Hi! My name is Cédric Bozzi, I make websites and iOS apps, and this is my blog about technology (mostly a Twitter archive, really).
“Walking Around In Circles: As Google+ Opens Up Will People Start Using It Correctly?”
Who knows, maybe I’m just a Silicon Valley guy who has lost touch with reality. It’s entirely possible. But maybe, just maybe, the opposite is true. Maybe “regular” people have been allergic to using groups in the past because they simply don’t want to use groups. Maybe it’s one of those things that’s a good idea on paper or in a brain-storming session, but doesn’t translate onto the web.
That’s a very interesting theory — as a geek, I love the idea of Circles (like Diaspora’s aspects), but are regular users ever going to be interested in that concept at all?
Not to mention that I’d already planned to post that quote yesterday, before getting my own invite to Google+, but now I’m in and I can tell that the interface for Circles sucks. Sure, the concept is viable, but there are lots of little missteps that make it annoying and confusing (UI elements jumping around, semi-compulsory multiple selection, an unintuitive flow to simply see a prospective contact’s profile, and a bunch of other tiny details that mount up). In short, Google has made the interface uncharacteristically flashy… but they still haven’t gotten user-friendly.
Looks a lot like my client’s spam filters are nuking all the App Store “Ready for Sale” messages. That’s convenient.
If Google Plus wants to have a killer feature that Facebook refuses to implement, it’s pretty simple: just add a “-1” button.
“Brief thoughts on Google Plus”
Within hours, the early Plus invitees were actually using Google Plus for conversations. Not just nattering back and forth, not just comments on the service itself, but real conversations.
That’s fundamentally different from Google Wave, where I rarely saw any discussion that wasn’t about Wave itself.
Interestingly, I’ve seen the same with my contacts — and I really don’t know why that would be. I don’t share stuff on Facebook nor on Plus, so I have no idea what motivates those people to actually start posting to Plus this time.
Except for the fact the Wave’s interface was too daunting, obviously.
Aww, it’s so cute, I have two contacts whose Latitude location is up to date. Android users, obviously.
E-mail is only dead if you’re writing to people who are swamped with spam. If everybody just moved to Gmail the problem would be solved.
There’s one corrupted file among the 32,000 that constitute my iPad’s backup, and as a result the restore fails entirely.
The kicker: I have no idea how to find out which file is corrupted. If I try to copy the folder in Finder, it fails in the middle, but no idea where.
Idle thought — if you’re banned from Google+ for posting objectionable material, do you lose your Gmail account along with it?
Apple just confirmed, as I expected, that they wontfix the bug / functionality that makes a mess of Uniconsole in iOS 5.
How to downgrade iOS 5 beta to 4.3
The devil is in the italics: if it fails, use the other version of iTunes.
I don’t understand the point of the free SketchBook Copic Edition, but it reminded me how much better it is to draw on a Wacom than an iPad.
WTF. The Google+ app refuses to run on iPads and iPods touch. Bad start. (Also, it crashes on my iPhone, but that’s probably iOS 5.)
That’s a nice fail for Google+ with iOS early adopters, who (1) want to use their iPads, and (2) have installed iOS 5 beta on their iPhones.
I’d be proud to see that Google, like me, has decided to go with embedded web views for their app—if it didn’t turn out that the app is shit.
It’s a little weird to have your G+ post reshared by someone, and then not be able to see it as you’re not in the circles he reshared it to.
The Thunderbolt Display has FW800 and Ethernet ports. Drool. (But odd that they didn’t find a way to get rid of the separate MagSafe cable.)
You can plug a second 27” Thunderbolt Display to your 27” Thunderbolt Display. And then… it’ll turn off when you full-screen an app in Lion?
Now that Dashboard is gonna be more integrated and more convenient to reach, any useful widgets to recommend?
I wish I could buy Lion online today and get the USB key for $40 when it’s available. Not so much for convenience, I just want the object.
On me souffle dans l’oreillette que je serais le seul couillon à mettre trois heures pour charger Lion ?
Somehow the linen pattern seems to work much better on my computer screen than in Springboard folders.
I liked the idea of natural scrolling more than the fact. Main disconnect, possibly: content is scrolling underneath a cursor staying still… unlike my fingers.
My number one Lion tip: No matter how wrong it feels, stick with the new trackpad scrolling direction. Give it a week.
