Read the Top 100 Requests on Dear Adobe and see if you agree.

Adobe has a lot of work to do to please their customers. This is a site that has been set up for us poor developers, designers, animators, and general creatives to vent our anger at Adobe - the company, the products, and their pricing. If Adobe ignores this site, and sees it as a small number of angered individuals determined to destroy Adobe's reputation they will be much mistaken. This site has comments from some of the most loyal users of Adobe products, from the people that genuinely care about their business, and these are also the most vocal - they are the core users that matter most to Adobe.

They are telling Adobe, directly, and in crystal clear English, exactly what is wrong with their current business. They're even telling them how to put it right.

Dear Adobe, Ignore this site at your peril.

Still exchanging business cards on a daily basis? Surely there's a better way in this modern age of web communications. There is, in fact there are many better ways than exchanging small pieces of card, but the latest (and possibly greatest) development in this area is a new service called Hello My Name is e.

What is E?

There's no better description of the service than on their own site:

"E is a service that integrates all your existing social services into an E•ID, which you can share with anyone in the real world. To exchange E•ID's, you just need an internet-enabled mobile phone like an iPhone or Blackberry. When you exchange your E•ID's, E makes sure your contacts get added to your other social services like Netlog, Twitter, Last.fm, Soocial, automatically."

So, essentially, you sign up for E, get an E•ID (a simple 5 digit code), and when you meet someone you want to get to know better, you exchange E•IDs by typing each other's into your web enabled phones.

Very simple, very convenient. At this point, you may be thinking - WAIT! I can already do this with existing services such as Dropcard. The cool thing about E is that it automatically adds the contact's details to all available services, so will instantly be following them on Twitter, and checking how compatible their music taste is with Last.fm.

E Connector

There is also a hardware component, to make things even easier, called E Connector.

"Connector is a device designed specifically for the E service. Connector allows you to add somebody to E, and all integrated services, in one simple gesture: Press two Connectors together and you’ve exchanged E•ID's. It’s that simple."

Very Apple-esque in it's simplicity (and design). Nonetheless, I like it, and if enough people start joining the service, this could really take off. However, that is the crux of this concept - unless it gains mainstream appeal, they are going to struggle to survive.

I really hope this concept does well - it would be great to see it develop with more services (Facebook, are you listening?) and gain mainstream use. If I were working at E right now, though, I would be worried. What if Apple were to simply put this feature into a firmware update for the iPhone? Same with Blackberry. Touch two iPhones together, exchange vCards, add to all services on there. Sure there wouldn't be this level of cross compatibility, but if it ended up in the iPhone, it could turn out that other companies would follow to support the standard that Apple would set.

All together, it looks like a great service. I've signed up for the beta and can't wait to try it out.

Last.fm is a fantastic online service that monitors (scrobbles) the music you play through iTunes, and updates your profile with the latest song information. It then builds on this data by notifying you of trends - who you listen to most, what your favourite genres are etc. and goes a step further to suggest other artists you may like.

Last.fm itself, the website, has just been redesigned and lives up to a very high standard that could draw many similarities to Facebook. The desktop app is also very well designed, keeping the interface simple, only showing what is needed and nothing more. The desktop app also ensures that what is important - the song information - is clearly and prominently displayed.

That's why when the original Last.fm iPhone App was released, it had a lot to live up to. The original was good, but not amazing, with quite a few features missing, and a less than smooth interface.

However, almost all of the faults of the original have now been eliminated with the latest release of Last.fm for iPhone:

• Major improvements to the user interface all around (tap to zoom album art)
• Ability to tag songs
• Personal tag radio
• Calendar based events view
• Common artists when viewing a user profile
• Lots of other usability and back-end updates

Tag Songs

Probably the most requested feature of the original app was the ability to tag songs. You can now tag any song with as many tags as you wish, and are greeted with an instant search that autofills with suggestions for tags. You can also start a new "station" based on any tag you wish. This is brilliant - they have taken user requests seriously, and not just delivered on them, but have exceeded expectations.

Cover Art Zoom

A nice little UI feature has been added on the "Now Playing" screen - the ability to double tap and zoom in or out of the album art. Simple but sweet.

Beautiful Startup Screen

Normally, waiting for an app to start is an arduous task. However, with Last.fm, the start screen is truly attractive - black to dark grey gradient, with Last.fm prominently displayed in the centre in crisp white. There is also a subtle loading animation - the "as" of Last.fm (and AudioScrobbler) winds around to indicate the app is working. First impressions count, and this is probably the most understated attractive loading screen of any app I have used.

