Category: Tech

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Return Path says the majority of spam complaints relate to legitimate emails.

There are two issues here:

  1. A lot of people don’t make a distinction between “email I don’t want anymore” and “email I didn’t want in the first place,” even though the appropriate responses are different. (One deserves an unsubscribe. The other deserves reporting, blocking, censure, etc.)
  2. A lot of marketers…how shall I put this?…make rather optimistic assumptions about whether people want their marketing messages.

Originally posted on Google+

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Nexus 7

I’ve been using desktop computers most of my life, laptops since my teens, a smartphone for about four years and a Nexus 7 tablet for about two months. I’m starting to get a sense of where the tablet fits in my overall computer usage, and with the release of the iPad Mini and upgraded Nexus 7 models, I figured it was time to write about it.

One thing I’ve found interesting is that, all other things being equal, I’d almost always prefer using the tablet to my smartphone for anything that takes longer than a minute. What makes the smartphone great is that it’s ultra-portable. If I’m running errands or anything else, I just put it in my pocket and forget about it. I walk around normally, and it’s there when I need it to check messages, post a status update, moderate comments, check directions, pull up a grocery list, take a picture, or yes, make or take a phone call.

But if I’m going to sit down for 10 minutes or more to read, to reply to email, to blog, or really much of anything else, I’d rather use the tablet. It’s easier to read. It’s easier to see things at a glance. Websites designed for desktop use work better since the screen is bigger. Apps are easier to use on the tablet than the phone, at least those designed to take advantage of it. The 7″ tablet is a great size for reading, just a little wider than a paperback book, easy to hold up while on the couch, in bed, at a table, or anywhere else.

I’m a lot faster at typing on the tablet than on the phone, and it’s certainly easier to compose when you can see more of what you’re writing. One downside of a 7″ tablet rather than a 10″: The keyboard takes up a lot of screen space in landscape mode, which is the mode I type fastest in because of my years typing on real keyboards.

When we were on vacation for 10 days, I used the Nexus 7 heavily. The only times I fired up the laptop were for photo management (this seems to be a recurring theme) and for one round of blogging.

As far as the tablet vs. the desktop, I like the tablet because I can so easily take it anywhere in the house. It’s the way to get through a morning’s email, Facebook, and news site rounds while eating breakfast. I can lie on the couch (well, in theory), kick back in the easy chair, prop myself up in bed — anywhere. I’m not tied to my desk, or to the places I can set a laptop, and I don’t have close it and wake it up again if I want to move to another room.

The main obstacle I find to using the tablet at home is that my almost-2-year old son loves using it himself to play games, read interactive kids’ books, and watch videos. We limit his time, but whenever I pick it up, it reminds him it’s here, and we have to go through another round of “Not now.” and “Ninja!” and “No, I’m using this right now, you’ve already had plenty of time on it tonight” before he decides he’s happy going back to his toys or books (which of course he wants me to read to him now…)

A desktop is still better for some tasks, though. A full (or at least laptop) sized physical keyboard trumps a virtual keyboard for serious writing or especially editing, whether it’s text or code. (A mouse makes editing a lot easier. I keep fat-fingering when trying to use a touchscreen to select & rearrange text, and I’m a lot slower with a touchpad than an actual mouse.) I’m still trying out image editors on Android. And of course there’s the storage factor: you can always plug another hard drive into your desktop to store more photos (or music, or video, or raw images, or…), but mobile devices are a lot more limited. (No, I haven’t migrated all my personal data to the cloud.)

Even with web applications and cross-platform services that offer mobile apps, there are a lot of sites that haven’t quite figured out how to tell a tablet from a smartphone, or that leave out functionality in their mobile apps. For example: until a couple of weeks ago, you couldn’t manage a Google+ page using the Android app (and you still can’t with the mobile-optimized website as far as I know), and even now it’s kind of clunky: you have to sign out and sign back in as the page.

So there you have it: One data point of how a 7″ tablet gets used in real life. It’s different enough from a smartphone that it’s worth having both, though I can’t really compare usage of the 7″ and 10″ form factors. That said, having the smaller tablet, I don’t really feel a need for a larger one.

Update: Something that came up in the Google+ discussion is connectivity. The model I have is wi-fi only, which was a calculated trade-off at the time, but is basically my only regret when it comes to buying the Nexus 7. It works great where wi-fi is available (home, office, coffee shops, hotel lobbies), and I can use my phone as a mobile hotspot where it isn’t…but that drains the battery, and it means fiddling with an extra device, waiting for it to start up, etc. Of course, now Google has a Nexus 7 with mobile data access, so if I were buying it today, that’s what I’d get.

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Space Shuttle Endeavour in a parking lot, seen from the front.

Last month I had the good fortune to watch Endeavour’s landing at LAX from the office building where I work. Today I had the opportunity to see the space shuttle up close while it stopped at a parking lot in Westchester.

When I got to work this morning, the shuttle had already left the airport hangar where it had spent the last month, and was sitting in a parking lot a mile or so away. I didn’t have time to go look at it, but I did have time to climb up to the top of the parking structure and look for it.

Space Shuttle in a STAPLES parking lot, seen from a ways off.

The first thing I spotted was the distinctive tail, and I walked along the top floor until I could see as much of the shuttle as possible. It looked out of place surrounded by trees and a Staples sign, though I couldn’t help thinking, “Space shuttle? Yeah, we’ve got that.” I took a few zoomed pictures with my camera, then one really grainy with my phone for the “now” impact, then headed into the office. Continue reading →

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Nexus 7 connected to camera.

All right! I’ve verified that my Nexus 7 can read photos from my camera!

