• Read the profile of your user (photo, nickname, real name, age, sex, location, work and education history, and interests),
• Read your user’s list of friends/connections,
• Read/Write your user’s status message,
• Read your user’s list of Updates (i.e. their activities from Yahoo! and the rest of the Web),
• Write your user’s activities from inside your app into her Updates stream,
• Query, filter, and join any data from Yahoo! and other Web services via YQL, and
• Broker your user’s permission to access this information using OAuth.

What does all this mean? It’s simple. An app using this SDK can pull in my Yahoo! profile information, plot me and my friends on a map (grabbing the locations stored in our profiles), compare our listening preferences (grabbing our favorite music preferences), and broadcast my activity (i.e. “Micah just posted a new high score of 18,478 in Bejeweled 2“) which, in turn, drives my friends (and more) to your app.

You can learn more at YDN (as well as find all the documentation).

And, if you build anything interesting using the code, please let me know… we’re always interested in showcasing great developer-built solutions (using Yahoo! technology) on the YDN blog. Even better, come out and join in at the iPhone Dev Camp Yahoo! is hosting July 31 – August 2, 2009.

In the talk, I spoke about what it meant to be “Open.” The word “Open” is pretty packed with meaning, and I rarely find two folks who agree on its definition. For instance, a colleague of mine raised hackles when he saw the term “Open” applied to BOSS, Yahoo!’s open search engine service because there was a for-pay tier of service (despite it allowing search functionality inside of other’s products, largely free). In his mind, “open” was associated with “free,” whereas for me, it was associated with flexibility and utility outside of its original location (i.e. inside Yahoo! Search).

Because of this, and many other similar conversations over the past 4 years, I wanted to provide a framework for how one can assess a product or platform’s “open-ness.” Below are the 13 facets of openness that I’ve been cataloging as a means to better describe this term. (They range on a scale starting on the technology side and ending on the side of the user’s experience.)

1. Open Source
   Free to use, decentralized, and (generally) highly reliable, this software movement seems to drive most folks’ definition of “open.”

2. Open Infrastructure
   Emerging as a new kind of openness, “cloud computing” has opened a pay-as-you-go, only-what-you-need approach to technology.

3. Open Architecture
   By defining a spec for how others can plug into your product, anyone can mod and extend your product.

4. Open Standards
   A community-powered, consensus-driven approach drives for a goal of interoperability, whether for software or hardware.

5. Open Ontology
   Add meaning to the Web by surrounding your data with semantic meaning (so that software can make meaningful connections).

6. Open Access
   By providing APIs, 3rd-party developers and partners can take your data/service into their products.

7. Open Canvas
   Your product can become a vehicle for 3rd-party content by opening portals into other products (while keeping users on yours).

8. Open Content
   The user becomes the editor by programming self-relevant content which comes to you when it’s ready.

9. Open Mic
   The product is populated entirely by users, not by you (a.k.a. the product team). Users own their content, and products support the making/discovering of content.

10. Open Forum
    Users form a rich web around content by contributing ancillary data, ratings, reviews, ranking, conversations and link submissions.

11. Open Door
    The user is welcomed/embraced as a product decision-maker in this corporate bizarro world.

12. Open Borders
    Settings and configurations become portable. Import/export is the requirement, and the user is not locked-in to a single product, instead having the ability to come and go as they please.

13. Open Identity
    The user is the owner of her identity and information, metering out bits as she finds appropriate.

With this list in mind, you can see the presentation in its entirety below:

In many ways, this list (and presentation) is an early draft, and I’d welcome additional thinking on the subject. How are others defining and planning for openness?

Update: YDN posted a recap of my talk alongside examples of each of the 13 facets of openness.

Confirmed for Tuesday, April 14, 7:30pm, Laaker is set to give the first of two talks entitled “Designing Your Product as a Platform.” The talk is billed as: “Learn how Yahoo! is designing its products to leverage third-party developers, embrace outside content, and weave its services into the larger web’s fabric, all as part of its “Open Strategy” efforts.” Laaker plans to walk through Yahoo!’s recent efforts to redesign and rebuild its products to be both more ‘open’ (to third-party developers) and ’social’ (amongst its massive user base).

Co-headlining the event is Dan Brodnitz, creative cataloguer of the creative class, who will be presenting “20 Conversations About Creativity,” which explores his insightful Conversations about Creativity series. The talk will dive into the many interviews Brodnitz has conducted with “writers, musicians, visual artists, a clown, a choreographer, two cartoonists, a toy inventor, and a stand up comic.”

Bleek could be one hit away his whole career
As long as I’m alive, he’s a millionaire
And even if I die, he’s in my will somewhere
So he can just kick back and chill somewhere, oh yeah
He don’t even have to write rhymes
The Dynasty like my money last three lifetimes

“Bleek,” also known as Memphis Bleek (also known as Malik Thuston Cox), is one of the gents on Jay’s Roc-a-fella label who seems perpetually unable to crossover to mainstream success. Unlike most artists with such a problem, though, he has a fan (assumedly) in the form of one of the world’s biggest hip-hop artists. He’s featured on Jay’s albums, is featured on Jay’s tours, is featured in Jay’s videos, and is featured in Jay’s lyrics; all are great promotional vehicles.

However, the line seems to implicate the following:

• Bleek has never had a hit,
• Bleek is dependent on Jay for his success and wealth, and
• Bleek could bow out of the music game and it wouldn’t matter.

Granted, I’m reading into this a bit, but none of these implications, while possibly being factual, are what you (Bleek) would want to hear from a friend (Jay) or fan (also Jay). It makes the friendship appear as a pity party or a mercy friendship.

In other words, if all three of these statements I’m gleaning from the lyrics are true, why would you say this to your friend, much less your friend and all of the hip-hop listening world? Sure, Jay should be honest and constructive in his feedback to Bleek, but this doesn’t appear constructive to me. The first would appear petty, the second would appear obvious and demeaning, and the third would be downright hurtful and dismissive.

From the times where I met Jay while working at Def Jam, he always seemed like a personable, kind fellow. And artists on his label (now and past) seem to have a strong affinity to him (much in the same manner as his fans), which would suggest he doesn’t regularly demean his crew. So, again, why would he say this to someone with such loyalty?

• Could Jay not have recognized my interpretation of this lyric?
  I doubt it; Jay’s a smart guy, and constructs some very intricate ideas across clever wordplay. In other words, he shows all the signs of thinking through what he’s saying. His point of detailing how anyone (and anyone’s progeny) associated with him would be living large could be detailed in any number of alternative ways. That said, maybe he quickly wrote the verse, recorded it, thought about it, and figured it didn’t matter… it illustrated his point, and there were other lyrics to be recorded for other projects; you can’t live in the past.
• Is it tough love?
  Again, doubtful. Aside from this line, Jay appears to be a fan of Bleek, and (from what I’ve seen) hasn’t offered any other “time to fly from the comforts of my nest, young one” lines to Bleek.
• Is it hate?
  I can’t see how this is possible, as Jay has an incredibly large platform to hate from, and there isn’t any other evidence of him taking a shot at Bleek.
• Could Bleek have written the rhyme for Jay in some sort of bizarre homage to his patron?
  Possible, but strange. This seems the least likely answer yet.

As you can see, I can’t make sense of the line, but I wish that I could. And, while I would certainly enjoy the no-strings-attached patronage of someone like Jay-Z (you know, so I could “just kick back and chill somewhere”), I hope none of my friends would ever publicly call out any perceived lack of success on my part as a means to illustrate their wealth of success.

From a hater, it’s always welcome and expected; from a friend, it just seems downright confusing.

For those that don’t know, my dad is a Lutheran minister in Omaha, Nebraska (”Hometown of Heroes,” as I’m known to call it). As far back as I can remember (i.e. roughly age 4), my dad has been devoted to helping others in a means beyond his “day job” as a minister. Whether waking up at 5 in the winter to shovel snow off several of the elderly neighbors’ sidewalks (as well as ours) or organizing community fundraisers for hunger relief programs or helping fight an extradition case for a Namibian political refugee or partnering with the local consumer credit counseling service to help folks struggling with debt or volunteering time at the drug/alcohol recovery programs, my dad has always seemed to draw on a never-ending supply of energy when it comes to diving into efforts that could provide relief for someone else. (Important note: those examples are all taken from a 1-2 year period… not a cumulative record.)

And my mom is no slouch in that regard, either. She currently works as a case worker for the “Every Woman Matters” program in Nebraska (an effort to ensure low-income women can receive and proceed with cancer screenings). Before that, she worked to provide in-home services to the elderly and, before that, as a school nurse. She was always heavily involved in the Parent Teacher Association, started the Familyness program (which was used as a model for “healthy family education” programs nationwide), and recently created (and continues) a program to teach “English as a Second Language” to the Sudanese (displaced by the North-South civil war) and Mexican immigrant women in Omaha.

So, when I heard from my mom a couple weeks back that their church, Grace Evangelical Lutheran, was going to be honored for its efforts around social justice, I wasn’t too surprised. While the congregation is relatively small, they have (among many other efforts):

• embraced the local displaced Sudanese refugee community (providing facilities, fundraisers, and assistance navigating governmental organizations),
• host an exercise- and health-focused neighborhood non-profit my dad kickstarted (Interfaith Health Service), and
• run an after-school “Kids at Work” program for low-income youth (wherein the students establish a savings account populated with earnings from their community gardening work).

And, while the award belongs to the church and the good folks there that joined in, pushed through, and continue with these efforts, I can’t help but be proud of my folks particularly.

This past week, my parents and several members of the congregation went to Lincoln to receive the award: the 2009 Art Palmer Micah 6:8 Justice Ministry Award. It was presented by the ELCA in honor of a Nebraskan who’d championed the cause of justice for the under-served populations. They’ve both received several awards in the past, but I’d like to think this one carried a bit more weight. Aside from carrying my name, the award recognizes the efforts that seem built into their DNA and are of paramount importance to their daily lives.

True to Micah 6:8 (paraphrased, “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly”), my dad posted but a fleeting line of text and a group photo to let people know of the award.

I, on the other hand, relish praise and attention (”I’m sure you’re already well familiar with Laaker.com,” I often pepper into my discussions.); as such, I hope someone else out there will see some of the great efforts my folks have been doing in the Omaha community for others. They both truly continue to inspire me every day, and it’s rewarding to see that their contagious efforts were recognized amongst all the great things going on across Nebraska.

I argued (very convincingly) that uploading photos and geotagging them were for suckers. They are both important tasks, but tasks I had no interest in. “Think how much time you spend downloading photos from your card, uploading them, and geotagging them (and trying to get Flickr to recognize a very clear, accurate address). And then think about 10 others things you could be doing. Including taking other photos,” I said.

Graves countered that tackling menial tasks best left to machines/drones (and the associated slowness and inefficiency) was the better user experience, or so I remember his argument.

Unwilling to leave it at that, I pressed the point: “I’m willing to make a wager. I would propose we each take a picture of the other’s flash memory card, upload and geotag it. The person with all 3 of these tasks accomplished first wins.” Excited about proving his approach, Graves took the bet.

Roughly 30 seconds later, my photo of Zach’s card was live to the world. I took an additional 10 seconds or so to add a title to the image as a courtesy.

Zach’s photo, however, never even managed to make it up to Flickr. (It should have appeared somewhere between “DAS 5″ and the photo of my Yahoo! star.) Somewhere in that long, inefficient chain of tasks described earlier, Graves decided he had better things to do… which was true.

Just about any task other than downloading, uploading, and geotagging your photos is better than downloading, uploading, and geotagging your photos, including naming and otherwise organizing such photos. Leave rote mechanical tasks to the robots and Wifi-enabled, auto-geotagging and uploading flash memory cards that handle such tasks so gracefully.

So, the point of this story? Make a good office bet. Listen to a little Kenny Rogers. Curl up with a long-winded but intriguing
H.P. Lovecraft tale. And, pick up a special edition Eye-Fi 4GB card on the cheap, whose tiny wireless robots will do the job of which the Kingston card (and its owners) could only dream.

With this approach in mind, I’d like to propose a solution that fits within this vein: a standardized means for publishers (i.e. anyone producing Web content) to expose their Application offerings to users.

Applications are all the rage now. Facebook kicked off the trend, Apple came in with killer iPhone Apps, and Yahoo!, Google, MySpace, and others all have App offerings, too. As such, many publishers have Apps in many flavors (i.e. platforms), but may not actively promote them around their site. Or, if they do, they don’t all consistently feature and talk about Apps in a manner that helps users know where to go to find out if their favorite site offers an App.

This problem, though, isn’t unique to Apps. It was a similar problem for RSS feeds when they emerged several years back. And the solution proposed then (and since implemented) would seem to work equally well for Apps: provide an autodiscovery tag for Apps in an HTML document’s head element. Once folks begin adding App Autodiscovery tags to their pages, browser makers (such as Firefox, WebKit, Opera, Internet Explorer, and others) and other software vendors (such as Yahoo! Toolbar, Apple’s iPhone version of Safari, etc.) can look at how they’d like to visualize such information (if at all). (This type of solution has been extended to content other than RSS, such as FOAF and Sitemaps.)

An example of how App Autodiscovery tags could be visualized in a browser.

Why do this? There are a number of reasons:

• A common standard for App autodiscovery will allow browser and software vendors to develop innovative means of exposing related App content;
• App Autodiscovery won’t negatively impact users or browsers that don’t understand the tag; it will just be ignored.
• App Autodiscovery is easy to integrate;

To prove the last point, the code for such an effort is simple:

<link rel="alternate" type="app/facebook" title="The New York Times News Quiz" href="http://apps.facebook.com/nytquiz" />

The type attribute could be populated with any series of attribute values (which would need to become normalized and approved MIME types), such as:

• app/opensocial
• app/facebook
• app/yap
• app/iphone

Additional title and href values would define the App’s unique name and location, which could tell a user where to use/install the Application in the appropriate App platform.

