This is a small answer to the hate that comes over from heise.de to iPhone users.

Okay three people forwarding me this article brings it to an end. WTF. Heise always was kinda “professional”, but this officially NOT SPONSORED by Microsoft, Samsung, Nokia & Co. “objective” study really tries to tell us that we iPhone users are CRAZY as we’re taken hostage by our telephone and defend its really bad existence due to some irritational psychological damage?

Well, I’m sure I’m not the only iPhone user getting forwarded all those silly news about “iPhone Worms Ripping Apples Product Apart”, “Security Issues with jailbroken devices (and their stupid users)” or this newest headline. What’s your problem?  I’m sure you’re thinking “Oh again one of those iPhone users held hostage by its smartphone, trying to defend its weak points”. Right. Thats the point. Its not about the malicious joy of people’s envy of a phone that does, what their similarly priced smartphone with much better hardware just doesn’t do: it works, its easy to use and you don’t need days to configure it.

But back to this silly study. There is one smart thing about it: if you critisize it, they seem to be correct. Well. So smart. The following could also be found out by someone without an iPhone. I’m disqualifying 80% of their points made.

Lets look at the points this study proves its view with:

1. “The first iPhone was not a 3G phone: What do you need 3G for? You can easily use the iPhone without using a 3G network and anyway, 3G is not particularly widespread, so this is not a problem.”

Nonexistant problem. When was this study made? Three years ago? Who cares?

2. “The phone cannot send MMS: There is no need to send MMSs, hardly anybody sends MMSs.”

Nonexistant problem now. BTW, I just sent one MMS so far with my iPhone, just to try it out - guess what? The receiving nokia device (XPress 5800, a pretty new device) couldn’t display MMS.

3. “You cannot forward a SMS: This is a function that hardly anybody uses and was therefore not included in the first iPhones.”

Nonexistant problem now. Needed to check that, as the crazy iPhone-users statements seems to be true to the bone.

4. “The phone has a poor camera: The built-in camera is perfectly adequate and the iPhone takes fantastic photos with its camera.”

Nonexistant problem. 3.2 MP is standard nowadays and in each iteration the cam gets an upgrade. Sorry for not using 10MP cams, but storage capacity scarce and the device 100€ more expensive. Oh and today we have the knowledge that MPs don’t translate into picture quality.

5. “It is not a real Smartphone, it cannot multitask: The phone has all the necessary functions and the OS is technically superior compared to other Smartphone OSs currently on the mobile market.”

This is a real limitation, but not as worse as described. The iPhone CAN do multitasking, but only some Apple services (like music, mail, timers, etc.) can do that. But technically, I’ll count this as a real point made. Even if noone ever has defined a smartphone to be a multitasking-monster. Well, Real Problem anyways.

6. “The iPhone cannot multitask, resulting in a great number of applications being unusable: The absence of multitasking is a deliberate design decision resulting in a faster UI.”

Nonexistant problem: Nothing is “unusable” because of missing multitasking. And this is technically the same point as 5.

7. “You can not change battery on the iPhone: How many customers run around with spare batteries? None or very few.”

My battery keeps up 2 days, so if I could change it, I wouldn’t do it. But this is of course a limit. If my battery gets broken, I can’t easily change it. Shame on Apple here! Real problem.

8. “Apple decides which applications you can install on the phone: This is good, because Apple thereby ensures that you do not get inferior programs on your phone.”

This is also a real limitation, but I wouldn’t say nobody mournes about this. This is in fact the most critisized part of the AppStore, and I hardly see iPhone-Fanboys defend that process. Real problem.

9. “The app store is a closed universe: Apple knows what is best for end users, which is good for the many iPhone users.”

Nonexistant problem for end-users. Besides, everyone else is copying the appstore for their own software world. It makes it easier for developers to give out their products. Oh, BTW this is the same as point 8.

10. “The phone does not support Java, so games need to be developed especially for the iPhone: Java is slow and not properly integrated with mobile phones, games for the iPhone are much better because they are directly developed for the iPhone.”

