Jeremy Stanley

The problems with iMessage

2012-02-18T00:00:00Z

One of the biggest features in Mountain Lion is Messages, which extends iMessage from the iPhone and iPad to the Mac. It's currently available for Mac OS X Lion as a beta. I encourage a download to try it out.

There are a few issues with Messages and it's something I've dealt with the iPad. Here they are:

Caller ID, receive at phone numbers. Apple needs to figure out a way for iMessages directed at phone numbers to be routed to the Mac and iPad. A feasible solution would be to authenticate phone numbers against an Apple ID. Some friends don't have my email address in their contacts, so when I message them from the Mac or iPad, it starts a second conversation, which is a pain. In Nilay Patel's preview of Mountain Lion, Apple was vague, but discussed this was something the company was working on. Time will tell.

Maybe Apple wants users to adopt emails as the primary way of conversing to get away from the phone number. A phone number is a difficult thing: sometimes we have to change them. By having iMessage, I could change my number and my friends might not know the difference.
Alerts. When it works, when I have messages coming to my iMessage email, this means I get an alert on my Mac, phone and iPad at the same time. This is a good thing. However, once I'm engaged in a conversation in iMessage, I'd like to get only alerts on the device I'm using at the time. This is a difficult problem to solve, but Facebook has done a good job of it with its Facebook Messenger app. When I get a Facebook message, my phone buzzes until I respond to the message. If I respond on the computer, the phone will shut up until I'm away from it for a period of time. This seems like a strategy Apple could adopt.
Animated GIFs. It's currently unclear how Animated GIFs work in the iMessage system. When I saved them to my computer and sent them in an iMessage, they animated in my message window on the iPhone, but my message's receiver did not see it animated. This is hugely disappointing and Apple really has to fix this. I'm not joking at all.

Currently, iMessage is flawed but not broken. I'd like to see Apple take it a step further and implement a smarter handling across multiple Apple devices.

A few notes on Mountain Lion

2012-02-16T00:00:00Z

I've been playing around with the preview of Mountain Lion, Apple's next desktop operating system of the course of the day and have come away with a few quick takes.

First and foremost, this preview is a very stable build, but it is unfinished. So, things can and will change when the operating system ships later this year.

Here's a few quick reactions to apps and features I tested out.

Notification Center

It's mind-boggling that, in the first half of 2012, no shipping desktop operating systems don't have a unified notification system (this might be true of Linux distros; I'm not sure). Notification Center works like a charm. Chats, emails simply roll onto the screen. I can't wait for application developers to harness

I really like the two-finger swipe gesture to reveal the panel with recent updates. In fact, it'd be a hindrance to use anything other than the trackpad to get the most out of OS X Mountain Lion. That's not to say the mouse should go away, as it will always have a purpose for special tasks like gaming. Rather, for day-to-day use, there are huge benefits to using just a trackpad.

Social sharing

As I've said in the past, having access at the operating system to login credentials for services like Google and Twitter are crucial game-changers. It's no different on Mountain Lion. I can take a picture, open it up in Preview (or Quick Look), click the share button, select Twitter and share it with my followers. It's simple and doesn't even require an application to use. Facebook is missing out on this, big time.

iCloud, iMessage, Messages

I found it really easy to transition to a clean in stall of Mountain Lion, helped because of iCloud. Bookmarks, contacts and notes all sync cleanly across all devices.

Couple that with being able to log in with an Apple ID to use iMessage inside the Messages application that replaces iChat, and Apple has a hit. While it's a little kludgy -- you have to associate by Apple ID and email, but not phone number, which can cause headaches -- it's a great start. It's simple to get a chat across Macs, phones and other chat services like Google Talk and AIM going.

What this means

It's really easy to just say Apple has thrown some stuff that worked on the iPhone and iPad on OS X and called it a day. It's even easier to say that's not innovation, that's porting.

It's definitely more than that: Apple, with iCloud, is striving to develop a consistent user experience throughout its devices. The iCloud is the new digital hub and any innovation that's done on the company's product line will be with iCloud as the imperative.

(It's also worth noting that a big update to Safari -- the address bar is now unified -- came to the Mac first. There's little doubt that iOS 6 will eventually see that. It is still a two-way street at 1 Infinite Loop)

Apple's also aware that iOS is a hit. There are more iOS devices than Macs ever sold. Why not try to match that success and attract iOS users to the Mac? Especially when the upgrading user will have to sacrifice very little in terms of familiarity and access.

Tweetbot for iPad impressions

2012-02-08T21:25:00Z

Federico Viticci at MacStories sums up his (downright exhaustive) Tweetbot for iPad review with this:

I’ve been using Tweetbot on my iPad for three weeks now, and it’s good. More than good, it’s the great Twitter client power users and those who simply didn’t like the alternatives out there were waiting for.

That's a good way to put it. There are several great third-party Twitter clients on the iPhone – Twittelator Neue, TweetDeck (when updated) and (until today) Tweetbot – that don't have iPad translations. There are some passable apps, however: Echofon is a good, but not great, iPad application. Because Echofon relies heavily on popovers, it's really easy to accidentally leave a view such as someone's profile, or a conversation (add in the fact that turning the iPad infuriatingly closes the popover).

In other words, Tweetbot is a referendum on other iPad apps' glaring faults. The app gracefully and smartly uses popovers; like when selecting and holding a link, or a profile to do a fast action. It doesn't overwhelm the user with crowded user interfaces (9.7-inch screens can be crowded with busy design), but still packs a great feature set.

As with other Tapbots apps, Tweetbot has an incredible attention to detail, with superior animations, cute and quirky sound effects, and performance.

As someone who can forego using a laptop in favor of the iPad in non-work situations almost all the time, Tweetbot will be an application I frequent a lot. Shawn Blanc noted on Twitter that the application justifies his iPad purchase (his review is here). I disagree semantically; rather, Tweetbot makes me value my iPad even more.

It's definitely worth $3 for the Twitter “power user,” especially if they use the iPad often for browsing Twitter.

A note on universal apps

Tweetbot is a $3 app, but is not Universal. Of course, this means customers would have to buy both the iPad and iPhone versions. It was a no brainer to buy it right off the bad, considering I had iTunes store credit to use. Other people weren't too pleased, wondering why they had to pay twice for the “same” application.

This isn't a novel concept either, as Angry Birds developer Rovio splits games into iPhone and iPad versions. From time to time, however, these debates come up. It speaks to a confusion iOS users have. It's not just about taking an application and blowing it up to fit the screen (the misperception that iPad critics had in the first place).

It's an issue companies like Tapbots will have to deal with, but I don't blame it for placing value on a completely new application. Apple has made it so easy for developers to bundle iPad and iPhone apps that a large swath users are annoyed when they are not. I don't think it's that big of a problem, considering Tweetbot is No. 2 in the paid apps section of the App Store at the time of this writing.

For Tumblr, every user is the advertiser (for now)

2012-02-03T20:30:00Z

I double checked the calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1 when Tumblr announced that it would charge a dollar for its new “highlighted post” feature.

For the cost of a song – not a super popular one – on iTunes, users can put a little tag denoting that this post is worth a reader's attention more than other ones. I think this is a fascinating feature: it's now in the hands of the user to simply, cheaply and easily promote a piece of content.

It's a neat way to grab a reader's attention: people scrolling down the Dashboard page can see the content that was promoted; the likelihood is higher that the user who scrolled passed will scroll back to see just what someone posted.

However, I don't think this goes far enough. As of the launch of the new feature, there's no way to sort by highlighted posts; sometimes, I just want to see the highlights. This goes along with my earlier post: Tumblr needs to get better at surfacing the content that's relevant to the reader who's been away from the service for an extended period of time. Why not show me the content that the people I follow paid for?

It signals an increasing need for Tumblr to monetize its service, apparently. Tumblr also takes a cut of theme sales on the service, so this addition signals a need for an additional need for revenue. At a dollar, it's enough an impulse buy that it might just work.

There's a larger game at play, also. By giving this feature to users of the service, it gets them used to seeing the highlight tag. That will make it easier for Tumblr to eventually introduce promoted posts from brands that users don't follow. Obviously, I'm not abreast of Tumblr's plans, but the idea must be floating around the company's New York offices.

Hopefully the money the company is making will lead to a more stable service:

Hey! It's the reason I stopped using Tumblr for posting! on.jeremydstanley.com/DojE
— Jeremy Stanley (@JeremyDStanley) February 1, 2012

Defining PC

2012-01-31T23:20:00Z

Every so often there's a debate about whether a tablet belongs in the bracket of “personal computer.” In fact it's something I wanted to stay out of, because it's a surprisingly contentious topic. Allow me to try to define PC.

PC (abbreviation for Personal Computer): A device that can connect to the Internet, has a display and keyboard (on- or off-screen), does NOT require a voice plan. 7" or bigger display.

Without the tablet, the PC industry is foundering, with a dip in sales. Saying if “you take the iPad out of the PC category, HP is the top manufacturer” is like “taking Ron Paul out” of the Republican primary race (a common media refrain pointed out and hilariously harped on by “The Daily Show”).

Isn't this the personal computer of the future? It may buck the preconceived notions of what a personal computer is: most tablet operating systems don't have exposed file systems, but does that disqualify it from being a PC? Is there anything I'm missing? Let me know in the comments.

Agenda for iOS

2012-01-31T22:00:00Z

Rarely an app comes along that warrants raving about, but I've found it. Agenda, a 99-cent impulse buy on the app store, is a replacement application for the Calendar app.

I'm definitely tired of the skeumorphic design of some of the stock iPad applications; so to see a modern, minimalist look on a fully-featured replacement is a good thing.

It's simple to use: swipe right-to-left to drill down to day view from week view, then appointment; right to left to back all the way out to hear view. The user can select what default view to see when they launch the app (I like the month view).

The app also features an innovative feature called Goals, which gives you the option to show very important milestones over the year ahead.

You can add events, confirm appointments (with customizable responses) and get the same alert notifications one expects with the calendar apps.

It also includes custom themes that allow a degree of personalization; thankfully, Savvy Apps has left out a skeumorph theme.

This app is also another example of Apple seriously relaxing its restrictions on apps that offer duplicate functionality. This is obviously a great thing for developers, as the shackles appear to be coming off.

Agenda is well worth the 99 cents for people engrossed in calendar management, but want a different option than the sometimes ugly look of iOS Calendar.

In defense of the e-reader

2012-01-21T19:30:00Z

Dieter Bohn at The Verge has an interesting post about ebooks and its supposed disadvantages versus the paper book.

Bohn is admittedly a little paranoid about buying into the future of reading at this early stage, I find it hard to blame him for that. At the same time, I don't think investing in an e-reader isn't as dire as he makes it out to be.

I have been using an e-ink screen Kindle for quite some time and yes, there's an undeniably nostalgic feeling missing from owning a paper book. As Bohn writes, “There are many who cling to the idea of a nice, good, heavy book and the feel of turning a paper page instead of swiping a screen or pressing a button.” Still, he notes this nostalgia may be “cultural and generational.”

However, all of that is outweighed by the potential of owning a library of books (for recreational, novel- or memoir-type reading) encased in a six-inch screen. The only downside to an e-ink screen is that it requires some draw of power, which means that, yes, it needs to be recharged once every few weeks.

One argument I do feel is peculiar is longevity; Bohn points out that companies that serve up the ebooks won't be around. I don't see Amazon folding any time soon; plus, the digital locker that Amazon offers means that the books are available where ever one can access a Web browser.

Still, there is one argument I agree wholeheartedly with: DRM. Yes, the books are available “everywhere,” but they're not shareable (with the exception of book lending), or easily transferred to another format.

I think book publishers need to be shown the light just as the music industry learned years ago that limiting the usability of a product turns off potential buyers. Restrictions do not make something a standard. Amazon and other ebook sellers should settle on an industry standard (perhaps ePub, which the Kindle does not yet support) and allow data portability to ensure being able to keep the data for as long as one would like.

Choosing an e-reader isn't the end of the game. It's consumer prerogative and the demand for printed books will not wane for some time. When it does, perhaps all of the questions Bohn has about e-readers will be sorted out.

More notes on the Galaxy Nexus

2011-12-28T19:23:00Z

About a week and a half ago, I gave my first impressions of the Galaxy Nexus. I've come away with a few more observations about the Galaxy Nexus and Android 4.0 on a whole.

Software

As I said in my initial observations, Android 4.0 continues to impress me. Automatic application updates are a great leg up in iOS, which lacks that ability. I like that it also allows updates to happen only on Wi-Fi, if you choose.

I'm mixed on the home screen. On the one hand, I like how it is very customizable with live widgets; news headlines, tweet composers and network settings are easily accessible without having to launch an app. It's easy, at-a-glance information. On the other hand, while application shortcuts do auto-populating the home screen, they show up on the left-most home screen–one I'd prefer to keep empty. It's an issue of preference and organization.

