Sam's World Of No

GPS, 3G, Exchange support and an online software store. Oh, and calculator that rotates to become a scientific calculator. And a load of corporate IT stuff.

Put it like that, and the iPhone 3G/iPhone 2.0 update doesn’t sound like much. Plus, you still can’t copy and paste. You still can’t take video, and you still can’t send MMS.  No, really. You can’t even send a vCard (my biggest iPhone gripe). But all of this will eventually change, and in the mean time the iPhone, whilst ostensibly doing less out of the box, empowers users by doing what it does much better than its competitors. Simply put, it’s a better piece of kit than anything else out there, by miles and country miles. It’s even creating a new economy, in a time when new economies are hard to come by.

But this release should be giving sleepless nights to all sorts of people, and not just those involved in making phones. The breadth of the platform means that the competition that the iPhone is taking on is now much more extensive. Check out this quick list of companies which, frankly, now mostly suck. We’ll start with the direct competitors, and then we’ll look at the new targets on Steve Jobs’ world domination radar.

1. All Windows Mobile phones - “This is nuts”, proclaimed Scott Forstall at the iPhone 3G announcement, while discussing the program manager that Microsoft considers acceptable behaviour on their mobile platform. Opening a can of whoopass on Windows Mobile is hardly a challenge; there’s a reason that the enterprise software giant already lost the mobile OS battle to BlackBerry. Every used ActiveSync? Yep, me too. It was hardly the best time I’ve ever had.
2. All BlackBerry phones - Oh dear. We’ve got enterprise support on the iPhone. Push email, push calendar, push this that and another. I don’t work for a massive corporation, but when sitting in business class I see the poor souls on their BlackBerrys, whittling their fingers to a sharp point as they frantically type emails on a tiny screen. I want to give them a hug and an iPhone. Now I can. BlackBerry are advertising a lot at the moment - perhaps that is the answer to being totally outclassed by a device that does the same as you, and then a whole truckload more as well.
3. All Nokia phones - Now the second best phone manufacturer in the world, Nokia is still streets ahead of the lesser competition. It has by far the best usability of non-iPhone phones, and its models boast a healthy feature set and a broad range of designs. 5 megapixel cameras and, yep, copy and paste, are serious features. But pick up a Nokia. Welcome to the feeling of cheap plastic. Touch the screen to operate it. Oh wait. No touch screen for you. You have fun on those tiny buttons. In terms of how tactile the handset is, the iPhone makes every Nokia look like a maiden aunt. But hey, the Nokia still has loads of features. Have fun trying to use them. Have fun trying to connect to a wireless network. Worst fun ever.
4. All Motorola/Samsung Mobile/LG Mobile/NEC/Sagem Mobile etc phones - See above. But with no consolation prizes. Let’s send these fail champions home. People are now paying for iPhones instead of having your free alternatives. Sure, they’re paying less than they were, but still. You’re screwed.
5. All Portable Sat Navs - How long until a serious Sat Nav solution comes out for the iPhone 3G? Not long, I would imagine. I’d buy it - the iPhone screen is plenty big enough to run Sat Nav, and yet again, I’m not forking out for a new unit with a brand new interface that was probably programmed by blind monkeys.
6. All portable games consoles, especially the Nintendo DS - Nintendo have been doing an excellent job at expanding their consoles to a much broader market, and the Wii and DS have been massive commercial successes. I know this, because 2 years later and it’s still not the easiest thing in the world to get hold of a Wii. Hardly the same story for XBOX 360 or PS3. You’re practically driving over them in the street, as they sit there, constantly lowering their own prices. The DS is the same story as the Wii, as it focuses on a market that appreciates simple, useful and mobile applications. But the iPhone does all this too. And it does it on your phone. Ouch.
7. Every page of Google SERPS after the first page - Google’s iPhone search web app only shows the first page of results. Below this list, it offers a small ‘more results’ link, that bounces you to a second window containing a normal Google search page. It’s kind of a “well, if you really MUST” option. Now, we all know that Google page 1 is where it’s at, and that the percentage of people going to page 2 and above is paltry. The iPhone brings every page after the first page one step closer to never, ever, being seen.
8. Your home phone  - Apple haven’t quite killed off the cellular networks - iPhone 2.0 only allows VoIP apps to run over wifi (so you can’t take advantage of unlimited data tariffs by routing all your voice calls in their direction) - but when you’re within range of a reliable and secure wifi connection (like the ones we now all have at home), you now have the ability to use your favourite handset to make free calls.
9. Every Apple remote - I’ve never felt the love for this flimsy and surprisingly powerful piece of white plastic (ever tried to use an Apple remote in a room where more than one device is in range?), and the remote app for the iPhone does its job so much better. I’ve used remote controls on Windows and Symbian mobiles for a few years now - Apple’s solution is so far ahead it’s unbelievable.
10. Every digital guitar tuner and every set of those stupid panpipes that people use for guitar tuning - My last example is small but indicative of a wider point. For £3, you can put a guitar tuner on your iPhone. £3 to never have to try to tune a guitar with panpipes ever again is like a Christmas present. There are lots of Apps like this - the most expensive app of all is a great example.

