My deliverable from this weekend’s gnowsis vs Berlin hack session: D2RQ Adapter for gnowsis.
Off for dinner with my parents.
Since early April, I’m working as a student intern for the Semantic Web group at HP Labs Bristol. I’m mostly working on D2RQ. There’s plenty to write about, but I don’t have proper internet access at my new home yet and don’t want to blog on company time. That’s why this short “I’m still alive and having fun†will have to suffice for now.
I’m back in Berlin for the weekend, taking a break from work and the english language (at least the spoken variety, heh), but not from semwebby things. More on that later, when Leo Sauermann, who is sitting beside me right now, has finished blogging the day.
New on the support page for Storymill/Tidepool:
<wah> Why Do I have to create an account???
On Storymill, we create your own unique web space for your photos and your tags in Tidepool. It’s a required web thing. Accounts help to build communities of users, and to allow you to share to friends and vice versa. We do not ever give out/sell your personal information.
Well, I imagine this is in response to my recent rant about the Tidepool download process. The question is a pretty good summary of my post, anyway. The answer, however, is not quite what I had hoped for, so here’s part 2 of my armchair usability critique of the Tidepool download process.
Tidepool (the photo tagging/management app) is tightly integrated with Storymill (the photo sharing service). You have to sign up for Storymill before you can even download Tidepool. That’s OK, but it’s unusual. There are few applications with such a policy. It’s probably not what users expect, and worth explaining on the site.
When you click the Tidepool download link, then you’ve probably seen the Storymill homepage, the Tidepool homepage, and the Tidepool features page on your way. None of these pages explain the relationship between the two entities, or tell that you must have Storymill to download Tidepool. This is a problem.
The download link doesn’t lead to a download (as the name suggests), but to a login form. This violates users’ expectation, which always is a no-no.
What I would have loved to experience: A straightforward, no-fuss download. Playing around with the app a bit. Stumbling across the “Publish your photos to the web” menu option. Clicking it. Creating a Storymill account from within the app.
Or, alternatively: Clicking the download link. Arriving at a registration form (not a login form) that explains: “You need a Storymill account to use Tidepool. Sign up here! It’s free.” or something to that effect. The registration form should ask me for an absolute minimum of information (username, email, password). Asking me for my full name there is a non-starter. No optional fields either. I can set these later on my profile page. Flickr does this very well.
I will stop now and sign up and download the damned thing and start playing with it.
peculiarmethod says:
here’s my question.. can you decrypt this?
<td padding=”5px”>I’m<td>
Segway Ninja answers:
You should be in a padded cell, but someone forgot to close it.
This is a rant.
Originally, it should have been a short review of Tidepool, Immuexa’s new photo organizing and sharing app. Timothy Falconer wants us to spread the word, and of course I’m curious about the first semwebby application that is pitched to the proverbial computer user’s mom.
But the review didn’t happen. Why?
Well, here are some hints to the Immuexa people.
I feel bad about slamming Immuexa like this. But I don’t understand why companies still let people jump through so many confusing hoops before letting them have a look at their products.
Merlin Mann has more hints on how to be a product he loves (and reviews). This should be basic stuff!
To end this post on a positive note, here’s a link to the nice Flash demo of Tidepool. Yes, it really makes me want to play with the product.
Update: Jon Kern from Immuexa has kindly answered in the comments. My followup.
David Weinberger quotes Clay Shirky who quotes Marko Ahtisaari:
Mobile phones are the first things since keys that everyone carries.
This is a profound realization. Because it changes what it means to be a human. This doesn’t happen everyday.
Humans used to be those creatures that can eat, drink, sleep, talk, walk around, perceive the world through a number of perceptory organs, use their brains, and manipulate objects with their hands. Now, humans can do all that plus instantly talk to any other human they know (well, almost). That’s as if fish were suddenly to grow legs. Or, for that matter, as if pigs could fly.
Why is this such a big deal? Because when you reason about humans or group behaviour or society, you can take this new ability for granted. People can instantly contact each other. This changes some things, and provides a nice frame for thinking about what to expect in the future. Devices will transform until they almost feel and behave like a part of your body – natural, unobstrusive, effective. Some social rules and norms and behaviours will change. Less tolerance for suprises (“You could have told me!”). Less scheduling and planning, more flexibility in day-to-day routine. Faster decision-making. Less need for punctuality. More need for quick short-range transportation.
This also gives a hint about where the telcos should be heading. Making and receiving calls should require an absolute minimum of fuzz. Presence indication is needed (“work mode”, “home/friends mode”, “private mode” etc.). Location-awareness of devices is very pervasive. On the other hand, I don’t see how a wider pipe (UMTS) or crappy cameras would add value to that new “human capability”. But then again, mobile video would be hot …
It will take a generation or so for this to fully develop. Until folks who grow up with that new, extended conception of human capabilities shape society.
Interesting times!
Glen Smith says nice things about StatCVS:
It certainly passes the “Just Works” test – I was up and running in under 5 minutes – and the graphs it produces are really quite cool.
I love stuff that “Just Works” and try hard to give my apps this quality. This is not always easy with Java apps and classpath hell.
Glen, regarding your complaint that you can’t limit the date range of the report: You actually can do this, not in StatCVS itself but by limiting the range of the CVS log.
This is also a good place to link to Tom Copeland’s great article on StatCVS at developerWorks, which I failed to mention here when it was published. Tom maintains StatCVS reports for hundreds of projects over at RubyForge.
Dank Digitalfotografie muss man nach dem Urlaub nicht mehr auf die Entwicklung warten und billiger ist es auch, aber dafür wollen dann hunderte überwiegend unscharfe oder langweilige Fotos durchgesehen werden. Zwei Wochen später sind dann drei Dutzend behaltenswerte Schnappschüsse übrig geblieben.
Der Urlaub war sehr willkommen – drei Tage Frühlingswetter, fremde Stadt, alte Steine, spektakuläre Ausblicke, und überhaupt mal was anderes als PXML, HPQ, NG4J, TriQL.P und was mich sonst dieser Tage so umtreibt.
