

On top of that, pretty big chunk of screen real-estate is taken up by unnecessary interface elements, and by permanently positioned banner. I know that marketing is important, but permanent banner is not the best solution. There are vertical 190 pixels of interface and vertical 270 pixels of actual useful data (40% wasted vs. 60% useful) - not good.

As a total contrast to that, mobile version of NYT ( mobile.nytimes.com ) website loads super fast, banners scroll away, and there is no interface to speak of. For reading news - a bliss!

Facebook

I will not go into details with this one. The App is bloated, feels heavy and is buggy. iPhone optimized website was recently updated and is just awesome. It is blazing bast, feels much much lighter and is actually easier to use than App.

Having mobile website and application at the same time is just too much competition inside the same house, and so far what I have seen, in that duel - website always wins! Mobile website is housed inside Safari, and as such allows for easy switching between sites, and links that you might have clicked on those sites. Furthermore, anyone can access your mobile website, whereas iTunes account is needed even if you want to download a free App.

One more really good thing, looking from developers aspect, is that you can change your website any time you feel like it, and skip all the drama with submitting your application to Apple and wait till it gets approved.

At MAX 2009 in Los Angeles, Adobe announced release of #3 most wanted iPhone feature - Flash on iPhone. Well, not full, FULL support of course. They will not be adding Flash support in Safari mobile browser if that's what you were hoping. Instead they will add support to announced Flash CS5 beta for conversion of Flash 10 AS3 to standalone iPhone apps.

Flash grew up to be a real monster in last few years and that's probably the only real reason why Apple did not put it in iPhone so far. Flash Lite just doesn't fit into profile of multimedia web experience and full blown desktop Flash version was just too much to fit into iPhone poor underclocked 412 MHz CPU. Latest 3GS iPhone has 833 MHz CPU underclocked to 600 MHz, and I can't help to wonder, is this 188 Mhz change in performance really enough for Flash to run remotely smooth?

Adobe said Flash CS5 public beta should by out by the end of 2009, so we all just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, check out this crazy Flash on iPhone Myth Busters inspired video from MAX: