Rubénerd!

I don't read Gawker sites since they decided buying stolen property was journalism, but when I was informed of Gizmodo's latest site redesign, I was quick to check out how their latest mess compares to mine. I can't design sites either, you see. Anyway, is this a joke?!

Ruben can't design stuff

Now as you can see from my site here, I know nothing about web design myself, I just created what I thought was the simplest thing I could get away with. Still, as a user I could spend my time critiquing the slow rendering, awkwardly designed new version of Gizmodo, but there are plenty of other people doing that for me right now...

This Is the New Gizmodo ★
Terrible.

...and I don't even read Gizmodo! Instead, here's a rant about graceful degradation.

No, its just un-graceful degradation!

Its a very simple concept, when you develop a site (or even software) you provide for an alternative version[1] when dynamic content, cross site requests, cookies and other media are either not accepted by a security concious user, or for when the client software doesn't provide the capability to render or use them.

[1] If you're really talented you don't even provide an alternative version, you simply design it in such a way that clients can render at least some of it when they can't render it all, and still make it usable and visually appealing. If you've got a designer who can do that, pay them well and do everything you can to keep them!

It doesn't just make your site more accessible for people using screen readers, text browsers and the like, but makes sites easier to crawl by search engines and those daddy long legs spiders that sometimes make their way into my computer room that I'm okay with because they eat insects and they've never scared me. But I digress.

Aww, but it's too much work!

Gawker media sites have long used JavaScript to load in fundamental parts of their sites such as comments which obviously isn't good for usability or security, but this time if you don't have cross site requests enabled by default it doesn't load anything other that what I can only imagine was an early prototype for the site. A VERY early prototype, there's no content whatsoever, and the navigation bar contains only two entries, neither of which link to anything!

There may be legitimate reasons for them to be loading in content from five million places and nothing from their host domain (load balancing, performance), but the fact that their site exists in such a way that under certain circumstances[2] it doesn't display anything should be a concern, perhaps even moreso than the fact that they're current design when being rendered properly isn't terribly attractive at best, and is painfully slow at worst.

[2] Well, I mean Rubenerd AND Gizmodo don't render anything when your computer is turned off (another potential certain circumstance), but I can hardly be blamed for that ;).

And in case you think I'm being unreasonable, Gizmodo's arch rival Engadget loads most of their content just fine even with all my archaic, paranoia-induced Firefox extensions, and in a site design I'd argue is infinitely more usable. It is possible folks!

Perhaps it simply attests to the kind of people that read Gizmodo.

Be still my beating heart. Enlightenment E17 is at 1.0.

Finally after a long time coming, we are pleased to announce the 1.0 release of the core [Enlightenment Foundation Libraries] (With the exception of Eet at 1.4).

In my opinion, Enlightenment is the most beautiful window manager for *nix systems, hands down. Long before Compiz and KDE4, Enlightenment squeezed out some pretty darn impressive graphics out of modest hardware.

In the bad old days, I moved from it to Xfce purely because I used mostly GTK+ apps and wanted visual consistency. Always had a soft spot for Enlightenment though, think it'll be getting an install again :).

Whenever I install a new hard drive, pointless ritual dictates I must give it a new custom icon. Not being artistically inclined (as evidenced by the site you're viewing), I often lend myself the use of the fruits of other artists' labours. That was an entirely pointless sentence, as was this one. You know what, forget this whole blasted paragraph. It never happened.

On the left is the default Mac Pro icon in OS X, the right was drawn by Parthiban Mohanraj entitled The Anodized Behemoth over at DeviantArt. Apple should hire him for all the icons in 10.7 Lion. Given their less than attractive new iTunes icon, they desperately need him.

This story could potentially be bigger than The Gap's ill fated new logo that looked like a blue version of PricewaterhouseCoopers or however you spell it. Waterhouse sounds like a company that fixes dodgy roofs.

Photo from the Starbucks weblog, under the "Available for Download" sidebar heading.

Disclaimer

First of all, to get it out of the way because I've heard it all before every time I mention Starbucks on Twitter, Gowalla and Foursquare.

Starbucks is a heartless megacorportaion, their coffee is terrible, and Ruben Schade is not only a stupid sucker and a pawn, he's also not politically correct saying he likes spending time there having caramel macchiatos. He's a poser and a fool, and spending just as much time at a local family run coffee shop in his neighbourhood does nothing to clear his super evil conscience. He should go to the Starbucks CEO and offer him sexual favours in exchange for his servitude, and just move to Seattle to pretend he's Frasier like all those other stupid people who think Starbucks is a relaxing, nice place to have a cup of coffee and get a little work done. They're all just so arrogant imposing themselves on others with their holier than thou attitude and their cups with paper sleeves. Why don't they just accept that different people like different things already?

Yeah yeah, whatever. Moving on.

