Thoughts on Safari (browser)

I just downloaded and installed the Safari 4 browser from Apple and it is, well, ugly! The ugliness is particularly bad on the rendering of its' tabs. The tabs are integrated into the window title bar with clumsy 3-D affects. It also eschews the former brushed aluminum theme for drab beige. I find this particularly disturbing since the software comes from one of the few technology companies that actually pays attention to design.

I was able to mitigate the ugliness a little by hiding the menu, bookmarks, and status bars. However, there's no changing the tabs. At first I rationalized the look in two ways. One, the software is beta so the appearance of the UI may change And two, Apple may be taking digs at Microsoft's Windows XP operating system. On further thought, neither makes sense as Apple should never risk its' reputation for design by releasing ugly software, especially on the most common desktop OS in the world.

That's not to say that Safari isn't a great web browser, it is innovative on a few fronts. First among these is speed, but does the average web surfer notice the speed of their browser? Maybe not, but the speed of Safari allows its' top page and history features to display and scroll pages. This works much like the CoolIris add-in (for IE and Firefox). I've only had Safari for a couple of hours, and I've already found the history search very useful.

The browser wars are heating up again and it's getting interesting. Internet Explorer 8, Chrome, FireFox, and Safari are all great software each with a compelling story. As for me, I use Explorer for all our intranet applications and Chrome as my default browser.

Tweetdeck

I've been using TweetDeck lately to submit my Twitter tweets. At first this seemed like a convenient way to tweet in absence of the instant messaging capability. While that is true, TweetDeck's real benefit comes in reading the tweets that I follow.

I always found the Twitter website a little clumsy for reading the streams of messages. That's because Twitter presents a single thread of messages displayed in the order they were posted. So my technology messages are intermixed with world news intermixed with gossips intermixed with nonsense. The result amounted to little more than noise.

TweetDeck solves this problems by grouping related tweets into columns. I separated technology and new into their own columns, for instance. Since installing TweetDeck, I find that I follow Twitter much more consistently (well OK, I generally ignored it before).

TweetDeck is also interesting because it is constructed and deployed on Adobe Air. Adobe Air runs Internet applications outside a browser and it therefore an interesting technology solving the multi-browser problem (which is getting worse, not better).

Atlantis found?

CrunchGear posted a blog indicating that Atlantis has been found. Sure, the source is a British tabloid, but apparently the ancient city was found using Google Earth.

While Atlantis is interesting in and of itself, the real story here is the technology. Google has been collecting data on the ocean floors using sonar. Impressive as it is that Google hired drivers to snap pictures of our major cities, it is even more incredible that they have hired boats to gather data about the ocean floor and stitch that data into their maps.

Don’t think of BI as an all-in-one solution

I recently had a short conversation on Business Intelligence with one of my peers. I tried to explain the premise that a Business Intelligence application in our industry (Health Care) should not be a one-size-fits all solution. Instead the technology should be tailored to the types of questions that it will need to answer most frequently.

When he claimed "of course it has to be able to answer any question, otherwise we could just write queries," I realized I failed to make my point. He is not the first person I've met to have this opinion. In fact, the opinion is pretty pervasive among my peers; and it is wrong.

Our Business Intelligence solution is a textbook case highlighting this point. Its' saga is a story for another day, but in our attempt to make it very flexible we failed to make it strong. That is, there's no limit to the reports you can create, but it's not great at answering any particular question.

I liken this to the difference between a hammer and a Swiss Army Knife. A hammer is great at driving nails, better than any other tool for this task. It also happens to be pretty good at removing nails too. A Swiss Army knife can do a lot of things from clipping nails to opening cans. But it's not particularly good at any of them.

The real beauty of a hammer, though, is the other things that it can do pretty well. In fact, if put to the test, it isn't hard to come up with at least as many tasks as can be done with a hammer as with the Swiss Army Knife. It can be a door-stop, a paper-weight, a meat tenderizer, a garden shovel, and more. Sure, it's lousy at tightening screws, but it can really drive nails.

Don't get me wrong. There's a place for firms that build all-in-one software. In fact, my former employer Information Builders is one such firm. My current BI solution is built on a MicroStrategy platform, another Swiss Army Knife vendor. Vertical solutions, like our health care application, need to be targeted; they need to be really good at particular questions.

Unfortunately, many designers of Business Intelligence solutions try to make Swiss Army Knives when they really need hammers. And given a good hammer and an innovative user, there will soon be many other tasks suitable for the tool.

I might have saved a life

I might have saved a life today. In truth, my actions were more instinctive than intentional; I had prevented a stranger from being struck by a car by grabbing his coat as he stepped off a Manhattan curb and into traffic. The oncoming car was speeding fast down the narrow street, trying to make a green light. The stranger was concentrating on his iPhone and was oblivious to the danger. It was unlikely that the driver could have stopped in time, and the man surely would have been struck. He was shaken after the incident and thanked me, claiming I saved his life.

