You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June, 2007.
Nice short review and follow up on various Rails hosts. Conclusion: try Site5.
That got your attention, didn’t it 
See here: John Gruber reports that Apple are giving away a free iPhone to all full-time employees who have been with the company for more than a year. Nice touch of generosity; cynics (and maybe realists) might say that it’s a publicity stunt – or a clever way to get close to your user base – but there’s some good karma in the gesture nevertheless.
Update: turns out it’s all full-time employees, and any part-timers who’ve been there for more than a year. See the very end of this page.
It’s interesting to note that Steve Jobs seems to see the iPhone in a similar role to the original Macs: hence, perhaps, the whole ‘iPhone redefines the mobile phone’ thing. What’ll be interesting when they come out is to ask the users whether in their opinion this is true. I’m guessing the answer will largely be yes, although arguably the leap from ordinary phone to iPhone isn’t as great as the leap from pre-GUI to GUI computing (put aside the full history of GUI for a moment, and assume that the Mac was the first time that the public at large had access to a GUI).
I use Google Maps all the time at work (I work with property databases so knowing where things are tends to be important…). I love the web interface – it’s simpler and less cluttered than Microsoft’s Live Maps. But I’m not sure how much I’d use this on my mobile. Upon downloading Google Maps Mobile (GMM) and firing it up to test, my thoughts were pretty much as follows:
- Hey, this is cool.
- I can see my house!
- It’s taking a while to load…
- But hey, it’s still pretty nice.
- I wonder what people would use this for? Walking routes? Traffic? Driving?
- I bet these satellite images are eating up my bandwidth.
- I’d probably only use this for getting driving directions. If I wanted driving directions, I’d be in my car. If I was in my car, I’d use my atlas.
That was when I turned it off 
But ok, cynicism aside: it’s a nice little app – for my aging Nokia 6680 anyway! I especially like the way I could visit the website and be presented with a download link tailored to the model of my mobile phone. That’s mush easier than browsing through a long, long list – which is what I did last time I downloaded something for my mobile phone. It’s also particularly useful for me because I often forget what model my mobile phone is, and the model number’s not written anywhere on the thing!
The GMM interface is a little different to the standard Nokia interface, but I guess that could be a product of the process of developing the little app for so many different platforms. Or, more likely, it’s an intentional move designed to leave more space for the maps (on my Nokia, the GMM app’s ‘buttons’ are small and tucked away at the bottom corners of the screen, leaving more space for viewing the actual maps). Anyway, given that there’s a lot of information to be presented in a small space, this is a good thing. And Google have actually done a really good job of tweaking the maps data so that the screen isn’t jammed full of place names and roads. It’s nice. If I ever use it, I think I’ll enjoy it.
Daily Exhaust: Why There’s An iPhone Craze (via Daring Fireball):
This is real simple and doesn’t require a long-winded explanation. The iPhone is the floating car we imagined we’d be drivin in the future.
This is funny. My brother and I agree that a lot of modern-day, just-around-the-corner innovations will turn out to be like the flying cars that we’ve been promised since we were six, ie, a fantasy. Hence “flying cars” becomes our label for anything that’s a) hyped up beyond reasonable expectation and b) dogged by unrealistic predictions of future importance.
Nice to see something finally living up to the hype.
While I’m on the topic….
It’s pretty new, but I’m sure other people have seen and commented on it by now. Still, that’s not going to stop me calling ‘bandwagon’ on this.
And “Dude, I run the most popular Windows site on the planet. Have you read it?”… it’s just not the same, is it…?
Frigtard.
I love Paul Thurrott. Less than a minute on his site and I find these gems:
The onscreen keyboard could prove to be iPhone’s Achilles Heel.
This is a key (ahem) area where Apple has completely misread the market, and the company is only making it worse by pretending that it has invented a new market, implying that the old rules simply do not apply anymore. Hogwash.
Well yes, of course. I mean, it’s not as thought they’ll have done any research, or anything like that now, is it? Or maybe tested the prototypes on real human beings. Nah. No chance.
Fake Steve: “Holy crap. Goatberg is preparing a negative review”
This is what our PR spies are picking up on anyway, based on their supposedly casual chats with Walt. He’s being cryptic and evasive, as usual, but from reading between the lines they sense there’s a hatchet job coming. Partly it’s just that Goatberg wants to redeem himself and regain some semblance of integrity by finally saying something negative about an Apple product. Where better to do this than on the most overhyped product in world history?
Indeed. This last line made me laugh. I wonder if Real Steve has this kind of ‘objective’ perspective on his products…?
Is this the worst designed website in the world…?
There’s plenty of fuss about the Apple iPhone (not released in the UK for, oh…a while yet).What strikes me is that the thing hasn’t even been released yet – not even as a preview model to selected parties, as far as I know. It’s a little strange (or desperate) for journalists to be dissecting something that, as yet, they know very little about. I mean, there seems to be plenty of people out there who are willing to tell us all about just how bad it’s features are, without actually having, well…actually…used one.
Excellent choice of custom designed t-shirts: site members design, community votes, winning designs get printed on fabric and worn. Nice idea.