So, with this thinking in place, App Autodiscovery code could begin to be integrated into sites today in the following fashion (using my friend and colleague Matt Lock’s App: Minsa):


<html>
  <head>
   <title>...</title>
   <link rel="alternate" type="app/yap"
    title="Minsa"
    href="http://apps.yahoo.com/-6lOOCT7a" />
  </head>
  <body>
   <!-- the web page's contents -->
  </body>
</html>


Adding this one line of code (per app per platform) within your website’s head element can make relevant App discovery much easier for people in the places they already have an interest (i.e. the places they visit). What do others think? Let me know if you know of alternate/better solutions to address this issue.

* For those unsure of what I’m referring to, the Semantic Web is an effort to provide structure and additional information around content on the Web. Why? Because most content on the Web is understandable to its readers, but not to computers. As such, you can discern that an article online is talking about an event (like a concert at a certain place at a certain time), but your calendar software can’t recognize it as such. Therefore, you need to manually “rebuild” such event info in your calendar, which breaks its relationship to the online article; if the article was updated, you wouldn’t know, and your calendar would be out of date. These disconnects happen all over the Web today, but could be significantly reduced via concerted efforts by publishers to enhance their Web content with semantic markup (which in turn would open their content up to many inventive possibilities that are today exceedingly difficult).

For more information about the Semantic Web, check out the W3C’s efforts (as well as the community-driven Microformats efforts) to see how content on today’s Web pages can be enhanced to support this model.

The book features two of Laaker’s photographs from a recent visit to Stockton:

Bank of Stockton building

Fox Theater Marquee

These two photographs by Laaker were discovered on Flickr by Cherbo Publishing Group, the book’s publisher, during its production.

“What better opportunity for Stockton to show off its better features than to feature a showing of some of Laaker’s shots?” said Micah Laaker. “Cherbo’s acquisition of these two images for this publication speaks to the quality of the publication, and, in turn, to Stockton itself for approving such imagery. To them both, I say, ‘Stay classy, Stockton.’” (It was uncertain if
Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy was playing in the background during Laaker’s comments. Regardless, Laaker enjoyed his trip to Stockton, which did indeed feature some beautifully restored buildings.)

Commissioned by the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce, “Stockton: Renewed, Revitalized, Redefined” was written by Anne Gonzales. Gonzales was the former business and agriculture reporter for The Record.

More news about the book can found at The Record, the Chamber of Commerce, and at Amazon.com.

However, and this may sound strange, I’m not always interested in what I’m interested in. After getting my fill of news on all things data visualization, design, Mac, tiny houses, cryptozoology, App platforms, social media, deals, foreign policy, StarCraft, and Paul Simon, I sometimes wonder what other folks are reading.

And that’s when I turn to Newspyle.

Newspyle is a simple, 3-columned website that shows the latest news bubbled up by others (who I generally don’t know) on Digg, Reddit, and Del.icio.us. I’m able to see, at a glance, what the rest of the world is finding interesting. Obviously, these three sites aren’t truly representative of the antithesis of all things Micah. (There’s still plenty of Mac, design, and web-oriented news.) But there is a fair bit of content I otherwise wouldn’t see… and wouldn’t bother perusing each of these sites (or their associated feeds) to filter such gems.

Only problem is, when viewed on the iPhone, the Newspyle site was hard to work with. It’s 3-column approach, which worked well on laptops and desktops, became hard to navigate and read on a smaller screen. The often-limited bandwidth of the phone, too, posed a hurdle when all the Digg links sent users off to Digg first (instead of directly to the story you were interested in).

Because of this, I recently built my first iPhone Web App: Newspyle for iPhone. And all it took was 2 hours. Actually, it took 20 minutes to make the App. But then I needed an extra hour and 40 minutes to troubleshoot some nuances that weren’t quite right initially. I did all of this using 4 things:

1. Newspyle (for the idea),
2. Dapper (to extract content from Digg, Reddit, and Delicious),
3. SimplePie (to parse the 3 sites’ RSS feeds and print the content into the App),
4. WebApp.net (which, somewhat ironically, isn’t available at http://webapp.net/ but provides the iPhone UI appearance).

The whole process was remarkably easy, as the time allotment suggests. Of course, it helped that the idea was already baked. And that tools like Dapper, SimplePie, and WebApp.net exist. And, are free.

Even more exciting, though, than simply building the App was that it made it (in some way, shape, or form) into the actual product. On a whim, I emailed Kunal Anand (the good fellow behind Newspyle) to tell him about what I put together (and attached the “working” code). Instead of a cease-and-desist or a thanks-but-no-thanks, Kunal seemed genuinely appreciative of the work, and pushed a similar but superior version live to the public. (I don’t know the details of Kunal’s reworking of the code, but it runs much faster, has better state memory, and uses a battle-tested backend solution.)

As such, now any visitor to the Newspyle site using an iPhone is automatically redirected to Newspyle for iPhone. And now, hopefully, more folks will get to enjoy (in an easier-to-read and lighter memory footprint) the collective wisdom of the crowds (at Digg, Reddit, and Delicious) while on-the-go.

All in all, this was a great introduction to iPhone development, and my (little) effort made things easier for me. I now get a much quicker browsing experience at Newspyle while on my iPhone, and hopefully others will, too. I again extend my thanks to Kunal for so graciously accepting the work of a fan; the Web is a wonderful place when folks can interact, contribute, and extend in this manner.

(PS: If you want a great way to use Google Reader on the iPhone, aside from their iPhone-optimized site, be sure to check out Byline by Phantom Fish.)

The Sceptical Futuryst, a blog sketching out the ideas and impacts possible in future scenarios, ran an interview with video director Micah Laaker entitled “Surveillance Supreme.”

The interview centers around the backstory of the animation, which continues to win awards and praise 4 years after its creation. It has made its way around of various film festivals (particularly resfest|10 and Media That Matters 5) and online memes.

The video can be viewed below, via YouTube, or on the ACLU site.

Laaker has created a number of interactive media for the ACLU aside from the Pizza video, including their 100 Greatest Hits, Major Supreme Court Decisions on Women’s Rights, and the Katrina Aftermath at Orleans Parish Prison.

With the rumored Apple TV-minus-the-box-plus-the-TV unit days from being announced, I wanted to add one more set of thoughts to his before any such unveiling.

Mike was one of the folks behind Yahoo! Mash, a testbed for some of Yahoo!’s social efforts soon to be released. In my mind, Mash’s key feature was the ability for anyone to create a profile for someone who hadn’t yet joined the service. The thinking was that some folks just don’t want to spend the time setting things up… but if someone already did all the work, why not? (And, as someone who has had to setup innumerable electronics and computer purchases for others, I can attest to the success of such efforts; knock out most of the setup hassles, and you’ve got a happy user you’d otherwise have never had.)

In a similar vein, why not offer the ability for users to setup and customize software profiles for others on the Apple TV? There’s a reason people still joke about how hard it is for their parents to setup a VCR: configuring home electronics is never as easy as you’d like. Mac users are generally well known for their evangelization of the Apple platform; why not give them an opportunity to prove it?

My thinking is this: Apple should provide a Mac andWindows application (or Web app) that allows a user to specify the following settings:

• WiFi settings
• iTunes Library pairing
• Television model (with supported resolutions)
• Cable provider and channel lineup (Apple TV doesn’t use this now, but if they ever want to tackle PVR, this would be good info to get)
• YouTube username
• Flickr username (and usernames of Contacts to track)
• MobileMe username
• Slideshow settings
• Podcast subscriptions

Once entered, the application can generate a patchstick disc image and load it directly onto a USB thumb drive, much in the same way that Boxee’s and XBMC’s patchstick is created. With this USB drive, a user could then plug it into their Apple TV, restart the unit, and have their settings injected in a matter of minutes. Even if this were just for individuals to do for themselves (i.e. not to help setup someone else’s Apple TV), the time (and frustration) savings would be considerable.

With that simple application, Apple could take the hassle out of an already-somewhat-hassle-free, living room electronics experience. And, with that, take on a bigger home entertainment marketshare.

Fortunately, no one waited for Apple to create the Boxee patchstick to extend the Apple TV. For those capable, why not create a patchstick creator to do just this?

Or so my theory goes.

Why is that? Apple dropped the Apple TV on consumers in January 2007 as a “hobby.” Since then, it has released several software updates, including a major on-demand kiosk service this past January.

Also during that time, Apple has released two versions of the iPhone, one of its biggest mainstream successes to date. Unlike the Apple TV, though, Apple provided iPhone users with an App Store: a means of extending the device with 3rd-party-developed Apps.

These Apps are developed somewhat differently than those for the Mac desktop. Namely, rather than the keyboard and mouse standards of yore, they are tuned to leverage the device’s alternate input mechanisms (multi-touch display, limited visible real estate, accelerometer, gyroscope, location-aware GPS/WiFi, Bluetooth, camera, and cellular connection) and alternate environments (indoors/outdoors, small physical screen, one-handed interaction, noisy surroundings, varied lighting, etc.).

Because of this shift in development, Apps developed for the iPhone (in my argument) are more in line with Apps that would be useful for the Apple TV (and not desktop Apps). The Apple TV currently ships with an Apple remote control that took some cues from the iPod: it has a 4-direction clickwheel and two buttons (Play and Menu). This limited set of possible interactions generally works well for the TV, but would work terribly for desktop Apps (where users are used to multiple inputs: 104-plus keys on a keyboard and a dual-click, scroll-wheel mouse). Anyone, in fact, who’s had to enter their 32-character WiFi password on the Apple TV unit using the directional clicker and Play button knows such interaction is painful; what is easy on the computer desktop is very difficult six feet away from the screen with limited input controls.

Apple clearly knows this.

To date, Apple’s software updates have added very few Apps to the Apple TV. Those they do provide are primarily restricted to “browsing” functions (i.e. tasks that involve simple directional scrolling and a couple clicks). Aside from browsing/playing video content, you can browse/play music, photos, and podcasts. In the few cases where the user needs to do more than browse or play, “keyboard entry” is limited to activities such as entering search terms for podcasts or supplying a username and password. Why? Because moving across a virtual, on-screen keyboard one click at a time with the Apple remote is time-consuming, painful, and so not “Apple-like.”

However, Apple has begun to tie the iPhone and Apple TV together already to simplify such a complex interaction. By releasing the “Remote” Application on the iTunes App Store at launch, Apple now provides Apple TV users an alternate means of accessing a virtual keyboard: rather than click with the Apple Remote, users can instead access the iPhone’s virtual keyboard (far from perfect, but light years better than the Apple TV’s beast). Aside from just keyboard entry, the “Remote” App also provides alternate menu access to controlling the selection and playback of video and audio content on the TV.

With one tiny App, Apple unveiled a powerful connection between the two non-Mac devices. Suddenly, users have two devices that stand tall on their own, but, by joining together, add up to be greater than their sum. The result? Giant, hi-def HDTVs as the display; Web-connected computer capable of handling concurrent App tasks and video signal decoding; a remote that has a multi-touch display, accelerometer, gyroscope, camera, and cellular connection; and (maybe most importantly) a compact format that fits well in a home living room entertainment center.

Because of this possibility, I would predict Apple begins to do 2 things:

1. allow developers to create rich, Internet-connected, iPhone-controllable Apps for the Apple TV using an extension of the iPhone SDK, and
2. distribute Apps to the Apple TV using the iPhone App Store (potentially with a filter for TV-only Apps).

So, aside from creating a cool home entertainment hydra, why would Apple enable the iPhone SDK for development of Apple TV Applications? I would posit several reasons:

• Name:
  I’ll lead with my weakest argument: the iTunes App Store is called the iTunes App Store, not the iPhone App Store. This would seem to suggest Apple is keeping the door open to distribute Apps to platforms beyond the iPhone and iPod Touch.
• Greed:
  $30 million was earned in the first month of the App Store’s release, with $70 million more the following month. Six million total Apple TV units are predicted to be in homes by end of 2008 compared to the 12 million iPhones in the market now. This would suggest a theoretical $25 million/month for the yet-to-be-supported Apple TV unit. Do I think that’s unrealistic? Sure. But even 1/10th of that figure would suggest an attractive revenue stream.
• Development Environment:
  Both Mac and iPhone development use Apple’s Xcode. And while the iPhone uses it’s own OS, the Apple TV uses a customized OS X. Apple TV App development could leverage UI controls and the simplified focus of the iPhone while having access to OS X’s amazing developer palette.
• Patent Mining:
  Apple filed a patent two years ago suggesting some big changes to the product: the Apple TV as a lightweight widget/application platform. The thinking therein appears to suggest that app-like widgets could enhance a user’s viewing experience (whether by facilitating live chat with other viewers, providing contextual information against the current feature ala VH1’s Popup Video, etc.), and describes a number of possible widgets: Weather, Stocks, World Clock, Sports, and Video Chat.

Because of these points, I believe there’s a strong chance Apple will further connect the iPhone and Apple TV. Or, Apple could replace the Apple TV entirely, and come out with a killer Mac Mini/Apple TV-hybrid unit. One generally never knows what Steve Jobs has up his sleeve until his Tuesday announcements…

(Side note: this isn’t a new idea… several more-informed folks have suggested similar ideas in the past. AppleInsider proposed the Apple TV as a “casual gaming” device, and The Unofficial Apple Weblog has been clamoring for Apple TV Apps for some time. Update: The Inquisitr just proposed a similar call for an Apple TV App Store.)

Inquisitor
Download Inquisitor | Previous recommendation that must be recommended again
Aside from far-faster page-loading performance, Inquisitor makes Safari the one-and-only browser choice on the Mac. (Don’t get me wrong: Firefox is fast, open source, and worth having on your machine. Safari’s just much, much faster, and better integrated into the Mac.) The plug-in, now financed by Yahoo!, modifies Safari’s top-right search box in the following ways:

• Change the default Search provider
• Adds auto-complete
• Adds search term suggestions
• Shows the first 3-5 results for your search in a bubble with a preview
• Allows you to add customizable links to alternate search engines (mine target my Delicious.com links, Amazon, Google Images, Flickr, Wikipedia, and Yahoo!’s intranet)

To top it off, it is super fast. It’s free, and very easy to install. Do not wait.

