Jeff Clavier's Software Only

The iPhone mania: Robert Scoble and Patrick first in line

  Robert and Patrick first in front of the Apple store in Palo Alto 
  Originally uploaded by jeffclavier

Robert has said that he was going to do it: well here he is with Patrick camping in front of the Apple store in Palo Alto since this morning 9:30am. For the short period of time I was there, a crew from CNBC and a   reporter from the Red Herring showed up to interview them.

It is going to be a zoo over there tonight, but it should be fun. I am not planning to stay overnight, but I might do my meetings tomorrow afternoon in the queue if there aren't gazillions of people waiting.

Apple has released information about tomorrow's "stampede": they will close the stores for 4 hours before the 6pm opening, and will sell a maximum of 2 iPhones per person.

Testing the TypePad Mobile application

Written on the phone:

Six Apart’s Michael Sippey has announced tonight the release of a new product, TypePad Mobile, a mobile application that allows smartphone users to post pictures and (basic) blog entries from their phone. This was already feasible by email but the application - running on my Cingular 8125 on which I type this - does provide a slightly better user experience and control.

The installation was pretty straightforward when downloading the CAB file on the phone (note that it should be signed). The download on the PC did not add it to the list of applications to be installed by ActiveSync and no explanation was provided as to how it should be done. The text editor does not react exactly like Word or the mail program, like automatically capitalizing the first letter of a word after the end of a sentence, which makes it a bit bizarre to use. There is no concept of links, or tags, which means that mobile posts have to be updated from a computer after the initial publication, which I guess is fine for now.

Pictures can be automatically resized to 640px in width. I would have liked to see this option to be offered per post rather than a preference of the application.

Added on a PC:

It seems to me that blog posts that include a picture should have a choice of layouts like Buzznet or Flickr have. The current default is to display the picture on top of the post, and then insert the text that has been typed. There is also a slight issue when a user has a large number of blogs and photo galleries, only the first few ones can be accessed via TypePad Mobile.

According to Sippey, TypePad Mobile is the relaunched version of SplashBlog after its acquisition by Six Apart.

 

Typepad gets a few useful feature additions

Typepad New Features
Originally uploaded by jeffclavier.

Six Apart just announced a few new additions to TypePad that are worth noting:

• The most important one - by far - was the ability to link your TypePad feeds to your FeedBurner managed feed, which I blogged about upon release. For the first time, bloggers know exactly how many subscribers they have across their numerous feed incarnations – and that is important to their ego .
• I like the ability to feature a post temporarily. This one (related to the World Cup) will be up until Sunday. And then I stop blogging about sports - I swear. It would however be great to somehow mark the post as “Featured” since the current implementation does not make it explicit.
• Finally, the ability to edit multiple posts in one go, like closing comments or trackbacks, is pretty useful.

Next requirement: getting some of the Vox editing features in Typepad, like the picture insert widget, would be great.

Any other favorite feature request of yours ?

NewsGator for Windows Mobile: I like it but...

Just saw this on my friend Brad Feld's blog: NewsGator for Windows Mobile Beta Available, and decided to give it a try.

To be honest, I am not too sure that I want to be hooked to my Cingular 8125 much more than I already am, but I might like to check a few feeds every now and then.

You can download the program through a Windows EXE file that installs a .cab on your device, or you can download the .cab directly on your phone. A few remarks about the (beta) product:

• We need a bit more information as to which platform/device should be using the PPC or the smartphone version. I tried both on my phone and they both work, even though the Smartphone version seems to have more options.
• It is great that the Mobile version synchronizes with the NewsGator back-end, like FeedBurner and NetNewsWire. However, I don't want to read my 300+ feeds on that device and I would like to be able to select the subset of feeds or folders that I want to download. NewsGator provides the notion of "Location" that would allow me to do so, but it can only be changed on a per feed basis - which is very cumbersome. I would either want to set the Location per folder or/and on a bunch of feeds at the same time.
• The user experience and workflow need to be improved, especially when it comes to navigation. It is mandatory to use the phone stylet to navigate back to the global feed view once a given feed has been read. I know that it is challenging to build a "one size fits all" navigation when phones and PDAs running Windows Mobile are different, but it would be nice to take advantage of the keyboard more than today. For example, I should be able to open a folder containing feeds with the <CR> or the main navigation key.
• I am not clear whether feeds refresh automatically on a given timer, or if I have to force a synchronization every now and then. I would set that timer to 30 mins by default.
• A bit of user documentation would be nice, since I don't know what the ""Clip Post" function does (for example).
• A few additional options, such as "No Beep" when opening a feed would be nice.
• Removing the program in "Removing Programs" actually does not remove it. Which means that after a re-installation, you end up with two instances of the program and I have not found how to fix that.

