Silberbauer Says:

Excellent video from The Onion introducing Apples new HCI invention

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

A couple of scenarios where this software from Aimersoft might be useful:

1. You are the (un)lucky owner of an Ipod and at the same time you have more than one computer and you really want to upload and download music to your Ipod from both computers.

2. Your harddisk sudddenly breaks down and leaves you with a lot of music on your Ipod – but no way to get it back onto your new harddrive and with no possibility to upload new music to your Ipod without deleting all of the music.

3. Your best friend has got a lot of cool music that you want to ‘backup’ from his Ipod onto your harddrive (remember to ask your friend if he holds all copyrights to the music before you start to download… ).

If you recognize one or more of these scenarios? Then Aimersoft Ipod Backup Software will definitely be useful.

What does it do?
Well, then name says it all – it simply just copies all you music from the Ipod onto a specified folder on your harddrive.

What does it cost?
This is the best part… IT IS FREE!!

Does Aimersoft Ipod Copy Manager have a lot of hidden spyware and keyloggers?
This is the worst part… I DON’T KNOW!!! (but for what it is worth – I don’t think so

Anyway, it works great and you will enjoy the feeling of once againg taking control of your music and bringing it back from the greedy hands of Apple and Steve Jobs who still is using the positiv ‘Apple Brand’ and great design to harrass their customers with stupid limitations to their product.

One might wonder why Apple has gone through so much trouble to limit their Ipods in this way. It keeps reminding me of Microsoft in the old days and their connection with some kind of bad empire or something… it seems to me like… well, I can’t quite remember…

Take a look at this CNN weatherforecast of hurricane Ike from today. At 1:20 in the clip he uses the 3 dimensional multi touch display. For once it is not only eye candy but has value and gives a good impression of the hurricane. Nice use and integration of Google Maps as well.

If the embedded video doesn’t work then use this link or see the clip on Baekdal’s blog

If the embedded video doesn’t work then use this link:

Some time ago I ranted about the HTC Dual Touch which is, imho, a bloody useless device. Not so much because of the device itself but because it is infected with Windows Mobile.

Now, I’ve gotten the Nokia E51 and I like it. Partly because I’m used to Nokia, of course, but mostly because: It’s a phone. It’s not a PDA. It actually rings when people call me, it’s in fact easy to, like,  call someone from, and the interface is properly designed to work on a small screen. The 3G is fast, it’s got Wlan (the HTC didn’t).

+ It has push mail (seems faster than the HTC), calendar, contacts etc. from the Exchange server at work.

It’s slender, nice looking, seems to have a long battery life time (unless push mail is constantly active in which case the battery drains within 1½ days).

Yep – nice device.

Boston Dynamics is working on a kind of robot horse/dog hybrid. It’s called BigDog and is supposedly meant to carry payloads (military and other kinds) over rugged terrain. What makes this both cool and scary is that while the robot is probably as stupid as a toaster, the way it walks makes it seem almost intelligent. That gait really makes it look alive.

Have a look at this video – and please note the part where the scientist kicks the robot to try to get it to fall. I instinctively felt sorry for the beast until I remembered that it’s a machine. But the way it tries to keep its balance (and suceeds) is so animal-like that it’s kind of freakish. BTW: The noise is coming from it’s on board petrol engine – I guess it’s not quite stealth yet.

[UPDATE]

Oh, I just found this one. The BigDog Beta version – before they got it house trained

I have a Garmin Nüvi 660 – a splendid GPS unit. If you are looking for a GPS unit for your car, the Nüvi series is the way to go.

But this is not about GPS units or mapping updates as such – it’s about the hellish user experience that not thought through installation procedures and futile attempts to protect software from piracy can lead to.

For Garmin needs a serious lesson in service design. What ought to be a simple update of the maps inside my Nüvi 660 GPS unit has been made into an hour long waste of time. It all started when I tried to purchase the map update:

1. I week before Easter I got an e-mail from Garmin telling me that the Map update 2008 for Europe has been released. I’m a gadget freak, and firmware and map updates are the salt of my tech life. The mail pointed me to the (very badly designed) Garmin website.