If you use a Mac, this should be the very first piece of software you install.

Quicksilver
Download Quicksilver | New to this list
I fought this for a long time, and I now regret doing so. Quicksilver is so many things, but at its basic core it provides a time-saving application and document launcher… via keystrokes. While the mouse and other inputs (like trackpads, Wacom tablets, etc.) provide precise pixel-level control over the cursor, the keyboard is undisputedly one of the fastest data entry devices for all things text. I mention this, only as I had previously argued it was faster for me to leave whatever I was doing, move the cursor down to the Dock, and click on an App I wanted to open. Unfortunately, I was wrong on two accounts:

1. Moving my mouse down to the OS X Dock, finding the App, clicking it, and then moving back up to the newly-launched App’s location takes a fair bit of time and thought.
2. Many times, the App I want isn’t in the Dock, so I either need to pollute my Dock with all App possibilities I may at some point want or invariably have to switch to the Finder, find the App by clicking through folders structures, double-click it, etc.

With Quicksilver, I simply hit Ctrl-Space, begin typing the App’s name I want, and hit Return as soon as I see it enter focus in the middle of my screen. My cursor stayed put, my fingers did what they were already doing, my Dock is now sparse and very easy to scan, and I can limitlessly access all Apps with roughly five keystrokes (3 of those being Control, Space, and Return).

Further, after seeing Mozilla Labs release Ubiquity for Firefox, I’m further convinced that these keystroke command lines are best suited for language-driven actions than cursor/touch interactions… and will hopefully become more commonplace.

1Password
Download 1Password | Replaces Pastor
1Password is a life-saver. While OS X has a built-in Keychain application which remembers OS-level passwords, 1Password reaches deep into all Web browser Apps (such as Safari, Firefox, Opera, WebKit, Fluid, etc.) to extend password (and contact info form) remembrance. What does that mean? Instead of collecting all your passwords on a piece of paper or an online notepad, 1Password automatically collects all the forms you fill out online and makes them one-click away from being resubmitted later on. These passwords then can be synced between multiple Macs (via their free my.1Password.com service) and iPhones (via their free 1Password iPhone App).

As added features, it can generate very secure passwords for you, remember multiple accounts (if you share the same computer with several people who use Yahoo! or Gmail), and can store and access non-Web site passwords (such as software serial numbers, frequent flier accounts, or frequent shopper perks).

Now, all you need to remember is the one password you use for 1Password.

Fluid
Download Fluid | New to this list
Fluid doesn’t make sense to most people I discuss it with, unfortunately, but it is among my favorite Apps. Fluid lets you take any Web page and turn it into its own App. “Why,” most of my friends ask, “would you want to do this?” Safari, Firefox, and other Web browsers all seem to get sluggish and/or crash right when you need to check email or perform a quick task. When that happens, everything you have open inside of them is frozen. This isn’t a big deal if you’re checking the New York Times or another news site. It is, however, a big deal when you use some Web pages like Apps themselves (think: Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Mint, WordPress, etc.).

Fluid, in essence, turns your favorite sites into standalone Apps. This gibes you some of the many benefits Apps have over Web pages in OS X (such as new message count for email or new items for RSS feeds). Each App created by Fluid runs in a protected instance of Safari, meaning that if Safari slows down, your App doesn’t (and vice versa). Lastly, you also get Growl notifications, Greasemonkey extensions, and much more.

WordService
Download | New to this list
I still am surprised that Apple supplies a built-in Dictionary and Thesaurus, but not these tools. And, further, that someone provides all of these free-of-charge. And, further, that no one seems to know about these.

DEVONtechnologies has made an OS X plugin (called a “Service”) that allows you to do the following to text you have selected in most Apps:

1. Convert to Initial caps of sentences
2. Convert to Initial caps of words
3. Convert to uppercase (all caps)
4. Convert to lowercase
5. Convert between straight quotes and smart quotes
6. Get statistics (letter, word, and line count)
7. Convert between Mac, Windows, and Unix line endings
8. Sort lines ascending/descending
9. Shift left or right
10. and plenty more…

Needless to say, if you ever deal with text (whether in email, Word docs, or browser form fields, this Service will be worth an installation. You can always access it then, too, by selecting text, opening your App’s menu (i.e. “Safari” menu in the Safari App), navigating to the Services item, and then opening Convert, Format, or Insert.

Adium
Download Adium | Replaces Proteus
Previously, I recommended Proteus for multi-service instant messaging; I’ve long since converted to Adium. First, Proteus is no longer under development. Second, Adium has been squashing bugs and adding features at an amazing clip. You can not only chat across the major services (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, GoogleTalk, etc.), but you can now chat with Facebook friends, too. It taps into OS X’s built-in Address Book for contacts, and is very customizable.

AppFresh
Download AppFresh | New to this list
Far from the last App to download is AppFresh. This software should be built into Apple’s Software Update mechanism, but until it is, there’s AppFresh. It scans your Mac, lists all the software you have, lets you know which are out-of-date, and (best yet) lets you update those you select without leaving this App. Keeping up-to-date was never so easy.

Other Recommendations
The following Apps have been useful to me, although they are far from the standard, daily-use fare of the aforementioned Apps:

• FFXporter
  Free, lightweight plugin for iPhoto which lets you upload your selected photos to Flickr. (This has been a long time coming.)
• Secrets
  Exposes numerous OS X software “hidden” preferences for quick manipulation. Many similar Apps charge $20 for this; Secrets is free, and allows users to quickly add other prefs to the system as they’re discovered.
• Punakea
  Tiny, lightweight App which lets you quickly tag files (ala Flickr and del.icio.us) in the Finder.
• RapidoWrite
  Create shorthand for text snippets, ala TextExpander… but $30 less (i.e. free).

I’ve been trying to get my extended family to use Amazon’s Wish List system for years to better manage gift lists for the holidays, so this is a particularly welcome addition. Inevitably, duplicate gifts are purchased, as there was no central place to manage non-Amazon gifts (such as a Sears Craftsman tool or gift certificate to a local restaurant) in the past.

Now, however, anything that can be found online (such as a Craigslist ad, eBay listing, photo from a news site, etc.) can be turned into an entry on your Amazon Wish List. Using the new Amazon.com Universal Wish List button, an object can be flagged from the browser toolbar in seconds.

As a side note, Steve Rubel points out that “it’s conceivable that this could become a social commerce feature over time given Amazon’s popular Associates program.” This brings up an interesting idea: if Amazon can now “collect” objects/items it doesn’t sell, track whether they’ve been purchased (and by whom), handle transactions with 3rd-party merchants, and offer “affiliate” (or referral) fees, why not extend the program to broker other 3rd-party affiliate promotions? Personally, I far prefer Amazon’s Affiliates program to LinkShare, Commission Junction, and others before it, in terms of ease of sign up, management, link building, and reporting. Why not take the next step by plugging in the 3rd-party affiliate programs, thus further extending Amazon’s ownership of the online shopping experience?

I instantly downloaded it, and added several of my WordPress blogs to the app. Aside from the annoying Twitter Tools glitch (which sent an empty tweet on blog setup), I was surprised to see some big omissions that would impede regular usage for site administrators… at least from my standpoint.

• Dashboard functions
  As readers here know, I don’t post every day. I do, however, very regularly check my WordPress Dashboard. The Dashboard wraps up basic stats, such as the five most recent comments, incoming links, number of new unapproved comments, and WordPress news for the package itself (and 3rd-party plugins).

  I find this data invaluable to know if there’s anything I need to take action on (such as marking a new comment as ‘approved’ or ’spam’) or learning about a security exploit.

• Global Drafts
  The second-most popular task for me in WordPress is creating and editing a draft post on the server. It generally takes me several revisions before I post a “post” here. (This one, for instance, has taken 10+ edits over 1.5 weeks.)

  Unfortunately, though, the iPhone WordPress app only can edit and save local drafts (i.e. those on the iPhone itself). This is probably the biggest deal-breaker for me. I don’t want to write and edit on my iPhone, as the keyboard is so awkward. I would, however, as it makes it convenient to drop in a quick edit or two, or get started on a new idea. But, preferably, I’d take a full, non-finger-crippling, physical keyboard experience over the on-screen, cramped digital keyboard. Because of this, I wouldn’t now dream of starting a post on the iPhone knowing I couldn’t switch back to the desktop keyboard later.

  Maybe one day Apple will allow Bluetooth keyboards to pair with the iPhone. (Maybe even starting with their own keyboards, in fact!) Until then, this app will just serve as a monitoring and quick editing environment.

  (Side note: It appears this issue may be larger than that of this app. I’ve noticed similar drawbacks plague ecto and MarsEdit, too. Anyone know why this is, and/or a workaround?)

• Links (add, remove, order)
  The iPhone has a number of built-in controls and UI elements for creating and managing lists. WordPress, too, has great built-in support for Links which populate a blog’s Blogroll section. Why not blend the best of both worlds? List management for your blog using the iPhone’s easy list management UI features? It sounds delightful.
• Widget addition, order, removal
  Similar to Link management, the ability to re-order, customize, and enable/disable Widgets for WordPress. Honestly, re-ordering widgets using the WordPress Web-based manager is rather awkward… having used the iPhone’s list control UI before, I imagine I’d prefer handling all Widget activity on the iPhone altogether.
• Plugin control and updates
  Plugins are well-known to cause performance issues for some WP blogs, and occasionally they can cause sites to come to a screeching halt. Being able to toggle a plugin on and off remotely would allow site administrators to quickly re-enable a site simply by flipping a plugin off (and/or back on). Further, WordPress now allows most plugins to be updated (when updates are offered) via the Web interface. As such, being able to click a couple links to bring all your plugins up-to-date would be very useful.
• Run backups
  The thing about backups is: you never think to backup your files till its too late… why not just offer the “Save to server” and “Email backup” options (sans “Download to your computer” due to limited iPhone storage opportunities)?
• Stats
  Last but not least, the WordPress Stats plugin has become invaluable to me. I’m a big fan of Google Analytics (who significantly raised the bar on visualizing web usage data several years ago), but there are few times that I head over to the Google site to check out how my blog is doing. The WordPress Stats plugin gives me my most basic visualizations (such as visitors over time, top posts, top searches, and most active) right on the Dashboard. It’s not a 3rd-party plugin, as its made by Automattic (the folks behind WP itself and Akismet), so no (legal) reason not to include in this package.

  I know the plugin currently uses Flash to render its chart, but I’d happily deal with a static, cached PNG or GIF if that got me some level of site monitoring via the app.

Please, don’t get me wrong. I understand I’m looking at a 1.0 release, not a 2.x or 3.x version. Many of the features I’m describing are fine to release after supporting basic posting functionality. Further, the app is free… which means the good folks at Automattic dropped at least a benjamin simply to offer freeloaders (like myself and all other WordPress user) a means of managing our blogs on the go. (So, to the good folks developing this app, “thank you.”)

Automattic has been kind enough to provide a list of upcoming bug fixes and features for the app. I didn’t see any of my ideas already listed there, but don’t doubt that as time passes, the app will become considerably more usable.

What features of the app do you find missing? And/or invaluable while on the go?

Update: Daniel Jalkut, author of MarsEdit, kindly offered a solution to the issue of Global Drafts, which ended up serving as a great workaround. (Thanks, Daniel! Anyone else know how to solve the remaining open 6 features?)

First, why would Kanye be defending (or “riding with”) Soulja Boy? And second, why would Kanye (who’s got something against everybody) say he’s got nothing against “nobody?” Neither made any sense to me. I had to read, and I’m glad I did.

Before I continue, I should note: the subject matter of the videos below is not for everybody. And by not everybody, I mean most anybody, particularly not for those who don’t enjoy hip-hop, braggadocio, considerable amounts of cursing, disrespect, and mockery. Also: laughter.

Back to the issue, Kanye fired off an opinion after watching some YouTube videos documenting the latest hip-hop Internet beef: Ice-T vs. Soulja Boy Tell Em. Turns out, Ice-T (the West Coast gangsta rapper once known for “O.G. Original Gangster” and “Cop Killer” and now known as Detective Fin Tutuola on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) decided to call out last year’s Internet and radio phenom Soulja Boy Tell Em (only known for last summer’s “Superman (Crank Dat)” dance and track) as the single-handed reason hip-hop is dead.

Ice-T’s Soulja Boy tirade

Bold words from T. Well, actually, bolder (and far more offensive) words were used, as well. Soulja Boy took some haranguing comments from Iceberg Slim on a mixtape drop promoting his new Urban Legends album. Soulja Boy heard the comments, grabbed a couple friends, hopped in front of their Mac’s high-resolution iSight camera, and responded as high school students do best: with incessant snaps about how irrelevant Ice-T was to anyone under the age of 50. Soulja Boy derides T for 7+ minutes, utilizing a Wikipedia article to fuel the flames.

He calls him out by name, references his East Coast-birthplace, 1950’s birthyear (in which he says folks were “still driving in wood cars”), and caps it with the classic “you should change your name to Lemonade cause you sweet” line. (”Sweet,” in this case, is suggesting that T’s image is a bit soft.)

Soulja Boy’s response

Ice-T, in turn, utilizes a 1980’s camcorder (likely VHS or Betamax) to capture his video retort. Unfortunately, the reply backfires, and for multiple reasons:

1. T appears in what could (at best) be described as a nouveau-riche-inspired retirement community,
2. T appears in a dated sports jersey (which was popular several years back),
3. T repeatedly apologizes and then berates SB (and others) in a passive-aggressive mess of thoughts,
4. T moves in and out of the camera’s viewfinder in a semi-nervous, “I’ve never done this before” posturing that doesn’t suggest a familiarity with self-published videos,
5. T repeatedly refers to “hip-hop” as being the one who will deal Soulja Boy justice for producing “garbage,” rather than himself.

Topping it off, Ice brings his son into the fray to talk trash at the end of the tape, too. All in all, an out-dated, out-gunned response using a medium he didn’t seem comfortable leveraging.