This Is The New Sh*t

I don't listen to Marilyn Manson at all and think his music is terrible, but I have respect for him. Like Lady Gaga, or that guy who's always playing that weird guitar at Central.

I had no idea but the current Starbucks logo has been in use since 1992 when they had their IPO. I know this because I read their press release, and if information is in a press release, it must be true.

The updated logo isn't really new per sé, they've merely removed the phrase "Starbucks Coffee" from the name, expanded the mermaid woodcut and changed the colour to match the aforementioned name that was once there. From their weblog post Bringing the Siren to Life, second paragraph:

From the start, we wanted to recognize and honor the important equities of the iconic Starbucks logo. So we broke down the four main parts of the mark – color, shape, typeface and the Siren. After hundreds of explorations, we found the answer in simplicity. Removing the words from the mark, bringing in the green, and taking the Siren out of her ring. For forty years she’s represented coffee, and now she is the star.

So that's my problem, I'm trapped in a green ring that says "Ruben Schade"! Maybe if I took myself out of that ring and painted myself green I'd be more dynamic and synergistic. Yes, apparently synergistic is a word. *facepalm*

Thoughts

I'm of two minds about this. First, to paraphrase Einstein, I'm generally not a fan of change simply for the sake of change unless there's something meaningful derived from it. This updated logo doesn't really seem to do this, at least to me as a non-graphics designer. The typeface and stars and colour balance in the current logo are just brilliant.

Perhaps wrapping the logo in "Starbucks Coffee" was part of an elaborate, two decade long scheme to get us to associate their logo with those words, much like Nike had their name next to the swoosh for a while before removing it, or Apple Computer having their retro typeface "a" as part of the bitten part of the logo and pple proceeding it, then having no lettering at all.

Its the Illuminati, or something

Of course conspiracy theorists no doubt will claim the removal of the term Coffee from the Starbucks logo is akin to Kentucky Fried Chicken changing their name to KFC because their stock was so heavily genetically modified that they couldn't legally be called chickens any more. Oh you didn't hear about that? Yeah, its all true! Its not because its so fatty I always feel green afterwards, its for THAT reason I don't eat it!

You see, Starbucks doesn't sell coffee, they sell coffee flavoured floor sweepings, and all those pesky truth in advertising laws would have meant a drastic logo change anyway, so they may as well disguise their products true origins as well as save themselves the hassle of adding all those extra words to the logo which is already big enough. I mean, only a Venti cup could fit a real description in the logo rather than just Starbucks Coffee.

Con Clus Ions

I dunno, on the one hand I'm pleased they're retaining the main part of the logo, but call me a cranky old man who drinks terrible coffee or any other insult you care to throw at me, but I like the current one better. And to prove it, I'm having a drink from their branch in Wynyard now as I speak. Or type, or whatever this is. Near the station of the same name.

Hey, at least they're not pulling an Adelaide in Sydney :O.

Various vexillological societies and The Wikipedias are reporting that Malawi has changed its flag to restore the previous Pan-African colour layout, a change the opposition party is none too pleased with. I don't pretend to know or understand the political motivation behind the change, but I like it. It looks brighter, more cheerful :).

When I was growing up I was intensely interested in flags and logos because so many designs could be visually expressed with so few colours and geometric shapes. People used to call me a loser, can you believe it? Don't answer that.

Despite not knowing the first thing about graphic design, I'm a unabashed logo and symbol nerd so I've been intently following the story of India's search for a Rupee symbol. Now Reuters is reporting they've found one. Reminds me of something.

Initial thoughts I thought and all that

I didn't like it at first because it seemed unbalanced, like it would topple over in a stiff breeze, but the way they able to incorporate Hindi and Roman lettering along with the de facto double line that's found in the Dollar, Yen and Euro was pretty cool. Is my lack of graphic design knowledge showing yet?

I often wondered why currencies like this never got their own symbols. When I lived in Malaysia I got a kick out of having part of my name in front of every RM denomination, but it takes up twice as much space and isn't terribly imaginative.

I wonder how this will be implemented in Indian computers? Will they ship with a symbol on the R key you can activate with FN, or will it replace the $ on the 4? And where in Unicode will it go?

Wait, wait: UPDATE!

Now I know what it reminds me of:

I suppose Indian people are always winning beauty pagents and whatnot, so it makes sense. Unfortunately as anyone who has seen me can attest to, I also know virtually nothing about hair and hair care. I think I'll stop while I'm ahead. Get it? A... head!?

Actually now that I look at them side by side, they don't look anything alike at all. Disregard this entire post.

While I'm ragging on Android and on my mobile soapbox thingy, why is it the media consistently gives the platform a free ride but criticises everything Apple does?