I like the keyboard on Android 4.0. My one gripe is that the punctuation button is awkwardly placed; I haven't gotten used to how it works. However, the quick-access punctuation button that appears after pressing space is a good way to mitigate the pain. But it makes me rewrite how my brain is programmed to not put a space before punctuation, even if the software eliminates the space.

I never once accidentally hit the home button instead of the spacebar, I think that point is moot, for a few reasons. When the keyboard displays, a few rows of black pixels also show add the space. Also, the target for the home button seems to be significantly smaller, in my non-scientific observations. One way Android could also mitigate this issue, if there is one, is to interpret brief presses of the home button as spaces. iOS does this for the dictation key and Mac OS X ignores accidental caps lock presses.

The back button on Android still confuses me. As Shawn Blanc noted in his review, the onus is on the user to figure out what the back button will actually do. That's not user-friendly, but it's something that is easily learned.

Hardware

After using the Galaxy Nexus for a week and a half, I'm relatively unchanged on the hardware side of things. I think the phone, while undoubtedly huge, is something I wouldn't mind getting locked in a two-year contract with. There were a few times when I'd reach across the screen and accidentally trigger something, be it a scroll or a button press.

A note on battery life. I used it sparingly over the holiday weekend and left if off the charger. The phone lasted about 48 hours on a single charge with very, very little use. Plus, it stayed on Wi-Fi. It goes without saying that I was impressed, but once you're on the faster, 4G network, it's a different story.

My speedtest.net speeds topped out at an astounding 14.93 mbps, but battery life takes quite a hit. My morning and evening commutes are about 35 minutes each and are almost all in a continuous 4G range (with one pocket devoid of LTE signal). Considering all this, the Galaxy Nexus drops in battery life significantly when combining music listening with light Web browsing. All told, my phone begged for a charger when I got home from work. LTE has great benefits, but it comes at a huge cost–an unusable phone after 12 hours.

The Galaxy Nexus' display continues to impress me. It displays great in sunlight and while other reviews have noted the automatic brightness adjustments as "aggressive," I find it hard to complain about.

Virtual equals

After using an Android phone for quite some time, the thing I come away with is that there really isn't all that much that could get me to switch full time to Android. It's not because I'm "locked in" to Apple's ecosystem, it's because the platforms are both so similar that it's hard to compel me to jump to another platform. If Android brought a killer feature and not a gimmick that Apple couldn't somehow provide down the road, consider me a new customer. I would imagine it's the same way for Android users looking at iOS as a viable alternative, but might not want to leave the ecosystem or learn a whole new operating system.

In other words, you'd have to be brainwashed to not see the advantages of the Android platform.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus impressions

2011-12-17T22:15:00Z

Ever since Android 4.0 (dubbed "Ice Cream Sandwich," but I'm going to call it by its version number) was demoed back in October, I was intrigued. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the flagship device running the brand new service and I've been able to run it through its paces over the last two days.

I've come away with an overwhelmingly positive feelings about the Galaxy Nexus. Read on for my initial impressions of the device. I'll have the phone for the next few weeks, so stay tuned for later posts for a more in depth or final takeaway of my experience.

Packaging and installation

It's a good thing that the most disappointing part of my impressions is getting the phone up and running. The box containing the Galaxy Nexus is a beautiful, understated white box, with red on the inside. It's a bit downhill from there: each component–headset, charger, USB cable, the battery–is enclosed in a tiny plastic bag. The LTE SIM card was in a little business card-looking case. There's also way too much documentation included in the box. It's just needless waste.

I also didn't enjoy the process of installing the SIM card and the battery, but there tangible benefits of having a replaceable battery (but more on that later), so it's worth the pain, in some respects.

Look and feel

The build quality on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is very good. It can't compete with my day-to-day phone, the iPhone 4S, in terms of industrial design. However, I feel the phone is easy to grip and has an pleasant textured plastic backing.

Who wants a giant, 4.65-inch touch screen on their phone? After all, a 3.5-inch phone is the sweet spot, right? False. Perhaps my hands are big (ladies...), but I've had no real issue with one-handed operation of the phone. Perhaps the one time I have to adjust the phone is to reach the compose tweet button in the top right corner of the Twitter for Android when I'm holding the phone in my left hand. It's a good thing Twitter for Android isn't my main app on the phone (more on that later).

There are three physical buttons on the phone: a volume rocker on the left and a power button on the right. Considering the size of the phone, the button placement is perfect. Each button feels good and the device is responsive to presses. For comparison's sake the iPhone has four buttons and a silent switch. In place of physical buttons for home and back commands, Android 4.0 renders buttons on the display.

Display

The Galaxy Nexus display, a 4.65-inch 1280-by-720-pixel resolution AMOLED display is very, very good. Colors are vibrant–sometimes too vibrant–and text renders nicely. I do still prefer the iPhone's retina display in terms of quality; I can still see the pixels when, say, looking at a zoomed-out version of the New York Times home page. For video viewing, however, I'd take the larger, higher resolution display of the Nexus any day.

There's a nice LED indicator below the displays that flashes whenever there is a pending notification.

Software

My previous experiences with Android involved skins: the HTC EVO 4G ran that company's Sense skin and Samsung's Fascinate ran TouchWiz. In comparing those UIs with Android 4.0's stock skin, I find there's no real competition. And it's not surprising, the mission for Android 4.0 was to create a beautiful design. That mission has paid off very well.

Most of the interface accents are a pretty sky blue contrasted on a black or gray background. It's very nice. Pair that with the new system font, Roboto. I find the font not to be a ripoff of Helvetica, as some have posited, but its own unique sans serif entity. It's a great font. I wish it was available in the Kindle app available on the Android Market, but it is available in the Google Books app.

In terms of responsiveness, Android 4.0 on the Galaxy Nexus hardware, is just as responsive as iOS 5. Scrolling is smooth, swiping gestures are pulled off perfectly. The only time I had an issue with scrolling was in the Twitter for Android application, which is just poorly developed it seems. The app stutters at just about every turn.

Navigation on the phone is very well done with three on-screen buttons that persist at the bottom. There's back, which takes you back one level of a menu tree or back a website, based on the app you are using. There's home, which takes you to the home screen, naturally. Finally, there's the app switcher, which finds an at-a-glance look at the apps that are running. It's just fun, and is reminiscent of the "card" interface, as each running app can be swiped away if it is not needed.