Ice-T’s response

So what does Soulja Boy do? Unleash the deathblow: a 4-minute, 55-second cartoon lambasting T as a “dinosaur-turned-gangsta rapper,” hypocrite, bad dancer, jealous has-been and crybaby. While crudely rendered, the animation repeatedly mocks T’s efforts at relevance to today’s market, and is highlighted a couple times with overdubbed, early 80’s Ice-T breakdancing footage.

Soulja Boy’s animated response

The animation, while juvenile and repetitive, proved Soulja Boy the clear winner. Having already lampooned T (particularly by having to look up T on Wikipedia to even know who he was) with 1.5-million-plus views of his video response, he upped the ante by having a cadre of folks write a script, animate it, and further shame one of the godfathers of West Coast rap.

Wanting to appear timely and relevant, Iceberg instead lived up to his moniker: slow, old, monolithic, and (in this global warming era) fading fast. SB took the beef from the rhyme arena (where Ice-T could have destroyed him in seconds) into a Web 2.0 world (where SB had already proven a grassroots, rags-to-riches success). And T sadly went along for the ride.

While watching that first Soulja Boy video, I was reminded of a wildlife documentary showing how prides of lions pass the mantle of leadership between generations. The elder lion is taunted by the younger upstart, who doesn’t quite seem to know his own power. The elder lion takes the taunts for a period of time, snapping at the young buck, but eventually hits a breaking point.

Of course, once he hits that point, he strikes, but cannot match the agility of the younger cat. Wounded, he is forced out from the pack, and left alone to die in isolation.

The saddest connection of this analogy is that Soulja Boy is hardly more than a flash in the pan, and many inside hip-hop culture would argue he’s not one of theirs (Kanye West respectfully excluded). Nonetheless, Ice-T got frustrated, picked on someone much, much younger than himself, and somehow managed to get schooled in front of the whole pride.

Certainly, he’ll retain some respect for his past achievements, but hip-hop is an entertainment-based industry… and the entertainment industry rarely focuses on or subsidizes once-was-hot artists. What today’s kids want is generally what today’s kids get.

With this beef now over, it’s pretty clear: if today’s kids didn’t previously know who Ice-T was (without checking Wikipedia), they certainly will now associate him with three things:

1. being old,
2. being sweet, and
3. being in possession of a museum-grade camcorder that used vacuum tubes to get its video out to the Internet.

Game over.

Shortly before I left the halls of Island Def Jam to come to Yahoo!, the company began promoting little-known Atlanta artist Lloyd on their Murder Inc. sub-label. After one spin, I smelled a stinker, and said so.

“No, no, no. Lloyd’s gonna be hot,” I heard.

Today, at a corporate office’s coffee bar in Silicon Valley, what did I see? A Lloyd “How We Do It” CD… offered not as a Lloyd CD, but rather (and rather mockingly at that) as a drink coaster.

It feels good being right every now and again.

Quick review: I wish I hadn’t committed to write this review. I find Internet Blackout to be offensive to those who enjoy comics, the Internet, and learning.

Full review: I’m a fan of O’Reilly. As a general rule, I’ve found their titles to be authoritative, practical, and a great reference when coding. I’m a daily reader of the O’Reilly Radar blog, and find Tim O’Reilly, the company’s founder, to have an accurate read on the technology industry’s pulse.

But, somehow, some way, this book happened into being under the label of O’Reilly. And I’m confused. Because, quite plainly, this comic is a mess from top to bottom. It has none of the trappings of the quality or consistency I’ve come to expect from the big O.

It sounds like its creators had a noble intent: “Hackerteen teaches young readers about basic computing and Internet topics, including the potential for victimization. The book is also ideal for parents and teachers who want their children and students to understand the risks of using the Internet and the proper ways to behave online.” Hackerteen is a real organization, with a similar mission, and the book is apparently a product of the group’s efforts.

As a new father myself, I can appreciate wanting to provide some guidance to the youth about online behavior and risks. I just can’t see how this book will do that, and I say that for two reasons.

First, as a comic book, Internet Blackout is not up to par. The reasons are myriad, but here are a select few:

• The story line hops six times on one page in several cases (and repeatedly throughout the book) without some sort of visual signaling, leaving me wondering what is happening page-by-painful-page.
• The artwork is downright sloppy. (Truly, “sloppy” is a kind representation… see page 57 for but one example of degenerative pencilling, crude coloring, and widely varying inking techniques… not to mention poor understanding of human anatomy.)
• Is this a superhero book? Or a book about gifted teens? Because what I see throughout the book confuses me greatly. Outlandish uniforms that even cosplay kids would decry as unimaginative (yet remain more believable than some of the X-Men 3 costumes) populate the same Bizarroverse as the Richie Rich-esque grandmother and the Mayberry-dwelling dad who changes appearance with his every appearance.

Second, as a story in general, I find it speaking down to its audience. We all remember that fateful, humorless time when our parents tried to emulate “the way these kids talk today.” The language was stilted, over-emphasized, and beyond awkward. Or trying to sound culturally aware by referencing yesterday’s star? In many ways, that describes the story line at large, as well as the conversations within Hackerteen. The tone is preachy, the language a bit off (When was the last time you heard anyone, much less someone under 30, use the term “cretin?”), and the drama overblown (soldiers on the battlefield in Iraq are somehow crippled by an Internet attack that doesn’t cripple the cable news channels from broadcasting).

Further, the book’s ending unravels into a series of disconnected vignettes. I’m not sure if those last pages were truly wrapping up the same story line I had been trudging through for the previous 90+ pages, but I didn’t care to double check. I was just happy to be done.

All told, this comic seems to suffer in the same vein as the design and appearance of many open-source, community-driven software projects; the result is a patchwork of unequal, disjointed contributions that you want to cheer on for its effort but would never recommend.

If you’re under 20, though, and reading this and have read the book, please let me know. Maybe a) Internet Blackout really does speak to its target audience, and b) that audience doesn’t pick apart the quality of the artwork. In the meantime, I’ll hope this was an anomaly in the O’Reilly publishing empire.

According to Wikipedia’s definition of “animal cracker,” they are “crackers in the shapes of animals… They are like crackers due to the way they are made, with layered dough, however the use of sweetened dough gives them the cookie taste and consistency.”

Tellingly, the definition also notes: “There is debate about whether or not Animal Crackers are actually crackers or cookies.”

And this is where I come in. See, I have this very debate roughly every two weeks. Someone will invariably see one of my animal cracker “snackin’ buckets,” and say, “Man, I love animal crackers, too! I remember those boxes as a kid with the circus animals, and…” And that’s where I stop them.

Nabisco’s Barnum’s Animals (Crackers) are far from animal crackers. Sure, they have animals on them, share a similar form factor, and even share similar packaging labels. But, they are animal cookies. Always have been. They are soft, buttery, crumbly, shortbread cookies. Not crackers.

According to Merriam-Webster, a “cracker,” is

“a dry thin crispy baked bread product that may be leavened or unleavened.”

Merriam-Webster then goes on to define a “cookie” as

“a small flat or slightly raised cake.”

Can there truly be much debate? Could an animal cracker be mistaken for a cake? (Maybe so, for its frosted cousins, such as the Keebler Frosted Animal Crackers, but not for the standard animal cracker.)

What, then, is the standard for the animal cracker? Stauffer’s originated the animal cracker in the US back in 1871. And, true to their legacy, they still make a mean animal cracker. Stauffer’s Animal Crackers have a similar outline and package as their cookied, Nabisco brethren, but follow through on their cracker promise.

Semi-sweet, crisp, and airy, Stauffer’s always delivers. Further, they offer good value. For a period of time, Costco offered a giant, 5 lb. Stauffer’s Bear Jug. I’ve seen smaller bear jugs and bags at Target and Walgreens occasionally, but unfortunately the consistency of the cracker is not matched with consistency of shelf stocking. (I can rarely find Stauffer’s on my shopping escapades.)

As such, I often find myself picking up Trader Joe’s Organic Animal Crackers for $2.99 for a 1-pound tub. I can’t say I know what’s “organic” about an artificial animal cracker, but I can say Joe makes a mean cracker.

And that’s what I’m always looking for… a great animal cracker. The world has many cookies, and Nabisco is behind many of them. But, their “animal crackers” are not among these cookie greats, nor their cheap, low-rent, imitation knockoffs. (I’m looking at you, Keebler and Borden.) The thing is, I don’t need any more new cookie encounters. Mostly, I don’t need Nabisco and friends converting their remnant cookie cruft into “crackers;” if future generations only encounter these cookies-in-disguise, they’ll never know the joy of a delicious, dry, crispy, baked, semi-sweet, bread product in the shape of an animal.

Instead, they’ll only be digesting disappointment.

Most interesting to me, however, has been their quiet rollout of MicroID support last week. ClaimID quickly posted, Fred Stutzman followed suit, and the MicroID blog alerted folks as well.

MicroID, for the uninitiated, is a snippet of code (which is made up a user’s email address and the URL of the current web page) which can be used by machines to verify the owner of the current web page. As a user, I find it incredibly annoying to tell the multitude of sites I use what other sites I use. (”You’re a computer,” I say. “Figure it out.”) As more sites roll out MicroIDs behind the scenes, pages/profiles I author (or am somehow responsible for, such as my YouTube Favorites links or my Amazon Wish List) could quickly be “sniffed out” by sites I already use.

Why would I want them to know what other pages/sites I use? I answered some of this in my interview upon joining YDN. But, quickly, it boils down to a decentralized and lightweight trust system that would allow the software behind any site at which I’m recognized to provide relevant content/recommendations. That, and I wouldn’t need to spend any time sharing all my other account usernames with a site I’m not even sure I want to continue using.

Anyway, MyBlogLog is following in the rich history of other major providers adding MicroID support: Digg, Plaxo, Last.fm, Wink, and others.

(Side note: As some may know, I had the good pleasure of working closely with the MyBlogLog team for the first two quarters of 2007. Aside from getting to getting to work on a new version of the Recent Readers widget and the all-new Profile widget (among migrating to the Yahoo! ID and the common Yahoo! profile representation), I got to work alongside some of the incredibly talented crew: Todd, John, Steve, Chris, Robyn, Ian and Eric.)

Additionally, Max’s plugin makes it easy to toggle between the production release and the more cutting-edge builds.

You can see an example of this plugin in the bottom-left corner of this page… just hover over the grey tab, and a pop-out bar will provide controls for playback of a series of MP3s I’ve hidden in this page’s code (courtesy of hip-hop mixtape master Mick Boogie).

Whenever I need to do a backup, I find myself repeating a pattern. I select a series of files and folders, and then check their total file size via the Finder’s Inspector palette (Cmd-Option-I) to see how close that is to the CD/DVD disc’s available space. Once I get just the right amount (i.e. 760MB, 4.3GB, or 8.1GB), I then want to isolate these files so as to remember which groups of files will make up their own disc.

The problem with this approach, is that the best way to do this (that I’d found to date) was to create a new folder, and move those files inside that folder. Unfortunately, I don’t always have a pile of empty folders waiting right along side these files ready to hold them. If I then create a new folder, it often loses the selection of the files I had (as the OS now focuses attention on the new folder, rather than the previous selection). As such, I then have to go through the same task I did before creating the folder (manually selecting and sizing different groups of files).

There has to be a better way. I tried a number of different 3rd-party add-ons and applications, but nothing quite did the trick. And, in the absence of all hope, I finally tried Apple’s Automator, which reminded me a bit of Yahoo!’s Pipes.

I first checked to see whether anyone else had solved this issue via Apple’s Automator Downloads and a 3rd-party Automator downloads site, but no go.

I then did what any grown man or woman would do… search for it on the Web. Still no luck.

Finally, I broke down, and tried to pipe a solution together in Automator.

It took hours. And several separate attempts.

Maybe you need a CS degree to figure out Automator? I’m not sure. But wiring together such a taskflow proved nearly impossible… at least, wiring together a graceful experience of such a taskflow proved impossible. Certain components in Automator allow variables, but I can’t define the output of one step as a variable that can then be used in another step. Unfortunate.

Eventually, and largely due to a mistake, I was able to get a solution in place by forcing a series of dialog boxes. It’s far from graceful, but now I can right/Control-click on items I’ve already selected, and then navigate a quick contextual menu tree (More » Automator » Move Selected Items to Folder). After several seconds, a pop-up dialog box then asks whether to save it to the Desktop. Instead, choose “Other…” from the “To:” drop-down menu, and then create a new folder wherever you desire in the resulting Open dialog box. Then press the Open button, followed by the Continue button, and voila: your selected files/folders move to their new folder.

You can download this ‘Move Selected Items to Folder’ Automator workflow, unzip the file, and install it on your Mac at “~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder/“. If those folders don’t exist, I imagine you probably just need to create that folder structure to be in business.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy Automator exists. Obviously, without it, I’d still be stuck with my broken taskflow. Nonetheless, Automator could stand to leverage some of Pipes’ learnings (such as variable creation and concurrent task operations). (And, not to be partisan, Pipes, of course, could leverage some Automator’s beauty and Recording functionality… maybe via a Greasemonkey script?)

If you’ve had similar taskflow problems, download the workflow, and let me know your thoughts. Also, if you know of a more graceful solution (or can code a more seamless Finder experience), please let me know… I imagine I’m not the only one who’s faced this issue before.

• Crush3r
  An events service that lets you send out beautiful, custom-designed invitations to your own list and doesn’t require signup of your guests.
• Loud3r
  A series of topic-based sites aggregating cream-of-the-crop sources most topical to each category. Fast3r (a motorcycle enthusiast site) and Vot3r (a timely election site) are both live.
• Thingfo
  A safe place where things hang out and find who has stories involving them.
• P0pulist
  A collection of folks’ favorite things, broken into popular categories. Think of it as one central place to enter your Top Ten lists for books, movies, games, music, etc. While still in private beta, you can signup easily, and approval comes quickly.
• Dipity
  A Facebook App for users to plot out timelines of their life events, Dipity can leverage your existing social timeline captured by Facebook to pre-populate your life story.

