cine + octo = boo

I’m a big fan of Last.fm, but I’ll admit that music-based social networks haven’t completely nailed it yet. Part of the problem lies in the lack of problem-solving for the user. Last.fm gets halfway there, in that it is a simple way to catalog listening behavior into a social profile. It loses in the sense that it is so passive that most people forget to engage. Or if you’re like me, you go whole months without realizing that your scrobbling has lapsed.

Not good.

I’ve never been keen on subscription models for music, although I never thought I’d be keen on a subscription model for movies, yet I’ve been a Netflix member since the beginning. So, I suppose there is room for convincing. That said, the proposition of a cloud based music library bolted to a social network is extremely compelling. When Ping was announced, this was the very first thing that came to mind — the promise of what this thing could become if allowed to grow in the right directions, oh the possibilities!

Imagine my dismay when finding that Ping does offer that very promise, yet fumbles on a few of the basics along the way. Specifically, interaction design around social activity. Yes, a company like Apple can produce iPhone after iPhone with an industry changing UX, yet they seemed to have dropped the ball on some very simple things. Before I dive in, let me preface that all of this is easily correctable, and I suspect we’ll see most of these issues addressed in future updates.

Here goes:

1. The Lonely Island

Joining Ping is an extremely lonely experience. Sure, Apple makes some follower recommendations right off the bat, but they aren’t particularly good ones. To be fair, a network that requires activation like Ping is bound to have limitations in the “People We Recommend You Follow” department, so Apple is wise to offer up recommended artists to follow. Yet, it still chalks up to a miss, and here’s why: I’ve never listened to an MP3 from any of the artists Ping recommends via iTunes. They have my listening data, they have my library, and they already scrape both of these for Genius recommendations, so chances are these are the closest matches they could muster. But some of them are so completely off base that it left me scratching my head.

Browsing deeper into the recommendations revealed another off-putting issue: The recommendations sometimes duplicate, which throws off the count. That means I see the opportunity to browse through 16 recommendations, only to find out that I’m actually offered 14, and the duplicates don’t even match my musical preferences. What does this say? Right off the bat, this gives me the feeling that I won’t find anything of interest for me here from an artist perspective. But that’s OK, I would be happy enough just to connect with friends and share music likes and dislikes. Ping leads with this call to action, but it isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do. To make matters worse, your option to search in iTunes or Ping doesn’t really offer a remedy, but more on that in a bit.

Read the rest of this entry »

Like every iPhone release, Apple’s latest entry has created quite a stir. In fact, from the very moment a prototype was misplaced in a bar this new iPhone has enjoyed a spotlight laced with leak-fueled intrigue on top of the usual “what will be released?” speculation.

Not all of the attention is favorable, especially with reports of antenna issues with some units when held left-handed, and Steve Jobs/Apple’s response. On top of it all, Google’s Android OS is enjoying increased prominence as well, with the high demand for the Evo 4G, and the release of the Droid X. Things are certainly heating up in the smartphone race, and it’s exciting to watch.

Dee was kind enough to get me an iPhone 4 as a combination Father’s Day/birthday gift, and I’ve been pretty impressed with it thus far. I decided to take the improved 720p HD video recording (and editing) aspect of the phone for a spin, and here is the result. All video was shot in camera, edited, and then uploaded to Vimeo and YouTube.

Note: I uploaded this video to both services as a means to test out each one for videos such as these. You’ll need to click through to watch in full HD.

Take a look:

Vimeo

Watch in HD on Vimeo

YouTube

Watch in HD on YouTube

What do you think? Did you pick up an iPhone 4? What’s your take of its video capability?

p.s. Special thanks to Amelie, for being a willing (and adorable) subject. I imagine there will be more videos like these in our future.

Rep. Joe Barton’s apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward this morning smacks of concessions, and moreover, was a total embarrassment.

Quite frankly, Barton’s actions align with something that has troubled me throughout the first year and a half of the Obama administration — Republicans do not want to let go. I can’t blame them. But at some point they need to stop acting like someone will eventually step in and say, “Oh, you were right. Obama, you’re out.” It’s not going to happen.

Yes, I’m aware that he placed a caveat by prefacing his statement with a claim that he speaks for himself, and not for the Republican Party. However, he also inserts agenda into his “opinion” by claiming that the same “shakedown” could occur to citizens as well as corporations. The truth is, Obama and Hayward came to an agreement, and despite criminal investigations, BP is still on the hook for damages that have been done to the gulf coast, it’s inhabitants, etc. They needed to be held accountable, and the decision to put $20 billion towards recovery was an attempt at good will, not a shakedown. It’s called accountability, folks.

I know this is completely unrelated, but it astounds me that we are capable of rallying together to find solutions to annoyances like the Vuvuzela bzzzz during the World Cup, yet we are unable to collectively sort through the damage occurring daily to the gulf coast eco-system. Don’t even get me started on the people complaining about their ability to afford the iPhone 4 despite such horrors as AT&T server failures or delayed shipping.

Update: Barton made another statement this afternoon, clarifying his remarks from this morning. He insists that he holds BP responsible, and does not want his apology to cloud that. Whatever, the damage is done. Let’s not ignore that Oil & Gas industries were the #2 contributors to your campaign funds.

i spent the day testing out the resilience of my iPhone battery, and thought i’d put together a timeline to show how things progressed. for the purposes of this test, i decided to keep every known battery draining setting turned on in what i consider a full on stress test.

here are the details:

• 3G is on
• push notifications are on for foursquare, AIM, and Yahoo! Messenger
• push mail is turned on for both a Yahoo! Mail account and an Exchange account
• location services are on

i took screenshots throughout the charging session, here’s what i came up with:

[block I]

3:30 pm — i started a charge, the battery was at 75% when i plugged it in

3:49 pm — no change after 19 minutes, however the “charging” symbol switched to the “plugged in” symbol — the phone thought it was fully charged

4:04 pm — still no change, but the phone has now reverted back to the “charging” symbol

[block II]

4:16 pm — still no change. at this point, i unplugged to run errands

5:30 pm — returned home from errands, plugged back in to charge. during my time away, the battery depleted 50%

[block III]

5:51 pm — within 21 minutes, the phone is back up to 75% charge

6:48 pm — nearly full charge. i checked on the charge flow, there were no hiccups (as witnessed in block I)

7:47 pm — nothing worth reporting during this hour, but i thought i’d add this in just to show that there were no further abnormalities

i’ll test traction throughout the day, tomorrow.

i was reading a review of push notification apps the other day, and my present situation started to fester. for those familiar, i’ve had to keep push notifications turned off in order to prevent rapid battery life loss and issues when charging my iPhone. reading about how others are enjoying push in some respects is frustrating, because there is really no sound reason why my issues are caused by push notifications.

so i buckled and decided to enter into another round of testing out settings, etc. all the while knowing that this could be painful (even possibly result in being potentially phoneless for a period of time. i re-enabled push notifications for foursquare, and opted to keep AIM (download on iTunes store) and Yahoo! Messenger turned off for the time being. what resulted was exactly as expected — rapid battery loss (down to 25% within 45 minutes off of the charger and minimal use) and charging issues (phone ceased to charge beyond both the 25%, 50% and 75% thresholds).

NOTE: people will question what that means (“If you couldn’t charge past 25%, how did you test the 50% and 75% points?”). with two simple methods:

1. the jiggle technique: by unplugging the phone and re-plugging it in repeatedly, i could occasionally trick the phone into charging beyond the 25% point. this is hardly rock solid, and frequently failed to work.
2. restore, restore, restore: for whatever reason, running a restore would override this bug and the phone would remain in charge mode throughout the restore process. often, the restore would last long enough to get the phone back up to nearly full charge. this provided a clue.

you see, i noticed that each restore would render the bug moot, but when faced with the decision to restore from a backup, the bug would resurface in the subsequent syncing of older data. could the issues reside in a corrupted backup? once the restore sync completed, the charging and battery life issues seemed to stick now, regardless of whether push notifications were on or off.

this led me to the next step in my testing process: erase all data on the phone (not just a software restore), and then set up the phone as an entirely new phone. this is a hassle in that all accounts would need to be reconfigured (email, etc.), but that’s a small price to pay for a more stable phone if it works. if it doesn’t, i’ll be taking yet another trip to the genius bar.