I’m sure there are more.
Apple have, yet again, taken a massive step forward by doing a lot of things that, once you see them, make a stupid amount of sense. The apparent simplicity of it all is sickening, frankly, but it’s deceptive. It’s not just selling software and phones that plug in. It’s selling software and phones that plug in every time, work everytime and generally make the rest of the electronics industry look like they spend their days scratching their heads aimlessly.

One thing I haven’t spoken about is Mobile Me; for me, this is the biggest question mark. Of course, it’s more than a paid-for email/calendar service, but with so much excellent competition out there (I can’t see me moving from Google Mail any time soon…), can Apple really charge people for something that has been free for longer than most of us call recall?

But I forget, this is Apple. Their software will be better, and its value will follow naturally.

Put it like that, and it sounds so simple, but what Apple have done is far from the easy option. Naysayers seem to think that the logic of “Better product, more sales”, is somehow too obvious and facile a goal to bother with. What they miss is that creating getting more sales is really easy, compared to the near-impossible goal of joining a new industry and promptly becoming its technology leader. Even if you think that Apple are all hype, you can’t deny the industry position that they now hold.

Some of this, of course, is hyperbole. Putting a clock on mobile phones didn’t render the watch obsolete overnight. Other manufacturers of mp3 players still, miraculously, sell mp3 players that aren’t iPods. And yes, I suppose I have been, as Americans put it, drinking the Kool-Aid, whatever that means. But you have to admit - this is a pretty interesting day.

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I have been very focused recently on my personal development, and carving a career path out of a selection of broadly-defined roles. In addition, I am keen to increase the amount of professional training I receive, so that, frankly, I get better at my job.

Where does a web professional turn for this? I have yet to find out. Have I missed something?

Is the best option the British Computer Society, whose first selling point on all of their selling materials (with which they will barrage you once you register an interest) is the letters you get after your name? Apparently I could stick ‘AMBCS’ after my existing letters for just a nominal fee (and other puns as well). What, exactly, would this prove? Nothing. But hey, I’ll admit flirting with the idea, though, so I delved deeper into the benefits.

So firstly, I’ve got the letters. I already have 8 (and opening and closing parenthesis, let’s not forget), so another 5 would be a nice addition. John has more letters after his name than in his name. That’s surely something to aspire to.

In addition, membership would, of course, mean that I could join your Internet Specialist Group, and peruse thrilling materials, such as the Chairman’s 10 favourite websites. These include Yahoo, multimap and the BBC news site. But let’s be fair. The site hasn’t been updated in 3 years.

That’s right. The British Computer Society’s Internet Specialist Group website hasn’t been updated in three years. I suppose that’s fair enough. It’s been a fairly quiet time.

Oh and another great feature of the BCS’s ISG site - it doesn’t validate. I’d forgive this; not a lot of stuff does, but the image that fails validation is the very same image that proclaims the code to be valid XHTML. That’s right. They’ve taken the code that the w3c gave them and rendered it invalid. Nice work.

The other benefits of membership are even more attractive. Of course, I have the weekly e-newsletter. One can only imagine the delights that it holds. Also, 50% discounts on Microsoft products. Thanks, but I’ll stick with my 100% discount on open source software.

Oh, and networking. Because I want to spend my time discussing escalation matrices with IT chumps. No thanks. I’ll keep my £50 and spend it on beer.

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I entered the business world, young and fresh-faced, after 18 years of full-time education that had, when it came to communication, focused on written and in-person verbal. I had become adept at communicating complicated ideas in a written format, and in explaining them in rather less detail in person.

I lesson I learned slowly (as my boss, Ian Cowley will attest) is that, in business, you have to use a tool that you are never really taught to use - the phone.

