The Photosynth experience

This one took my breath away. When can I have this?

From TED2007, through Idan

 

Technorati tags: Photosynth, TED, TED2007, Visualization, Image Processing, Photography

Hebrew is a hard language

The Google folks are trying to eat their own dog food. But as it turns out, eating from right to left isn't as easy as eating left to right.

You see, the fact that Hebrew is written from right to left has been consuming significant computing resources since,well, the dawn of time I guess.

The issue has been mostly solved back in the 90's when Microsoft forced the "logical display order" standard (a.k.a implicit directionality, RFC 1556 and other names) on the industry.

And yet, check out this Google AdSense ad, appearantly from Google:

This ad translates into the following English nonsense:

Google - free from Gmail

Comfortable GB, less junk mail, 2.8 and more. POP storage, access.

Register today!

Oh well. I am confident that Hebrew (and Arabic) will display perfectly soon after the introduction of peace to the middle east. Don't hold your breath on either one of them though :) .

 

Technorati tags: Google, Gmail, Ad, Hebrew, Right to left, RTL

JPG Mag Submission: theme "America"

MS Yahoo Live

Through Mashable: Microsoft May Acquire Yahoo for $50 Billion.

This rumor has been around before. It seems to be a tad more real this time - see NYPost article and SearchEngineWatch post for more sources, references and names.

This will be interesting, to say the least.

Will combining the efforts of the somewhat lame Live search engine with the search engine from Yahoo, the company that announced that it has given up being #1 in search create a real competitor for Google's most successful product?

Microsoft has toiled for years to shed off its "home desktop only" positioning and to become an Enterprise player. It wasn't easy, but it worked. Too well maybe. Because now, when Microsoft is trying so hard to join the cool kids playing on the Internet playground, the best it could do so far is the Live suite of services, with its oh-so-integrated but also oh-so-boring services. I hate to pick on stupid details, but did they really think that corporate blue is the best color scheme for Live.com?

Will the Yahoo infusion change this?

Oh boy. I just realized I might end up using Microsoft MSN Live Flickr. Scary thought. Well, in that case I'd like to direct the MS executives reading this post to here : )

 

Technorati tags: Microsoft, MSFT, Yahoo, YHOO, acquisition, rumor

Conspiracy Theory

Everyone is talking about the Digg User Generated Revolution (that's UGR for you) story. Good summary over @ Blonde 2.0.

Me, I've got myself a nice little theory. I say that the whole thing is a conspiracy, architected by Kevin Rose and David Sifry so that Technorati has more stuff to index and Digg has more stories to be dugg.

What will be next? Will they be starting a war in the middle east just so that we have something to blog about?

Actually, that wouldn't be very hard to do : )

Oh, I almost forgot the most important bit:

This is a very special secret encoding designed to keep the AACS from discovering this post. Viva la revolución!

Technorati tags: digg, technorati, conspiracy, kevin rose, david sifry, UGR, revolution, HD DVD

Ambivalence

It took me a while, but I finally got myself a new HTC TyTN smartphone.

It is an amazing piece of engineering - the sheer amount of functionality is amazing, and the cool sliding keyboard is a huge plus.

I love this tiny machine. It does just about everything, all wrapped into a not-too-large phone form factor.

Except it sucks.

I've been a loyal NOKIA user for many many years. Probably over 10 years by now. And since day 1, I've always appreciated the effort the NOKIA folks put into making their phones usable. The big things and the small things.

Like maintaining "shortcuts" across versions in a consistent manner.

Like the fact that the green and the buttons always do what I expect them to do - in every scenario, the green means the same - "Comeon, do that default thing that I probably want to do here and skip all the prompts", while the red one consistently bails me out of whatever prompt I am at.

And the keypad, while only a keypad and not a full size keyboard, works right. It automatically switches between numeric and alphanumeric modes exactly when I expect it to.

Using a NOKIA phone as an alarm clock "just works". I can set the alarm with my eyes closed, with a few keystrokes. And it will go off, even if the phone is in "silent" mode - in fact, even if the phone is turned off. It's been like that since my first NOKIA phone, and it stayed that way through the various operating system upgrades and form factor changes. Because it makes sense.

Now contrast that with the HTC TyTN.

The TyTN also has a key that lets you exit the current screen without making any changes. On the PC, this key is called "Escape". In Windows, you also have the "Cancel" button in most dialogs. On NOKIA, it conveniently maps to the Red key.

On the TyTN, the button that cancels the current screen is called "Ok". Which the exact name of the standard Windows button that performs the exact opposite function.

Plus, in many screens on the TyTN you get a visual "OK" button at the top right of the screen. Whose function is identical to the Windows OK button, but the reverse of the hardware OK button.

So when you'd like to tell someone using the TyTN to close a screen without making any changes, you should tell them "Use the OK button. NOT the one on the screen! The other OK!".

Right.

The TyTN also has an actual "confirm and do the default" button, which works sometimes, and has no name. It's that key in the middle of the navigation pad, or a click on the scrollwheel.

Ughhh!

The scrollwheel is of course conveniently placed opposite from where it is on the Blackberry. And its placement is designed thoughtfully, so that its nearly impossible to push it down it without accidentally also pushing the machine "Power" button.

Which, quite naturally, doesn't really turn it off. It just turns off the screen.

I could go on and on about how hard it is to actually place a call using the impossible-to-navigate contacts list, the mostly-useless yet dominating hardware video call button, the impossible-to-find camera shutter button, and much more. But you get my drift :)

Of course, many of the issues stem from the underlying Windows Mobile 5 operating system. Windows Mobile 6 promises to fix some of these issues.

Naturally, being the technophile that I am, I will upgrade to Windows Mobile 6. But then, I've been using Windows Mobile since the CE 1.0 days, and I've hated each and every version, so I'm not really holding my breath.

P.S. If you insist on using a Windows Mobile device, do yourself a favor and get the Spb Phone Suite, it makes the pain almost bearable.

Technorati tags: HTC, TyTN, Windows Mobile, NOKIA, Usability, Rant, Spb, Spb Phone Suite, Smartphone

To Photo Splice or not to Photo Splice

There is a button on the page! and when there is a button, well, you know, some people just have to press it. Just to see what it does :)

So, I clicked Photo Splicer on FeedBurner, just to see what it does. And then I left it on.

You see, FeedBurner (FeedBurner rocks!) Photo Splicer pushes the stuff I post on Flickr into this blog RSS feed. I guess you could call it "an identity merger" - Deb would love this.

But Idan doesn't. In fact, he took the time to complain about it. So I turned it off.

So long Photo Splicer. Welcome back split identity.

Speaking of split identities, shush... don't tell anyone yet. Still too busy to complete the move. Maybe in a few days.

 

Technorati tags: FeedBurner, Photo Splicer, Identity