Productive Organizer

We talk about in the past the swyping virtual keyboard for multiple platforms SWYPE. It speeds up text input on your device but recently I have fallen out of love with it.

SWYPE comes as a default on my Samsung Galaxy S2 but no matter how I tried to use, I still go back to the standard keyboard application such as Ice Cream Sandwich or SwiftKey.

SWYPing is just not very normal. I still prefer good ol typing input. I am not sure about you guys.

Today’s update since SWYPE was acquired by Naunce comes the integration of Dragon Dictate technology into SWYPE. So now not only can you enjoy Swyping goodness but also quality voice to text input.

You can also download other language packs as well.

The update can be installed from the Swype preferences pane now, and you can join the beta from Swype’s website

I have subscribe to the Google network a fair bit. This means that I use

1. Gmail as my main email client
2. Google Reader as my main RSS feeds reader
3. Google Calendar as my consolidated calendar
4. Google Contacts as my main contact manager

The advantage of subscribing to Google’s cloud services or network, or whatever you want to call it is that

1. It is extensible. You can link data to your data easier than other platform. You can export data away from Google should you feel dis-satisfied with it
2. Because it is extensible and API is open to developers, many desktop,smartphone and other native device developers can build applications to increase productivity and performance
3. Google continues to innovate in their products to accommodate to a large number of users with different ways of calendaring, contacts management, reading and managing email

But the downside for using Google’s product

1. The look is always very ugly compare to Microsoft and Yahoo’s offering
2. Because applications are always in Beta, some people will feel turn off about experimental things and why it doesn’t have certain features

Google have taken a lot of efforts to address the UGLY portion. In the last year, their web applications and Android and iPhone applications have undergone a drastic beautifying.

Now there is a consistent minimalist white theme for almost all their applications. They have cut out a lot of the clutter and have given enough whitespace to enable the user to focus on the right subject.

Good user interface attracts users to come back and want to use it, and the more a person use it, it enhances them better.

The new Gmail resizes better when you change it to a smaller window. The email conversations look better with the picture of the person you are talking to next to it and overall feels more like a chat conversation.

The problem with Google Reader had been that it always look strange and its really not great at focusing on what matters – the content! This redesign removes a lot of the boundaries and ensures the user sees clearly between controls and content.

There is also a tighter integration with Google Plus which is good to grow the Google Plus social network. The more ways you make it easier for info sharing the more it becomes important.

What do you guys think? Do you like the new changes?

Being both a software engineer, technology commentator and user experience enthusiast, Steve Jobs to me have been nothing short of inspiring.

Great Systems Integrator

What stands out first and fore most was that whether it is an MP3 player, personal computer or a phone, he does not watch watch his competitors or what the consumer wants, he creates a Blue Ocean and provides consumer the answer what really works for them or how it should work for them.

Let me just say that I have used my fair share of smartphones since the palm, windows CE days and I have never encounter a device that is just so right in every way, whether it is the navigation, the focus on smooth scrolling the detail to what mainstream needs. There are not geeky integration into their product just because that is the current technological advancement.

The amazing thing is that the industry should have know this because its so intuitive yet they don’t provide for us but this man did and for that we really have to thank him for how he push the industry to be so consumer centric.

Great User Experience

Before Apple really went mainstream with the MAC OSX, IPOD and IPhone, Human Computer Interaction was not high on the industry agenda. Sure it is a good to have but the focus is on functionality and more functionality.

Steve showed that great user experience can command a premium, enhance their brand, create a following and be a competitive advantage.

To see how much emphasis he placed on details to provide that great user experience take a look at what Google’s Vic Gundotra, the current nemisis of iPhone have to say about Jobs:

One Sunday morning, January 6th, 2008 I was attending religious services when my cell phone vibrated. As discreetly as possible, I checked the phone and noticed that my phone said "Caller ID unknown". I choose to ignore.

After services, as I was walking to my car with my family, I checked my cell phone messages. The message left was from Steve Jobs. "Vic, can you call me at home? I have something urgent to discuss" it said.

Before I even reached my car, I called Steve Jobs back. I was responsible for all mobile applications at Google, and in that role, had regular dealings with Steve. It was one of the perks of the job.

"Hey Steve – this is Vic", I said. "I’m sorry I didn’t answer your call earlier. I was in religious services, and the caller ID said unknown, so I didn’t pick up".

Steve laughed. He said, "Vic, unless the Caller ID said ‘GOD’, you should never pick up during services".

I laughed nervously. After all, while it was customary for Steve to call during the week upset about something, it was unusual for him to call me on Sunday and ask me to call his home. I wondered what was so important?

"So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I’ve already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve.

"I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I’m not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient. It’s just wrong and I’m going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?"