The Browser app included in Android 4.0 is extremely snappy. I tried loading the graphics-intensive full version of The Verge on both my iPhone 4S and the Galaxy Nexus at the same time (after clearing each phone's cache) and found they loaded at identical speeds on Wi-Fi. My one gripe with Android's Browser has to be the lack of website fonts. The Verge's gorgeous fonts were replaced with Roboto, which in some cases made text appear out of place or misaligned. See the "new articles" link below:

That's the one thing I want to see fixed with the browser. Otherwise, websites display flawlessly; scrolling and zooming results in no hitches.

Ultimately, I find the fit and finish of Android 4.0 to be up to par and in some cases better than iOS. There's just one thing holding it back: developer support for apps. There are some flagship iOS apps that aren't available on Android. Instagram, which has pledged that it would develop an app, is a notable holdout. Still though, the Android Market ecosystem is definitely gaining steam, so there's a ton of potential there. As I spend more time with apps, I'll post about the ones I find interesting.

LTE

The Galaxy Nexus on Verizon features an LTE radio. In my testing, it's extremely fast, but is a drain on the battery life of the device. Unfortunately, although Verizon tells me that I'm in a 4G coverage area, the Galaxy Nexus will default to the slower CDMA network. If I go a mile down the road, I get full bars on 4G and an extremely fast, broadband-like connection. It's mindblowing.

This comes at a cost; and it's not just the battery life. The data plan on the phone is typically 2 GB for $30 a month. Thanks to a holiday promotion, it's 4 GB at the same price. On the LTE network you could stream three HD movies and almost eat up all of that data plan. There's almost a panic that sets in each time the phone is used on the network. Fortunately, Android 4.0 has a nifty data-usage monitoring and warning system.

I think the data caps, with more and more ubiquitous 4G speeds, are stupid. Athough it has broadband-like speeds, at least broadband services cap data usage at around 250 GB per month.

Final thoughts

I think I get a bad rap for being a devoted iPhone user. For one, I've tried other Android phones running Android 2.2 or earlier and found them less than adequate. After using Android 4.0 for a day, I've come to a conclusion: I believe in Android. I think it's one of the best mobile operating systems out there and the Galaxy Nexus is one of the best phones ever made. It's that good.

Good riddance, deck.ly

2011-12-13T19:15:00Z

In my review of TweetDeck 1.0, I neglected to discuss a feature that was cut, mostly because I never used it.

Deck.ly, the long-tweet service was mercifully axed. Ever since Twitter acquired the company in May, I had assumed the service would eventually be shuttered.

One of my favorite parts of Twitter as a service is that it is both limiting and limitless. Limiting because a tweet is limited to 140 characters or fewer, but limitless because of the power of links.

Deck.ly, like other long-tweet services, proved to be more of an annoyance than helpful. While there were hooks within the app to display a full tweet, for users of other apps it would just show a link to a deck.ly Web page with the full tweet.

To its credit, it was the quickest way to generate what amounts to a blog post from the app. It was no frills, but the tweets that were generated from it didn't have a good way of cutting off; the tweet would just end mid-sentence.

I can see how a bunch of TweetDeck users who might find this change annoying. Andy Carvin, NPR's senior strategist covering events in the Middle East, would quickly paste in, say, a statement from a government for easy reading. Now, people like Carvin will have to find another way.

That other way? Just get a blog. There are plenty of free blogging services that are just as easy to craft quick posts and automatically post to Twitter. Tumblr and WordPress both support this natively, so these are great options. They take a few seconds to open and, as long as you have to a Web browser, are dead-simple to post in. Plus, blogs come with the added benefit of editing.

Deck.ly's death is a sign that Twitter is sticking with what works for it: short bursts of thoughts, with the added benefit of being able to link out. Overall, shedding Deck.ly was a good move.

TweetDeck 1.0 review: One leap forward, a few steps back

2011-12-12T19:50:00Z

Adobe AIR is junk. A pile of junk. It's a resource-sucking, battery-draining pile of junk. It bears repeating multiple times.

Up until a few days ago, AIR was required to use TweetDeck, one of the most popular Twitter apps for both Mac and PC. I've put the new version through the paces and I've found an app that has plenty of major improvements and a few nagging setbacks.

The pros

TweetDeck now uses current Web standards as the backbone of its app instead of the much maligned Adobe AIR. That makes it extremely versatile and lightweight, meaning that it would theoretically impact a laptop's battery life way less than normal.

Even better, this means users don't need to download and install an app on, say, a friend's computer to get the TweetDeck look and feel (complete with synchronized settings). The application can be accessed from TweetDeck's website. This is especially good for people who are turned off by some of the changes to Twitter's website. Think of it as an optional way to view Twitter.com.

Many of the cosmetic changes center around simplifying the look. Gone are those tiny "unread tweet" indicators that served virtually no purpose (who really goes through and marks tweets as read?), plus those clunky icons at the bottom are eliminated. There are some drawbacks to this simplification, because it also means eliminating useful features. I'll touch on those later.

I really like the tweet detail page (shown below) that TweetDeck when you click on the "more link" (or just on the tweet itself). It shows if the tweet has been favorited or retweeted, plus shows any replies or previous parts of the conversation. It also shows any media, like Twitter photos or YouTube videos. It's an incredibly handy feature.

The Cons

It's not all rosy. While the look and feel has substantially improved and many of the apps behaviors work well, there are some things that are broken.

The navigation is a bit of a mixed bag. I'm puzzled by the lack of horizontal scrollbar. It wasn't broken, but I can see why designers found the scrollbar a bit kludgy and annoying, but the "solution" the team has implemented is far from perfect.

The biggest issue is illustrated below:

On the main, left-most column view, the user is able to hit the giant target to navigate to the next set of columns. Yet, the next view that is displayed, the middle, looks like this:

What if the user wants to return to the main set of columns? There's no giant target to the left to return, so they have to hunt around to the top and click on the arrow or the set of columns indicators. This slows down the user enough to make it a hindrance on usability and enjoyment of the application. In other words, a horizontal scroll bar is a much more suitable navigation metaphor.

One more thing about general navigation. It's probably a bug, but it's an annoying one: if you're scrolled anywhere from the top of a column and you navigate to another pane of columns and then return, the scroll position is lost. This means wasted time going back through old tweets.

For what is marketed as a power-user application, TweetDeck doesn't support a very power user-friendly feature: keyboard shortcuts. There's no way to easily reply, retweet or favorite tweets. Worse, there's no way to bring up the compose view for tweets without hunting to the top of the screen and hitting the compose button.

This is a gripe, but attention-to-detail was something Twitter was known for: If the user has the display name set to "@name," retweets will still show the user's full name.