That might sound stupid, but let me explain. All through school and university, you are expected to submit work in written form, and to be able to prove your ability to describe it in person on occasion. Seminars and tutorials, where most students sit in silence and absorb the knowledge that their colleagues, who have actually done the appropriate preparation, reward those who can talk well and explain effectively. Your main assessment, however, is almost always in some written form.

If you have problem at university, you either go see a tutor, or send him or her and email. Only one lecturer who ever taught me gave out his office phone number and encourage people to ring it - and I bet nobody ever does.

And so generation upon generation of extensively educated people knock on the door of the business world without any formal training in the most basic of skills. I was the same; I’d never used the phone as an interface for business before and was reticent to do so, and I still see a lot of people who seem to be under the impression that text-based communication works well in all circumstances. These people are wrong.

Even the most experienced communicators find it difficult to convey exact meaning and tone in a written form. At work, I frequently get extensive emails that I can’t make head nor tail of, and require a lengthy reply. I’m the fastest typist in our office (with a score of 400+ on this test, without fail, and occasionally 500+), and it will still take me 20 minutes to put together an 800 word email. That’s a lot of time to take away from the serious business of writing code. Often, a 5 minute phone call would knock the whole subject on the head - because nobody types as fast as they talk!

Here is how people should treat communication methods:

Email - good for information-intensive communications that will last a number of days, and will often supplement phone calls. You can’t look up information from a phone call, so for hard data, email is the place. But do yourself a favour; tune your email down to only check the server every 20 minutes or so. This does wonders at reducing the immediacy.

Instant Messenger - good only for very quick questions, and passing around snippets of information. It is impossible to run any sort of business process via this limited medium.

Phone - seems like it takes longer, but is good for actually getting stuff done.

In Person - the very best. Take every opportunity you can to see and experience the people to which you are talking. These conversations are almost always the least guarded and most productive.

So to those people who think that the email is the place for long task descriptions and the phone is simply for quick questions, think again. This is the real world; your long, rambling email is simply not going to be read. Email is fine for a quick question, but if you fancy getting something actually done… pick up the phone.

Oh, and I am so near to putting a filter on my email that automatically deletes anything marked at a priority higher than ‘normal’. I have never, ever, received a ‘high’ priority email that had any right to its lofty status. If it’s that important… pick up the phone.

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For some months, a note has existed on my backpack to blog about moving to Google Apps - to provide what I needed when I moved; a definitive guide. Unfortunately, there have been one or two snags along the way, and I moved my email, my calendar and my google talk account, but with limited success. Here’s some of the tips I picked up along the way, and some of the frustrations for which I await a fix.

Email

My first problem was email. I was moving to Google Apps from a normal Gmail account. The migration was simple - I set up IMAP on the Gmail account and added it as a secondary account on the Google Apps account. This works just fine, although it is slow - very slow. It took nearly a week for all 239 mb of my email to be transferred over. So here’s a top tip - decide you’re going to move, set a date, and some time before that, lay the groundwork by starting this process.

Note: At work, we have used the Google migration tools which are available with more non-free versions. This process was significantly quicker at migrating our current IMAP mailboxes over.

I then switched my old Gmail account to bounce to my new Apps account, and all email bounces through happily while I gradually update the places where that address is stored. This also has the added advantage of filtering some spam out, which is nice, but not really a great concern as Google’s spam filtering is by far the best.

So it’s all going well; my Google toolbar is signed into the Apps account, and I hit the red mail button. Oh dear - it’s asking me to register the email address I’ve just created on Apps as a Google identity for a Gmail account - an account that could never receive email. Fair enough, I thought, and closed the window.

A couple of days later, I installed the Google notifier on my Mac - this worked fine with email being on Apps. The Mac dashboard widget, however, did not. I completed my account details and it complained the account didn’t exist. I clicked through to Google to find that it had set up a new Gmail account for the Apps email address, without even asking. And to add insult to injury, the new account was Gmail 2.0, which I still haven’t had rolled out on any of my Google accounts, at work, at home, anywhere. Wasn’t impressed.

So to summarise; Notifier on Mac works with Apps, Toolbar on Firefox Windows goes mad. And so does the dashboard widget. Clearly, Google is missing a link in some of its products which would allow them to identify and differentiate between Apps and non-Apps services.