Don't get me wrong though, it is a good first step and without these navigation glitches, that product is going to be very useful. I just hope that it will be priced more sensibly than the previous Mobile HTML reader that was bundled with a lot of other things, which made it too expensive given the functionality.

Tag: newgator, mobile

TypePad feeds get FeedBurner'ed - at last

“Thank God!” was my reaction when I heard the news that Six Apart and FeedBurner have finally entered into a deal of some sort – redirecting TypePad default feeds (index.rdf, atom.xml, rss.xml) to one’s FeedBurner managed feed. Six Apart has elected not to provide detailed feed statistics for TypePad a while back, which has created a market opportunity for FeedBurner to grow into, and this most welcome move is something I have been asking/bitching about for over a year. It is great to finally have it.

The setup is very straightforward: goto to the “Configure” tab of your Typepad blog, select the “Feeds” header and&nbsp; below “Feed Preferences” you will see this new FeedBurner setting. Click “Connect to FeedBurner” and a popup will appear to allow you to enter your credentials, and choose which of your managed feeds is to be associated with your blog. Repeat the operation for every blog you have on TypePad that you want “FeedBurner’ed” – and you are done.

The implementation of this option is a redirection of requests to (index.rdf, atom.xml, rss.xml) to the managed feed.

The net benefit of that feature ? Get an aggregated number of subscribers to start with.

Tags: feedburner, sixapart

The Cingular 8125 could have been the perfect Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone

But it is not… quite far from it. Why ? Even with his price tag ($599 without a carrier subsidy ?),  the Cingular 8125 (aka the HTC Wizard) has been under-spec’ed and has a few flaws:

• There is not enough RAM available to the O/S to run a number of applications concurrently. Which leads to the impossibility to take  a picture, or gets Windows Media Player to stop playing a podcast because it is out of memory.
• The default ROM program is  hog, and needs to be updated manually to get better performance and multi-tasking (see below).
• The lens is of dreadful quality for a 1.3 MegaPixels camera. I can only get blurry photos out of it, just a notch better from my previous SMT 5600.
• The phone suddenly slows down to a crawl, freezes or even f…ing reboots on its own. I know that this is the signature of a Microsoft product, but people please! I have had to rip open the phone a couple of times to remove the battery and reboot (2 minutes) to make an urgent phone call (true story).
• Navigating Windows Mobile 5.0 with one hand works mostly OK, but a few functionality or programs require the stylus or holding the phone with two hands. Not great when you are trying to make a call in the car or walking in the street holding a bag in one hand. After all, it is still a phone!
• ActiveSync 4.1/4.2 does not work as an Internet conduit (at least I have not been able to configure it) which means that you can’t receive email when you are synchronizing your phone with your PC.
• Getting Wifi to be used instead of GPRS is just too much work.

Not everything is bad though, and it is still the best phone on the market as far as I am concerned. When the O/S has not eaten all the RAM available, the sliding keyboard is of fantastic quality and the large screen makes the Cingular 8125 a great alternative to the Blackberry IMHO. Note that you need to upgrade your Exchange Server to SP2 level in order to be able to benefit from Push Email – where an out of band message is received by the phone when a new email is available for download, as opposed to having to poll the server every few minutes.

A couple of great resources I have found for that phone family are this blog and this developers forum. The latter is where I read that this ROM that ROM was a great one for this phone. Note that this process is not guaranteed to work in all cases, so be very careful.