It's not just old media

Don't get me wrong, I adore Slashdot and still use it as a primary news source in lieu of sites like Reddit and Digg, but their double standards are so breathtaking I fear sometimes I may collapse from a lack of oxygen. I hope I'm not near anything pointy when that happens, I don't think my insurance covers such stuff.

Yesterday's story that was summarised as the sweet eye candy of Android was only one of a litany of examples. I imagined that if Android had been substituted with iOS, the story would probably have been tagged as flamebait and plenty of angry people would have been frantically typing on their keyboard explaining why Apple is the spawn of Satan.

The latest example is this serious security hole in Android that wasn't even accidental but was deliberately designed.

Google Has Android Remote App Install Power, Too
It turns out that Android also includes a feature that enables Google to remotely install apps on users' phones as well.

BlueBoxSW humorously that had the story been about the iPhone, the headline would have read:

Again none of this should be construed to mean I wouldn't want an Android device myself (once they make some decent hardware and stop blaming it for software problems as I blogged about last year), and I certainly am not suggesting we let our guard down on Apple, but come on folks the stench of hypocrisy is threatening to gas us all.

The other players

I tell you what though, one thing we can all agree on is how amazing it is Microsoft has been so quickly and effectively sidelined with all their silly Kin and Windows Mobile Enterprise Phone Corporate Service Pack One Edition whatnot. The entire debate is framed as Apple versus Google, Microsoft barely even gets a mention in footnotes any more. Except for this post, hey at least I'm doing my bit. Buy a Sidekick!!!

Imagine the uproar on Slashdot if this story description was posted about an Apple product! But I digress.

According to Liliputing, Intel is bringing the sweet eye candy of Android to x86, which — if all goes well — means it will land on (more) netbooks and tablets soon.

There are certainly many legitimate reasons people could give for running Android, including having access to [some of] the source code and [somewhat] greater freedom over what you can do with the hardware, but its UI is hardly one of them and it certainly isn't "sweet eye candy".

I'd describe the Android UI with the same word the Metacity team uses to describe their window manager: Cheerios. Not terribly attractive or tasty, but it gets the job done and probably won't shatter like an iPhone 4. HTC's Sense UI may be Slightly Frosted Cheerios. Can you get Slightly Frosted Cheerios?

Let's not forget the prototype Andoid devices were originally designed to broadly copy the BlackBerry UI, it was only when Apple breathed new life into the fairly stagnant smartphone market (thank you, Windows Mobile :P) that Android started looking like... an iPhone. Nothing really wrong with that, but when you have so many other compelling features you should promote them instead.

While I'm on my soapbox...

While I'm ragging on Android and on my mobile soapbox thingy, why is it the media consistently gives the platform a free ride but criticises everything Apple does? It's not just old media, sites like Slashdot are so

Andreas Constantinou has written one of the most interesting blog posts about Android that I've read in a long while; he argues its claim to being open source is not only suspect, but that the platform's relative success has very little to do with it. The following are my own thoughts.

It's not as open

Years ago I wanted a Qtopia device, a chocolate-bar form factor phone made by the Qt framework folks. I was on the mailing lists for the OpenMoko phone for years as it missed deadline after deadline. The Neo1973 looked like a boat anchor, complete with an awkward handle for tying rope onto its frame.

For a sizable part of the 2000s I was a Mac user but longed to move to entirely free and open source systems because it was the "right thing to do", but as with many FLOSS efforts I gave up when they failed to deliver on promises.

When Android was announced my hopes were renewed, but as it quickly became clear it's advertised openness wasn't as clear cut as we were led to believe, as Andreas painstakingly points out. This has led to a few discussions personally on Twitter asking whether Apple's unabashed "play by our rules or leave" approach is more honest than Google's "we're all about openness" when there are even parts of their own systems that are off limits.

That said, I have no problem acknowledging they're light years ahead of Microsoft, and as consumers in general we're far better off with Android being the generic OS for phone makers than WiMo with either a creaky old codebase or a UI design that'd look great... in print!

It's not really original

Prior to the iPhone, the Android prototype looked like a Blackberry, right down to the tiny keys and the layout of the user interface. Fast forward a few years and aside from some awkward slide-out keyboards and trackballs that even most Android users claim is utterly unnecessary, Android devices look like iPhones with a few more buttons. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but one can hardly claim Android is original in any really meaningful way.

Daniel Eran Dilger wrote a brilliant piece in Roughly Drafted recently about the upcoming Android 2.2 software and how if Apple released something akin to it people would be up in arms.

While Apple has taken a public beating for being slow to deliver some significant features of the iPhone OS, including last year’s copy and paste or this year’s multitasking, it’s less well known that Android is missing key features that everyone just assumes it must have.

I still want one

While acknowledging the iPhone is a superior device in terms of usability, security and design, the nerdy part of me would still love to have an Android device, and not just so I'd have an icebreaker with Gina Trapani who I have a mad crush on.