i’m pushing the phone to the limits to test this out, so i’ve activated location services, push notifications, and 3G. if battery life is better under these settings, it means i’m onto something here. so far the test has been going well. sometime (before 7am) we experienced a power outage, which means while the phone was on a charger, it was not being charged. all signs point to it having reached full charge, as it was full when i retrieved it this morning at around 8:30 a.m. since then, i’ve had an AIM conversation via push notifications, ran out for bagels at 9:39 a.m. (where i reclaimed mayorship using foursquare), read several blog posts, took photos, uploaded to flickr, tweeted, grabbed coffee, and returned home at about 11:19 a.m. once home, i took a snapshot of my battery life, which at ~25% after a little over two hours of heavy use seems like an improvement. mind you, i was seeing a drop to 25% of battery after 40 minutes of light use (3G off, location off, and push notifications on).

i’ll continue to monitor, and will report the latest on the blog as it develops.

in a slightly related note: Sarah Lacy posted about waning Apple fanboy-ism over on TechCrunch this morning. with the recent issues over Google Voice and other unapproved apps, i’m sure functional issues like these only impact blind devotion to Apple further. it’s my feeling that no one should be blindly devoted to anything. period. a critical eye is important to maintain — otherwise films like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button end up getting a free pass from Fincher acolytes.

iPhone OS 3.0 brought with it a slew of new functionality, and some hidden gems. copy & paste, extended battery life, and push notifications were the three that piqued my interest most of all. after upgrading, i was happy to find that copy & paste worked well enough, and i actually found improved battery performance post upgrade. life was good. admittedly, i was a little disappointed that apps like AOL Messenger were not ready to go with push notifications right out the gate.

a little less than two weeks ago i noticed that my iPhone 3G was refusing to charge beyond 20%. the main battery indicator displayed 20%, and the indicator in the upper right displayed the “plugged in” battery symbol. definitely a mixed signal.

i decided to wipe the iPhone, do a full restore, and see if this improved things. after doing so, the iPhone accepted a full charge, and the next day we embarked on a trip to San Francisco via Caltrain. a few hours after leaving, and with very little use on the iPhone, the battery displayed 50% charge (and draining quickly). a couple notes on my settings before someone chimes in on with suggestions:

• brightness is ~30%
• 3G is off
• WIFI is off unless i’m in an area with known access
• push mail is on, but only for exchange. all other accounts are set to fetch

by the time we reached our destination the iPhone was well below 20%, so we decided to make a pit-stop at the apple store for a visit to the genius bar. after a short wait, the apple tech ran some tests on the iPhone, and then promptly replaced it with a new one.

back at home, i upgraded the OS to 3.0, then restored from a backup. things seemed to be going better, in that i could at least charge the iPhone without problems, however the battery drained quicker than i’d remembered prior to 3.0. over the next week, the iPhone’s battery life continued to dwindle in performance, and the mixed signal issues from the first round started up again.

this time i tested the iPhone charging behavior a little more. i noticed that unplugging and replugging the iPhone back in could eventually trigger a charge cycle. so, i left the iPhone on the charger for several hours only to return to find it was completely drained of battery. next, i decided to test different charging scenarios: plugged into a computer, directly plugged into the wall, and using different cables. all of this made no difference.

on the verge of yet another wipe and restore attempt, i happened to notice something that opened up another possibility. i received a push notification from foursquare while charging (with the charge indicator displaying the lightning bolt symbol). after i read the notification, something caught my eye — the lightning bolt in the upper right was now replaced with the “plugged in” symbol. to top it off, the push notification (when the phone was left locked) kept the iPhone’s display on. i monitored this for roughly 10 minutes, and the screen never went back into sleep mode. sure enough, the battery was draining steadily.

it’s completely reasonable to expect push notifications to have some impact on battery life, but this appears to be a bigger functionality issue. i’m not seeing the same behavior with other notifications (like text messages, missed calls, or voicemails). for now, i’m keeping push notifications turned off until the v.3.1 update to the OS drops. of course, this might not be the same for all. i’ve found that some people reporting the opposite case (push mail causing the drain, not push notifications).

i’ve tested the phone for 2 days since removing push notifications, and battery life is back to the “improved” levels from before enabling push notifications. i’ve yet to bump into any of the odd charging state confusions, and i’ve also been able to heavily use the phone while commuting on Caltrain with only a 25% loss of battery (this was unheard of on the 2.0 software).

anyone else experience similar issues?