Well and other Phones might not support Fortan, or another favourite language of mine. Totally nonexistant problem.

11. “The app store contains numerous small trivial commercial programs: The app store’s large selection gives users the freedom of choice and the many small programs help make the end users daily lives more fun.”

Nonexistant problem. If you don’t want it, don’t use it. Or go to the Ovi store, hahaha. You won’t find more than a handful of reaaaly bad games in there.

12. “It is difficult to use the touchscreen for fast SMS messaging: The touchscreen makes the phone easier to use and you quickly get used to it.”

Nonexistant problem: since 3.0 you can type emails and SMS in landscape mode, and I’m nearly as fast on that as on a real desktop keyboard. The non-landscape-mode is not that good, but so far I didn’t see a better virtual keyboard.

13. “The iPhone is a low technology phone packaged in a sleek design: Apple has taken the combination of the design and UI to the next level, therefore the technological specifications don’t really matter.”

If you want faster hardware, go for it. As long as the hardware supports a fluently working OS, this is a nonexistant problem. Especially if you have 1Ghz and your windows mobile interface still is unresponsive.

14. “The quality of the phone is poor, calls are often interrupted and network coverage is poor: It is a good phone, these problems are due to the operators’ networks and not the phone.”

Nonexistant problem. At least I’ve never had a problem, and I doubt I got the single super-iPhone they built just for me while every other is broken.

15. “You can only purchase the iPhone from operators chosen by Apple: Apple has spent a great deal of time and energy selecting the best operators for customers.”

Real Problem: This is a real issue of course. But none that customers don’t whine about!

16. “The iPhone is targeted at a niche segment and will not be able to develop further: Apple has succeeded in designing a phone for people that appreciate design and user friendliness.”

“The iPhone is targeted at a niche segment and will not be able to develop further”? Did you read the numbers? Did you read the news? The iPhone IS 50% OF THE SMARTPHONE WORLD because it steadily develops!!111elevenone!

17. “The iPhone does not support memory cards: Iphones already offer the necessary memory people require and end users can choose between two models, one with a little memory and one with a great deal of memory.”

Well, thats Apple’s philosophy. I took the 16 GB version. But where is the difference to the many smartphones out there giving you a 8GB-memory-card and that are extendable up to 16GB? None. Well, okay, acutally if I had bought an 8GB version I couldn’t have upgraded it later on. Well. But its just stupid to count this as a problem of the device, its a problem of the user. And therefore a nonexistant problem.

18. “You can not install your own browser: The browser Apple has designed is so superior that you do not need any other browser on your phone.”

This is a real problem too. Its the same as points 8 and 9, but I’m in a good mood so this could be called another real problem.

19. “You cannot use the iPhone as a modem for your portable PC: People that have an iPhone do not need their portable when on the move.”

Nonexistant problem today. And Hello! There’s the jailbreak! And jailbreaking is easier than sticking a new battery in your phone!

20. “There is no radio in the phone: You do not need a radio in your iPhone because the iPhone supports iTunes that offers almost unlimited music.”

Nonexistant problem. I use Last.fm and there’re a lot more radioservices. Sure, they don’t use century-old technology for this, so you need to stream the stuff. Could be called a problem, but I’m not willing to count it. After all you have an integrated iPod too.

Conculsion: Again, the Apple-haters had food for their selfmade problems, but please keep away with such totally stupid studies. THAT SURELY HAS NOT BEEN SPONSORED BY (put name of big phone company in here) AND WAS MADE BY VERY SCIENTIFIC MEANS. If you see the logic in there, please drop a note. Other comments are appreciated too.

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Image by koalazymonkey via Flickr

So after about two weeks of using GTD-life-enhancement with “ToDo” on iPhone, Toodledo as online-synch I have some basic thoughts wheher this helped me. You can find the last post about this here: Why using ToDo-Lists and GTD?.