Every other time I want to switch from one app to another, the mouse stops responding. Which of these apps is the culprit?!
Do I buy more RAM so my MacBook doesn’t have to swap apps in the background, or wait until I buy myself a top-of-the-line MacBook Air ?
Holy shit, le kit 4 Go Macway est à 40 €. Mais pourquoi ils me proposent un kit 8 Go alors que je devrais être limité à 4 ?
I can’t open several files at the same time in Excel from the Finder anymore. How the hell did they manage that?
Who doesn’t love having to wait for the scrollbars to fade out before you’re allowed to click the last file in the window? (In list mode.)
Why did I ever tell my client to type his data into Excel instead of immediately making a web-based form? I’ll pay for that a long time.
There was a warning icon next to my syncing iPhone in iTunes, so I clicked it. That just made the warning icon disappear.
I think I hate Mission Control. How do you choose, say, a Finder window, when you’ve got a bunch open and they’re all superposed?
You can still drag on the app’s Dock icon to trigger All Windows. Hitting space makes Exposé come up quicker.
Oh, that’s gonna be really fun, having Xcode automatically flush from memory every time I hide it, and spin a while when I need it again.
Lion’s Photoshop-style resizing modifiers
Nice. But useless. But nice.
“Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Server: The Review”
Looks like a horribly amateurish mess to me. Another nail in the Mac’s coffin.
“Doubts About Lytro’s ‘Focus Later’ Camera”
Quite glad to see I’m not the only one having them.
I have “$first = min($first, 0);” in my production code. I get this wrong EVERY TIME. I should override min() and max() to “die”.
I can only hope someone discovers some more sensible hidden preferences for Mission Control before I throw the MacBook through the window.
I’m beginning to suspect that my Lion stalls happened because the system was randomly waking up, and waiting for, my network-connected Drobo.
Oh. It may be my fault that OS X (even Snow) kept waking up my network-connected Drobo. I’d put a shortcut to it in my Home directory.
I know 26:00 on a Sunday isn’t the best time to ask, but anyone got a recommendation for a hosted VPN service?
Zeroed out the drive three times, SMART still says it’s good, so I guess I’m gonna assume it’s good. I’ll just backup three times a day.
In other news, reinstalling on a formatted drive with the home-made DVD works great. Only difference is, final online registration is not optional.
So… is “Find my Mac” available in Lion somewhere and I can’t find it, or will it only be enabled after iCloud is launched?
“Google Responds to Google+ Account Suspension Controversy”
Horowitz also took time to dispel the rumor that a suspension of a Google+ account means that a user loses his or her access to Gmail, Google Docs or other Google services. “When an account is suspended for violating the Google+ common name standards, access to Gmail or other products that don’t require a Google+ profile are not removed,” he said.
Is he saying that all the testimonies to the contrary were lies? I’m not buying it. I’d be a lot more confident if they said that disabling Gmail accounts was a mistake and they’ll never do it again — but denying that it ever happened in the face, of so many articles? This whole thing is a giant screw-up and they’re making it worse by the day.
“Design Sales Site Fab.com Hits 350,000 Members, Raises $8M To Celebrate”
Fab.com, which started out as Fabulis, a social networking site for gay men, has not only recently changed its name but also started from scratch with an entirely new business centered around online flash sales of design items.
No, wait, seriously?
Ah, the 1Password extension for Safari has been fixed (shows as a popup rather than in-browser), so I’m switching back again back.
Oh, yeah. Maybe next time I won’t launch FileVault encryption just while Spotlight is re-indexing the whole drive. That’d be more sensible.
Kernel panic while FileVault was encrypting the disk. (Caused by Xcode.) I’m sure I’ve got nothing at all to worry about…
“Switch friends to Gmail” is kind of an odd call to action. Like “Surprise your friends, enlist them in the army.”
Ahhhh I can hide my Gmail labels from IMAP, and even the “All Mail” box? That should make Mail’s sync so much more responsive!
I love signup forms where the compulsory, restricted, and Javascript-populated “state/region” field is above the “country” field that determines its contents. Ungh.
Oops, I was this close to paying for my auto-renewing VPN service with PayPal. Like I haven’t read enough horror stories just this week.
Um… if the VPN’s secret key for L2TP is the same for all users… doesn’t that mean anyone knowing the key could intercept the data?
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