Occasionally, a tweet will open inside of the TweetDeck app's browser. On Windows, this requires a close and restart of the application. On Mac, the user must right-click and click "back" to return to TweetDeck.

When following the Arab Spring and other world news events, I relied on a handful of Twitter applications' translate features to get a first-hand account of what's going on. In TweetDeck, as in Twitter for iPhone 4.0, the translate feature is gone. This is likely due to the expense related to using Google's translate service. Apps like Tweetbot continue to use the feature, so it seems pretty cheap of Twitter to deprecate the feature.

TweetDeck also supports the streaming API. This means updates roll in as soon as a tweet is posted. I ran into it a few times with the AIR version, but TweetDeck 1.0 also experiences weird dropouts where the streaming API stops working and instead refreshes. This is can be frustrating sometimes.

Back to those icons on the bottom I mentioned in the pros section. First Twitter for iPad didn't support it from the get go, then Twitter for iPhone eliminated it in a recent version prior to 4.0 and now it's gone from TweetDeck: timeline filtering. Say I saw something I wanted to reply to, but lost track of it (perhaps due to a certain scroll bug). In old versions of TweetDeck, I'd hit the filter button and hit type a few words to find that tweet. This feature is gone, for seemingly no reason.

TweetDeck continues to support Facebook, which is somewhat surprising, but it did cripple the robust support it had in place. A user can view the Facebook timeline and notifications, but they can't like or reply to status updates. Instead, clicking on a post opens the browser. Fortunately, TweetDeck continues to support posting to Facebook from the compose view. TweetDeck is kicking its users out to the browser perhaps to train them for the inevitable: TweetDeck might not always support Facebook.

Notifications on Mac don't always work. It's not clear if the application requires Growl, the powerful notification engine, to be installed. If this is the case, an OS X Lion user has to pay $2 to get the whole TweetDeck experience with Growl notifications.

While the TweetDeck application is fully supported in Web browsers, accessing the TweetDeck website from Safari on iPad results in an unsurprisingly bad experience. This is a disappointment, considering TweetDeck was a launch app for the iPad, but it has had a prolonged absence from the App Store. There is no indication if it will return.

Wrap-up

TweetDeck remains the best way to access Twitter from multiple accounts between Mac and PC in a continuous way. No matter where the app is accessed, settings are maintained. By simplifying some of the experience, usability is decreased, navigation is broken and necessary features are omitted.

On the whole, TweetDeck 1.0 leaves room for improvement, but shedding Adobe AIR is an important first step.

Let me know what you think of this review, tweet @JeremyDStanley.

iPad as focus writing tool

2011-12-11T11:09:00Z

There have been plenty of articles recently about using the iPad as a way to get work done. Most of these posts talk about using the iPad in a keyboard case or in some other way.

I have a secret. I've been typing a majority of the posts on this three-week old blog on my iPad, without the help of a keyboard case or a physical Bluetooth keyboard. Yes, I've been using the touchscreen to write longer-form posts.

(In the interest of disclosure, the Twitter for iPhone piece definitely fell in the I-need-to-use-a-computer category.)

The tools of the trade

Apple Smart Cover. Obviously, the Smart Cover is one of the most important part of using the iPad as a competent writer. Without it, it's an awkward balancing act. With it, the iPad becomes a versatile typing machine. I've used it in post-game press conferences at basketball games and it was a breeze to take notes.

Elements ($4.99). I'm completely sold on the usefulness of Markdown as writer's tool. It makes it dead-simple to write posts that are link heavy, without having to deal with long snippets of code. Having brackets instead of typical HTML formatting litter the document make it easier to proofread before posting.

Elements (App Store link) supports Markdown as a syntax and even shows previews of the document fully-rendered as if it were on a Web page. Pair that with awesome Dropbox syncing and my files are available anywhere I have access to a computer, iPhone or iPad.

Dropbox. With Dropbox for iPad, you can easily upload photos and videos, grab the link and insert it into the document.

Calepin. You're reading this post on Calepin, which is a very new hosted blog solution built on the marriage of Markdown and Dropbox. All posts must be composed as Markdown documents and saved to a folder that Calepin publishes. Then, just publish the document from Calepin's website and they show up on the home page.

I work with and have worked with a bunch of content management systems, but using Dropbox and Calepin is among the easiest. They are featured enough for writers, but admittedly for individual writers. I'd like to see where Calepin can go for larger-scale sites, while remaining useful for solo writers.

Focus

The iPad has a sincere and real advantage over using the computer for focus writing. Don't believe me? If you're on a laptop or desktop right now, hit command- or alt- tab right now. Back? Go to your Facebook tab and come back. How long did it take you to come back to this article?

I'm more likely to be engaged as a writer and as a reader if I'm using an iPad. With the exclusion of an occasional message notification, writers can be more focused. Perhaps it's possible that writing on an iPad, touchscreen or physical keyboard, is inherently faster, because there's not this compulsion to check other browser tabs or check Twitter. When writing this post I didn't check Twitter or Facebook once, because there is no reason to.

It was just me, my on-screen keyboard and my words. Can it get better?

Why a redesign for Tumblr should be next

2011-12-09T17:30:00Z

With all of the hubbub around the redesign of Twitter's website and applications, I thought it'd be interesting to consider what social media properties are in dire need of a redesign. One sticks out: Tumblr.

The dashboard interface

This screen is the heart and soul of Tumblr. It's a constant feed of people you follow on the service, but it could stand for improvement.

Relevance

Facebook's Top Stories feature -- as controversial as it can be -- is absolutely brilliant and should be the benchmark. I stayed away from Facebook for an extended period of time (three days) and when I came back, it had all of the important life events of the people that I might have missed out on.

Tumblr could embrace this sort of concept by providing a top stories feature: combine the sources you typically like and display popular stories from those sources. In the spirit of options, users could choose to keep the vanilla chronological view.

Trending tags

Tumblr has a great Explore page, which highlights popular tags. Like Twitter, Tumblr could surface the most popular tags at a specific time, encouraging exploring and finding other sources. It's not enticing enough for a typical user to click the little "Explore more tags" button on the right-hand side of the screen.

Click-to-animate

Tumblr's iPhone app includes a nifty feature: instead of loading and playing an animated gift automatically, users have to click a button. As someone who pretty much hates animated gifts and thought they were dead and gone in the last decade with the advent of Internet video, an optional click-to-animate feature would be lovely.

Combating spam

Spam is obnoxious on Twitter. No service is completely spam-free, but Tumblr is especially challenged at figuring out who is a spammer. Merlin Mann sums this up pretty well.

