Here’s a good example of user interface design on the part of Google. I wrote an e-mail just now to a client in which I was sending them a download link for some materials which I had uploaded to my server. When I went to send the message Gmail realized I had said “I’ve included”, however I had not attached anything, and gave me the above dialog.

This is great user interface feature which would have saved me many times in the past, I’m sure. I can’t remember how many times I’ve forgotten to attach files to an email when I should have.

So far, it’s a very nice app. It is very simple—but this kind of app is perfectly suited for simplicity.

The app took a while to open the first time, but once it loaded I was greeted with a Register screen which allowed me to register the app with my Amazon account and associate it with my Kindle account. The process took only seconds.

Books in your Kindle account are automatically loaded into the “Archived Items” tab, which acts as a sort of bookshelf—books you have access to if you want, but not important enough to be sitting on your desk. When you go to the Archived Items, you download a book to read by double-clicking on your choice. After it has downloaded, the book will automatically be added to your home page and then opened for reading at your farthest read page. As I have been reading a few books on my iPod Touch for a while, it was very nice to have them appear on my MacBook Pro at the exact page I had left in.

Reading in the app is also nice. You can resize the window to get as much text as you want (or don’t want) on the screen at a time. It has support for your bookmarked pages, and the user interface controls are pretty simple. You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard or the scroll wheel of your mouse (or in my case, two-finger scrolling with TouchPad). The mouse/touchpad feature is nice, however it is entirely too sensitive to be used carelessly—you’ll turn five pages before you realize it.

All in all, good job Amazon. There are a few little bugs such as the scrolling problem, but this is Beta software after all. It could be argued that the interface could be nicer, but for what the app is designed for it performs its function well—especially for being beta.

When the Kindle app for iPod/iPhone came out, it opened up the world of Kindle to me. I already owned an iPod which serves so many functions for me—spending hundreds of dollars on a dedicated book reader didn’t make financial sense (or cents) for me. However, when the Kindle app was released it was perfect because I was able to enter the Kindle world without any further investment.

And that’s exactly what Kindle for Mac is doing for many more users: opening the world of Kindle up, free of charge, to anyone with an Apple computer.

When I first started developing for Palm I was a bit skeptical of the framework because it seemed thrown together and needed a lot of polish. The most annoying part was (and is) the lack of accurate documentation. Yes, I said accurate. Palm’s Developer website doesn’t offer complete documentation on everything, and even less of it is actually accurate. Often times if you copy-and-paste the sample code into your project it will not work due to either a typo in their code or the fact that the code is from a previous version of the framework and no longer works.

Palm’s own developer forums often are a frustration. If you take a look around you’ll notice a trend: most people’s posts have many more views than replies—which tells me nobody else can help them either. This isn’t to discount the webOS/Mojo ninjas out there—it just grows both aggravating and disappointing. I am currently trudging through writing a follow-up app for my last one, with progress alternating between very quick and very aggravatingly slow (as in, spending an entire day trying to figure out a problem no one has the answer to, and eventually deciding on another path that actually works).

Although this post sounds like a rant, I wouldn’t classify it as one. I haven’t lost faith in Palm. I understand it’s very early in webOS’s lifespan (indeed, the App Catalog itself is still in Beta), and being a developer I can accept that 1.x software is seldom perfect. Although being in the Palm camp this early on is a bit frustrating, seeing the ratings and feedback from your users after your app has finally shipped makes it all worth it.

This could all be nothing, or it could mean that Blu-ray support is coming for iTunes in the next version. No one seems to be mentioning the fact it also says “DVD [...] and video-related data” which I don’t see in my current version of iTunes (8.1.1 (10)). So not only does iTunes 8.2 use Gracenote to find audio CD information like we’re used to, it evidently will use Gracenote to identify videos. I’m not sure if this means Apple will eventually make iTunes capable of playing DVDs or not, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a good idea. iTunes is already outgrowing what its name and original purpose describes.