If you got a minute, take a gander at each. They’re each working diligently to incorporate user feedback into their products, and deserve a larger user base.

This effort was soon copied by MacUpdate, who offered a MacUpdate Promo bundle which also provided some great apps. MacHeist, not to be outdone, hacked that promotion, and offered users the ability to get additional free apps by buying the MacUpdate Promo bundle through its hack.

Well, it’s back again.

The new MacHeist II effort offers 11 Mac apps for $49. That includes the following applications:

• 1password, $29.95
  All your confidential information, including passwords, identities, and credit cards, is kept in one secure place provided by Apple’s OS X Keychain. Sounds useful. Verdict: Keep.
• AppZapper, $12.95
  I’ve been looking to get this one for some time. Adding and removing apps on the Mac is pretty simple, but it can be difficult to know where all an app tucked away its associated files. AppZapper makes it a simple issue. Verdict: Keep.
• Awaken, $12.95
  Awaken allows you to set any song in your iTunes library (or a playlist) as the buzzer on multiple alarms. Sorry, but my Mac isn’t by my bedside. Verdict: Pass.
• Cha-Ching, $40.00
  Checkbook balancing, budgets, bills and expenses handled “iTunes-style.” Me? I need automatic synchronization with my online accounts… I like software to do the work, not me. Verdict: Pass.
• CoverSutra, $22.00
  A CD jewelcase interface for iTunes with cover art on your desktop with Last.fm integration, fully customizable keyboard shortcuts, and instant player controls. Honestly? CoverSutra needs iTunes open to play music… I think I’ll stick with one app rather than two to do such a simple task. iTunes is way too bloated as is; last thing I need taking more memory is another music player. Verdict: Pass.
• CSSEdit, $29.95
  This is considered the top-tier CSS editor on the Mac. Happy to now have a full license, as I do a considerable amount of CSS-based design work. Verdict: Keep.
• iStopMotion, $49.00
  Use your Mac’s iSight to streamline the process of capturing and processing stop motion film. Sounds cute, although probably will only use once. Verdict: Will Try.
• Pixelmator, $59.00
  A layer-based image editor that uses the Mac’s built-in iSight, graphics card, and a full-screen editing mode. I beta tested this app early on, and will be interested to see how it matures. Verdict: Keep.
• Snapz Pro X, $69.00
  This one’s huge. It’s been the de facto screenshot and screen capture (i.e. video) app on the Mac for years. Verdict: Keep.
• Speed Download, $25.00
  Downloads from your browser, FTP, iDisk, are handled and sorted by type– movies go into Front Row, music goes directly into iTunes, etc. Sounds interesting… and likely to annoy. Verdict: Will Try.
• TaskPaper, $18.95
  A bare-bones, text-based to-do list to keep you organized. While I like the ability to edit either in the app or any other text editor, I’ve begun to take a liking to Things. Verdict: Will Try.

To top it off, MacHeist II will again donate 25% of its proceeds to one (or all) of the non-profits listed below:

• Action Against Hunger
• AIDS Research Alliance
• Alliance for Climate Protection
• Direct Relief International
• Humane Society International
• The Nature Conservancy
• Save the Children
• Save Darfur
• Prevent Cancer Foundation
• World Wildlife Fund

As I write this, $71,491 has already been raised for these organizations. Not bad.

So, check it out. $49 for CSSEdit, Snapz Pro, Pixelmator and 1Password alone would be a good deal; the rest is gravy. And, you’ll be helping some good folks in the process.

Address Book

Mac OS X’s Address Book is one of the strongest features of the entire operating system, in my opinion. Accessible not only through the Address Book application, it can be queried and manipulated by any other application. This means my contact info for a person can be called (and edited) by my instant messenger app, my email app, my photo management app, and even my library cataloging app.

That’s killer. Sadly, though, the Address Book application hasn’t received much attention since it was released years ago. Occasionally a new feature is added (two, in fact, with the new Leopard release!), but fundamental Address Book issues haven’t been resolved for years. I won’t try to catalog them all, as honestly, that’s a pretty big task. However, there are a couple tweaks that would add significant value.

• Additional Services

  The Web’s changed a bit since 2000. OK, it’s changed a lot. Kids these days aren’t emailing; they’re sending messages via Facebook. They’re posting video on YouTube. They’re calling on Skype. And they’re uploading photos on Flickr.

  But how do I represent any of them in Address Book, as I’ve got a lot of friends who use these services? I could add direct links to their profile pages as Web URLs, but that wouldn’t make it easy for other applications to make sense of that data in a meaningful way (the way they can with phone numbers, email addresses, instant messaging handles, etc.).

  In my mind, the best way to accommodate this issue would be extending what I call the “Services” list, which currently lists IM services: AIM, Jabber, MSN, ICQ, and Yahoo. (I can tell you, as well, how many times I’ve updated anyone’s Jabber, MSN, and ICQ fields… hint: it’s less than 10!)

  

  Address Book’s Services menu exposed

  Why can’t I add Skype, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, LiveJournal, etc. to the list? Why no “Custom” field for this list of services, the way there is with nearly all the other fields in an Address Book card? It’s a bit ironic, too, considering that the Web’s list of services grow at a far, far faster pace than, say, humanity’s definition of places like “work” and “home” or the 8 categories for a phone number.

• List My Groups

  What’s more embarrassing than trying to introduce your friend to someone whose name you don’t quite remember? Address Book seems to deal with this issue on a daily basis. Contacts can be added to multiple groups, a very useful feature. Problem is, once you’ve added a contact to several groups, how can you find out to which groups he/she has been added? Turns out, there’s an answer: while a contact card is selected, hold down the Option key. Once depressed, the associated group(s) on the left will highlight. Pretty cool.

  Only thing is, how did you know that? I sure didn’t. Took an accident of me wondering, “Why is one of the Groups highlighting when I accidentally pressed the Option key?” Neat discovery once I figured it out, but sadly, I’ve been trying to find how to determine what groups a contact belongs to for more than 2 years.

  This may sound crazy, but why not list the names of the associated Groups on the contact’s card? No one has to kill the fun Option key highlighting; but there could be a more intuitive way to lead to such a discovery.

• Big Boy Search

  This one’s simple. Know all those little modifiers you prepend to searches in Yahoo! and Google to get granular, advanced search results? Apple does; they use such operators for their OS-wide Spotlight search.

  Unfortunately, that power doesn’t translate to Address Book. Searching for “state:OH” doesn’t return folks who live in Ohio. Rather (and rather bizarrely), it returns anyone who had “United States” listed for their address’ country field and an “oh” in their name. I would propose, instead, that Address Book handle operator searches in the same fashion as OS X and major search engines. I know its not a regular feature most folks need, but it would give your power users and 3rd-party developers some great slices on the rich data contained inside.

• Fix Edit Mode

  Pierre Igot has actually done a fantastic job detailing issues with Address Book’s Edit mode problems, so I won’t try to compete with his thorough assessment. I’ll just say “+1″ and leave it at that. (Sad side note: his comments are 2+ years old.)

• Connections

  Address Book has a great feature: Related Names. I can enter in the name of a friend’s spouse or kid, as well as professional colleagues. Trouble is, though, these names are disconnected from… (drumroll) Address Book contacts! In other words, if under “Alex Meyer” I entered “Micah Laaker” in the “Friend” field, “Micah Laaker” wouldn’t in any way be connected with the “Micah Laaker” contact card in Address Book.

  Reduce the barriers between information. The Web has got me and millions of others used to hyperlinking to see more about an object… why not people in Address Book?

  Better yet, if the person on the contact card (let’s say my dad) has another person listed as “spouse” (i.e. my mom), and that spouse is listed in my Address Book, too, why not ask if I’d like to update her address after I update his? It would keep my Address Book data in much better shape, and show that Apple’s incorporating some of the best of Web functionality and smarts into its apps.

• Date autocomplete

  Address Book’s dates field used to be smart. No matter what input I gave it, it could turn it into a data. “11 Jun 75″ became “June 11, 1975.” “10/11/2007″ became “October 11, 2007.” This makes things easy. No matter what format folks typed their birthdate, anniversary data, whatever,

  And then Leopard came along.

  Somehow, someone at Apple decided it would be better if we all manually entered data

  The real kicker? Try entering a date the way you might say it (after being trained by so many Web forms): 6/11/75.

  

  Address Book’s “improved” date input field

  The result? You won’t guess this: “6/11/0075.”

  Wow.

  That is easily one of the last things I expected, considering the day before I upgraded to Leopard, it did the right thing. (Hint: 6/11/1975.)

  Honestly, I’ve never been this disappointed in software. (There’s lots of frustrating software out there, but few that went from “Ahh, that was really helpful!” to “Are you $%*# kidding me?!” And very few Apple software releases that made me angry.) I don’t think I even need to spell out a recommended course of action for this overall (and specific) issue. Please just fix this. Fast.

Apple took an embarrassing step backwards with the Leopard release of Address Book. No one sued Apple for infringing on some “make software smart” patents (at least that I’m aware of), so there was no need to cripple the product this late in the game. It should fix the date auto-complete issue immediately, and then get on to some other much-needed improvements. Why let Address Book sit with so little attention, when it is a backbone service for the entire operating system (and numerous 3rd-party applications)?

And, remember: I only ask for this because I care. Address Book, and all the other apps/issues I mentioned, are products and services I use daily and evangelize to others. I just want to love them a little bit more… or, at the very least, be made so that it was easy for other developers to extend them to do just that.

(Ed. note: This was the last of a several part series. See previous posts re: .Mac, Customer Lifecycle, Apple.com User Profiles, and iPhone/iPod/iTunes.)

iPhone/iPod

Apple must be inundated with idea after idea on how to improve or really make the iPhone a better product. But, I won’t lie; the iPhone is an awesome device. I had a series of disappointing Verizon phones (preceeded by an equally disappointing SprintPCS phone) over 3 years. No matter what glitches I’ve experienced with the iPhone (and there have been a couple doozies), I actually feel empowered with my phone now… rather than crippled or limited. Anywhere I go, I have access (even if occasionally slow via the EDGE network) to my email, maps for directions, and my full address book. Not to mention some great games and my Google Reader newsfeeds.

That said, there’s room for improvement. Particularly around syncing, which I mentioned earlier as a .Mac feature. I can understand .Mac-like sync not being a feature available to every user, as someone has to pay for server storage of all that information. The following suggestions, though, would apply for any iPhone and/or iPod user straight out of the box.

• Shortcut creation (iPhone)

  I can’t say I’m a giant fan of the touchscreen’s keyboard on the iPhone. While some know me for my sissy-soft hands, my iPhone knows me for a different digited issue: fat fingers. And fat fingers make it hard to type (particularly quickly) on a small keyboard. To make matters worse, Apple’s auto-correction software somehow manages to bungle both my regular English words and my old SMS shorthand. “MTG” (”meeting”) becomes “MTV,” “WFH” (”working from home”) becomes “WTH,” etc.

  Worse, the software doesn’t learn. No matter how many times I type “MTG,” it keeps on thinking I mean MTV. The “S” in SMS stands for “Short.” Why can’t I send short, shorthand MSGs (not MAGS) to others? I can appreciate Apple’s efforts to make the world a more formal, English-literate place. Most of us, though, aren’t sending TXTs to the CEO. Let us use our efficient little lingua franca, please. And, show us a little love by learning it over time… make that auto-correction start suggesting the words I use. Particularly, my email address. (And, please, please stop auto-capitalizing my email address as soon as I add the “@” symbol.)

  As it stands, I somewhat dread SMSing on the iPhone, as I know I’ll have to think just to send my note. That sounds like a Windows experience to me; I prefer the Mac-way of doing things, thank you.

• CoverFlow browsing (iPod… and should be an iPhone issue, too!)

  iTunes 7.x and Mac OS X Leopard recently incorporated CoverFlow into their browsing experience, which provides a visual, flip-book-like approach to perusing music and data libraries. It rocks. I was sold the minute I first played with it. (After all, who doesn’t remember their LP/CD covers when thinking about their favorite albums?) It is so, so, so much more engaging than scrolling through a 12-point text list.

  

  iTunes display for music on Mac (left) and iPod (right).

  Sadly, though, when I browse the music on my iPod in iTunes, I’m presented with an old-school 12-point text list of all my tracks. What happened? I was just flipping through this beautiful presentation of the limited selection of music on my Mac, and when I switch to the pimped-out, 80GB iPod, I get the limited, pre-iTunes 7.x experience. Any reason I can’t have the big boys’ experience while viewing my iPod’s content, too?

• Don’t cripple iPod functionality on the iPhone (iPhone)

  Manual music management on my iPods rock. The reason I use an iPod in the first place (these days, at least) is that I don’t have to keep my entire music library on my limited-space laptop drive. By manually copying and managing tracks to my iPod, I can keep them there, and keep my hard drive free for data and work.

  Unfortunately, the iPhone allows no such similar functionality. The only way to get music on the device is to sync playlists from my Mac to my iPhone. Delete the track off my Mac? Next sync, its getting wiped off my iPhone.

  To make annoying matters worse, the iPhone also doesn’t let me play my music stored on it when plugged into my Mac. Why? This totally baffles me. The iPhone says “iPod” right on the package, as well as on its Home screen button. It shows up in iTunes like an iPod.

  So why can’t I stash and play my music? This has effectively killed the “iPod” component of the iPhone for me… the only time I use my iPods for music is when I plug them into my many different Macs.

• Do not disconnect! (iPod)

  Really?! From the company that brought hot-swapping drives mainstream? To this day, I need to manually “eject” my iPod from my Mac, waiting tens of seconds (usually 6 tens, to be precise) for my iPod to tidy up and close shop. Usually, the reason I need to remove the iPod is that I’m dashing off to a meeting, and don’t want to lug the iPod, its cable, and its charger along.

  Call me naive, but I believe that Apple can provide a simple, elegant, and little-chance-of-harm means of disconnecting iPods by simply unplugging the device. What can I say? I dare to dream.

