racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

… And it’s got most of the features I wanted in an Apple Gazette post I wrote a couple of months ago.

It does run OS X (a stripped down flavor, I would say). It has an interesting interface (no keypad, just a touchscreen, which I think would be nothing like the clunky touchscreens of today’s mobile phones from other manufacturers). It would play music—integrated with iTunes. And it will run widgets!

Abe cites the highlights here.

Engadget has the full details.

Sweet, glorious specs of the 11.6 millimeter device (that’s frickin’ thin, by the way) include a 3.5-inch 480×320 touchscreen display with multi-touch support and a proximity sensor to turn off the screen when it’s close to your face, 2 megapixel cam, 4GB or 8 GB of storage, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP, WiFi that automatically engages when in range, and quad-band GSM radio with EDGE. Perhaps most amazingly, though, it somehow runs OS X with support for Widgets, Google Maps, and Safari, and iTunes (of course) with CoverFlow out of the gate. A partnership with Yahoo will allow all iPhone customers to hook up with free push IMAP email. Apple quotes 5 hours of battery life for talk or video, with a full 16 hours in music mode—no word on standby time yet. In a twisted way, this is one rumor mill we’re almost sad to see grind to a halt; after all, when is the next time we’re going to have an opportunity to run this picture? The 4GB iPhone will go out the door in the US as a Cingular exclusive for $499 on a two-year contract, 8GB for $599. Ships Stateside in June, Europe in fourth quarter, Asia in 2008.

And here’s a good read from Time about how great Apple is for designing the iPhone.

I’m wondering how Cisco will react to the iPhone moniker. They own the “iPhone” trademark.

I want one!

I’m a fan of usable sites. In fact, I’m part of a local group of usability advocates–Usability PH. If you’re wondering what the heck usability is, I can cite the Wikipedia definition here.

Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. Usability can also refer to the methods of measuring usability and the study of the principles behind an object’s perceived efficiency or elegance.

Usability usually pertains to how efficiently a product (or software, or just about anything) can be used, how easily one can learn to use it, and how satisfying it is. So you can imagine your favorite gadget to be usable if it satisfies these three criteria–that is, if you were easily able to learn how to work it, and if you’re satisfied overall.

Simplicity: a concept in itself, and not a lack of something else

Many people equate usability to simplicity, and I cannot help but agree. Something usable should be simple enough to use that you shouldn’t have to RTFM. However, this does not mean something should be dumbed down and feature-less. To better illustrate, let me cite what Joel Spolsky writes on his blog.

Devotees of simplicity will bring up 37signals and the Apple iPod as anecdotal proof that Simple Sells. I would argue that in both these cases, success is a result of a combination of things: building an audience, evangelism, clean and spare design, emotional appeal, aesthetics, fast response time, direct and instant user feedback, program models which correspond to the user model resulting in high usability, and putting the user in control, all of which are features of one sort, in the sense that they are benefits that customers like and pay for, but none of which can really be described as “simplicity.” For example, the iPod has the feature of being beautiful, which the Creative Zen Ultra Nomad Jukebox doesn’t have, so I’ll take an iPod, please. In the case of the iPod, the way beauty is provided happens to be through a clean and simple design, but it doesn’t have to be. The Hummer is aesthetically appealing precisely because it’s ugly and complicated.

So Joel says that aesthetics is a matter of taste. The iPod’s elegance lies in its simplicity. However, other objects may be beautiful because of how complicated they are. Just like mechanical watches, with all the gears, cogs, tourbillons, and whatnot. However, Joel goes on to say that the concept of simplicity does not mean you have to take out features to make something usable.

I think it is a misattribution to say, for example, that the iPod is successful because it lacks features. If you start to believe that, you’ll believe, among other things, that you should take out features to increase your product’s success. With six years of experience running my own software company I can tell you that nothing we have ever done at Fog Creek has increased our revenue more than releasing a new version with more features. Nothing.

Strike a balance

However, I would like to disagree to some extent. Too many features might just confuse users. And actually Joel wrote about that just recently, when he posted about Windows Vista’s having too many shutdown options. So I guess it has to be a balance in design. Something should have enough features, but useful features. And the product’s design should be simple enough not to give the common end-user headaches having to wade through tons of features, but also intelligent enough to be able to give the more advanced ones access to the extended feature set.

It’s just like OS X having a straightforward UI for everybody, but access to the terminal for advanced users who want to tweak just about everything.

