Apple Love - Wallpaper

Apple Love - Wallpaper, a photo by Ben Adamson on Flickr.

Blog Post on the DocuSign Blog: NetBeans IDE + DocuSign API. The easiest way to connect from Java yet.

Reblogging:
http://www.docusign.com/blog/2011/06/23/the-easiest-way-to-get-going-with-docusign-api-with-java/

What will make me use SkyDrive

I saw the UI updates from SkyDrive team a few days ago.  It reminded me that I had a SkyDrive account.   I actually used SkyDrive for a couple of years.  It was really never my go-to solution for sharing. 

It didn't have desktop tools. Supporting Mac was an afterthought and in general there was nothing special about it.  In comparison Box.net had great plugins and corporate sharing.  DropBox had a great folder that I could use, but SkyDrive has been kinda neither here nor there.

SkyDrive was also very confusing with Live Mesh and its still competes in a way with Windows Live Sync.

In my test of Windows Phone 7 it was nice to see that you could upload photos to SkyDrive automatically, but again it wasn't really enough for me to say: "wow, I really should move my photos to SkyDrive"

There is one place in my house where I would really LOVE photos off SkyDrive and that is on my XBox.

I've been one of those cord cutters who uses Comcast purely for internet now and my XBox 360 reigns supreme in my living room.  I don't have a stationary desktop and there is no way I am going to create a "home server" which will be collecting dust somewhere in the corner.  My photos are on my laptop, flickr and Facebook.  What would be really killer is if my XBox natively connected to SkyDrive and I could show my friends photos directly from SkyDrive.

User Experience would be very key.  It would be nice if based on my XBox Live ID my SkyDrive photos folder was automatically available and I could easily go and show slideshows from the folders.  XBox is powerful enough to do caching of the images on the local drive and pre-fetching to make slideshows and browsing through folders very simple.

If that was in place I'd use SkyDrive all the time.  I think I am not alone.

Samsung Focus Review from an iPhone 4 user

Last week I was able to get my hands on one of the Windows Phone devices - Samsung Focus.  I have been an iPhone user from iPhone 1 and prior to that I used to use Windows Mobile devices for years.  Even though there are abundant reviews of both devices I felt like I should create a review of my own.

For those of you who do not want to read through the whole post I'd like to say: iPhone 4 is still the best smartphone I have ever used.  Samsung Focus is not terrible, but there are a lot of little things missing and after an accumulation of all the little things you end up with a strong desire to switch back.

I wanted to construct this post not as a way of knocking on the WP7, but rather as a roadmap for the evolution of the device and the OS.  First the good things about the WP7:

1) Windows Phone 7 OS got the GUI right.  It's a pleasure to use and it works well on a mobile device.

2) Integration with Facebook is a great.  I love the linking of contacts and updating of information.  

3) I like the fact that I can get to the camera right away - that's very handy.

4) The lock screen has information about schedule and e-mails.  That is very useful.

5) Speakerphone on the Focus is great, I think it's better than the iPhone 4.

6) The fact that Calendar, Contacts and E-mail are all integrated with Windows Live was a step towards iCloud before the iCloud.

Here are the things that need work:

1) Get a better device.  

You can tell the difference between the actual hardware when you hold a Samsung Focus and an iPhone.  The first is a Ford, the second is an Audi.  Attention to hardware detail is just not present in the Focus.  It's plastic, it's bigger than the iPhone and it not well polished.  

Microsoft launched with 5 different phones and not one of them was better in hardware than the iPhone.  What they need is nice metal and glass that are tightly fit together.  They need retina display.  They should have screws that are polished and tight.  Microsoft needs to press on their hardware partners to produce a beautifully polished device.  The device needs to feel like a Swiss watch in order to compete with the iPhone.  The phone has become not only a mini computer but also an accessory.  If the phone doesn't feel like an ESQ watch - I don't want it.  The bar is already that high.