Whilst I am at it, I have been asked by many people where my Exchange server is hosted: Mailstreet is the answer, and if you open a new account, you’ll get access to Microsoft Exchange SP2 by default (as well as a promotion doubling your storage capacity via this link).

Soccer/Football fans: Add the World Cup schedule to your Outlook

Ready for a loss of productivity  of worldwide scale ?

Here comes the World Cup schedule that you can add to your Outlook calendar. Just click on “Download Now” on this bCentral page.

And here is the full schedule per ESPN. Sounds like we will be able to watch matches on that channel.
 

Tags: worldcup2006

Tools of the (feed) trade: switching to FeedDemon & NetNewsWire

After a couple of years happily using NewsGator for Outlook, I have finally de-installed it from my machine. The latest release of FeedDemon (2.0) has brought that product at par with NetNewsWire – which in turn has been ported on top of the NewsGator Online back-end.

Both products offer a flexible and powerful navigation, allowing me to go through my 300 feeds pretty quickly, one feed or one category at a time. Not being able to easily browse and mark read all posts related to a category is what got me of NewsGator.

I had a chance to chat with Nick Bradbury, the creator of FeedDemon, tonight at the Root party and mentioned to him that it would be great if FeedDemon was getting closer to NetNewsWire in terms of folder navigation. And as far as NNW, it is not possible to forward a post by email in Entourage for some reason, and it is a bummer. I know that not that many people have the need to read feeds on Macs and PCs seamlessly, but it is nice to have my use case covered.

Finally, as we are in the Tools chapter, I want to give a shout to co.mments.com developed by pal Assaf Arkin and to FeedBurner’s FeedFlare.

Tags: FeedDemon, NetNewsWire

Quick LinkedIn update

LinkedIn has quietly been releasing a number of very useful features over the past few months, and I thought I would point them out as I find them really useful:

• Public profile: you can now expose elements of your LinkedIn profile - which is only feasible to people in your network - to all users. Your Public profile URL is http://linkedin.com/in/ACCOUNT_NAME (here is mine). And LinkedIn makes badges available too.
• You can now list your blogs and web sites in said profile.
• A feature I have been asking for 2+ years: you can now see the people who have recently joined LinkedIn in your rollodex - allowing you to decide who to invite more efficiently.
• For users of the Outlook toolbar, the Dashboard functionality gives you a list of people you could add to your address book (because you exchanged an email with them), people who are already on LinkedIn you could connect to, and most interestingly people in your rollodex whose contacts have changed.
• In the same toolbar Grab allows you to select someone signature block, and automatically extract signature fields to easily create a new address book record. As this is something that I do multiple times a day, this is proving quite useful - even if results are not 100% perfect.

Finally, and this is a fantastic achievement, LinkedIn is now profitable as announced by CEO (and good friend) Reid Hoffman in the second edition of TalkCrunch: Social Networks 3.0.

Disclaimer: I have no economic interest in LinkedIn.

Tags: linkedin

If you are still wondering whether to buy an EVDO card - read this

It has been a few days since I bought an EVDO card (using the excuse that my new office would not have Internet access for about a week), and I must say that I am totally bought in: this is the best productivity tool I have bought in a while, both in terms of convenience and time saved.

Time saved can be measured in the (sometime long) minutes one has to spend testing, configuring and sometimes paying for Wifi access. Convenience is due to the ability to access the Net during a “downtime” (like this morning when I waited for the airport shuttle) where this was no Wifi access point around.

Add to this the fact that the first couple of hours of a large conference is generally spent screwing around with a non-working Wifi (apparently Etech’s attendees faced that last week), and you will very quickly rationalize that $60 to $80 a month is *nothing*.

I for one had hesitated for a while not beig sure of the actual usage I would have of an EVDO contract, I thought I would help those of you who are facing the same interrogation.

PS: Stewart Alsop in the comments points out that this is also a solution for people riding buses or trains or cars (not the drivers!). I actually experimented this last week, going down highway 101 whilst IM'ing a friend.

PPS: Many PC Forum attendees are going through that time-wasting exercise of switching from one hotspot to the next. In the meantime Dan Farber and I are blogging. 'nough said.