Being in London, this year we haven't been lucky enough to attend the Apple World Wide Developer Conference at Moscone West in San Francisco. We'll be following Twitter along with the rest of the world's Apple fans, but just in case Twitter goes down (not that that's ever happened before... oh wait) we'll be keeping you posted on developments throughout the day.
So the new iPhone is only days away, and there are tons of rumours flying around all over the place. Let's have a look at what's being said, and what could be said at WWDC...
I've been thinking about how the keynote could go, and here's a little idea of how the show could pan out:
< -- Begin thinking like Steve -- >
Intro
Hi folks, thanks for coming. We've got some great stuff for you this morning.
This is the most popular WWDC EVER. We've got 100s of Apple Developers on hand to help you out and chat over the week. First time we have sold out in the history of WWDC.
Today, I'd like to talk to you about our two core platforms: OS X and the iPhone.
iPhone
* A few slides about how iPhone market share has been growing (conveniently ignoring the last few months where it's been falling).
Yes, it's true. Today, we're introducing the new iPhone. And yes, it's 3G.
New iPhone, runs iPhone 2.0 firmware from the box.
Relating back to our posts on the DreamBrowser, we found a great demo of a much improved technique for scrolling windows at Thorwil's Blog.
The concept of scrolling using scroll bars in a GUI has not altered for over a decade, and an improvement like this makes a lot of sense. It may not aesthetically be the most attractive solution right now, but as time goes by it's highly likely this could end up in desktop software and operating systems.
It's going to be interesting seeing how this concept develops and whether it will make it into the wider world of mainstream software.
Fellow readers of liquidicity, we are surprised. Genuinely surprised.
People print our posts.
We never realised that many of our readers actually like to have a real, physical copy of some of our posts to (I guess) stick on their wall, put in their scrapbook, hand out in the street, or do anything else with.
In all honesty, we never designed liquidicity for printing, and only rarely print posts off ourselves. So today, we decided to see just how bad liquidicity looked on paper - horrendous! The navigation bar showed up as an unordered, un-styled, empty list. The sidebar showed below the content, running over several pages. The default font was, gasp, Times New Roman, and the rest was just bad.
Worst of all, for even short posts at least 3 sheets of A4 paper needed to be printed due to the unordered layout spiralling off down the page. What a waste of ink and paper.
We immediately got to work on a new printable style sheet. Now whenever you print a post on liquidicity, your discerning eyes will be met with a centred, red, bold title, a well sized font, a focus on content, organised comments, and nothing else. No sidebar, no category links, no "digg this" - nothing that isn't needed on a piece of paper. All in a lovely paper friendly font: Helvetica.
So, all we can say is... find your favourite post and hit "Print"! But not too many times, because we really do like trees.
Many thanks to Stass for pointing out that people actually print stuff off once in a while.
Only a small post, but I just signed in to Google Mail and received a loading bar progress indicator.
No need to stop the press, but it's a whole lot more useful than the old "Loading..." message.
I hope they do the same with file attachment uploads as well. Progress indicators are a much more user friendly display of loading times than just a spinning icon, or as previously on Google Mail, writing "Loading...".
Hint: Always aim to explain to your users the progress of whatever operation they are waiting for. Progress bars are a simple and efficient way of doing so.
Gary Jones from BlueFur contacted me today about a new project they're working on call BlueFur Jobs.
The aim is simple- to turn Wordpress into an easy to manage job board that anyone can host. It's not quite ready, but you can try it out here. The best thing about it is when it is 100% ready for prime time they're going to release the code for free so we can all enjoy the benefits of their blood, sweat and cheers.
I wrote about the project over at GoSquared Discuss earlier today, but I thought I would promote it to liquidicity so everyone can see what a great piece of work this is.
I tested it out briefly and first impressions are great:
The Great Stuff
* Posting of new jobs is really simple
* Useful RSS Feeds for each job category
* Instant preview of job post
* Clear division of job categories at both top and bottom of page
* "next" and "previous" job categories at bottom of page
* No sign-in necessary
* Overall really simple to use
Improvements That Could be Made
* First and foremost - a search function would make it much easier to find jobs. Especially if the number of jobs reaches into the hundreds.
* People may not be over keen on their email address being posted out in the open. Perhaps hiding this with a coded image or a hashed code would be better.
* Greater focus on "job description" to ensure enough detail on what the job is about is given. Perhaps allow basic html formatting (bold, italics, bullets etc.)
* On posting a new job, clicking "preview" would ideally scroll the page up to where the preview text shows.
* Indication of new jobs to returning visitors with an icon or formatting.
To Make it Kick-ass
* Link "location" field to a mapping site like Google Maps.