GTD only > 2 minutes

The first (logical rule) I came across is: never put something you can do in under 2 minutes on a ToDo-list. Do it instantly! This helps resolving loops like “Put the other item on the ToDo-list”, so I guess the rule was made by a computer scientist ;-p … no really: if something is done quickly, just do it!

GTD vs. Calendar

First it has to be noted that GTD has some paralells with using a calendar. You’ll put appointments with people (like go to the doctor, have an interview with, etc.) and recurring appointments (like a weekly meeting with your colleagues) in a calendar, as you got one certain point in time when you have to do that. GTD is more about listing the stuff, that has no exact point in time when it has to be done. I’ll put there items I need to to at work and stuff that needs to be done at home.

Context

Context is the situation you’re in when you need a certain part of your ToDo-list. I don’t need my work-list at home and I don’t need my home-list at work. This is what contexts try to solve. In the GTD-programs I use, you can set a context to each item. On ToDo for iPhone setting your actual situation to a context lets the app hide all other todo-items. Contexts get automatically set on todo-items if you have set that certain context. On Firefox I need to set everything by hand, but its pretty easy. Use contexts, they mean the world.

The contexts I use are work and home. I also use another context thats called “boring-time”. When there’s nothing to do at home (or soon in the christmas-holidays), I look in that list. I put topics for blogposts to write, books I’d like to read and private projects and stuff like that in the boring-time-context. I didn’t solve one of those since I use GTD, seems I got too much other stuff to do :-/

Hotlist

You can set a “due date” (and time) on each todo item. This is the time when you should have solved a todo or the last point in time when you should begin working on the todo. You can also define a priority (like none, low, medium or high). When you then look at your “hotlist” (or “Focus”-list as its called in the ToDo-app), only the more important stuff and the stuff with a near due date gets shown, at least in the iPhone program its also filtered by the actual context that is set. This helps seeing the important stuff through the other clutter.

The due date has another important meaning. As its the time when you should start the ToDo if you didn’t do it before, you get a message (that looks like an SMS) in the iPhone app.

Problems I didn’t solve so far

I tried making a short list of items I need to do in the morning. Why? Hmm. I tend to walk around in the morning, not knowing what to do first. Sometimes I forget my umbrella and get cauht by rain. Therefore a small list would be nice. There is an option to let items recurr (any timespan, every day for example; I use this for getting the trash out every two weeks), but I didn’t like to see all the stupid items like “do breakfast” in the list. Maybe this can be solved with the iPhone ToDo’s “Projects”. Those can be used to set sub-items, but it gets synched to the Toodledo Service as single items, so I’m not sure if it works that good (tried it once, “inTheMorning”-project with subitems, set to recurr every day, but the subitems didn’t resurr somehow, so I sat the and got an empty project recurring in the morning).

Then Outlook 2003 made problems. I used another thrid party-app linked on toodledo to sync the ToDos with outlook 2003. Sadly, Outlook realizes its data gets changed and ask the user (me) for permission. This wouldn’t suck if you could allow it forever, but you can’t. Outlook just doesn’t support it, so you have to click “okay” every ten minutes, when the third party app tries to sync. Stupid outlook. Didn’t try it with a newer version so far. Outlook seems like a crappy ToDo-solution anyways, as you got no chance to define contexts (at least in 2003).

When I have more insights, I’ll let you know! So far, get stuff done! ;-)

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First things I wanna put straight:

• I sometimes have issues keeping track of what I’m supposed to do, when to do it and in which order.
• Sometimes I heard about GTD on twitter or in blogposts, but when I tried to read into it I thought that I don’t really feel like learning another complicated system for stuff that I can solve with small slips of paper.
• I always wanted to use my iPhone for ToDo-lists, as I use it for everything else in organisation: contacts, calendar … so why not todo-lists?
• I feel that I can be doing things faster if I used some kind of organised approach to my todo-listings, therefore I just thought: why not try out another fancy internet-solution? And synch it with an iPhone-app, so I always have my lists at hand?