2. At the Garmin website I had to enter the serial # of my GPS unit to find out what update to get. Bad funnel design here – why not just show me a picture of the different units to make it easy for me to spend some dough? Luckily for Garmin, I had the unit with me.

3. I found the right update, and the website told me that it could be purchased directly from Garmin. Nice, I thought, and broke out the Visa card.

4. But alas – after putting the update in the shopping cart and entering all my personal info, I found out that Garmin only ships to the US, UK and Ireland. It took me some browsing to find the Danish dealer of Garmin hardware.

5. Nowhere on the website of the Danish Garmin dealer could I find out how to buy the update. A few products were listed – but not the one I was looking for.

6. I Called Garmin Denmark and after being on hold for 5 minutes a guy told me that Garmin Denmark does not sell map updates. The update must be bought in one of the physical dealerships. I apologize to the support guy for being a bit angry at this point – but for Pete’s sake: Why don’t you just write on your web site that you’re your not selling to private customers? Why don’t you compile a list of online shops that sell your stuff?

7. Refusing to waste my time going to a Fona or Merlin store (the Danish equivalents to Radio Shack: They mostly don’t have what you need, and they mostly don’t know anything about what the do have) I managed to find the update on a webshop and ordered it.

8. A DVD sized package should be perfectly able to fit through the letter opening in my front door, but to my surprise the Garmin DVD didn’t arrive. Instead a note from the post office told me that I had to get the package at the local post office. But I have left for Easter holiday and the package had to wait for a week. Those of you that like software updates as much as I do will know that a week is a very long wait.

9. Today – picking up the package – I realized why the postman hadn’t been able to get it through the letter opening: Garmin has for some spaced out reason chosen to wrap the DVD with an A4 sized clam shell (you know: the environment damaging PVC packaging that’s impossible to open without shredding your fingers to pieces). So, absolutely unnecessary packaging delayed the DVD a week.

10. After using a pair of heavy duty scissors I got the DVD out from its casing without blood shed and booted it up. It immediately halted with an error message saying that the setup program couldn’t detect an active internet connection (and such is needed). All I could do was to cancel the setup. Now, all other programs had no problem finding the internet connection – the pc was as online as ever. After 30 minutes of trial and error and searching the internet for help (using my supposedly non-existing internet connection), I found out that some setting deep inside Internet Explorer had to be changed for the Garmin update DVD to see the connection.

Now: The only reason that this connection had to be available was for the DVD to check my Garmin registration number with Garmin’s servers. So 30 minutes of my time was wasted because a product WHICH I LEGALLY BOUGHT needs validation. Arrgh. Of course the problem with the missing internet connection isn’t mentioned on Garmin’s support pages although more than one GPS forum mentions it. I guess Garmin’s employees doesn’t read the forums in which their loyal customers discuss Garmin products. Why should they…

11. Finally – after me tweaking Internet Explorer, the setup program continued – just to grind to a halt again when the DVD suddenly couldn’t find my Garmin unit. Strange, because the unit was perfectly connected to the pc, though, and the screen of the Nüvi shows the “connected to a pc” picture. The Garmin website suggests that I try another USB port – I do. No go. I try another USB cable. No go.

It turned out that the unit conflicted with a network drive letter on my pc. Thank god I’m not a pc novice – a lot of users wouldn’t have been able to locate this error (when did YOU last check your locigal disk setup using the Disk Manager inside Computer Management inside the Control Panel?). Of course: It’s not Garmin’s fault that I have a network drive called G:, but again: This must be a very common problem and Garmin does not mention it on the support pages on its website. And the moronic setup program does not suggest any way of solving the problem – all I can do is to press “Exit”.