Of course this was okay with me. A few minutes later on that Sunday I received an email from Steve with the subject "Icon Ambulance". The email directed me to work with Greg Christie to fix the icon.

Since I was 11 years old and fell in love with an Apple II, I have dozens of stories to tell about Apple products. They have been a part of my life for decades. Even when I worked for 15 years for Bill Gates at Microsoft, I had a huge admiration for Steve and what Apple had produced.

But in the end, when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I’ll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.

To one of the greatest leaders I’ve ever met, my prayers and hopes are with you Steve.

Great Disruptor

He created one of the most disruptive company in history. The music industry doesn’t know how to make sense of the music piracy scene and he created a device people would use and distribute music through it. That probably save the industry.

He make the retail market and phone manufacturers sit up and be serious (after they all say he is going to fail) about how the industry will change with their product offering.

How have Steve Jobs influence you?

When creating a winning tablet, its not the most important just load every tablet with the most core cpu, the most ram and the biggest screen.

Package them well and make it affordable and people will flock to your offering.

Here is an interesting post from bob Bushway who describes how iPad can replace almost all his daily use except for intensive administration and programming work.

• I woke up this morning at 4:15 am and did some light reading with my wife using my iPad and Olive Tree Bible app.
• I then went to the gym, jumped on the elliptical, did some more reading using Amazon Kindle app.
• After punishing myself a little bit more on various instruments of torture, I logged my workout using Numbers.
• While waiting for my wife to finish her workout, I checked and answered a few emails.
• I then made my way to the office, went into a meeting, and took notes using thatsame iPad and the Evernote app. During the meeting I needed access to a few documents, so I popped open Documents To Go, accessed my DropBox folder, and then opened the Word doc. I made some edits and saved the document (which was then synced to my other computers).
• During the day, I’m also logging my meals using Numbers (on the same iPad I used for the meeting above…notice the trend?)
• While at work, I’m doing programming and editing using my Windows-based Tablet PC (a different computer). My notes and document edits from the meeting above are available to me. However, I’m more likely to take my iPad to a meeting rather than my Tablet PC.
• When I go home tonight, I’ll use my iPad on and off throughout the evening – accessing my kids school website, reading a few blogs, checking email, and then closing the evening out with some more reading in Olive Tree.

You may have heard of Four-squares which looks to translate all iPhone’s into possible point of sale devices. IMO the iPad makes a better case for this simply because its screen is as large as those POS system that you see.

Shopkeep is the software on the iPad that transform your iPad into a point of sale system. Take a look at these clips.

What this mean is that should you want to start a small business but don’t want to invest in a full fledge POS device, you can make use of such technology. 

Android! where are you?

Take a look at this video of the copy and paste implementation for Windows Phone 7 that is due in 2011.

It looks awfully difficult. Certainly more so than iOS. Android and Windows Phone 7 are all copying what Apple did for their iPhone

In fact everyone is copying their method of text selection. It shows how well in-tune Apple is when it comes to User Experience engineering.

Kyith:

I blogged in my investment blog some time last week pointing to readers a business example of why Mint was able to become a more valuable personal finance company compared to Wesebe.

I used Quicken for 7 years and have around 7 years of Quicken data and sad to say I am pretty much tied in to it.

This is where Quicken’s parent is a good company to invest in as for a user like me its difficult to switch to another platform unless it promise that it will have no problems importing my 7 years of data.

But one thing Quicken fared badly is that, they come out with  a new version every year, yet you can’t tell the freaking difference between each version.

To make matters worse, it requires some intellect to start using this Quicken to help you.

That is probably why Mint.com took off. It got so successful that Quicken’s owner bought it up. And now Mint.com’s owner is task with correcting the so call problems he highlighted in the first place.

What’s the difference between online management startup Mint.com and personal finance software Quicken?

“Quicken, before, looked like it was from 1996. Imagine that you were going through a castle of 100 rooms, and it’s got all of these loops in it and hidden stairways. And the first time you go through, someone asks you to find the library on the third floor. You’d say, I have no idea where it is, I can’t remember,” says Aaron Patzer, Mint’s founder. “Quicken was designed like that before. It had all these loops: You could get to certain features through multiple different directions, which you might think is convenient. It actually makes it much more difficult to build a mental model of the software, which is what everyone implicitly does.”

For years, Patzer has been airing his frustrations with Quicken and similar services such as Microsoft Money. He says these frustrations were a central reason for starting Mint, which now boasts 4 million users, and was also a central reason for Intuit’s $170 million acquisition of his company last year.

“When Intuit acquired us, they said, I heard you’ve been talking trash about Quicken for a while, so why don’t you go fix what you think the problems are,” Patzer explains.