Thats exactly what I’ve done. After all, these apps and internet solutions build on the same GTD-principles, and therefore learning GTD seems to be important for programmers of those tools, but not for the end user like me. But of course the solution to my problem wasn’t only to download some software, as you’ll have to think about what software solutions you use and for which set of tasks this works. After all, many things like appointments fall into the realm of calendars; and many “small tasks” should not be set on a todo-list at all, as those tasks are too small (”check todo list”; checking this item is superflous) or too large (”be happy”; falls into the realm of so called goals). Then some software has limitations about what you can do with your todo list (like outlook). So everything need to be planned a bit, so you get a solution you can use.t

And this is the main issue. Usability. I need a system that can remind me what I have to do for the day and that doesn’t take loads of time to configure. So far I can’t make a clear statement, but I see some issues and problems here and there - while other parts of my solution seem to work perfectly. I’ll tell you in my next post if the solution I try is usable or if its utter nonsense to try to use online & mobile applications to get yourself remebered and organised.

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If the question is, what JavaScript-Framework you should use, finding an answer is usually all about finding out what you already use and what seems to be the feature-richest, fastest and best supported frameworks. If you already use a Framework, just take that one if you’re not only using it for some easy simple stuff like a popup or something. Otherwise, think about what you’ll need the JS-library to do and consult the web. What I have done:

Some Quotes:

“You can save a tremendous amount of time and effort by using the browser-independent framework that JQuery has spent untold man-hours testing, debugging, and proving in the field. While there’s nothing wrong with writing JavaScript, why not speed your development time by writing to the library instead? As I’ve always said, don’t reinvent the wheel, unless you plan on learning more about wheels.” - Jeff Atwood

“A JavaScript framework may not make you a better programmer, but it will make you more efficient. That alone should be reason enough to choose a JavaScript framework, or library if you prefer. Unless you decide to build your own, there are plenty of options available to developers. However, choosing the right framework can be tricky, and weeding through a mess of opinionated fanboys (myself included) is intimidating.” - Brian Reindel

Features-comparison:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_JavaScript_frameworks

(pretty much tells us that Dojo and jQuery rule)

Speed-comparison:

http://www.domassistant.com/slickspeed/

My test resulted in: jQuery fastest, Dojo was close … Protoype and Moo were pretty slow (used Firefox 3.5)

Research and advise:

http://www.dannydouglass.com/post/2008/04/Comparing-Popular-JavaScript-Frameworks.aspx

Conclusion

Think for yourself. I’d always recommend jQuery, as every single developer that has ever used it has fallen in love with it, and it just always ranks best - everywhere. You got all features, high speed, short syntax, small filesize, very good documentation, unnumerable amounts of plugins, tutorials - and a low learning curve. If you can’t trust EVERYONE ELSE, you’ve got to have good reasons to.

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My girlfriend has a new handy: the Nokia Xpress 5800 (and I chose it for her). It features a touchscreen, a 3.2MP camera (with autofokus and flashlight), WLAN, boasting with its music capabilities and all the other usual stuff you get with smartphones today and costs about 300€. It also has a touchpen for writing. Whooho.

As an iPhone-user I can only judge that thing from my viewpoint and compare it with the iPhone. PRO Nokia:

• First, its price is only approximately half (or even one third) that of an iPhone (which is REALLY nice).
• It has a camera button on the outside that lets you directly switch to camera mode and that also trigger the camera, so you don’t have to watch the touchscreen to tip on a softbutton to make a snapshot.
• The speakers rule. Listening to loud music is possible with this thing.
• You don’t need iTunes or some other software to get music or video on that phone. You got the OVI-suite if you want to use that.
• You can just use it as USB-mass-storage. IPhone users dream of that and can only use Wi-Fi apps that do the same, but those need a Wi-Fi key to connect.
• You can do handwriting instead of using the softkeyboard.
• There’s a really BIG softkeyboard that uses the full screen and only leaves a small part of the rest of the background visible where the text is displayed.
• Some nice shortcuts: kamera (button on the outside), clock (tap on the displayed time), the mediabar (one tap for that and there are shortcuts for browser, music player & more). Some more shortcuts can be put on the standard screen, which is nice.
• Headphones are plugged into a controller where you can skip to the next track of music or take an incoming call.

