Let’s say it, I think the design is pretty bad. Let’s say something else : some comments on the Flickr thread are plain wrong (a few are pretty funny though).

Steve Patt, the designer, posted a well deserved response (several actually).

Then, Ryan Singer from 37signals posted an article, seizing the opportunity to give a design course. He also links to Patt’s response, and as Ryan seems to be a well educated and nice person, he doesn’t judge Patt too hardly.

Comments on svn.37signals were more serious than the ones on Flickr, even if some, I think, misunderstood Ryan’s intention: He’s not defending the UI; he’s just forgiving the designer.

In the comments, I began posting a response to Patt’s.
(Responding to a comment on another’s site comments… Ain’t that Web 3.0 !?)

While I was doing it, I got more and more angry. I really think the UI is crap, and having someone defending and justifying it like that… makes me angry.
So, as nobody took the time to do it (at that time — a few did the same just after in SVN comments), I decided to do a mock up of something just a little less ugly.

Here is my take to it.
As I said in my comment, I’m not a UI designer, I never used the Apple SDK until then, it took me 1 hour, including the 1.25 Go of SDK download. I only tried to mimic Patt’s screen.

As a user, I still think it’s a crappy UI, the whole app should be rethought to really make it better; but it’s still way better than the original and it’s more compliant with Apple HIG.

So, to wrap up, Patt’s UI is really ugly and not easy to the eyes, an probably not to the finger.
He shouldn’t defend it too hard, especially arguing 20 years of designing apps. Designing Palm UI for 10 years doesn’t make you an expert at designing iPhone app.

This is just the first example of many to come, and the reason Apple is locking the App Store and filtering the content.
[update: App Store is up, and apparently, Apple is not filtering that much...]

PS: this earned me a link on Gruber’s Daring Fireball. Yay!

This is one of these moments…
A bitter taste and a hard time getting through.

I was just beaten, Fair & Square, on the finish line, building a small web app.

Here is how it started.
Like many I was first confused when I heard about Twitter, a few months ago.
Some kind of broadcasted one-way IM, 140 characters limited.
I didn’t even Twitted at first. I only started this January.

As Robert Scoble – famous blogger and huge Twitterer - understood it, the secret to Twitter is the number (and quality) of people you are following, not the other way around. I also like these two twitts about noise and signal.

None of my friends are on Twitter. So I started following people from the Mac community and from the Web developer community. But it wasn’t enough. So I went through the list of people followed by the ones I was following. You follow me ?
Of course, this would be cool if it could be done automatically.

“Hey! I could write it !” – he said to himself.

I first searched for an existing product – Nothing, I’m good to go. Fame & Glory are mine !
Then I searched the Twitter API, fired up Textmate, and coded it.

I started 2-3 weeks ago, late at night, after home was asleep.
I have all the backend, I even registered the Domain Name: TwittsOfMyTwitts.com.
(What you have there is only the development pages. It works, but there is not a single line of styling, nor Javascript/Ajax).

And tonight, browsing the web, I find this…
The exact same thing (but finished and polished), gone public 2 days ago.
Aarrrrgh.

It was written by Bob Lee, a software engineer @ Google.
Here is an interview of his experience writting Twubble.

OK. STOP. Introspection time:

• The idea is dead simple. Probably dozens thought of it, and way before.
• He finished it before me. Even a few days counts.
• His code is nicer than mine.

but

• My domain name is better .
• I’m not a software engineer @ Google
  nor a software engineer, nor an engineer at all. I’m not even a web developer, yet !
• My final product would have been really close to his
  (You will have to take my word for it on this one).

So, all in all, that’s not such a bad day. I’m OK, loosing this one to Bob Lee.
Being so close might even be a compliment.
It still sucks: I was pretty eager to finally have something going public.

P.S.: Bob, If you read this, I just wonder :

I’m fond of US fictions, TV or movies. But I live in France. So from Day 1, I bought most of my DVDs in the US. There was DVDExpress.com, and then Amazon. It gave me the 3-6 months my early adopter ego required.
I remember the 1st season of 24. I had the DVD box set 6 months before it was even aired in France. Nobody even knew the show, I was already addicted. How cooler can you be ?

Now, it’s a whole different story. The cool guys are the ones downloading the show, 20 mn after it was aired, for free, making me “the dumb ass paying his DVDs, only to get them 6 months after every one”.

So, I, who has been buying hundreds of DVD for years, who could afford to buy new ones, will now start to download illegally.

I call that a massive FAIL.

There are several reasons to this failure. Mainly due to the Studios.
In a nutshell, they still don’t know they have to adapt much faster.

First, they think they can pull the buy your video collection one more time with the Blu Ray, as they did with the DVD. So they throw little bones (iTMS, Amazon unbox…) to keep the tech-saavy guys calm, while they sell over priced Blu Rays to the others (not to mention those poor bastards who bet on the HD-DVD).

Then there is the “world problem”.
Yes people, you have consumers outside the US borders. Please, explain how comes it takes 6 month for a movie to cross an ocean ?! You might want to start to think global.

Last, there lack the technology. Studios (still them) don’t want to entrust a Microsoft, nor an Apple, with there movies.
They fear they will loose the control. So they try their own method, and fail. Not everybody is a Steve Jobs,  not every body can come up with a decennial plan to rule the world of medias and succeed.

So, here is a shot:

• Make movie premieres worldwide.
• Thus, making DVD/Blu Ray simultaneous (while you’re at it, drop DVD/Blu Ray zoning).
• Make downloadable versions of movies, over an ITunes/Unbox/Whatever-non-microsoft, platform independant,
  with the ability to store, organize our own collection. 
• Stop winning with your copyrights and everything: no one will ever pity you.

Of course, Mr. Anybody has a computer (unfortunately, it’s a Windows machine, but he’s wondering what’s all that noise coming from Cupertino…).
Actually, it’s his third one, in some ways, he is a technology-aware guy.
He has an internet connection (probably a brand new DSL, finally taking the plunge), he manages mails and surfs a little. His son recently bought him a digital camera. He thinks it’s a wonder.
His computer is slowly but surely becoming the center piece of his life. He will soon watch his movies with it, he already has ten mp3 albums (five encoded with his son, to learn; two of them bought online; and three he doesn’t even know how they got there), and he manage his pictures with great care, because he knows how valuable pictures are. He knows that in a few years, pictures will be the only memories he will have left of his daughter’s wedding day.

Of course, Mr. Anybody never does any backup of all this because the industrial consortium that sold him his hardware/software never cared to explain that computers were still in a testing phase – for the last 20 years – and had every chances to crash any minute, thus wasting 5 years of his precious memories. Too bad.

So:
If you are Mr Anybody, run to a hardware store, buy a spare hard drive and copy everything from your computer on it.
If you are Mr Anybody’s little geeky nephew (more on you later), make him do it.
If you’re part of the industrial consortium that sold him his machine: shame on you – you’re a jerk / Bravo for that wonderful scam.