Like I said, the iPhone (and the iPod) rocks. Apple could totally ignore these issues, and I’ll keep using them just the same. Only thing, though, is that a little piece of me will die each time I do, knowing they could have done just a little bit better.

(Ed. note: This is one of a several part series, already including .Mac, Customer Lifecycle and Apple.com User Profiles coverage. Stay tuned tomorrow for my final post re: Address Book.)

Apple.com User Profiles

Before anyone goes and says there are currently user profiles on Apple.com, I’d ask you to find them within 5 clicks, or at any point in any of your online Apple.com experiences. One does exist… if you dive deep into the message board system. (Here’s my hidden Apple.com profile, for example.)

Why do I care? Last I checked, Apple fans are rabid; they love to argue about how superior OS X is to Vista, and how Mac users are smarter than Windows users. Apple runs commercials, in fact, about how much hipper, smarter, and creative Mac users are. Why not give them a means to show off their smarts and Apple’s wares? “Show and prove,” as we kids here say on the streets.

Particularly, I’m thinking of an Apple.com profile page… not a .Mac profile page. (We want more evangelistas, not less.) Tied to any Apple ID, the profile would let users add a tad more info than their name and homepage. I’d even recommend, at the very least, the following:

• My own avatar
  Some folks like to be known by their face, some a Spider-man logo, some an old ‘missing startup drive’ icon, rather than just a fixed palette of Apple-approved and Apple-supplied Mac icons. If you don’t want to be in the business of storing icons/photos/avatars, might I recommend Gravatars?

  

  This is the avatar I use on virtually every site except Apple’s.

• Visual representation of my current setup
  Macs are sexy computers. I’ve never been less excited about a Mac than looking at the current “Computer Model” info laid out in 11-point text on the current profile. At the least, provide the thumbnail images for the spectrum of machines and software I could have. (Hate to tell you, but I’ve still got an old Mac SE that I’d like to show off.) At best, let me upload/link to my photos of my setup.
• My Apps
  New Macs are great out of the box, particularly when including iLife. (You know what would make them better? A new version of HyperCard.) However, it seems unlikely that all us Mac users don’t add other software to the machine. And this software setup is invaluable to other users, particularly if the profile is of that of a well-known content creator (whether an artist, movie director, Simpsons writer, etc.). If a user could flag the software they use, a simple list could spur sales in the Apple Store and/or downloads in the Downloads section. Again, if you don’t mind me further suggesting, check out I Use This to see folks dedicated to helping people find what software other folks are using.
• Support Activity
  You currently have it… thanks! Might be nice to visually separate Questions from Posts, although this is already a somewhat confusing distinction.
• Community Ranking
  Mac users love to show off how much they know about their Macs. Currently, highly active users on Apple’s support site are shown with a “Status level” listed in text with tiny blue boxes. What’s the highest level? Is Level 5 good or bad? (I didn’t see a key/legend.) And might there be a clearer, more visually attractive means of representing achievement?
• Non-database presentation
  The current profile page looks like a dump… a database dump. Do users really need an “Avatar” and “Name” labels in front of rather obvious content? Consider treating user profiles with a similar design caliber as software profiles. Yes, all the data may sit in a database, but as a user, I don’t need to be reminded of that fact. There are countless other profiles available for reference to see what’s working everywhere else on the Web.
• Inherent affiliate linking
  I currently make a bit of money from iTunes affiliate links, and I’m pretty sure that 95-plus percent of iTunes users do not. For those who do (and rabidly work to promote our sites/pages as we’ll earn money), why not allow the ability to insert my affiliate code once (during profile setup) to apply across my entire profile? Again, it’s a small but vocal and viral audience; help those that will then want to help you.
• iTunes integration
  The iPod has transfixed the world’s population. You own the digital music space. Why not make it a bit more social a space? First, integrate Apple.com profiles within iTunes. Currently, contributing users (providing ratings, reviews, and iMixes) are treated tangentially by iTunes. Instead, display these new rich user profiles, which can then in turn feature:
  1. Recent Listening

     Last.fm and iLike have made their businesses on the back of iTunes’ Recently Played data feed. Seems pretty simple for y’all to easily include it here… with links to sample/buy the appropriate in tracks in iTunes.

     While you’re at it, can you open up the Apple TV to allow a similar feed for Recently Watched? I’ve wanted this from my TiVo for years. I like knowing how I spend/waste my time, and how my memory of what my favorite shows are match against what I really spend my time watching.

  2. Widget integration
     Your current My iTunes widgets offer a taste of a user’s iTunes activity beyond listening. Why not get more of your widgets auto-installed by including them on profile pages as soon as a user enables the functionality (with due notification, of course)?
  3. Lists
     iTunes’ iMixes functionality appears to still be popular… no surprise. People love to compile Top 10 lists, and particularly for music. By including the iMixes a user creates, a viewer has a better sense of each user’s personality.
• My First Mac
  I would be surprised if any Apple user can’t remember their first experience with their own Mac. Again, we’re a vocal bunch, and we like to share their experiences and knowledge. Why not facilitate a means for users to enter their first experience? Could make for some interesting case studies (should you ever be running short), and it also would allow long-time users to show off their history in the Mac/Apple field.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that few folks run around spelunking for user profiles to read. But when they do encounter them (as they’re spawned in different places around your site and products… and could be in many more places), Apple has an opportunity to show the diversity and excitement their products embody. A resource like that can reduce customer support costs (as I can now find a real person with a similar setup as my own), aid in content discovery (find out what your friends are listening to and/or what software they’re using), and drive sales (if I can get paid to promote Apple products, I will be driving folks to “my” Apple Store).

(Ed. note: This is one of a several part series, already including .Mac and Customer Lifecycle coverage. Stay tuned tomorrow for iPhone/iPod/iTunes and January 2nd for Address Book.)

Or maybe just me.

Customer Lifecycle

I mentioned earlier that 3 folks in my family purchased a MacBook this year. In each case, Apple got some demographic information and an Apple ID set up. The great interest in detail shown in the registration and setup process, though, seems to have fallen by the wayside once anyone moves beyond the setup screens.

To improve this, I’d recommend (at the very least) a lightweight recommendations engine.

When I/they/any customer returns to the Apple online store, I am not recognized and greeted by name. My past purchase (likely the machine I’m using right now) or the machine I’ve listed in my profile isn’t shown with recommendations for what I might like to buy next. And when I go to look at Notebook Cases for that new MacBook laptop, the 110 results aren’t already filtered (though they can be if I look around the page a bit) to show me cases for just this laptop. Software targeted to the demographic info I supplied (and Mac I purchased) isn’t recommended or featured, either in the store or Downloads section. On the flip side, software that wouldn’t perform well on my machine isn’t flagged as such (with a potential upsell for more RAM or a new machine). Worse, though, when I come to the Support site to troubleshoot an issue I’m having with my machine/software package, I’m back to square one; I have to tell Apple (again) what machine and software setup I have. At the point when I’m least happy with Apple (due to whatever issue is plaguing me at the time), Apple pretends as if this was our first encounter.

In a way, it makes me picture Steve Jobs cocking his head to the side and saying, “I’m sorry… I don’t think we’ve met before. Have you heard about the exciting world of Mac?”

In a different and more accurate way, though, it makes me feel like Apple wanted all my information not to help me out, but rather for marketing (and/or maybe nefarious?) purposes. I’m under no illusions; I’m sure that’s exactly why its being collected. I’ve usually been OK with that with other companies, in fact. But Apple keeps inundating me with ads about the joys and ease of the Mac experience. About how they’re different from Microsoft and the Windows world. So much so that I start to expect it. I now expect them to Think Different. And then they go and forget my name (figuratively and, in some cases, literally)… even when I’m signed in.

In essence, Apple appears to rock at acquiring customers, but, to-date, has yet to capitalize on the rest of the lifecycle. And, they could do this with simple acts of remembrance… something computers are exceptionally good at doing. I willingly gave you my data. Now please, please use it.

For me.

(Ed. note: This is one of a several part series, already including .Mac coverage. Stay tuned for posts re: Address Book, Apple.com User Profiles, and iPhone/iPod/iTunes.)

a computer’s software should break down the obstacles and bureaucracy that prevent efficiency in the real world and disguise how onerous the task may actually be.

As such, I end 2007 with my hopes for Apple in 2008; I write this not only as a fan, but also as a shareholder. (Steve, now that you’re an avid reader, here’s to hoping we see even some of this next year.)

.Mac

Many of my friends remember me hyping up the .Mac service for the past several years. The promise has always been great. Among other things, sync your files seamlessly (nee, Mac-like) between multiple Macs to have the same Address Book, Safari Bookmarks, Mail settings, application preferences, etc., everywhere you go… and always available “in the cloud” (up on the .Mac site). And indeed, it’s worked relatively well that way for years.

Unfortunately, the Web has grown at a clip that has far outpaced Apple in terms of updating the service. Matter of fact, Leopard and other Apple products are releasing base features that cannibalize the service’s utility: see the awesome Yahoo! Address Book sync between your iPhone, your OS X Address Book, and Yahoo! Mail/Messenger for but one example. .Mac users are getting upset, and it seems like high time to make some significant upgrades to the service.

I see a couple areas I’d particularly recommend for growth in the .Mac area:

• iPhone Sync
  Why did I invest .Mac’s promise of keeping my data “in the cloud” if their first truly portable, always-connected device can’t take advantage of the features? To get my iPhone in sync with very light data (Address Book updates, such as 10-digit phone numbers and 10k avatar images, and iCal events, such as 100-character meeting invites), I must plug my iPhone into my Mac and sync the two. I’ve never been in the habit of tethering my phone to my laptop or desktop, and have thus come to not rely on the iPhone for its Calendar and Address Book applications (both of which have data, believe it or not, which are updated multiple times each day). It would rock to have the iPhone syncing this data on-the-go, just as it does with my IMAP Mail account. (And, no, I shouldn’t have to shell out $400 for an updated iPhone just for this capability when the 3G version of the phone supports this feature.)
• Backup of iTunes purchases
  Apple clearly wants me to back up my iTunes purchases. I am solicited every so often in iTunes to use its internal backup feature (or the .Mac-supplied Backup application) to keep additional copies of my purchases. Why not automatically stockpile these tracks/videos/whatever in a Purchases folder on my iDisk? Storage is cheap; ask Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, and all the other players offering ridiculously large amounts of storage for free to their users. You have them one-upped in a different area… your users already paid for the privilege of this particular content. Why not archive it for them automatically (and preferably not count this storage against their meager 10GB limit)?

  If not for altruistic, value-added, help-the-user reasons, then consider it for reducing customer support costs.

• Storage
  I began to cover this already, but it needs clarification. Everyone gripes about this. So maybe there’s a ring of truth to the fact that its a tad bit shameful to so excitedly hype 10GB of storage, when that’s freely offered from so many other services. Man up; we’re paying $100/year… try not to make us feel like chumps.

  20GB sound reasonable? I’d, of course, prefer 50GB, but I don’t want to sound greedy.

• Instant Gratification
  Apple has product marketing down like a science. Walk into an Apple store, and you want to touch and grab all the products displayed around you. The tiny software boxes beckon, and suggest the beauty of the objects inside. Interestingly, though, .Mac software boxes contain not much more than a generic manual and a unique product code. (AppleCare boxes share a similar issue; their boxes contain one additional item: a TechTool Deluxe DVD that can also be downloaded for easy burning later.)

  This isn’t too big a deal (although it seems strange that there isn’t a disc in the box, even if its just filled with demo versions of 3rd-party software) for the physical store… people came in to pick up a ‘thing.’ What’s odd, though, is that the online store sells the same physical product. This means if a user buys the product tonight from the online store, they will need to pay for shipping, wait several days, and then get a couple sheets of paper when it arrives. Aside from the environmental impact of packaging and delivery, it strikes me as odd that Apple (who pioneered digital downloads with iTunes) has to send a box.

  But wait… if a user simply clicks ‘Join Now’ on the .Mac homepage, they can get started using the service this minute. So it isn’t a requirement that a box be shipped; you just might think so, as the digital, far more convenient download option isn’t presented.

  I have two recommendations:

  1. At the online Apple Store, only sell the digital delivery of .Mac (or at least make the packaged version something the user has to take an additional step to select)
  2. At physical Apple Store locations, deliver the .Mac activation code as a print-out on a user’s receipt… kind of like the way gas stations do for carwashes

  Both solutions reduce the waste, and get the user directly to the goods. And aside that, there’s a little less disappointment this way than in opening a box (that holds discs and packaging for other Apple products, like iWork and iLife) to find a lonely sheet of paper.

.Mac still has considerable value to me for the data synchronization alone, but it would be great to see some of these issues resolved soon. Open-source alternatives to .Mac are appearing, and others are suggesting replicating most of .Mac’s offering with free alternatives. Time to stave off the antsy masses.

(Ed. note: This is the first of a several part series. Stay tuned for posts re: Address Book, Customer Lifecycle, Apple.com User Profiles, and iPhone/iPod/iTunes.)

Laaker.com on OLPC Laptop, originally uploaded by mlaaker.

“I know the first thing most kids will do when receiving this (or another) laptop is to 1) crack into the neighbors’ Wi-Fi, 2) manually enter ‘laaker.com’ into the Web browser, and 3) bookmark the site for easy access in the future,” said Mr. Laaker. “I can’t let them down. Laaker.com needs to work, right out of the box, in the most environments imaginable.”

Proving his team’s unerring and unending Quality Assurance program has paid dividends, the site loaded blazingly fast.

“Tonight, children everywhere (and their parents, too) can rest well knowing that Laaker.com will be there with them to learn, laugh, and grow today, tomorrow, and the day or two after tomorrow (whichever comes first),” said Laaker. “Whether its on one of these green-and-white beauties, an iPhone, or some other fancy new device, we’ll be there in working order with them.”