Calendar View

A new view for the Events screen is Calendar View. Essentially this is the same as month view in iCal, and it makes perfect sense to put it here. You can now easily see any upcoming events of the selected artist by simply browsing over a calendar view.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and highly recommend you try out Last.fm for iPhone. Best of all, it's free, so what excuse could you possibly have!

You could also read Last.fm's official release post here.

Download Last.fm from the App Store.

The Future of Web Apps (FOWA) Expo is back in London for October 8th-10th at the London ExCel Center and boy, it's going to be one hell of a show!

Speakers include Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Kevin Rose (Digg), Blane Cook (Twitter) plus many more from the likes of Google, Salesforce, AOL, and Mahalo. Also attending (and speaking) are the guys from 280North, creators of 280Slides and Cappuccino that we wrote about a while ago.

We are very excited as we were unable to attend last year's FOWA and will be there on October 10th ready to chat, share, learn, and party!

Kevin and Alex are also going to be there shooting a live diggnation from the main stage at 7:30pm on October 10th where Google will be providing the (alcoholic) refreshments. After which, the wrap party will get started with Facebook and Digg kicking things off. (I've heard that Facebook are going to be sponsoring an open bar.)

The celebrations are going to be epic. We hope to see you all there and look forward to meeting a wealth of interesting people that are changing the web as we know it. There will ofcourse be free wifi for all (probably provided by the Cloud) so you can keep those posts coming even while you're having lunch.

Get your passes for all 3 days of the event over at Carsonified's FOWA site.

See you there!

Do you remember earlier this year a web application called 280Slides?

Let's refresh our memory a little bit - 280Slides was a stunning piece of work both on the beautiful UI that felt like a native OS X app, right through to the core that was an entirely new framework that promised to make developing web applications just the same as building desktop ones. Well today that framework has been launched to the public (with a suitably beautiful icon) as open source, and it's called Cappuccino.

There's not much I can say about Cappuccino right now that isn't on their site, other than give my full support for this truly advanced framework. What sets it apart from other javascript frameworks such as MooTools (which we love and use extensively by the way), script.aculo.us, and jquery is that Cappuccino is built specifically for developing full blow web applications, not just sprucing up existing web pages and adding a little dynamism. Cappuccino, in fact, is so far removed from existing ways* of building web applications that they claim you won't need to know very much about web development at all:

"With Cappuccino, you don't need to know HTML. You'll never write a line of CSS. You don't ever have to interact with DOM. We only ask developers to learn one technology, Objective-J, and one set of APIs."

This is a massive step in the right direction for existing desktop application developers (especially those already developing for OS X) as they can relatively easily start building similar applications "for the cloud" and harness the power of the web to push the boundaries of their application design.

We are really looking forward to having a play around with Cappuccino, and we highly recommend you popping over to their site simply to check it out and learn more.

* Sprout Core also takes a similar view to building web applications (rather than adding AJAX to HTML pages), but it's a different framework that still requires you to learn web based languages. Sprout Core was covered extensively (around the same time as 280Slides) when Apple released MobileMe which is built using Sprout Core.

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.

We are overwhelmed with the response from our first post on the Dream Browser project.

To follow up, we have a couple of small mockups of 1) A better way to look at Bookmarks, and 2) How you might go about viewing videos.

A Better Way of Looking at Bookmarks

We have CoverFlow in iTunes, we have it in the Finder, where next? Yep, the Browser.

CoverFlow is a controversial concept - people either love it or hate it. One could argue that CoverFlow makes sense in iTunes as you can view all of your music just like the ol' days by flipping through your virtual CD covers. One could also argue that it makes sense in the Finder because you can view all of your documents with a scaled down instant preview without even having to open them.

 However, there are others who may argue that CoverFlow is an over-engineered,  graphics hungry, time wasting piece of eye candy.

 I must admit I don't use CoverFlow terribly often in the Finder - it is useful for pictures, PSDs, and videos, but when I get to my Applications folder, CoverFlow serves very little purpose.

Hang on a minute, though - when was the last time you browsed through your internet history? How long did it take to find what you were looking for? It's true - currently, internet browser history sucks. To make a start, things need to be more visual.

Introducing CoverFlow into the Browser makes perfect sense - whenever you navigate to a web page, the Browser could capture a screen shot of that page at a smaller resolution of, say, 640x480. These images would then be stored in a directory that was easily accessible by the user. When browsing history, any item deleted would also remove the thumbnail from the directory.

Add to this an advanced method of search. When you currently search your history or bookmarks, the browser compares your search term to the URL and title of each page. A far superior way of finding what you want would be to index every site you have navigated to, so when you search, your query will be compared to more than just the title and URL, but also the very contents of every page, just like Spotlight does with your documents.

How to View Videos

In Sebastiaan's original post, he mentioned the archaic way of viewing video that is still the norm on the web.

 Breaking content apart has been something of a challenge for years on the web - separating content from design with HTML and CSS, but not much has been done on the user side to aid separation of content such as text, video, and pictures.

If we were able to identify different media (which we are), we could organise, for instance, all of the videos you have viewed in the last day into a list, and the same for photos, and maybe even maps*.

 The image above shows a simple, iTunes style list of videos. These videos could be QuickTime, YouTube, or any other video content provider theoretically. Perhaps it would be more beneficial to restrict the classification of content as"Video" within the Browser to avoid Flash sites being organised into the same category. Restricting the classification of video could be done by filtering files from certain domains that are between a range of media sizes.

So, for example, if the domain of the video file is one of the following "media-site-1.com; media-site-2.com; media-site-3.com;" AND the filetype is one of the following ".flv; .mov; .avi; .swf" AND the filesize is  between "X mb" and "Y mb" THEN class content as "Video"

 *Maps - that one literally just came to me - perhaps with a plug in we could gain better ways of keeping track of maps within the browser, and relating those maps to other information, such as contacts, web addresses, and more. 

 Just a few more thoughts, please keep the feedback coming!

 I might upload the Illustrator file I made for the screens I have been producing so you guys can visualise some of your ideas if you want.

Thanks, oh and see the previous post if you're not sure what this is all about.

The other day, Sebastiaan de With of Cocoia wrote a blog post entitled "My Dream Browser".

This immediately grabbed my attention and reminded me of a few ideas I had a while ago for changes in the browser space.

Here is one of the images he posted to visualise his ideas:

The internet browser market is currently moving quickly in terms of new competition with the release of Safari for Windows, and Firefox 3 in beta, but in terms of design and UI it has been a while since any major changes took place.

The problem with current browsers is they are not designed for the new ways we are using the internet - RSS feeds are a late addition in the whole scheme of things, downloads are resigned to a small window in the background, and other media such as video and photos are still embedded into pages with no easy way of cutting through the clutter.

With this growing multitude of content flying around, perhaps a more organised approach would enable users to collect and share information online easily and efficiently.

Looking at iTunes, the most popular media software in the world, media is organised into groups of Music, Videos, TV Shows, Purchased Content, and then User Defined selection (Playlists). What if a similar approach was taken to the web? It would make sense - imagine being able to see all of the videos you have watched in the last week in a single list, with the ability to play any of them all from one page. Imagine you are downloading a 90 page PDF while also downloading a new app from your friend's site, as well as downloading the latest movie trailer from the Quicktime site and being able to monitor all your downloads, and see what type of media each of them are, without even leaving the current window.

That's our dream browser.

We also had some UI ideas of our own, some of which we are working on bringing into GoSquared itself sometime in the future.

You may remember, a while ago we wondered "why isn't CoverFlow in Safari?", well we still wonder, and it would definitely be in the browser of our dreams. CoverFlow wasn't the only idea we had though...

Take this scenario:

I find an image I really like on a page and want to share it with a friend or a colleague. Currently, I copy and paste the image into my favourite email client (Mail), fill out the "To:" field with his or her name, and maybe leave a little comment in the "Subject:" field, then maybe another little "Yo, check this out" in the body field, and then I hit send.

Wouldn't it be cool if you could do this:

Drag the image to my friend's name in the sidebar, and wait for it to arrive in his inbox.

The ability to do things like this would drastically improve the way people communicate ideas on a regular basis.

We have a few more ideas, and this blog post could run on for another few days, but for now we would love to hear what you guys and girls think.

We are actively working on the browser to make it a reality - Danny Greg from Crimson Sky Software is the lead developer on this project and he is just as passionate as we are about creating this awesome browser.

If you would like to help out, or have any ideas of your own, please let us know below!