Currently, even with this Blu-ray support, the only way you have access to Blu-ray on Mac currently is to purchase an external Blu-ray drive and even then you’re limited by licensing issues. For the most part you can’t play Blu-ray movies, just utilize the massive storage capacity of the blue-ray disk.

Some might say—myself included for a moment— that perhaps this means the next generation of Macs will ship with blu-ray drives in them. While this might not be as much of a problem with their desktop Macs, the MacBook line would be an interesting challenge—it would require Apple to find a way to cram a blu-ray optical drive into its existing unibody MacBook structure, or possibly even re-invent the unibody for the next generation. While redesigning the unibody seems like a natural step if they want to offer more features in the laptops, the problem of implementing blu-ray is more than hardware. We’ve long known Apple’s opinion of blu-ray licensing as told from Steve Jobs himself:

Straight from El Jobso’s mouth at today’s notebook keynote: “Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It’s great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace.” Phil chimed in with “We have the best HD movie and TV options in iTunes.”

—(from Engadget)

From this it’s pretty clear if Apple does decide to include some blu-ray support it will be geared more towards the storage benefits and personal videos. As far as HD movies go, Apple seems to be relying on their iTunes HD platform.

What are your predictions for Apple as they get their feet wet in blu-ray?

Evidently this problem doesn’t happen to everyone. In most cases the software installs and just works—not for me. I had to Google up a storm and do some thinking. My search led me to a relatively unknown feature in OS X’s handling of MIDI devices: aggregate devices. In order to pipe sound into Guitar Rig, you have to create an aggregate device.

First, I’m going to explain how it works and what it really means, then I’ll show you how to do it. You can skip this part you don’t care.

How it Works

The input comes into your aggregated device and immediately passes through and out that device’s “output”. Guitar Rig sees this “simulated” device as a real device and allows you to access it inside the program. Guitar Rig actually thinks this device is one of the Guitar Rig Kontrol hardware devices that you have plugged into your computer.

How You Do It

Although it’s not very prominent, there is an application that came with OS X for managing MIDI devices. That’s what we’ll be using here. It’s called Audio MIDI Setup and you can find it in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder—or better yet use Spotlight to find it (Cmd+Space, then type “Audio MIDI Setup” and press enter).

Once you’ve opened the program you’ll need to select “Open Aggregate Device Editor” from the Audio menu at the top of your screen. Click the plus sign (+) to create a new device and then click the check boxes next to “Built-In Input” and “Built-In Output”. Do not click the checkbox next to “Built-In Microphone”!

Click “Done” and close the program.

Now all that’s left to do is go into Guitar Rig and set your Output Device to your new device (whatever you named it). Once you’ve done that, you’ll see your device show up as an option for the “Input”.

In Conclusion

I hope this helped somebody out there out. Have fun messing with all Guitar Rig offers you—which is quite a lot! Keep on rocking. I’d love to hear any of your recordings, just comment me a link.

The new design and features, however, are great. Good going Yahoo!! (two exclamation marks because Yahoo! already has one in it )

But since I’m a Django developer, why am I using Wordpress for my personal site? It’s obvious, isn’t it? Sure I could easily develop a blogging solution in Django. There are so many of them. Bruce Kroeze and gang are currently working on a pretty promising looking Django blogging all-in-one solution called Banjo. But still I have opted to use Wordpress simply for this reason: it’s developed. PHP usage aside, Wordpress is a great app that makes blogging extremely simple to do. I could spend—even in Django—several hours developing something of my own that compares to it, or I could just embrace it and use it to simplify my life.

I choose Wordpress.

I’m not sure when it appeared, but in the File menu there is an option which says “Back Up to Disc…” When you click this you are presented with a dialog window:

Insert a blank disc (CD or DVD, I assume) and click “Back Up”. iTunes will then save everything to your disc(s)—including playlists, play counts, podcasts, and videos.

Restoring a Library

To restore a library, simply insert your iTunes backup disk while iTunes is running and iTunes takes care of the rest. Please note you will have to authorize the computer to play anything purchased from the iTunes Store.