The compose screen

The point of Tumblr is to have a blog and, yet, something's missing. A clean, way to compose text blog posts. The box is just too tiny to fit more than four paragraphs of writing in, leaving proofreading to be almost impossible. Yes, while copy-and-paste is obviously supported, I think it would be great if Tumblr could give the compose screen some fit and finish to make it a serious writers' platform.

Nevertheless, Tumblr is a superb blogging platform, because it's built on simplicity and making it easy to share content that users find interesting. These changes could make it from an awesome distraction to a serious service to watch.

Twitter for iPhone: A history

2011-12-08T22:05:00Z

Twitter for iPhone 4.0 was released to the general public on Thursday to widely mixed reviews. Some hailed it for its simplicity and others felt betrayed by the app for not sticking to its roots.

What were Twitter for iPhone's roots? It started with a company called Atebits, run by Loren Brichter.

Tweetie 1.0

Released: November 18, 2008 | $2.99

Courtesy of smokingapples.com

The first version of Tweetie emerged when there was a small field of Twitter clients for the iPhone. The most popular app at the time was Twitterrific. Tweetie set itself apart with a few game-changing features.

Chief among them: endless scrolling to load more tweets. Yes, it seems trivial now, but in the nascent days of application development for the iPhone this feature was killer.

One of the big knocks against Tweetie was its SMS-style interface.

Tweetie 1.1: To tweet a link

Released: December 15, 2008 | Price: $2.99, free upgrade from previous versions

Tweetie 1.1 added a URL scheme that allowed users to take a URL from Safari and paste it into a Tweet sheet. By adding "tweetie:" at the front of a URL, the application would open with the URL pre-populated. This was especially important, because iOS did not support copy and paste at the time.

Tweetie 1.2: Swipe to reply

Released: February 16, 2009 | Price: $2.99, free upgrade from previous versions

The killer feature of Tweetie was finally here. No, I'm not talking about PEE. Swipe to reply allowed users to reply directly from the app's timeline view. When the user swiped, they could visit the profile directly, favorite and reply to the tweet.

The visual design of the app had also gone through a visual overhaul, opting for a dense view.

Tweetie 1.3: Left off the store, then left in the dark

Released: March 10, 2009 | Price: $2.99, free upgrade from previous versions

Courtesy of andysreviews.wordpress.com Tweetie 1.3 was held up in App Store hell. It was rejected because a trending topic displayed inside the app had featured a curse word. Brichter took to Twitter to complain:

You all ready to be pissed?Tweetie 1.3 rejected.Because there's an offensive word in the TRENDS - http://twitpic.com/1zbcs
— Loren Brichter (@atebits) March 10, 2009

Not long after, Tweetie 1.3 hit the App Store and brought along with it a whole bunch of bug fixes and new features. App users long had clamored for additional themes and Tweetie 1.3 delivered a dark theme.

Tweetie 2: Pull to refresh

Released: October 9, 2009 | Price: $2.99, new and existing users

Just 11 months after Tweetie first hit the App Store, it was time for a rebuilt, completely new version of the app to hit. With that, came a minor backlash from Tweetie 1 buyers. Brichter believed that Tweetie 2.0 was enough of a revamp of the app that it warranted a whole new purchase.

Upgraded version of the same product with the same name and they expect me to pay full price?Unbelievable.Never buying another 96 Jetta.
— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) September 30, 2009

That didn't stop Tweetie 2.0 from being a stellar app. From my review, regarding the best new feature at the time:

Not only that, but there’s a great new change for reloading your Twitter. No longer do you have to scroll up, click the refresh button and wait for updates. Instead, just scroll up by gesturing down and hold it until you get feedback that it is reloading.

Pull to refresh became one of the most widely adopted metaphors among apps that work with timeline views. My iPhone currently has 15 apps with the feature. Facebook's iPhone app required users to shake the phone in order to reload the view. Now, like dozens of other apps, it conforms to the UI metaphor Brichter invented.

The app also aggressively used caching, which meant that the app remembered where the user left off, making up for the lack of a dedicated multitasking feature on iOS.

Tweetie 2.1: Project retweet, location-based tweeting, gap detection

Released: November 29, 2009 | Price: $2.99, free upgrade from previous versions of Tweetie 2

Back in the old days of Twitter, retweet didn't exist. Well, it existed as a form of syntax inside of a tweet. Now, it's a feature widely used. Tweetie 2.1 was one of the first iPhone apps that took advantage of the new format.

It also had location support, which let users search nearby tweets. Add on Twitter lists, which had just been introduced to organizes different groups of users.

Remember when Tweetie 1.0 was one of the first to feature endless scrolling? Tweetie 2.1 took it one step further with gap detection. When you reopen the app after quite some time away, Tweetie 2.1 recognized a gap between tweets. By clicking on the gap, it populated the area with the tweets it missed.

Tweetie 2.1.1: Foursquare support

Released: March 12, 2010 | Price: $2.99, free upgrade from previous versions of Tweetie 2

Tweetie 2.1.1 was a minor update, but it's worth noting, because it's the last major feature upgrade. It added Foursquare support, which showed place information when a user posted from Foursquare.

Less than a month later, Twitter announced that it had acquired Atebits' Tweetie and that Loren Brichter would join the team at Twitter.

Tweetie 2.1.2: The last version

Released: April 28, 2010 | Price: $2.99, free upgrade from previous versions of Tweetie 2

Courtesy of TheNextWeb

With Tweetie joining the Twitter flock, there was one last upgrade to do. And it was in the form of a game. It teased the new version of Twitter, which would be made free for all users.

Twitter for iPhone 3.0

Released: May 18, 2010 | Price: Free

Courtesy of MacStories.net

Twitter for iPhone continued the impeccable design of Tweetie for iPhone. It reorganized search, added signup options right inside of the app and let users without an account browse Twitter.

What went missing from the app? URL shortening from services like bit.ly. Twitter began using its t.co shortener, instead.

Twitter for iPhone 3.2: Push notifications

Released: November 16, 2010 | Free

Courtesy of Mashable

Before push notifications made it to Twitter for iPhone, users turned to Boxcar, which was a handy solution for Twitter developers who couldn't build the infrastructure to support push notifications. Now, however, Twitter itself could support it for notifications about mentions and direct messages.

Twitter for iPhone 3.3: #Quickbar, the #Dickbar

Released: March 3, 2011 | Price: Free

Courtesy of Marco Arment

Quickbar. Oh, Quickbar. This "revolutionary" new feature lasted less than a month after it was released. The feature put trends (including promoted trends) at the top of the timeline and annoyed users to no end. It was quickly dubbed the "dickbar" by tech pundits, because of its lack of value to the user. Some upgrades lessened the "impact" of the bar, but by version 3.3.3, it was gone for good.