Since then, Patzer and his team have dramatically overhauled–or Mint-ified–Intuit’s product, streamlining a slew of Quicken features and making it more visually digestible. Big changes included a simplified account setup; an iTunes-like color scheme; infographics; advanced search, sorting, and resizable columns; gradients; nearly doubling the accuracy of transaction categorization; more than doubling the amount of accessible banks; and refining under-the-hood specs with Mint’s back-end.

“As far as the vision on where the navigation should go, what features should be highlighted, which should be deleted, which should be omitted, which should be enhanced, I did that myself, in one weekend actually,” Patzer says. After all, he’s been reflecting on his frustrations with Quicken for years, and lists them off with ease: “In the past, you had to select, do I want Express Web Connect, Web Connect, or Direct Web Connect? No one knew what those meant. They meant, do you want to use a direct OFX connection, do you want to download QIF files, or do you want to use a screen scraping connection? No one should care about the difference. It should just be: get me the information from my bank.”

[Read the rest of this article here >>]

I got a chance to go down to the local store to test out the Archos GEN8 101 and 70 extensively.

Let me just say that its not as bad as what the guy faced in this article here, but its not very complete yet.

The touch experience

On the whole my experience navigating is not very good. Particularly, I think its highly attributable to the screen protector they lay across that is making it not very sensitive. We need to re-evaluate this one.

When the touch experience is not there, it impedes my overall user experience

Live Wallpaper needs to be turn off

The live wallpaper makes the 2 devices laggy, turning it off makes a marked improvement.

Essentially if you have an android phone, you should always turn off live wallpaper if you are a productive user like me.

The weight of the device

Much Much lighter than the iPad. It makes it more portable. But I get the feeling after prolong holding typing I will still get tired.

7 inch vs 10 inch

Ah the size comparison. Which is better?

Because the 10 inch is 1024 x 600, it looks like an elongated 7 inch.

Now I understand why the iPAd is 1024×768 because reading magazines on a wider device makes so much more sense.

I can view comfortably on 7 inch or 10 inch. That is not a problem.

But the 7 inch is so much portable. In fact for portability  is the right size.

But if I were to use it as a reader, I would prefer the 10 inch.

In terms of value for money I think the 10 inch is more value than the 7 inch.

Reading PDF books

This is something that I would like to test and sadly the device does not come with a PDF reader. However I was able to download one from the AppLib.

I tested with 3 books

1. 66 MB Magazine – takes a long time to render. It renders by 4 squares for 1 page
2. 7 MB Magazine -  faster than the 66 MB but still slow
3. 5 MB Technical book – same speed but the good thing is that you can view it without needing to zoom in zoom out.

One thing to note is that I played them off a microSD card which my friend says is slow speed.

A better test would be to move it to the flash disk which would be faster.

Also the reader is questionable as it kept crashing. Adobe Reader or Repligo would be much better.

AppLib

A very limited marketplace, but it still has tons of things. I believe a lot of people can make do with it, but there is always an official Android Marketplace hack.

Overall Assessment

After seeing this, I went to Sim Lim to take a look at the China tablets and comparatively the ARchos is so so so much better than them.

But when I was using it, I kept thinking why the touch sensitivity lacks so much of what the iPad can achieve. I can stand waiting and lagginess. But I really don’t like touching the same thing twice to select.

I will keep my options open. There is still the Creative resistive device and likely more release according to my reader here so it pays to wait.

I am not discounting the iPAD at SGD728 as well.

We have introduced BlindType, which I think is great and Swype which is also good. Now we have a whole new keyboard experience in 8pen.

8pen uses a lot of gesture based actions for input but what matters more is the way the letters are arranged. They are not QWERTY style.  Why do I think it will not work?

1. Simply too much learning curve

Learning curve is steep. Most of us grew up learning to type on QWERTY which on a whole is not efficient, but after years of practice  it has become second nature to us. While 8pen might ultimately be more efficient as a input method after 1 year of practice, most people are unwilling to learn this input mechanism.

2. Not standard from other devices input.

Imagine this, you take an effort to learn this method. Then when you go to your netbook or desktop and you need to input, it will likely impede the way you input on those device as your brain has to process 2 different sets of input for the same thing. I am not sure how big is the impact but we were able to do that quite well with the QWERTY keyboard and the T9 alphanumeric keypad.

Somehow everytime I see all these so call green solution, I have a feeling that its just gonna be another money sucking exercise from these large companies.

Logitech came up with a solar wireless keyboard that has an ambient light solar panels installed on the top of either side so that you do not need alkaline cells to run.

Now people will think hey this cool tech is gonna safe me money because I don’t have to buy batteries.

But the likely scenario is that this is going to be a lot more expensive such that the equivalent battery cost would be roughly 5 years of using normal batteries compare to using this much more expensive keyboard.

Its equivalent to purchasing a netbook just to save electricity since it will take you 10 years or so to save that amount equivalent of your netbook.

[Read the article @ Engadget >>]