Well thats it with the good stuff, here comes the bad:

• The touchscreen doesn’t feel as insensible as most windows-mobile-devices I tried, but you still have to press it. The Nokia has a plekron attached and includes a small pen to help you with that but iPhoneuse is just easier and more exact.
• There’s no multitouch.
• Most of the time you need more than three touches to come to the application you want. But there are some nice shortcuts (mentioned in the PRO section above).
• The plastic looks a bit cheap, the touchscreen is not made of glass but of some plastic.
• The menus and the browser are not really nice-to-use. Its manageable tough.
• The apps are mostly pretty basic. I didn’t see the OVI-apps so far.
• I can type much faster on an iPhone.
• This might be the most important point: Even when the Nokia has a lot of features, my girlfriend still reaches out for my iPhone if she wants to look something up on the web.

After all, I think the Nokia was a good choice. Its not too costy, and if you dig a bit into it, you can really make good use of that phone. I like it, even if I like the iPhone much better.

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AssertTrue(this) is a great blog. Its about programming in general and also a lot about (W)CMS-systems. The author Kas Thomas writes in a very nice way and regularily makes me laugh. I even envy his superb blog-title.

I might be writing the same stuff in 10 years - but as I’m still learning a lot, I more feel qualified to talk about little gadgets that I can understand to a reasonable extent. He blogs very actively and when I just started my feedreader and read some of his latest posts, I just needed to point your programmer’s noses to this blog.

This reminds me that I need to rework my blogroll and seperate it in something like recommendedreading, friends and just links (that link points to a very good blog too btw, just don’t try to read it without a feedreader, the design is pretty ugly).

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• Blogrolls (mohammeda09.edublogs.org)

Image via Wikipedia

Listening to technology-podcasts on the german Handelsblatt.com-website, I heard about Zemanta. It is a service that uses a firefox-plugin to read out your blogged text and parsing it for “words they know”. They present you links, tags and images to embed in your blog post, showing you links to wikipedia-articles and pictures fitting the content. Just after finishing this sentence, the sidebar that gets embedded in my webbackend of wordpress refreshes. Whoa! I got 5 links for the first sentence and I just included them all. I also included a pic you see floating right.

This is what many people think the semantic web or Web 3.0 to be. And in a way, it is. The use of Web 3.0 (the term in my understanding encapsulates user-generated-content as in Web 2.0 and the semantic web) in blogging seems logical to me as blogging the one of the most public displays of Web 2.0. This firefox-plugin makes it much easier to generate interesting articles and IF it doesn’t break my blog frontend, I’ll definitely use it in every post from here on. But back to the functions:

Image by pshab via Flickr

You can press an update-button and your content gets scanned again. New pictures appear and new links can be included. Just realized that most links are Wikipedia ones, but some (like the firefox-plugin-link or the Zemanta-link at the top) are also directed at other “well-known” resources. You can search for a term you put into a searchbar and get links, content and new pics. I tried “semantic web” for example. You can drag-and-drop pictures into the content-pane, and it gets easily included.

We’re standing on the edge of Web 3.0. I don’t think that this here is all that Web 3.0 is about, but I think its a great application that can be called “Web 3.0″-ly. If you would like to use this ff-plugin too, just go to their website and install it. You’ll have to agree to their TOS, that basically says “don’t change anything our plugin includes” and “we need access to the text you write” and “you are in charge for your content and all content you get from us as we show you the license”. So now I hope this post doesn’t get destroyed by some bad constructed CSS on my side. Fire and forget - or do you have any comments, iThoughts or fears about this plugin? You may also comment in german.

Image via Wikipedia

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