Twitter for iPhone 3.5: iOS 5, Twitter photo uploads

Released: October 11, 2011 | Price: Free

Twitter for iPhone 3.5 took advantage of Twitter's deep integration with iOS 5. It could automatically access the user's Twitter account without having to ask for login credentials, provided the user input them in the Settings app.

It was the last major Twitter for iPhone release Brichter was a part of:

Today was my last day at Twitter. Taking some time to figure out what’s next. Really proud of the way the team has grown.
— Loren Brichter (@lorenb) November4, 2011

Twitter for iPhone 4: A whole new look

Released: December 8, 2011 | Price: Free

Twitter for iPhone 4.0 is a significant departure from previous versions of Twitter and Tweetie. Some of the design elements remain, particularly the blue indicators for new tweets and the pull-to-refresh feature. Everything else has undergone a significant refresh.

It's unclear whether development of version 4 is the reason why Brichter left the company, but it has been largely panned in the tech press, while some praise it for its simplicity:

I think now that 4.0 is out I can stop calling Twitter for iOS "Tweetie".
— Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) December8, 2011

Twitter for iPhone 4.0 puts search and saved searches in separate tabs. Watch, as a .5 upgrade makes usability plummet! #letsfly
— Jeremy Stanley (@JeremyDStanley) December8, 2011

I'm convinced the new Twitter app design is built for those who don't really "use" Twitter. Lists are buried, favorites buried, etc.
— Clayton Morris (@ClaytonMorris) December9, 2011

The new Twitter is good for the ecosystem. It's got a real simple feature set for new users and advanced users will go elsewhere. #WinWin
— Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) December8, 2011

Just me or is the new Twitter iPhone app a total turd, layout-wise? DM's buried a level under "Me" tab? Multiple accounts under "Me"?
— John Gruber (@gruber) December8, 2011

Twitter for iPhone has had a long history and with the iterative nature of the company, it's doubtful that it will rest on its laurels and be ignorant of user feedback. With Brichter missing, those looking for the Tweetie experience will probably have to go elsewhere.

Let me know what you think of this post, tweet @JeremyDStanley.

Waiting for an upgrade that may never come

2011-12-07T00:00:00Z

Tuesday, Motorola posted on its blog explaining the process to upgrade current phones to Android 4.0. It sheds a bit of insight on just why Android phone owners are forced to wait (or to hack it) for months on end.

The post details a four-step process that take time: essentially, the manufacturer has to write and adapt the version version of Android and test the phone itself. Then, the manufacturer has to submit it to the carrier and release it.

It's a bind that manufacturers, carriers and customers all have to deal with it. What's worse? The phones Motorola plans to upgrade were all released last year. Clearly, older hardware can support Android 4.0, but Motorola doesn't want to devote the resources.

So why invest in a phone if you're not guaranteed any substantial updates for at least a year? Google and the manufacturers should pay attention to the two-year contracts customers sign up for and promise support for at least that time. Sometimes, these companies fall behind very early into the release cycle.

The best bet, it seems, is to buy a Google Nexus device. It's guaranteed to get updates soon into the release cycle. Meanwhile, other phone makers are compelled to release other phones, so what does that mean for application developers?

It makes it very difficult to develop, despite confident comments from Google's chairman, Eric Schmidt:

"Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach Google is taking. There are so many manufacturers working to deliver Android phones globally," Schmidt said. "Whether you like Android or not, you will support that platform, and maybe you'll even deliver it first."

There's some doubt that app developers will invest money in a platform that doesn't generate a lot in sales and the uncertainty about what version of Android is the most popular among potential customers.

Google has the market share now and they will continue to, just with the sheer volume of handsets being released by a number of manufacturers. At the same time, Google's delivering an inconsistent experience for phone buyers. And inconsistency could make customers consider other options when their contract nears expiration.

If beta is for Google, better is for Apple

2011-12-06T00:00:00Z

In Mat Honan's scathing critique of Siri, one part jumps out:

If I have my camera app open, it can't take a picture or set a timer ("I'm not much of a photographer," it replies), which is precisely the kind of thing voice control could be very useful for.

That first part irks me. This criticism is in so many reviews of the Siri service, that it can't take photos.

Excuse me? In what scenario is this actually more useful than pressing a button? You would have to have the camera app open, press and hold a button (either the home or remote button) and say "Siri, take a photo please."

Typically, I use Siri when my iPhone is tucked away in my pocket. Again, this use case not useful for photography.

The iPhone camera app doesn't support timers, so I'm surprised Honan would want Siri to support a feature that doesn't (yet) exist in the app. There are alternatives, like Camera+.

(Sidenote: you can remotely control the iPhone's camera; you just need a pair of headphones with the microphone and volume controls on it. Press volume up on the remote, and bam, picture taken.)

Not perfect

Siri isn't perfect, but it is a beta. "Beta is for Google," Honan writes. Perhaps he's right. At its current state, it doesn't do everything users could possibly expect. It does do a few things very well, particularly with timers (of the countdown kind) and reminders.

Would I like it if it tweeted for me, without having to work around it with text messaging? Of course. Would I like it if it remembered syntax throughout a dictated text message? Without a doubt. Would I like it if some features didn't require an Internet connection? You get the idea.

I can't help but think about the first iPhone iterations. When it first launched in 2007, would I have liked it to support third-party applications? Would I have liked the software to support multitasking?

When you invest in an Apple product, you invest in its potential. That you're buying a product that will be improved over the course of its lifespan. The first iPhone gained access to third-party apps. The iPhone 3GS gained multitasking support and notifications. Siri will be improved.

Maybe, it launched as a beta because speech recognition -- a critique Honan launched at Apple -- isn't there yet. Siri doesn't understand me 100 percent of the time. I don't think any speech recognition software can come close to that kind of accuracy.The people who study and work on speech recognition programming, Benoit Maison writes, say "there is no data like more data."

And that, perhaps, is why it doesn't have more hooks into other applications. Start with firm, tested first-party applications and then move out to support third parties.

Remember that no other phone had an assistant feature that comes close to Siri or even the potential of Siri. It's going to be hard for other software makers to catch up to bring something to the table that is more useful than starting a Web search for you.

Siri has room for improvement, but it's hard not to look at the competition and say "Wow, Apple is so far ahead."