* Allow people to sign in to post jobs without having to fill everything in again.
* Ability to share a job with friends by email.
All in all, BlueFur Jobs looks to be an awesome job board, and we are really looking forward to seeing it develop.
Drop a comment to help them out - they are looking for as much help as possible while they develop it.
Inquisitor, the brilliant little search plugin for Safari has been purchased by web giant Yahoo!
In a move that has surprised many, Yahoo! has seemingly made a smart decision here. The Inquisitor plugin is used by a large number of Apple users to get instant search results from the built in search field that Safari comes with. The search field defaults to Google when Safari is first downloaded, enabling both Google and Apple to earn through search advertising from a high number of searches. So Yahoo! will ensure Inquisitor's default search is through them to increase their slice of the multi-billion dollar search advertising market. Thankfully, the default search engine is still changeable via the newly designed preference pane.
Yahoo! purchasing this plugin is not just a sign of good business sense. It is a very clear example of the importance of interface design. Interface = Brand. The interface of Inquisitor is beautiful, and has developed throughout its life. Being a user of Inquisitor from the beginning, it has been great to see it develop into a thoroughly useful, efficient, and beautiful tool.
Let's hope the buyout from Yahoo! will keep Inquisitor at its prime for years to come.
On a side note, David Watanabe has not joined the ranks of Yahoo!, he's still focused on creating his own awesome software.
Just over 2 days ago, we launched the all new GoSquared, introducing the GoSquared Network, the completely rewritten Control Panel, Squares on other Sites, and more.
In just 2 days, we already have 14 Sites on the GoSquared Network, with more joining every day. We are really pleased that after a large influx of new users, the Control Panel is now available to thousands of Members.
The launch went smoothly, but there were a large number of bugs that simply couldn't be sorted out until we were online. We have been working without much sleep for the last few days to fix as many bugs as possible, and improve the most important areas of the site. Here's some of the fixes we have been working on:
New My Info Area
We have completely redesigned the My Info area, giving a polished finish to your GoSquared Account details. Editing your Account details will now lead to a more familiar CP edit pane.
Top Sites
The Top Sites list on the Squares Homepage is now fully functional, and displays the most popular Sites at any given point in time based on their GoSquared Reputation.
Recently Joined Sites
At the base of the Squares Homepage is a quick preview of the most recently joined Sites on the GoSquared Network. All Sites are given a large thumbnail preview image that is updated regularly. You can see more Sites by clicking the left and right arrows. New Sites are automatically added to the queue for this preview area, regardless of Reputation, giving all new Sites publicity before they have spent a penny.
Support Wiki
The GoSquared Support Wiki is growing, with more and more information being added every day to help you out with viewing and using GoSquared. If you need help with anything, or think anything is missing from the Support Wiki, just Contact Us.
Other bugs that aren't so interesting
Fixed a bug where GoSquared Reputation displayed error codes before Site had installed GSTC. Now shows "GSTC not yet installed" message.
Sign in fields for drop down on Sign In and Join pages no longer take default "edit pane: appearance. Now take browser default appearance, and smaller size.
Added "New" icon to Squares title in navigation bar for non-secure pages. Members signed in to the Control Panel don't see this, because they already know the Squares system is new.
Added online status to Squares Overview in Control Panel, so you can see at a glance which Squares are currently public and which are awaiting approval.
We have been working on building this for a long time now, and are proud to finally present the long awaited Squares system.
We are introducing 3 major new products with this release today:
All New Control Panel
Sign in, or join GoSquared to experience where most of our time has been spent. We think you'll like it.
The all new Control Panel lets you do what you want to do, fast. From here you can monitor all of your Squares from one page, view dynamic graphs of your traffic data, update your Site details in real time, and a whole lot more.
Instead of reading more about what the Control Panel is like, why not try it out for yourself, by joining GoSquared for free today.
By adding your Site to GoSquared, you not only gain the ability to sell Squares on your own Site, but can also monitor traffic from within the Control Panel.
Squares on other Sites
GoSquared is perhaps the easiest way to purchase advertising on any Site. Simply submit your Square, a 140x140 pixel image, and choose some keywords. GoSquared matches these keywords with similar Sites on the GoSquared Network, and suggests the most potentially effective ones. You can then choose to purchase your Square on as many of these Sites as you like, for as long as you like. Click purchase, and you're done.
Your Square will show up in the Control Panel instantly, and you can start monitoring from there.
Want to advertise on liquidicity? Get your square up in as little as five minutes flat. With thousands of views daily at your disposal get seen the GoSquared way and best of all, only:
$4 for 1 Day $20 for 1 Week $40 for 1 Month $119 for 1 Year