The Future Design 2008 article spans a number of genres and media, and tries to paint a picture of what issues designers are facing in these varied industries. I try to wax on a bit regarding the push to design every experience as if it could pick up, pack up, and head over to another site to hang out with users there; letting users grab content and take it where they will while continuing to interact with their social connections is quickly becoming the norm.

Widgets, widgets everywhere. That’s what 2008 seems to be looking like to me.

Then, do two things:

1. Get a $100 rebate right away for buying on this particular day.

2. Fill out the online form to upgrade to the full edition of Office 2008 for only shipping and handling (roughly $7US).

Next year, when Microsoft Office 2008 comes out, you’ll have a full version coming in the mail. All for about $32.

Once I began that quest, though, it struck me as odd that my library was tied to one computer; I couldn’t access/update it online, or share it with others. This led me to LibraryThing, less UI-candy but a powerful online library tool nonetheless. Further, LibraryThing helped and encouraged folks to use CueCats to input their collections, and seemed focused on open standards.

Enter: Shelfari.

I got an invite to Shelfari back in July from my friend Lowell. There seemed to be a level of design professionalism around the product, and it was backed by Amazon. Cool. Also, it looked like they might be trying to move towards a more visual approach, ala Delicious Library. I created a Shelfari account, added some books, and then largely forgot about the product.

Enter: Facebook’s F8 Developer Platform.

With waves of 3rd-party development of social profile apps, a number of book cataloguing apps appeared. Shelfari’s Facebook app appeared at one point in my News Feed, and I decided to add it to my profile page. After adding it, I went to Shelfari and added a couple other books I owned to make my profile module look a bit more impressive.

Then, I made a mistake. I opted to let Shelfari look through my Gmail address book to see who I was already connected with might also be using the service. (I have a general policy when it comes to inviting others to a service I belong to: if they are already a member, I have no problem asking if they’d like to link up; if they’re not, I may invite one or two folks who I think would be very interested. Otherwise, I either mention the service in person, or forget about inviting folks to it.)

I entered my Gmail login credentials, and pressed the Continue button.

The resulting screen showed a half dozen some users (from my address book of 800-some) as members of Shelfari. All the addresses were checked. Just to make sure, I scanned the page first… I didn’t want to spam everyone in the list. There were two sections of addresses: “Your Friends already on Shelfari” and “Your Friends not yet on Shelfari.” Each had a “Send Invites” button, and a toggle to select/unselect the addresses within that section.

Pretty clear.

I hit the “Send Invites” button beneath the “Your Friends already on Shelfari.”

Seconds later, I got the first of several mail delivery errors in my mailbox. It appeared Shelfari had emailed some of the addresses from the section whose button I didn’t press. I was alarmed, but not too worried.

Then came the acceptance emails. Emails from my mother-in-law, my dentist, past clients, eBay sellers, and folks on mailing lists whose addresses I didn’t even have. By the very fact that I had received mail from an address, Gmail had stashed it in my address book; that I found useful. What I found harmful was that, now, all those addresses (especially all those addresses of folks I didn’t ever even email… they had emailed me) had been pinged by Shelfari by me.

Should I send an email to everyone in my address book to apologize? That seemed even lamer.

So I channeled those feelings into an email to Shelfari support: “It’s bad enough to auto-check them all in hopes of spamming the whole list, but to then tie those auto-checked addresses to a disconnected button?” The response I received back (rather quickly) was infuriating. “That certainly is disconcerting,” it started. But then it took an odd turn. “We have actually evaluated numerous designs for this process and have chosen one that we felt was extremely clear explaining the process and what is happening.”

So while acknowledging what happened was not in a user’s best interest, they defended the design of the system. This struck me as something usability testing (even paper prototyping or casual man-in-the-field testing) would catch easily. Qualitative feedback captures gems like this in a way that raw, aggregate data can’t.

I replied again, but never heard further. I grumbled to myself, and to several co-workers.

And then, finally, this past week I came across O’Reilly Radar’s ‘Shelfari and the New Social Contract’. I wasn’t alone. Dozens of other Shelfari users were as angry as I, LibraryThing’s CEO had done an investigation (and expose) on the exact issue, and now O’Reilly was drawing attention.

Shelfari’s response seemed plausible on first read. And then I thought about it. Their new fixes, while solving my particular problem, still will result in unwanted, unsolicited emails being sent. (They choose to pre-select all email fields still; a convention long ago dropped by most companies wanting qualified members, not those too lazy to hit “unsubscribe” from the ensuing emails-to-come.) And, further, the pattern exposed (of their intern who hid under the guise of a happy fan while interacting with co-workers in comment threads) suggests that they don’t get it.

Long story longer, I’m still a Shelfari account holder. Part of me feels bad bailing on a service to which I inadvertently attuned so many people. Another part of me wants to believe this was just a couple of bad things coupled together, and Shelfari will learn from the mistakes.

But honestly? I’m doubtful. And it makes me want to use LibraryThing more. (I appreciate their allowance for site publishers to include their own Amazon Affiliates link in their widgets.) And the upcoming Delicious Library 2.

So, in the meantime, while Shelfari’s invite process isn’t on the up-and-up, I figured I’d publicly join in with the kicking.

Speaking to investors, Micah Laaker stated: “One year ago, rumors were fluttering around, and people were asking about our growth plans. One month ago, to answer those points, I stood before you and announced our latest addition and first shipping product.”

“Jonah Charles Laaker was released publicly October 11, 2007, 6 days behind schedule but more feature complete than originally planned. He’s already beating growth estimates and quickly learning while on the job; that’s 50% year-over-year growth over our 2006 output, and we now have a new employee to work on the site.”

Asked about the 6 day release delay, Laaker brushed the issue aside. “Look, quality takes time. The market’s happy, and we’re happy. Take a look at the results; Jonah’s a sweet kid, and we’re happy to have him on board.”

Luckily, Yahoo! Developer Network co-worker JR Conlin stepped up and helped me fill in a couple blanks. As such, I present my revision to the O’Reilly Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) for JavaScript Developers Pocket Guide (by Mike Chambers, Daniel Dura, & Kevin Hoyt)… particularly pages 27 and 28, Setting Up the AIR SDK and Command-LineTools:

There are a number of ways to add the path to the AIR SDK to your system path, depending on which shell you are using, and how you specify user environment variables.

The instructions below show how to modify your path environment variable if you are using the bash shell.

1. Open the Terminal program (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
2. Make sure you’re in your home directory by typing

   cd

   and pressing enter.

3. We need to check to see if one of two files are present. Run the following command

   ls -la

4. Look for a file named either.profile or.bashrc.
5. If you have neither the .profile or .bashrc file, then create the .profile file with the following command:
   touch .profile
6. Open the .profile or .bashrc file with a text editor.
7. Look for a line that looks similar to this:

   export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

8. Add the path to the /bindirectory to the end of this line. For example, if /bin is at /airsdk/bin, the export path should look something like this:

   export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin;/airsdk/bin

   making sure to separate the entries with a colon.

9. If the file is empty, add the following line:

   export PATH=$PATH:/airsdk/bin

10. Save and close the file.

Insert: Quit Terminal (and other applications), and restart your Mac. (If you don’t restart your Mac, your Terminal application won’t recognize the changes.)

11. Run the following command to load the new settings source,

    .profile

    (or

    .bashrc

    , if that is the file you edited).

Revise item #11: Run the following command to load the new settings source,

. .profile

(or

. .bashrc

, if that is the file you edited).

12. You can confirm that the new settings have taken effect by typing

    echo $PATH

    and pressing Enter. Make sure that the

    /bin

    path is included in the output.

13. In order to test the installation, open a Terminal window and type

    adt

    .
    
    You should see output similar this:

    Too few arguments.
    Usage: adt -package air_file app_xml [ file_or_dir | -C dir file_or_dir ... ] ... 

    meaning that the tools are configured correctly.

If you get an error that the file cannot be found, then check the following things:

• Make sure the bin and runtime directories are included in the

  directory.

• Make sure you included the path to

  /bin

  correctly in the PATH environment variable.

• Make sure you either opened a new Terminal window, or ran source on your configuration file.

If this works for you, too (or, if it does not), drop me a line in the Comments section. I will try to keep this updated as I hear from folks. Having recently spoke at the Atlanta stop of the OnAir tour, I can attest that developers are building exciting things with AIR… hopefully this will help a few others join those legions.

Bringing such insightful words to life, Mountain View (home of one Micah Laaker) is now hosting one of 7-Eleven’s “movie involvements” in the form of a Kwik-E-Mart refitting of their newest store in the area. Serving as a tie-in for The Simpsons Movie, the convenience shoppe’s exterior, signage, employee uniforms, and product lines have been overhauled to match the show’s 7-Eleven-inspired Kwik-E-Mart.

The new, improved 7-Eleven storefront at 1380 Pear Avenue, Mountain View, CA.

Within minutes of learning that Mountain View was one of 11 nationwide Kwik-E-Mart hostings being unveiled today, Mr. Laaker began devising plans to visit every local 7-Eleven until the winning locale was spotted. (Also, he was hankering for a Super Big Gulp.) Minutes after that, he and wife Carrie were driving just around the corner when he heard her yell, “MART!”

Such shouts could mean but one thing: the “chosen” store was less than a mile around the corner from their home. The next half hour was spent documenting and purchasing such treasured gems as Buzz Cola, Radioactive Man comic books, and the illustrious sprinkled donut of Simpsons yore. Sadly, no Duff Beer was discovered in the coolers. (Images from the store’s opening day are found on Flickr.)

“I’ve heard 7-Eleven’s customers are into movies… I’m into movies, too!” said Mr. Laaker while strolling the aisles of the store (and being cautiously tracked by two store employees uneasy with his camera-documenting ways). “Not surprisingly then, I’m also into The Simpsons and 7-Eleven. Further, I’m into participating in big national marketing events when they’re just blocks away.”

Mr. Laaker then took a dainty bite of his sweet, sweet, delicious donut, and made his merry way home.

We have all the official information up on the Yahoo! Developer Network blog, as well as the official open Hack Day site.

And, as with last year’s event here in Sunnyvale, this will be free, open to (and expressly for) non-Yahoo! employees, and provide a 24-hour, beer-and-pizza-fueled social environment within which folks can build and demonstrate unique product ideas and enhancements. Unlike last year’s event, though, this one will be held in a palace overlooking London.

The whole YDN team will be there for the event, as well as a number of US- and UK-based Yahoo! folks. I’ll personally be in London Wed, June 13, through Sunday, June 17, so if you’ll be there too (or happen to live there), drop me a line.

But most importantly, come out and make something.

Other posts about the event:

• Matt McAlister, Yahoo! co-conspirator
• Matt Cashmore, event producer on BBC’s Backstage team
• Ian Forrester, also a member of the Backstage team
• Chris Riley, excited participant

PS: Happy Cinco de Micah!

Yet we as a country and as individuals continue to move slowly to end and resolve a genocide that has erased upwards of 400,000 lives already, and the Sudanese government’s campaign is not waiting idly while we debate our next threat… among countless others that have yet to come to fruition.

Waiting for the Khartoum government to approve an international protection force is akin to waiting for the Nazis to approve an Allied force inside of 1940’s Germany to protect the Jews. Their goal is the eradication of the indigenous people of Darfur; such authorization will not come willingly, nor soon enough.

As such, if you haven’t already, please consider joining in one of the Global Days for Darfur events going on right now to spur international action (and show popular support to embolden our government’s leadership), as well as:

• Urge the UN to take more action,
• Divest yourself and your company’s holdings that fund the Sudanese government’s backing of the janjaweed and military support, and
• Lobby Congress for direct, immediate, and measurable action.

Most importantly, learn more about the issues surrounding the Darfur genocide, and talk about this atrocity with your friends and colleagues. While the movement to end this genocide needs its eloquent and moving speakers, it remains in a remarkable shortage of any speakers.

Please, help drum up enough awareness and outrage over the continued reality of rape, torture, and elimination of the people of Darfur. Four years, 400,000 people, and an immense amount of hope and potential have already been thoroughly lost. By forcing action now, there may not be a need for a fourth annual Global Days for Darfur.

Every 3 months, Yahoos from all parts of the company have 24 hours to build new products (or enhancements to existing products) with the express goal of showcasing their work in front of the company… and its top executives.

It’s what we’ve dubbed “Hack Day,” and it’s been remarkably successful at bubbling up top ideas and talent to decision makers internally… and then out to our users.*

So, it was out of our most recent event that Loc Amigos emerged. Fellow Developer Network crony Jason Levitt drummed up the idea of scouring the address books of a user’s different mail accounts to find which social networks these contacts may already be a part of… sure beats the current approach most use of sending emails to everyone in your address book. Using the Yahoo! Mail APIs as well as some screen-scrapers for Hotmail, AOL Mail, and Gmail, as well as the YUI user interface libraries, Jason worked with Kathleen Watkins and I to quickly assemble a working version of the product.

Does it work? Absolutely. Is it the best user interface for this sort of challenge? No way… but, it demonstrates something very important: a small, nimble team quickly working on a proof-of-concept can take a cool idea, get a working prototype, and now take it into usability labs to get real user feedback.

It’s this rapid, entrepreneurial spirit that is still fostered inside Yahoo!, and makes it a very exciting place to work. Even more exciting, the Developer Network (of which I’m now a part of) works on projects like this all the time in efforts to demonstrate and test the very APIs and Web Services we promote. It’s hard to imagine a more collaborative, inspiring environment, especially one built to encourage others (whether individual designers/developers, startups, or even our competitors) to succeed in similar ways using our (and others’) tools.

* For more on what Hack Day is, and why it rocks, see Chad Dickerson’s post on Yahoo! Hack Days as well as Matt McAlister’s Top 10 Reasons Hack Day Rocks.

First, I misspelled the name of Ohio’s great citadel, Cincinnati, with the word “cincinatti.”

Second (and most importantly), I mis-tagged Bryce with such a label when (in actuality) he lives in Columbus.

Now, I won’t lie. I haven’t been to Ohio before, and I profess no desire to visit. This is not due to some dislike for its residents, its industry, its heritage, or its sizable electoral voting weight. Rather, it goes back to one of my many dollar bets.