How to trust your cell phone

2011-12-01T00:00:00Z

Three easy steps:

Use a carrier who accurately discloses what data of yours it collects and whether it is collected by a third party. Those carriers don't exist (yet).
Keep asking questions, or find someone who can do it on your behalf. Or hope the government can do something about it.
Don't don't trust those answers. Keep asking questions.

Microsoft's uncanny marketing strategy could pay off

2011-11-29T00:00:00Z

First it was the giant Windows Phone in New York. Now, it's in a demo on your phone.

Visit this page in a phone browser to see an impressive replication of Windows Phone 7's user interface.

It's the first opportunity I have gotten to actually play with the interface, but through a tutorial. As I expected, the Metro design is gorgeous and, well, different.

I really like what Microsoft has done here: they have a modern phone design, but to be successful, they're going to have to grab some marketshare from people who own Android and iOS devices as much as, say, older phones and other smartphones.

I could imagine an iPhone 3GS or a T-Mobile G1 owner who's up for an upgrade see this demo and be compelled at least try it out in store.

It isn't at all a new strategy: Amazon recently showed off its new Appstore by running Android versions of applications on its website.

After checking out the Windows Phone demo, I'm as excited about seeing it on "real" hardware as I am excited about Android 4.0.

Alienating consumers

2011-11-27T00:00:00Z

Memo to media organizations: stop marginalizing your potential readers or viewers.

One of the first companies to alienate its readers was over the summer, when the New York Post turned off Web access for readers on the iPad, instead directing them to a paid application.

Sunday night, I wanted to watch an (assuredly tragic) piece on homelessness in America on “60 Minutes,” but was instead greeted by this friendly page:

The CBS app on the App Store costs $5. I can watch the video on my computer if I please. Why the disparity?

Then there's ESPN. The company has, in recent months, deployed a nice tablet version of its website. However, this is a turd sandwich. When trying to view am NFL GameCast, I'm greeted with this:

So if we're keeping score in the What-Not-To-Do in Web Design game, NewsCorp, Viacom and Disney are all winning, by a landslide. (To Disney/ESPN's credit, it is just discriminating based on tablet orientation, but it is still egregious.)

Why alienate readers based on the device a person uses? Organizations are crippling experiences, but there has to be a reason why?

Can CBS and NewsCorp really be that successful on Apple's App Store, when potential readers could find the content on their own computers? Does it perform better than ad revenue on the website?

It's the potential downfall of owning a device that has a great paid apps ecosystem. That doesn't make the companies right to do what they are doing.

First-person shooters and iPad

2011-11-25T00:00:00Z

Until recently, the gaming has been dominated by two input methods: the controller and the keyboard-mouse combination. It could be soon the word "touchscreen" gets added to the mix of input devices for competent first-person shooters.

"Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation" (App Store link) for the iPhone and iPad is a compelling piece of evidence in the case for first-person shooter development. The main argument against shooters on touchscreens boils down to controller issues: there are no physical buttons that can be used.

"Modern Combat" basically destroys that argument. Gameloft, the developer, has figured it out. There well-placed (and customizable) on-screen buttons and the responsiveness is good.

Once acclimated with the controls (perhaps a half-hour of the game's campaign mode), they become second nature. And it reveals that, yes, this is a great experience on the iPad.

Like its name, "Modern Combat" is reminiscent of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" and the current crop of shooters on consoles and games, especially when it comes to its multiplayer mode. Players can hop into 6-on-6 matches like Capture The Flag and Team Battles, or fight it out in free-for-alls.

The graphics are surprisingly well done and rival its console counterparts. Explosions, player models and environments render gorgeously at what appears to be 60 frames-per-second.

It's surprisingly addicting and a good game to spend an hour playing. At $7, it's a far cry from the $60-a-pop games sold in stores and delivers a nearly console-equal experience.

There's no question that the iPad is a boon for casual gaming, but "Modern Combat" is one of the first games that may appeal to people who play console games.

There's been a lot of talk about whether or not the iPad is a PC. Perhaps there should be a debate about whether or not the iPad is a game console, too.

The question isn't "What is the iPad good for?" anymore. It's "What can't the iPad do?"

Distraction-free reading

2011-11-23T00:00:00Z

Let's face it: reading on the Internet, by and large, is a challenging endeavor. Many article pages on the Web are designed to get you to click on more things.

Whether it's text being broken up by distracting ads asking you to "continue reading below" or just poor spacing and typography, it can easily get tiring.

There are good workarounds out there: Apple's Reader built in to Safari does a fantastic job of parsing out article text and turning multi-page articles into full, cleanly-designed layouts. Plus, Mac, PC and iOS versions have Reading List support, which syncs articles you can save for later provided iCloud is configured for bookmarks (Unfortunately, for me, that is not the case. The service will not reset the hundreds of duplicate bookmarks it created by itself).

Where Apple's service breaks down is that its locked to Safari; there's no API that enables, for instance, Chrome developers to take advantage of the Reading List figure. That's where a third party comes in.

I've been using Readability for about a week and, so far, I'm really liking it. After signing up for an account, users can install a browser extension on the desktop. Then, you browse the web as usual; when you come across a page you'd like to read without distraction, just press the "`" key (the key to the left of the "1" key).

Then it loads the article in its Readability view. It's really dead simple and it does a few things really well.

Customizability. You can easily adjust an article page to suit your needs: there's sliders for font size, article width and backgrounds and fonts. Plus, you can turn links into footnotes (a feature I find really nice: a lot of articles are link-heavy, this setting keeps the links, but doesn't colorize them.) and disable or enable images.

Friendly with publishers. Readability doesn't hijack your web view immediately; instead, you have to fully load the page before you can initiate the read now view. That way, publishers can still accurately track page views and thus get paid. Plus, Readability partners with publishers so that whenever a paying Readability subscriber uses the service, the publisher can receive payment for that view.

Kindle support. Readability also can send individual articles to Kindle. Plus, with the read later feature, you can build a digest of articles sent to your Kindle automatically every morning (or night, depending on your preference). It's great for long reads you couldn't get to during the day, but want to get to during a commute.

The path has been forged in reading list and distraction-free applications; Instapaper, Evernote and Read It Later all have similar services to Readability's service. None of those services match the ease-of-use on the desktop. Instapaper has a wide lead on mobile devices, but Readability is on the verge of releasing an iOS application. Needless to say, if articles can become a bear to read with confusing layouts and links, there are certainly options.

Interestingly, it makes one wonder if and how publishers will somehow respond, perhaps by trimming down the distractions. Until that happens, Readability is a good interim option.