2) Apps

Windows Phone 7 apps are seriously behind.  There are a ton of apps that are missing.  I couldn't find Mint, DailyBurn, Skype, Evernote, Chase and other apps I use all the time.  Some of the apps that were there, such as Facebook and Twitter, were subpar.  For example: twitter didn't have a way to search or load my saved searches.

Microsoft needs to take the strength of its evangelism team and apply it to the leading iOS applications.  They should seriously just build a Facebook application that beats the iOS Facebook application. They should create a Twitter application that is faster and better than the iOS equivalent.

I understand that the reason those apps are non existing or subpar is not Microsoft's fault, but it is their problem.

3) Marketplace

I could not effectively find things on the Marketplace.  Apps, PodCasts, Music are all collapsed into one search result list.  There is no way to filter that.  For a person who is switching from an iPhone its important to find a particular application.   When I am looking for Zen podcast I accept that the first result set might be everything including music, but I need to be able to zoom in on podcasts.  That was not possible.

4) Search

I am using Bing as my search engine on my iPhone and I've been very happy with it.  However I can't say the same about the Bing Maps built into the Samsung Focus.  For example: the map has ignored my current zoom area and proceeded to give me results that were outside of the zoom. 

Another example is when I searched for SFO while being zoomed out to see the entire Bay area the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) was not in the first ten results.

Overall I have to say that the strategy of catching up with the iPhone is failing.  Apples fantastic hardware design and a myriad of apps that are being built for iOS first make that an uphill battle.  I believe this strategy is going to get Microsoft close:

1) Get Nokia to create a fantastic device.  Swiss Watch quality metal, glass and precision. 

2) Use the Billions of dollars to fund or create amazing applications.  Fund promising applications so that they are polished and beat the iOS ones.

3) Fix the Marketplace and get a freemium Zune subscription.  

4) Use the phone data to provide better, precise search that tailors things to the device.

I believe there are a couple of other things in motion that might give Microsoft an edge by addressing another Market.

1) XBox - if they follow step #1 from the strategy above and create the best gaming phone that connect to XBox they have a chance to capture that niche.

2) Skype - adding the capability of calling overseas at a reduced rate and to start using SkypeIDs instead of phone numbers would be a great differentiator.  This could make Windows Phone devices the most valuable device for an international caller.  The question is of course whether the carriers are going to go for it.

In closing I'd like to say that WP7 is a great step forward.  If they follow the strategy they did in the fight against Sony and Nintendo I think eventually it might take the lead.  They do need to keep in mind that Apple is very sharp competitor and the recent iCloud announcement shows it.

Firefighter's Memorial - High Resolution Shots

mikebz's photostream on Flickr.

Windows 8 Impression

The big news this week was the unveiling of Windows 8. There is plenty of coverage of features and the video that shows the new GUI. Here is coverage from the site that I use for my hardware news: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/01/microsoft-unveils-windows-8-tablet-prototypes/

Here is my take on Windows 8:

The new GUI is fantastic and is borrowing heavily from the great work that was put in place by Windows Phone 7 team. I like that interface because it's elegant, minimalistic and it actually doesn't require heavy 3rd resources so that those can be used for processes that actually need them.

I also love the fact that OS supports HTML5 and JavaScript. I think Microsoft finally learned from WPF and other proprietary frameworks - people don't like them. HTML and JavaScript are adopted by millions of developers and it is going to be an easy adoption curve.

What I don't like is that the new GUI seems like it just sits on top of the old desktop. I suppose it makes a lot of business sense and Microsoft did do that with Windows 3.1 when it was sitting on top of DOS. What I'd prefer is that if they actually switched the whole thing around. The native OS would be using Metro and HTML interfaces and a Virtual Machine would pop up to run your legacy applications if you ever needed those.

A couple of things that I didn't see but I was hoping to see:
1) an application store that had curated Windows8 applications
2) a cloud integration where OS heavily relies on Live services. Synchronization and data sharing should be built directly into the new OS and work between my XBox, WP7 and W8.

Those features might still be coming but something and I am keeping my fingers crossed.