It’s a complicated concept to think about, I know, but being an end user I appreciate elegance in design. That’s why I work better on my old PowerBook than my newer, supposedly faster Compaq Presario. That’s why I went for the iPod Video when there are other, cheaper MP3 players that can do much more. It’s about efficiency, elegance and satisfaction.

It’s that simple.

It finally happened. jangelo.i.ph is now no longer under my control–or at least a considerable level of control, like before. It has now been auto-upgraded to Calliope version 2, and I no longer have direct access to the base CMS. This is one of the very reasons I decided to move into my own domain and host my own blogging software back in April of 2006–I wanted to maintain control. The prospect of an upgrade had been looming at that time so I decided it was time to gradually let go.

For a while, the most part of 2005, I was part of the team that developed i.PH into what it is now (Calliope version 2)–or so I think–but it’s now time to say goodbye. I actually said my goodbyes earlier, when I first considered moving to racoma . net, and then eventually to racoma.com.ph.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to complete the move within the weekend, and finally say bye bye to jangelo.i.ph. Well, I’m not totally abandoning the site, but it’s more like keeping it as archives. You do know why I’m contemplating this move. I had been part of the i.PH development team during my short stint with dotPH, and I’d been privvy to the planned upgrades. Well, I can say they’re cool and all that, but still I prefer to have full control over my blog installation. And I’m not so interested in friendster-type social networking schemes. I’d rather go for good design and usability. And you do know that by “design” I do not mean only “style.”

Why?

In designing and conceptualizing a blog and blogging platform, I have a few ideas, and they basically revolve around usability (take out the clutter and the uglifying elements). Snazzy features are good, but they’re not essential. If the core functions of an application cannot easily be learned and used, then that degrades the value of the application. If a site cannot be navigated efficiently and effectively, then that just makes the user want to hit that CLOSE button as soon as possible.

Calliope is now no longer a publishing/blogging platform. It has evolved (or mutated?) into a mashup of social networking, publishing, and multimedia linking/hosting/aggregating applications. First and foremost, that’s not what I’m looking for. If you’ve read any good Web app and Web 2.0 ebooks lately, you would’ve realized that it’s the small, independent, but very useful apps that succeed today, not those that try to do everything. And frankly, I think it has lost much of the potential I originally thought it had. For one, there’s the timing factor–when you make people wait for so long for you to tweak something to perfection, chances are they’ll move on to the next great thing.

And may I mention that the upgrade broke all the permalinks and search-engine optimizations I had done to my jangelo.i.ph? That sucks.

Some observations

You’ve been pressing me for a review, Mikey. Yuga has posted his on PTB. Now here are some of _my_ initial thoughts, which I’ve held off writing about and publishing for quite some time, until now that I realized I’ve lost jangelo.i.ph already.

I wouldn’t delve much into the features and details of the new-and-improved Calliope, but I’m writing about the general feel, as I see it.

* Usability. Usability isn’t quite the strongest suit of Calliope. I’m an advanced user and I had a hard time learning and getting used to the original Calliope version 1 concept–and I had to, because it was then part of my job. Now I’m having a hard time adjusting to the new version 2 concept. And for all the snazzy features the upgraded site now has, users still cannot rearrange sidebar contents using a drag-and-drop interface–something the WordPress Widgets plugin has allowed for quite some time now. In fact, one can _not_ rearrange sidebar contents at all with Calliope, as originally promised. Sigh.

* Speed. Sadly, not everyone is on broadband in this country. I’m one of the more fortunate people who enjoy 512 Kbps plus speeds at the comfort of my own home, and I’ve got a relatively new computer. However, my patience still gets tested whenever I try to load up my old i.PH site and most other i.PH sites, and also when I try to change some aspect of the layout using the Calliope interface. That’s why I preferred directly editing the code in plaintext. That may be old school, but gets things done faster for me. However, even novices, for whom the GUI-updating mechanism of i.PH was intended, might find the wait too long for comfort. Hey, I’ve been hearing reports that i.PH sites take five effing minutes to load on some dialup ISPs. And I don’t think it’s the actual connection speed that’s the problem, since loading times still go past my patience threshold even on broadband. The sites are just plain heavy. Period.

* Flexibility. The reason I wanted direct access to the CMS (then Blog:CMS and now WordPress) is because I’m not just any regular blog user. I want to be able to edit my blog the way I want it, from using custom layouts to adding custom design elements, to doing away with the crappy, heavy sIFR fonts and being able to implement other basic stuff. I understand not everyone is comfortable with doing this, but I do remember direct access to the themes’ code was supposed to be part of the plan (at least for paying clients). But then again, I think it’s the Calliope front-end that’s supposed to be the selling factor of i.PH so this would probably never happen. Also, there are a host of other customizations I had on my old site that I was hoping would be part of the default features–basically on-site SE optimizations, and that leads to the following point.

* SEO. I’m not really a hardcore SEO fan, but I do believe that on-site optimization helps usability as much as it helps SEO, particularly in terms of navigability and structure. For instance, I cite two points here.

* Permalinks. Static links are important. Make ‘em too long (like the loooong alphanumeric ones some ASP-based CMSes put out) or too short (like the default WordPress ?p=123, etc.) or too non-descriptive and both the search engines and users would have a difficulty finding your content. Friendly permalinks (using .htaccess rewrites) are just a click away on WordPress. And here’s one really big gripe I have with the Calliope upgrade–all my permalinks have been changed (since Blog:CMS and WordPress use different permalink structures by default). Now all the pages indexed by Google, Yahoo! and other engines would just direct readers to the frontpage and not the actual article.

* The title tag. I have a thing against blog posts and articles that don’t display the exact article title on my browser’s title bar. It’s bad enough that search engines get to index your content using just your blog title on the results (and not the more relevant post title), but it’s also bad when you’re bookmarking a single post. Fixing this is as simple as using the proper tag on each static or archive page. Search engines love this. People also do! It’s easier to find when you have a ton of windows or tags open, and it’s definitely better when bookmarking locally or on social bookmarking sites.

A web app is only as powerful as a user can use it.

It all boils down to whether one is comfortable with using the Web app. And sadly, I’m not comfortable with Calliope as much as I try to _want_ myself to like it.

Maybe when we get to doing the FGD that i.PH has been asking about for quite some time now, we can get to resolve these things.

I’m still keeping jangelo.i.ph alive, though–but just as as an archive site for my old content.

Christian Montoya posts on the top ten ways to “uglify” your blog. It’s basically a collection of the top things not to do if you want your blog not only to be aesthetically-pleasing, but also accessible and usable. I think the keyword here is usability. I believe in designing blogs and websites with usability in mind.

While I do agree with fellow problogger Dave that not everything in the list is helpful, let me highlight some points I find worth following–actually design points worth avoiding, that is.

* Long blogrolls. I used to have a moderately long blogroll at the old J Spot (jangelo.i.ph), which kept on growing as I got to know more people in the blogosphere and got to read more interesting sites. Actually, my blogroll is automatically generated from my bloglines subscriptions, so this means each and every blog I publicly bookmark keeps getting added to the point that the blogroll got too long that it ate up a space longer than the front page of blog posts. I eventually relegated my blogroll to a static page, so it’s unobtrusive, while still serving the purpose of telling readers what other sites I read, and adding to that SEO factor (passing on the linklove).

* Social bookmarking buttons. I think these just clutter the design of a blog. If readers were already users of any of these social bookmarking sites, they would know better and are likely to have their own easy-subscribe or easy-tag buttons for bookmarking sites of interest. Besides, not everyone is into all of these social bookmarkers. I, myself, only use del.icio.us actively. The others I only get to stumble upon (hey, that’s another social bookmarking site!) every now and then.

* Feedreader buttons. Same as the bookmarking buttons, there’s no sense in putting in all of the available feedreaders out there when your readers are likely to be using only one or even none at all. I’ve included only the more popular feed readers, and these buttons are only present on my “about this site” page.

* 80 x 15 buttons. More ways to clutter your site even more. If you must include links to affiliate sites, I think they’re best relegated to your “about this site” or “about me” page, and not plastered on every page at your sidebar. I do have some of these buttons, but only to a limited extent–and I plan to move them sometime.

* Tag clouds. These are all right, if kept to a minimum. But if you’re like me, you’ll be bound to be attaching all sorts of tags onto your posts, and the tag list could get unweildy at some point. Just like an ever-growing blogroll. Now my tag cloud is on a separate page.

* Ads. Well, this is subjective, but I’ve opted against ads on the J Spot, at least for the foreseeable future. I’m earning enough from my other problogging and freelancing activities that I prefer not to be pressured in writing at this blog. Also, I don’t want to divert the attention of my readers to other things, especially as clicking ads will lead readers outside of my site.

What else?