12. Finally: The GPS is connected, its firmware updated and the unit restarted. I entered the validation code for the map (located on the jewel case of the DVD), and … the updater halted again. The server which was to validate my validation vode is down. “Please try again later” it says. All I can do is press Exit. I’ll just have to wait until some geek in the US gets the server up and running again.

13. By now, I was pissed. I bought this product (although it was hard to find) and now it seems that I’m not allowed to use it. So I wan’t to write to the Garmin support and tell them that their software sucks. But fortunately for the poor supporters, the support site crashes when I try to access the mail form…

Dear Garmin. This is not the way to do it. It’s not OK to be more concerned with copyright laws and data safety than to the user’s experience. An update procedure for an expensive product must be tested over and over again to make sure that the user (all users – not just a geek like me) can complete the procedure.

Multiple pieces of software, services, support functions and content has to play together to ensure a nice user experience. The service has to be designed all the way for the user to be satisfied. If that is impossible (and it seems that it is to Garmin) then at least let go of the paranoia and all the safety measures and focus on providing decent support all the way through the update. In that way the installation procedure will be simple and less prone to errors. All you do is irritating legit customers. The pirates will find a way through anyhow.
Now – after spending almost two hours and waiting for that quirky validation server to wake up – the setup procedure finally runs and is updating my GPS unit. Meanwhile it shows me ads for motorcycle GPS units (Why? I have a GPS unit – that’s why I’m updating it – morons!) and reminding me, that the little blob on the GPS screen that indicates my whereabouts can be changed to another kind of 3D vehicle. Gosh.

If all that energy had just been used on testing and improving the setup procedure and updating the support pages.

A while ago, Jeff Han demonstrated the multitouch screen at TED. Now it’s ready for the consumer in a less impressive, but more usable trackpad version. It’s definitely the way to go! It seems to be very intuitive and suddenly the trackpad becomes more than just a ‘mouse-wannabee’. Now we just need a bigger trackpad and more actions than just manipulating the size of a picture
And we need some really clever people to create generic trackpad-language so Mac and Microsoft and other will use the same ‘language’.

Jeff Han’s presentation at TED

Just before Christmas I got to test a HTC Touch Dual with Windows Mobile 6 at work. It was partly my own idea to introduce HTC Touch or Touch Dual as a possible alternative to our mainstream Nokias. That’s why I chose to ignore my mobile-savvy colleague as he offered his condolences when he saw the black HTC box on my desk. He was right, though. Windows Mobile and mobile phones don’t mix.

This was my first hands-on experience with a Windows Mobile phone as I’ve always used Nokia. I have used Windows Mobile devices before, though, as I’ve owned several WM based PDAs. They weren’t perfect but I could live with them. But, as I was to find out, the usage of a PDA differs a lot from that of a phone.

I was looking forward to the WM6 Exchange server integration (“push mail”) and to have an always updated calendar with me. And these features did work fine-ish. Except for the crummy calendar design that forces you to use the stylus constantly, that is. But even so: After five days I gave up the fight with Windows Mobile 6: What a genuinely stupid OS for a phone. Bad, bad UI design.

I think Microsoft has made a huge mistake to try to move an OS from a pc to a phone. Already after a few hours I got very tired indeed from having to get out the stylus just to close a window or to cancel an error message on the ridiculously tiny close-box in the corner of the dialogs. I don’t care if it looks like the GUI on my Windows pc – it just doesn’t work on that little screen. On a device that tiny you do one thing at the time – you don’t need the windows metaphore to allow for multitasking (it hardly works on the pc anyhow).

Also, several times when I was trying to phone someone, WM6 – being absolutely clueless about my priorities – would pop up with some reminder or other alert that really shouldn’t popup at all while I’m dialing. Just like Windows XP does, WM6 made me feel that the system comes first and the user second.

I soon started feeling that I was spending time fighting the system instead of using it. Exactly as I feel when trying to get Outlook 2007 to start in less than 15 minutes or that thrre to four hours every month I spend massaging my Windows XP into working without too many alerts or errors. Yep, Microsoft surely has succeeded moving the Windows experience to a handset. And that’s a pitty.