(Ed. note: A “dollar bet” is a wager placed between Micah Laaker and some third party for the value of one dollar. The loser of said bet must write his/her name, as well as the subject of the wager, on the bill.)

In 2000, I placed a friendly wager with another of Ohio’s sons, my good friend and associate Colin Lange. Mr. Lange had insidiously suggested to others in our office that Ohio was part of the Midwest. Such heresies were considered impolite in proper company in that day, and I took Lange to task. “Ohio is not part of the Midwest. Never was, never will be,” I defiantly roared. “As far as I’m concerned, Ohio is part of the Northeast.” He quickly met my retort with a dollar-bet challenge, and the result was a despondent trip to the annals of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sadly, the Census Bureau disagreed with my assessment. I did take comfort, however, finding that it was non-canonical Midwest, being labeled as “East North Central.” (Note how none of those words contained “Mid” or “West,” while two of the three matched “North” and “east.”)

The bet was lost, the dollar transcribed, and a new disdain for Ohio was born. (Ed. note: Such disdain, however, did not rank high enough to warrant Ohio’s placement on the dreaded Laaker.com Enemies List.)

Which brings us back to present times, where Cincinnati and Columbus clash about in tale of alliteration, betrayal, misspellings, and a laissez-faire approach to studying American geography (and friend’s details).

So, to Mr. Glass, I publicly apologize. If a fellow Midwesterner had confused Nebraska with Iowa, or Omaha with Lincoln (or, worse, Council Bluffs!), I, too, would have done something other than smile. I feel your pain, and your tags have been corrected. Let’s squash this beef like titans.

Laaker is joining YDN to build and lead the new user experience group for the team. The Sunnyvale-based company, now 10+ years old, began as the web’s Yellow Pages, and now has grown to be the #1 start page, #1 email service, and a host of informative, entertaining, and addictive services. Its Developer Network provides tools, code, and assistance for people outside the company to utilize Yahoo! services (such as Search, Maps, CSS and JavaScript, and even the insanely popular Answers).

To announce this move, Laaker was interviewed by good friend and colleague Matt McAlister. A portion of this interview has been made available for public consumption:

1. What is your biggest user experience pet peeve on the Internet?
   Data duplication. As a user, I am forced to pay a data surrender toll with every new site I visit: my name, email, password, zip code, photo, and sometimes much more. While I’m probably a little too comfortable sharing such information, it becomes frustrating when I move, change job titles, switch photos, etc., as I then have to revisit and update every site I’ve entered such info. Further, if I then decide I don’t want people to know where I live, or what I look like, I’ve got a similar distributed information management issue.

   Managing these profiles also carries risks for all the individual companies/startups that maintain and store such info; if their accounts are sabotaged, and sensitive information is revealed, they’re liable. Looking forward, if there’s a way for everyone to access a common platform for user profile, preferences, and basic information (with the appropriate security controls and management interface), we can make our users’ online lives easier to maintain and control. Providing that sense (and reality) of control, as well as the benefits of recognition (such as automatically knowing what ZIP code to use for weather, movie theater locations, and maps, or providing quick access to your address book), will be a great leap forward for our online experiences.

   We want to make users do as little work as possible to get what they want from our products (and yours). Instead, we should shoulder the burden behind the scenes, listen to what our users tell us (both in what they say, as well as what they do), and provide experiences that excite and engage them everyday.

2. What web site do you wish you had designed?
   ClaimID. They took a leadership position around connecting users’ various identities across multiple sites using the MicroID microformat. The beauty of their approach was twofold: 1. allow users to make claims to their various profiles without requiring verification, and 2. leverage an easy-to-implement, open format that is simple for the developers to integrate. They’ve kept their interaction simple and minimal, their scenarios in context with the action just taken, and play nicely both with the competition (such as other OpenID providers) and the collegial (e.g. support for Gravatars and multiple microformats).
3. Show us one of the more clever user experiences you’ve seen on the Internets recently?
   I would encourage folks to check out the Upcoming/Flickr integration. For an example, check out the YUI 1st-Year Anniversary Party. The photos shown near the comments area are sucked in by users adding a tag to their Flickr photos. Further, once such a tag is entered on the Flickr side, it is hidden from users (as its in computer-readable but human-ugly format) and instead is reflected with an Upcoming.org icon and a link to the associated event.

   Simple, community-powered cross-site integration is a beautiful thing. By emerging from the community, Upcoming and Flickr were able to add useful functionality for their users (i.e. photos shown on events’ pages, and event listings linked from photos) that allows best-of-breed tools to focus on what they do best, rather than trying to build competing offerings inside of each that don’t quite do what users want. By doing so, users can pivot off of photos/events (via hidden tags) and better represent the activities in which they are participating.

4. What’s the best invention in man’s recorded history?
   The newspaper. As a medium that cuts its cost-to-entry so as to provide the masses with vital information, critical thinking, and calls-to-action every day, the newspaper wins it hands down for me. I would rate books highly, as well as free hosting/publishing platforms (like Blogger and Wordpress.com) for similar reasons. I also think very fondly of my Nintendo DS Lite; it’s too early to tell on that one, though.
5. Who was your favorite band in 8th grade?
   Public Enemy, if I remember correctly.
6. If you were a Muppet, who would you be?
   Statler. He always heckled with a smile.
7. What does your wife find most annoying about you?
   Good question. My guess? Including her in the press releases I write. (I usually have to edit her back out; she’s not as liberal with sharing her info online.)
8. If you had to listen to the collective works of one musical artist over and over again until you died, who would you listen to?
   Time and again, Paul Simon seems to win out for me, so I would have to choose him. My Last.fm profile, however, tells a different story, with U2 blowing everything else out of the water. Secretly, though, Justin Timberlake would probably be the least melancholy way to go out.
9. Does altruism exist?
   One of the most enjoyable benefits of being a Yahoo is our Yahoo! Employee Foundation… its a self-sufficient, not-for-profit organization that is funded entirely by Yahoo! employees. It’s not a company mandate, and it wasn’t spawned by the company. Rather, it was spawned by those fortunate to work here who wanted to use the platform of this company as a means for good. So, does a corporate-affiliated organization prove altruism exists? No. But the people who’ve I met behind that organization, as well as my family and close friends, have repeatedly proven it time and again.
10. What interested you most about working at Yahoo!? How about YDN?
    If you don’t work inside Yahoo!, you may be surprised that we have more than 350 designers working worldwide (with 200+ here in California alone) to craft our users’ experiences. I came to Yahoo! to join an amazing group of designers, researchers, and analysts (not to mention fantastic product managers, engineers, and marketers) with a common goal: approach problem-solving from a user-centered perspective and iterate quickly while learning from actual users.

    I’ve long been a fan of our Developer Network as it provides a means of extending Yahoo! as a platform. For having “Web” in the title, the World Wide Web is a pretty disconnected experience. Yahoo! exists in a much larger ecosystem, but there’s currently very few examples of a connected experience (i.e. what a user does on Amazon affects what they see/do on Yahoo! and what they see/do on a personal blog). And, if Yahoo! begins to serve not only as a user-facing destination but also the glue between numerous online destinations/services, we’ll have a fair bit of work ahead of us to ensure a solid, trusted, and enriching experience that our users associate with the Yahoo! brand. (Side note: I’m looking to hire talented designers and prototypers to help define Yahoo!’s off-network experiences ; if you’re interested, please drop me a line with examples of your work.)

In this here “Year of the Golden Pig,” its all about health, wealth, and knowledge of self at Laaker.com, and a smattering of self-help. As such, I am sharing said wealth and knoweldge (and no health) concerning all things Mac-software… and eliminating the need to write multiple emails this year.

Further, if you’re just generally curious as to what software I use, check out my software profile at iusethis. It’s a social repository for software usage of which I’ve become a fan. If you’d rather spend your time online here, though, feel free to peruse my choice picks below:

Utilities

Onyx
Unlock Debug menus for Safari, Disk Utility and other applications; perform system maintenance and optimization tasks; and configure the Finder and other system tools to behave as you wish.

Inquisitor
Totally pimp your Safari search box: add autocomplete, your favorite search engines (MyWeb, Wikipedia, Amazon, etc.), and see similar popular queries.

Stuffit Standard
StuffIt has been the industry standard for file decompression for years. There’s a new competitor out, the open-source The UnArchiver, which I’ve just begun to try… jury’s still out on whether it takes the cake.

Pastor
Simple-purposed application for storing passwords, logins, serial numbers, preferences, etc.

CDFinder
Great app for archiving your data, music, and video discs; it costs $30 after 30 days, but has served me very well over the years.

Delicious Library
One use of this media catalog program will have you gathering up anything with a UPC code on it. If you have a digital web cam, you can use DL to scan bar codes on your CDs, DVDs, books, etc., automatically grab info from Amazon, and catalog all the info on your machine. Perfect for insurance tracking, as well the ability to publish elsewhere if you want. ($40)
For those without Macs or $40 lying around, there’s also Library Thing, which fills a similar role without fulfilling the UI delight… nor the easy-entry barcode scanning.

Burn
Kind of like Toast/EZCDCreator, but free. For most needs, Apple’s built-in CD/DVD burning will suffice; however, Burn is faster, uses less disk space on your computer (as Apple makes a disc image first), and gives you more options (like VCDs and more).

Design

Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
OmniGraffle Professional

Internet

Cyberduck
Free FTP program that can sync your bookmarks with your .Mac account

Plaxo

Proteus
Instant Messenger application that handles AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, GoogleTalk, Jabber, and more, while still using your OS X Address Book.

Smultron
What was hands-down the best (and free) code/text editor available on the Mac is now one of the ugliest. Featuring code snippets (think of it as a quick library of commonly-used text/code), .Mac preferences syncing (for multiple machines), and tabbed environments, Smultron is fast and often-updated. Repair the icons by applying a patch created by the original icon artist on the project.

Cocoalicious
Very useful for quickly managing your del.icio.us bookmarks.

delImport
If you use del.icio.us bookmarks, you need this application, too. Anytime you search in Apple’s Spotlight, your del.icio.us bookmarks will be included, too.

Adobe Reader
PDFs are everywhere, and the latest version of the Reader application is much, much speedier.

Macromedia Flash Player
Macs rarely come with the latest edition, and a large chunk of the Web requires the latest and greatest.

Macromedia Shockwave Player
Macs rarely come with the latest edition anymore. While seldom used anymore, you can save some pain later by downloading now.

Adobe SVG Viewer
This plugin lets you view the XML version of Flash on your Mac.

Firefox
(you know why)

Music

iLike Sidebar

PodWorks
This is what I use to copy music from iPod back to my Mac… it’s $8 well spent.

Video
Perian
This plugin allows DivX and other generally-PC-only formats to play just fine via QuickTime.

Flip4Mac WMV
Windows Media Player support comes to OS X in the guise of this plugin. It will let you play .wmv files directly in the QuickTime player.

VLC video player
This application plays a lot of movies Quicktime, WMP, and Real can’t play.

Niche

Tivo Decode Manager
$100 is too, too much to pay for what is already free; bypass TiVo’s overpriced TiVoToGo software and use this constantly-updated

XBox Browser
Have an old XBox (i.e. not an XBox 360)? Got it modded with XBox Media Center? If so, XB allows you to rip your games and save them on the XBox hard drive so that you won’t have to switch discs for games again.

.Mac

.Mac 1-year subscription
If they ask, tell them “mlaaker@mac.com” sent ya… beyond well worth the $99 a year… lets you sync your files between multiple computers, cell phone, iPod, palm pilot, etc.

It was actually this “Post to del.icio.us” addition that got me to thinking: why not add Yahoo!’s other two bookmarking tools as well? Shortly after experimenting with del.icio.us, Yahoo! released MyWeb: a competitor to the public bookmarking/tagging tool which accommodated privacy, page caching, and prioritization of saved pages on Yahoo! search results. And it was this last feature (search prioritization) that has kept me a MyWeb user, as opposed to the ever-popular del.icio.us. (Since the release of two upgrades to the MyWeb service, Yahoo! Bookmarks 2.0 has begun rolling out in beta with an improved interface and folder categorization as well as tagging, although all entries saved are private-only.)

So, how to add these tools, too, to NetNewsWire? Repeated efforts of modifying the original del.icio.us AppleScript (among others) resulted in some half-working tools: items in an RSS feed could be posted, but the URLs of the Safari/WebKit-rendered tabs’ pages were ignored. Sadly, that’s where I would generally find the interesting pages I wanted to bookmark.

Then, I happened to discover Deeje Cooley’s “Tag This” for NetNewsWire script example. Magic. By stripping the code back down to a similar construct as the original del.icio.us scripts and adding the appropriate URLs, I got to a working solution. Now, when I find an RSS feed item or browse to a page that I want to save to one of these services, I can simply select my script in the NetNewsWire script menu. Immediately, Safari (or whichever Web browser you have selected as your default) will fire open in the background with tag and note entry fields ready for quick saving.

Want to try them out yourself? Download them today, un-ZIP, and move into

˜/Library/Application Support/NetNewsWire/Scripts/

before firing up NetNewsWire. You can download the files here:

• Yahoo! Bookmarks 2.0
• Yahoo! MyWeb

Unfortunately, these scripts don’t seem to work with NetNewsWire Lite, the free (albeit with a somewhat reduced feature set) counterpart to its non-Lite sibling. That may be more of a limitation of my knowledge of scripting, though, than a real NetNewsWire Lite limitation.

Next up is seeing if I can get this to work for Vienna, which is an open-source newsreader that has already seen some good work on extending the application.

Shortly after the release of this poll’s findings, Laaker.com CEO Micah Laaker announced, “2006 was huge for us. Really huge. We got a classy new site; top-notch, classy new content; and top-to-bottom integration with some of the classiest partners in the industry. I share your excitement for the past, especially 2006. We raised the bar for content quality, and we’ll do so again in 2007.”

No mention was made of whether readers were aware of the lack of other content throughout the year or whether they were aware of any content from 2006.