Of course, there are other design no-no’s, such as those atrocious auto-playing music, crappy color schemes and even crappier fonts. But we’ve had enough of things to avoid for now.

What do you think? Are there any other blog elements that irk you? What about ugly dogs?

No, it’s not Manny Pacquiao‘s latest book. It’s what I’m naming* this newest gadget of mine, the Compaq Presario V2617TS. It’s sort of my take on “MacBook.”

I’m sorry to say I had to retire my Thinkpad 390E (look it up–it’s a really really dated model, but that tells you how hardy ThinkPads can be) since it could no longer keep up to my requirements. I do hope it’s now in good hands.

The V2617TS is not top-of-the-line but it sure is a good deal for the price I paid. And it’s good enough for my needs as a writer, pro-blogger, occasional gamer and wannabe-photographer. SRP was PhP 35,950 but I got a discount of PhP 5,000 for paying cash, bringing down the price to PhP 30,950 or approximately US$ 580 (I think this is the price listed online at the Complink website).

It’s a Celeron-M model inside the V2000 form factor, so it looks just like the higher-end V2000 Centrinos and Core Duos, save for some differences which you would only see on closer inspection (and which non-laptop enthusiasts won’t know about anyway).

Yes, it’s teh sexy!

The specs

* Processor: Intel Celeron-M 370 (Dothan core): 1.5 GHz, 1 MB L2 Cache, 400 MHz frontside bus
* Memory: 256 MB DDR (upgraded to 768 MB)
* Chipset: Intel 915GM Express
* Graphics adaptor: Integrated Intel GMA 900, up to 128 MB shared video RAM (dynamically allocated by OS)
* Screen: 14″ Widescreen XGA TFT LCD (very very bright!)
* Hard drive: 40GB 4200 RPM
* Optical drive: Combo drive (DVD-ROM, CD-R/RW)
* 10/100 LAN, 56Kbps modem, two 2.0 USB ports, RGB out, S-video out, one Cardbus slot
* Weight: 2.31 Kg
* (OS not included in the package)

I’ve always leaned towards the big brands (such as IBM, HP/Compaq, etc.) and that was my first priority in looking for a new laptop. There’s something about the design of these branded laptops (design meaning not only the style but the overall concept and construction) that gives them an edge over ODM or other BTO laptops. Firsthand experience tells me ThinkPads really are built like tanks. Compaqs and Fujitsus live forever, too. And Macs never lose their sex appeal.

Yes, I know I could have bought something else not badged with the “big brands” but with better specs. But I’m a design freak. What can I say?

And then, of course, you’re paying extra for the after-sales support and online firmware updates. Got that concept from fellow laptop junkies** from Cooltoyz. So what you lose in sheer specs you make up in being sure your laptop’s in tip top running condition.

Celeron?

As for choosing Celeron-M over Pentium-M (which runs the Centrino platform), it’s a matter of price. The Celeron-M is every bit as powerful as the Pentium-M all other things equal (save for L2 cache), but the major disadvantage is battery life, since Celeron-Ms always run on full clock speed. So I usually only get maximum of 2.5 hours on a single charge.

The lowest-priced Centrino V2000 would cost me twice. Go figure.

By the way, I have a knack for pronouncing “Celeron” with a hard C (like K) as in “Celtic.” I don’t know why. Just sounds cool, perhaps.

Photos

Again, pictures speak louder than words, so I’d suggest we go mosy over to my Flickr site for photos of the PaqBook. Here are some thumbnails. You can also hover your mouse over the thumbnails for some descriptions (if you don’t want to view the larger image).

A full review is in order and shall be posted onto bLaptops once finished. For the meantime, here’s a peek into how it feels to go wide (screen) and my review of the Samsonite Inventure laptop backpack I recently got for the PaqBook.

*Corsarius has his Corsarify.
**Trivia: I used to run my BBS on a 386SX Toshiba Satellite. That was in 1995.

Updates, as of June 2007

If you’re interested with the V2000, be sure to check these out:

I was able to have my V2000′s front bezel, LCD and CPU fan replaced at the tail-end of warranty period. Since the new LCD enclosure had WiFi antennae, I was also able to install an internal WiFi mini PCI card.

Also, I decided to protect my touchpad and palm rest with frisket film, since after a year’s use the V2000′s paint had already faded due to contact with my sweaty, acidic palms and fingers.

Recently, I saw low-end V3000 Compaq Presarios (the V3120TU) selling for about the same price I bought my V2000 last year.

Some words of advice

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