Three times a call simply didn’t come through (it’s a phone for crying out loud!) and four times I dialed my fathers number by mistake because of a design flaw in HTC’s TouchFLO interface (which has been added to patch some of the even bigger flaws in WM). The device insisted on merging all my Live! Messenger contacts with my professional contacts making tons of duplicates and adding a lot of contacts without phone numbers to my phone book, making finding the right version of the contact  (the one with the phone number) annoyingly difficult.

I have the feeling that Microsoft’s brand managers have had too much influence on the design. A lot of stupid compromises have been made to make the phone interface look like Windows, instead of genuinely making the OS work on a tiny screen and in a mobile user context. The design flaws combined with the Touch’ sluggish response and not always too precise touch screen makes this gadget a big no-go to me. WM6 doesn’t seem mature and personally I think it’s fundamentally flawed. I think it’ll need a complete rewrite.

One thing is spending time in front of the pc tweaking and tuning. But to have to combat your mobile phone just to get it to work the right way – that’s not OK.

I felt that I could not trust this piece of hardware to work when I needed it to – and as I rely heavily on my mobile phone I’m now back on my trusty old Nokia 6230i. No push mail – but no wasted time, missed calls or hypertension either.

Then: Playtime. We joined the RobotLabs workshop run by LEGO Mindstorms [Update: the event was hosted by RobotLabs itself, not LEGO]. Now – this was fun. The assignment was to program a pre-built robot to solve as many tasks as possible in a small model world. The theme was Energy, so “coal”-bricks were to be moved to a certain position, windmills must be pushed across the landscape and a petrol car should be moved to make room for a hydrogen car.

It was a classic team work experience, but the pressure was on as we had very little time to program the robot. Also, to win, the group had to prioritize the assignments: Some assignments were worth a lot of points – others almost no points. so this was about creativeness, yes: But also it was about business objectives. The groups that did not go for the easiest way to solve the problems that paid the most points lost. Even if their solutions were creative.

Needless to say: Our group (Silberbauer Bros. and Christian from FLSMidth) won the contest that day. Always nice to have en engineer close at hand when it comes to robots.

The Mindstorm products are truly innovative and the LEGO [Update: Robotlabs] workshop succeeded in showing what innovation is all about: Creativeness and teamwork – but also a clear goal and clear business objectives.

Great to see that a product we’ve played with from the age of 2 still re-invents itself without loosing the “thing” that made it fly then. It still flies. Must… must… must have Mindstorm for Christmas.

Microsoft has launched their Project ‘Milan’, which is basically a large touchscreen with a new multitouch manipulation software.

I tried a similar product in New York last year (based a projector instead of a touch screen) and based om my experience it makes a big difference when you’re using a multitouch display instead of a keyboard.

If you’re using a multitouch display on a horizontal surface it’s often becomming a social experience in contrast to using a keyboard where you’re mostly interacting in a individual manipulation and interaction mode. So give me a couple of those, thanks … but could someone at Microsoft please make sure that the blue screen of death is not all over my coffee table?
It would ruin my creative mood, I’m sure.

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The functionality is ok – but let’s face it: It’s ugly.

Bill Buxton dreamt this up ages ago – now Jeff Han has built it and demonstrates it live: The multitouch touch sensitive screen. This might be the first glimpse of the greatest HCI revolution since the event-driven graphical interface.

Go see for yourself at YouTube.

(Source: etre)

Cool my Zune design made The Register. And thanks for all the comments, guys.

Update: Oh my, it’s spreading

Brasil here we come. Update again: …and here goes iPodHacks and macessentials.de
August 4: Articles in Computerworld and ComOn (both in Danish)

Here it is! Microsoft’s iPod-killer – seamlessly integrated with Windows Mediaplayer and as sleak and easy to use as its software counterpart.