Later, as I replayed the scene, I wondered about the thought process that led to my grabbing a complete stranger and pulling him back out of harm's way. Of course it happened so fast that I was not conscious of the decisions I had to make. In short, I saw a speeding car and an unaware pedestrian and naturally reached out to prevent the accident. But were my actions natural? Sure, it was easy to access the danger of the situation, but the choice to grab the man was selected over other possibilities. I could have shouted a warning; I could have done nothing and hoped for the best; or I could have alerted the driver.

At first blush my decision seems obvious among the choices. Still, though, there was more information to process. I had to decide that the probability the man would be struck was very high. And I had to weigh the risk of him getting hurt against the chance that he would take offense at being forcibly grabbed by a stranger. This last point is trickier than it may seem, because I had to judge that it was appropriate to touch him and I wonder how I would have reacted if it was a different person. Would I grab a woman in the same way? Would I a grab a homeless person? Is the fact that he was a man similar to me a factor in saving him from injury? I like to think that I would react the same regardless of the person at harm.

In the end the only thing that matters was the man did not get injured. I suppose it was nice, too, that he was appreciative.

Every second

Every now and then I come across a web site that seems like nonsense, but then turns out kind of cool. Such is the case with every second, a simple web site with several animations representing events in the world (or universe).

Visually, the site is attractive; it is rendered in gray-scale with a modern sans-serif font. There is one UI anomaly though, the links for Category, and item seemed reversed. But once you get past the odd click arrangement the site is pretty cool.

Cool yes, but not terribly useful. Maybe it is nonsense after all.

Sad saga of a three and a half hour commute

Wrong decisions aren't necessarily bad decisions. After all, choosing to walk from Maze on 54Th street to Penn Station on a beautiful night isn't a bad decision. As it turned out, though, is was the wrong decision. So shortly before 10pm I set out on foot to enjoy the night and sights of midtown Manhattan.

A wise man would have checked his watch. And a wise man would know the train schedule. I did not check either my watch or the schedule; two mistakes I should not make as a seasoned commuter. 

As it turns out, these were unfortunate errors because I arrived at Penn Station just minutes after my train had left. The next train was at 11:18pm, just under an hour wait.

Penn Station in New York is not a very pleasant place. During the day is bustles with activity as commuters pour out in the morning and pour back in later. Commuters are like automatons; showing little emotion they rush to their destination trying to interact with other as little as possible. There is nothing interesting or pretty about the station, it is completely utilitarian. At night it is a popular hang-out for the homeless. I spent my hour in the NJ Transit waiting area with my nose to my BlackBerry.

When the train was available for boarding, I found a quiet seat near the back and promptly fell asleep. I was awakened later by the conductor's announcement that our train had lost power. We had made it as far as the Secaucus transfer station; in the middle on the New Jersey swamps. The train was dead and the next one would be an hour wait.

By time I was home, it was 2am in the morning. After a half hour walk through Manhattan, an hour wait at Penn Station, an hour wait after my train was disabled, and an hour train ride home. Commuting is a bitch. But had I decided to take a cab to Penn Station, or even jump on the subway, I would have caught the 10:18 train and would have been snuggled in bed before midnight. Instead I made a wrong decision and paid the consequences.

Somebody agrees with my Chrome prediction

When Google introduced its' Chrome browser, I posted a short article on my thoughts (see Thoughts on Google Chrome). One of my conclusions was that the browser which would most feel competitive pressure would by FireFox.

"...If my browsing patterns are common, though, then Firefox will suffer more. In the end, Firefox and Chrome may just duke it out..."

Today I read an article with a similar conclusion. I'm happy that someone out there agrees.

The article, though, overlooks the primary reason why IE will remain the dominate browser; the fact remains that a huge library of browser based applications are not cross-browser (case in point, my team's products). This software is not aimed at the consumer or deployed on the World Wide Web. Instead the applications are deployed on corporate intranets around the world, assuring that IE remains the browser of choice for IT departments.

Meme

My introduction to YouTube was a viral video titled "Boom Goes the Dynamite". As it turned out, the video became part of Internet lore, and the term part of American vernacular. There are dozens of similar videos that have become what is called "meme" (pronounced meem). For those of us who quickly delete chain email, or don't have the inclination to follow viral stories, there is a source for the most significant meme, KnowYourMeme.

Know your meme is more than a collection of YouTube links. They have their own videos hosted by geeks in lab coats. They describe the source of the meme, show clips from the original source, and even follow-up on some of the near-celebrities. Check it out and never get left out of idle conversations again.