One of the more limiting aspects of the iPhone [for me] is not being able to automate tasks that I would otherwise fire up a shell and hack away at on a desktop. Having a Python interpreter (or even just basic shell scripting) on a phone would be an absolute slice of heaven, and I know that Apple will never allow it on my current device. I could imagine Apple doing an Automater.app-like environment for the iPhone OS at some point in the future, but I'd still prefer being able to write some scripts that use APIs for the phone, text messages, email and so on, then upload them to the phone. There's so much stuff I repeat everyday that the phone itself could do for me.

All that said, having done no research into this I have no idea an Android device would allow me to much (or any) of this either, but I suppose if they didn't I could roll my own custom firmware... that is, if Google allows it.

It's 3am and I'm writing about phones. I should be asleep, dreaming about them instead. Hey, wait.

David Olsen on Twitter said something this morning which I think is endemic of the reason why Microsoft is being crushed in the consumer space and can't understand why. For once, a more serious post here on Rubénerd.com!

MS works with hardware partners to deliver more or less the same solution as Apple, distribute the delivery of competing product

I hate and love Clarkson at the same time

In an old episode of Top Gear from 2006, Jeremy Clarkson test drives the a Malaysian Perodua car. While acknowledging the price point and features made it compelling compared to other small and affordable cars on paper, he immediately dismissed it and took a sledgehammer to its body work in an entertaining rage. It was clear the car had been designed by a team of business executives in a board room, and not by people passionate about cars, he claimed.

The dilemma facing Microsoft isn't that they have a lack of talent; some brilliant people work for them and they have access to the same potential employee pool as Apple does. Their problem is they advertise what they're doing without addressing why other than profits, which means people fill in the blanks with images of the Evil Empire and monopolies. They also create consumer products by broadly duplicating products (or at least attempting to) from other companies and then stare in utter bewilderment when people keep buying iPods instead of Zunes, as David showed above.

The image problem

Apple has pizzazz and is too cool for school, and Microsoft is old and tired. Microsoftians dismiss such notions as marketing babble and that consumers are dumb for falling for it, without realising how important such image is. Instead we end up with knockoff Microsoft stores in the US stocked with offerings from mediocre companies like HP and with hapless employees attempting to dance to the Black Eyed Peas. Don't get me wrong, my dancing is painfully embarrassing too, but that's why I don't do it in public!

Apple is successful because they advertise themselves as a lifestyle company that wants to make life easier and more fun for people, and as a result they happen to make computers, music players and phones. Microsoft advertises themselves in the consumer space with lists of technical specifications. It works great for them in the enterprise space, but not for consumers.

Whether they intend it or not is inconsequential, consumers broadly see Microsoft as wanting to make as much money as possible as their why, and Apple as being a company wanting to challenge the status quo. They're both businesses with shareholders, but the difference is striking.

The irony is that while Microsoft was trying to be Apple by attempting to duplicate their experience, the very real alternative market that embraces openness and customisation was cornered by the Linux folks, a loose confederation of white hat hackers and disparate IT companies with an OS that's less reliable, secure and has lower performance than FreeBSD but that is driven by one hell of a goal. Microsoft is being squeezed from both ends.

What they so desperately need to do

I use Apple computers. I have an iPhone. I also have a bunch of vanilla boxes running FreeBSD and I still run Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions and 95 in virtual machines for nostalgic fun. I grew up on Windows and many of Microsoft's Home titles such as Bookshelf, Musical Instruments, Explorapedia, Dangerous Creatures and Entertainment Pack. Skifree! Chip's Challenge! If you need proof that I used to like Microsoft products, I wrote about it in detail here back in 2008.

Unlike some Apple and Linux folk, I have no qualm with saying Microsoft is capable of making great products that are fun to use, because I remember using some. However, their approach of embrace, extend and extinguish that worked so well for them in the operating system and office software market simply doesn't translate in the consumer space for reasons that seem to be out of their grasp or comprehension.

What Microsoft needs to do is take a step back and make a genuine attempt to connect with consumers. Don't show us a vapourware video for a product you have no intention of releasing or simply photocopy another product and stick a Zune sticker on it, they need to tell us what motivates them to make these products.

Instead of flooding the market with hundreds of different (and often incompatible) devices that copy a product another company released three years ago, they need to pour their collective heart and soul into just a few and make it show. We can tell when a company has done this, and when they've made something as a result of board room decisions, as Clarkson showed with that Perodua.

I often point out here that for all their monopolistic shenanigans in the 90s and the horrid reliability of their products during that era, I reckoned there were some real diamonds in the rough during that time which gives me hope that they can do it again. As far as I know and care now, the Microsoft I knew and grew up with died a long time ago in a cloud of indignation and broken promises.

Perhaps the first step is to ditch Ballmer.