The tablet supports a subset of USB OTG (On The Go), which also lets it connect to keyboards, mice and external storage. It only has a micro-USB port, which means I had to get a $1 USB cable adapter, but for that price? Big deal.

If I put the camera in PTP mode, it can import directly to the gallery. If I put it in PC mode, I can use the Nexus Media Importer app. And I can use FlickFolio to upload multiple photos to Flickr at once.

The next time we go on vacation (OK, the next time we go to Comic-Con — I don’t mass-post vacation photos during a trip), I won’t have to hog the laptop just to upload photos!

This is something I’ve wanted the ability to do for a long time, since before Apple redefined tablet computing and I was considering getting a netbook. And unlike a netbook, which I would have only used while traveling, I use the tablet every day.

On the downside, even though I won’t be competing with Katie for laptop time, I’ll be competing with J for tablet time….

Photo: Why I still need a good camera in addition to my phone. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration: The phone isn’t really that bad when used under good lighting, or with the flash (though the Lumix is a lot better, and has an awesome optical zoom). It’s just that the picture with the flash, while sharp, showed the smudges better than the images on the screen.

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Portable cellular phone tower on wheels.I believe that any network-aware mobile app should assume network access will be spotty. People step into elevators, ride buses through tunnels, attend large events where they’re competing with thousands of other phones…there are all kinds of reasons you can lose your connection.

That’s why I like the sync approach taken by Gmail on Android. Read, write, label, file, reply…pretty much anything can be done without a connection, and it’ll push your changes as soon as you get back into range of a signal. That’s also why I’m more likely to skim Twitter than Facebook while waiting for the elevator at work – Ubersocial has already synced recent tweets for me to read, but Facebook usually can’t even load until the doors open and I lose all access.

Right now, though, I’m looking for an offline posting app. I’m planning for Long Beach Comic Con next month, and I know from experience that T-Mobile has no signal at all on the main floor of the convention center. I’d like to be able to tap out a tweet when I think of it, hit send, and have it queue up the post until the next time I make my way up the escalator to the lobby. (Ubersocial used to do this, but doesn’t seem to anymore.)

What I’d really like to do, though, is upload photos offline to Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr. It’s not a huge deal, since I can still post when I surface for lunch or coffee — that’s when the photos would actually go out after all — but if you’re going to make a point of posting things in the moment, it helps if you don’t have to hold that moment in your mind so long that it distracts you from experiencing the next one.

Any recommendations?

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The first beta of WordPress 3.5 is out, and along with new and improved functionality, one feature is being removed: the blogroll. Well, technically it’s only being removed on new installations. If you have an existing WordPress site with links in the Link Manager, it’s not going away until a future release, and even then it’ll be moved into a plugin. (Lorelle writes about the history of blogrolls in WordPress and what to do if you want to keep yours.)

The move reflects changes in blogging trends, as well as the ongoing struggle between search engines and the SEO industry. In the old days, it was trendy to list sites you liked in a sidebar. Search engines took note, and then SEO practitioners started taking advantage, and so blogrolls lost their value.

One of the sessions I attended at WordCamp LA was a talk on optimizing WordPress. One of the measures I’ve been looking into is reexamining the plugins I use. (Sure, there’s no such thing as too many if you’re actually making use of them, but more code needs more resources.) I’m actually using two plugins to increase the value of my blogrolls here and at Speed Force:

  • Better Blogroll to show a small, randomized subset on the sidebar instead of the full list of links. (This keeps it from being clutter, and prevents the links from fading into the background by being the same on every page.)
  • WP Render Blogroll Links to list them all on a page.

I keep thinking, do I really need these? Well, I definitely don’t want a long blogroll in the sidebar. If all I want is a links page, I can just write one, and if I really want static short list in the sidebar, I can add them manually. It only really matters if I want to keep that random subset. Otherwise, I can pull two more plugins out of my installation.

But then, do I even need the links page at this point? My current links here mostly fall into one of three categories:

  • Well-enough known to not need the promotion.
  • No longer relevant to this site.
  • Other sites I maintain.

I might want to just drop the list entirely.

Speed Force’s links are both more extensive and more targeted to the site. It’s probably worth keeping that list around, but maybe just as a links page.

Does anyone actually look at those sidebar links anymore?

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Speedster's-eye view of a Chicago street.

It’s astonishing how short the Internet’s attention span is these days.

Last Friday I made a point to post my photos of Endeavour’s final flight as quickly as possible. The shuttle’s carrier landed just before 1:00pm, and I put off grabbing lunch until I had uploaded my best pictures. My Flickr traffic jumped up by a factor of 5 that day…and was back to normal on Saturday.

A few years ago, I could post convention photos a week or more after the event and people would view them in significant numbers. If a convention ended on Sunday, I usually tried to put my pictures online by Monday or Tuesday, then add them to groups over the course of a week. These days, if the photos aren’t up during the con, no one seems to care. And even if they’re up, they’d better be labeled and submitted to groups immediately. Sure, there’s a bump, but by Tuesday, interest is already dropping off.

Sometimes it seems like even waiting until evening to transfer photos from the camera is too long. If it’s not pushed straight from your phone to Instagram within five minutes, your potential audience is already moving on to the next thing.

I used to review Flash comics at Speed Force, but it became clear that whenever I missed the day of release, I got half as many readers, and if I didn’t have the review up by the end of the weekend, only regular readers would even see it. And there wouldn’t be any discussion, because everyone had already hashed things out on other sites.

A while back, I wondered, “Is now better?” I guess I have the answer: “Yes, if you want people to actually see it.”