Joakim Nygård Archive Linked About

2008-12-19

19 Dec 2008 -

This 24 hour of flights map is absolutely fascinating, reminiscent of an invasion (by man!).

Make something that people want

3 Dec 2008 -

Only build stuff for yourself

That’s the Golden Rule of Building Stuff. If you’re planning to build something for someone else, let someone else build it.

A rather long on-screen read but definitely worth the time for anyone with ideas.

2008-11-27

27 Nov 2008 -

Clever use of proxy for ad-blocking in Safari: GlimmerBlocker. Been using floppymoose.com for a few years with joy.

One Application to Rule Your Files

9 Sep 2008 -

The Finder has always been by far the most important application on the Mac. It was the entrance to the computer, the Google of the offline. It used to be where your files were. That changed with Apple’s Digital Hub strategy.

As the iPods became a still larger part of Apple’s revenue, the importance of iTunes became clear. From being just another application designed to do one thing well, playing music, it - like the Finder - became the entrance to a certain kind of files, music, and to another computer: The one in your pocket. iPhoto does the same for photos, displaying and organizing media files in a usable way. They are both attempts at managing an increasing number of files, media types and devices.

The situation leaves the Finder in a strange position. With iTunes handling music and movies and iPhoto your photos, the Finder is no longer at the core of finding files. This creates another problem with open and save dialogs that were historically designed to be a minimal version of the Finder (they really should be full featured Finder windows, familiar and easier to use). With iTunes and iPhoto, an iLife Media Browser needed to be tacked on to access their managed content.

It is a fundamental problem of managing the thousands of files each of us keeps on computers (and phones) today. How do we find and organize them? The folder metaphor is time-tested but static by nature. The Spotlight search technology, smart folders and media browsers are first steps toward a solution, but no where near done and currently just patches to an anacronistic design.

It is worth noting that Apple has taken steps to make the data of various applications be more file-like to support Spotlight. Mails are stored as invidiual mails now rather than a single mbox file and contacts and events are browsable from the Finder. A complete overhaul of the Finder to integrate the possibilities of Spotlight, tagging and metadata is very much needed.

The SpotlightFS file system for MacFuse allows for spotlight searches simply by creating a folder with the search terms as name. Leap is also a step in this direction, relying on Spotlight to do the searching and definitely worth a look.

Files, no matter what kind they are (including mails and contacts), should be accessible from anywhere on the computer. They should behave like they were records in a relational database so that they can be displayed, ordered and filtered anyway wanted (this was, in fact, part of the goal with the WinFS filesystem that got pulled from Vista). Smart Folders should be easier to create from search terms or tags and behave like regular folders and support tagging a file simply by dragging it into that folder.

In many ways the Finder would be like a clever webapp, like Flickr with multiple views of the same data. It seems like a good idea to look online for inspiration, particularly since one of the key challenges is how to move data seamlessly between services and allow easy user generated mashups - comparable to moving file data between applications.

iPhoto and iTunes should provide a view to a certain filtered list of files and ad specific functionality, e.g. playback or retouching tools rather than attempting to solve a file system problem. A plugin architecture, much like the one for Spotlight or Quicklook, would allow for new meta data and alternative views: An iCal view displaying photos by date or a people browser showing mails, chats and documents grouped by person.

Apple has created high level APIs like Core Data and Core Animation to help developers leverage new technology. A similar Core Files with a simple but powerful interface to the file system and related metadata would be a giant leap in the right direction, allowing the Finder and third party apps to access files in dynamic groups.

With Apple saying the next version of Mac OS X, code named Snow Leopard, will focus on polishing existing features over adding new ones, I sincerely hope an improved Finder with extra Spotlight magic like described above is considered ‘polish’ :)

iPhone 3G plan in Denmark revealed

28 Jun 2008 -

Telia finally pulled the curtains on iPhone pricing and conditions in Denmark today. Unlike the other Scandinavian countries Sweden and Norway, Telia Denmark has only a single plan for each iPhone model.

The 8GB iPhone will set you back $296 (1399 DKK) while the 16GB model costs $423 (1999 DKK). Both include 6 months contracts (maximum in Denmark) with a monthly fee of $127 (599 DKK) comprised of 300 minutes (though unlimited to other Telia customers), unlimited SMS messages and 300MB of data. The total cost of ownership during the 6 months is thus $1057 (4993 DKK) and $1184 (5593 DKK) respectively.

I’m all in, especially considering I’m already spending around $100 a month using my current Nokia. Subtracting this from the TCO brings the cost of upgrading to the iPhone down to a fair $580. I’m a little worried that 300MB a month might not be enough, but it’s really hard to judge how much I’ll end up using 3G compared to WiFi and how much the Safari cache can save.

Compared to the Swedish and Norwegian iPhone plans the monthly fee is considerably higher but the contract runs for a minimum of 18 months. Here is comparable TCO for all three countries:

8GB:

16GB:

Both the Swedish and Norwegian contracts include 250 minutes, texts and MBs, selected as closest match. It would seem Danes get a better deal in all ways. Now, it’s only two weeks before the mayhem begins…

George Carlin Dies

24 Jun 2008 -

The world-renowned comedian George Carlin died yesterday at age 71. Famous for his provocative material and eloquent performances, Carlin perhaps said it best himself:

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm.

And this brilliant take on modern communication, illustrative of his shows:

Webgrind 0.7 is out

12 Jun 2008 -

The third release of the web frontend for Xdebug by Jacob Oettinger and I is out today and contains a few new features like version checking, support for directly loading a specific report and a visual breakdown of internal, class and procedural functions and calls to include/require.

call type breakdown

Jacob and I both appreciate the positive feedback our little project has recieved from the community. Please feel encouraged to submit any suggestions or comments, either here or on the Webgrind googlepage.

Lifestreaming With Friends

23 May 2008 -

As part of my thoughts of data portability and its little sister ‘data share-ability’ through public APIs, I’ve created a Zend Framework based class for aggregating data streams from a few of the popular sites I use and sort them cronologically. Though the class itself is not ready for the public eyes, the result is a lifestream of (some of) my activities online, visible from the lifestream link in the menu.

While this provides a simple way of tracking my steps, it does not help me follow my friends. To remedy this, I’ve started working on an open social web application. It will provide a simple means of adding information on yourself and friends and an interface for following both.

The application will be a distributed social web and as such can be installed on any webhost. I believe this is key while waiting for the One True Portable Data Format as it puts the social relations in the hands of the user - where it belongs - and not in a data silo of a private company (Facebook anyone?).

The Dataportability Website is a great resource on the matter. There is a wealth of great and useful standards already defined; The biggest problem is getting them out there in big enough numbers for it to matter.

It is, in many ways, the problem of structured data versus the way humans think. Computers are rooted in logic and structures and though the thought of an ideal taxonomy of the world and us is appealing (at least to some), I don’t see it happen. The universe is a far too messy place for it to truly succeed (though Google seem to have a few tricks). Compare this to the enormous usage of the so-called folksonomy or use of tags. They are easy to use, have no cumbersome hierarchies and appear to work most of the time. They do give rise to synonyms, homonyms, and lack of normalization (stemming) - concepts humans navigate easily but computers need help with.

There are many problems on the way to realizing my application, let alone a standardized way of parsing human relations online. At the moment what I have is

For it to be of any real use, the application should to accept connections directly from service providers (flickr, twitter, etc.) rather than just from another installation of the application. It would also be immensely useful if it could parse and auto-discover any microformat markup encountered (other sites I use, people I know, personal info).

A successful solution cannot be accomplished by one man, but it is interesting to work on and the prototypes keep me updated on my friends :)

Webgrind: A Web Frontend for Xdebug

29 Apr 2008 -

My about page has mentioned a web based frontend for Xdebug for some time. The project has a name now: The idea for Webgrind, a spin on Valgrind, came from lack of profiling tools for PHP, particularly on OSX. Though it is possible to install kcachegrind on osx it seems overkill for many uses and is definitely not as easy as unzipping a folder to the webroot.

After sitting on the idea for some time, I spoke with Jacob Oettinger about it and he promptly started on the foundation. What we have done up to this point is far from the power of kcachegrind, but it does allow for simple profiling in the browser to locate methods and functions most in need of optimization. Plus it installs in seconds.

I have since learned that the PHP group has a suggestion for a Google Summer of Code project that replicates the features of KCacheGrind as a web frontend. It seems Chung-Yang Lee has signed up for the challenge and it will be interesting to follow his progress.

We are currently making the last changes before releasing the first version on our Google code page for Webgrind. Please let us know what you think of this and of any ideas for future features. A downloadable package will be ready on Wednesday.

Spatial Clue Preserving Sound

13 Apr 2008 -

I forgot where I first saw this amazing demonstration of a sound recording and playback technology that preserves the spatial information required for the brain to hear the location of sound sources called Cetera.

Developed by hearing aid producer Starkey Labs, Cetera apparently is not a new technology. Audiology Online has an article about Cetera from 1999 but this is the first I’ve heard about it.

Sound is recorded by two microphones placed at a distance similar to that of the human ears and further processed to mimic the acoustics of the outer ear, and the result is unbelievably real. In the illustrational recording oh a virtual haircut, the electric razor feels eerily close to your ear! To experience the effect, headphones are needed:

Sajithmr has a full transcript of the dialogue and two more recordings.

If only this technique could be used in first-person computer games they would instantly become more immersive!

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