Calendar

My migration from normal Google Calendar to Apps Calendar was simple enough - I shared the old calendars with the new account, and will use them for archive purposes. Again, Mac notifier works just fine, again the Firefox Google toolbar failed miserably. Click the calendar icon, and a page opens up:

Oops. A calendar already exists for xxx@xxx.com

(Email address censored by me)

Oops indeed. But don’t worry, Google will bounce you to the right page:

Go to your null calendar

New invitations sent to xxx@xxx.com will be added to this calendar. If you have an account at null, you can sign in at:

http://calendar.google.com/hosted/null

Maybe not. Apparently my null calendar is where it’s at - if I have an account at null, I can access it. Clicking that link (just for amusement, obviously it wasn’t going to work) brings up an error page - an error page that gives a 200 status code, no less. Win.

So it seems that in this instance, Google tried to help me out when I clicked into a calendar that shouldn’t exist, but the good intentions were let down by some buggy code. This is better than mail, which doesn’t realise that an Apps account exists for the domain, but still not perfect.

Reader

Google Apps doesn’t include Reader, so I ended up setting up a normal Google account with my main address on my new Apps domain. Perhaps this is what broke the calendar and mail. Migrating the subscriptions was easy - simply export as OPML on the old account, and import on the new. Done.

IM - GTalk and MSN

I didn’t bother migrating contacts with talk - I just added them again, both in Google talk itself and MSN (having set up my new main address as a M$ Passport). I like this exercise - it allows me to ditch contacts I never speak to. It also provides an interesting acid test - will people add me again? Fortunately, all did. IM was therefore back up and running straight away.

Imified/Twitter - Again, my Imified setup didn’t merit migration. I added the contact in MSN and had it going in a few minutes or so. I also added both Twitter and Imified to my new Apps GTalk account. No love. Not a jot - in fact, this opened up a world of pain.

I tackled the problem from the Twitter angle - basically, for the xmpp/jabber stuff to work with non-google talk services, you have to add some SRV records to your domain, and there’s a few very useful pages out there on sorting this out. To summarise them, at the moment my understanding is that the full SRV breakdown is as follows:

_xmpp-server._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.

_xmpp-client._tcp.yourDomainName.com IN SRV 5 0 5222 talk.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.yourDomainName.com IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.yourDomainName.com IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.yourDomainName.com IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.yourDomainName.com IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk4.l.google.com.

_jabber._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.yourDomainName.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.

But still, it doesn’t work. Twitter has experienced a lot of technical issues recently, and it’s easy to use a broad brush and suggest this is their fault. But Imified doesn’t work either, and all the debugging suggestions are fruitless.

So that’s it! I can’t get federated services for GTalk to work, and Google seems to be unable to lookup the names of its own Apps domains, meaning you are bounced to strange error pages and Gmail accounts that will never receive mail! But generally, it’s a pretty easy process and for the sake of consolidation, it’s worth it.

Now I just have to get openID working…

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Obviously, the makers of BBC iPlayer were initially distraught when I suggested, a couple of months ago, that their terrible product was re-defining the low bar when it came to beta software. The availability of programs was poor, the website was strange and required a seemingly-endless stream of passwords and identity checks, and the iPlayer software (read: DRM-enforcement SS Unit) was 6.64 megabytes of pure fail.

Clearly, the gauntlet was thrown down. I can visualise the events now as I had been there. And as if they had actually happened. First, the iPlayer team was excited about the blog post. Finally, they thought, the internet is taking notice of our betamax*-level technology. Then they read the post, remaking at the quick wit and the ever-thoughtful user comments, and were beside themselves. For nights, they lay sleepless. After a few days, they picked themselves out of their pit of despair and came up with a stunning idea, a spark of originality which would change the internet.

Hold on, cos this is complicated: They realised that what they should do, rather than making people download software that looks like it came from Astalavista and didn’t work, is stream the content straight from the website. That’s right. I couldn’t believe it either. As Steve would say, this is man-on-the-moon level invention. I can’t believe nobody ever thought of this before.

In all seriousness, the product that iPlayer has become is better and is actually worthy of being released to the real world. And of course it’s right that they released something early and waited for feedback, rather than keeping the product in development for years without working out what people want. And yes, they have responded quickly to the fact that they had produced a pup.

But you just think that they should have guessed that streaming online was the only way forward from the outset. It’s not like the path hadn’t been paved already. But, dear iPlayer engineer, here’s what you’ve been waiting for. “Well done”. Now get back to work - start by taking those stupid red boxes off the BBC News Homepage.

* And yes: I know that in some ways, Betamax was superior technology. But it still got sent to Failsville, which is where it sat, waiting to be joined by the initial iPlayer platform.

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