Denial of expertise

At a certain point, you have to admit you aren’t good enough to do something better than an expert could do it even if the technical option exists for you to give it a shot anyway.

There’s been a lot of hubbub about the iPad and hackery. I think there are plenty of talented experts in the open source field. I think the pundits that complain the loudest are usually not those experts.

iPad Not Charging? Not Really.

Yeah, I didn’t get bit by this myself, but it’s a big deal. It amounts to a smack on the wrists for Apple UX people who didn’t button this issue up tight pre-launch, but it’s something that we should all remember. From RWW:

Generally speaking, RTFM is not enough. Thinking through user experience, including testing by people outside the team, is mandatory.

Headfirst Insanity: 6 Gnarly Helmetcam Videos

Numbers 2 and 4 are particularly stunning. Check out the racing — falling — through the Rio slums on a mountain bike. Videos like these are why I blog.

iPad Teardown – iFixit

I don’t have my iPad yet so I’m doing my very best to reserve judgement on just how it’s going to change things. But based on iFixit’s teardown, I think I can safely say that there is an equal amount of engineering inside this thing as there is pure art.

Andy Ihnatko’s Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA) » iPad and Multitasking

Couldn’t agree more.

So it disappoints me to see commentators on TV today dinging the iPad for a lack of multitasking. A tech expert whose mission is to communicate tricky technology to civilian audiences can’t let that pitch go by with a flat “no.” You also shouldn’t offer a flat “yes” but at least the statement “the iPad OS multitasks” is technically correct. You’re there to educate. Which means that you don’t want people to come away thinking that (for example) iPod playback stops when you try to get your mail or fire off a Tweet.

End User: Get more latitude out of iPhone 3Gs photos

Ryan Brenizer shares his thoughts on HDR apps for the iPhone (3Gs). Results are pretty damned good. Check out his post for examples and links to Pro HDR and TruHDR in the iTunes store.

HDR is just a tool to fix the inherent problem most digital cameras have of being able to capture a much smaller range of lights and darks than the human eye, and few cameras need fixing as badly as a tiny cell phone camera. With all of those pixels crammed in to a space so small, each pixel isn't receiving very much light, and that tends to mean noisy images with blown out highlights. The noise problem is hard to fix, but tonal range is relatively simple: Just take a picture exposed for the shadows, another for the highlights, and slap them together. And that, simply and easily, is what both of these applications do.

MediaPost Publications How Topeka Capitalized On Google’s April Fools’ Joke

The tourism board did have one major challenge: it didn't have a way to determine the return on investment for its paid search campaign. Sheley hopes to change that by initiating a call to action to account for conversions. The plan is to drive people to the tourism Web page and prompt them to download a visitor's guide or book a vacation on or through the site.

KFC’s Bacon Sandwich On Fried Chicken “Bread” Starts Killing People Nationwide April 12

Here’s a horrific bit of something:

For those coming late to the story, it’s bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken. And now, many months later, I’ll finally be able to get my hands on one.

KFC announced the decision to go live with the Double Down yesterday, but we weren’t sure they weren’t playing a April Fools gag. But no, they truly are going nationwide with the delicacy on April 12.

I’m still holding out for the April Fools gag. There’s someone at KFC who has to have forgotten to make a call to someone important. This is the sort of thing that’s just wickedly funny after a bottle or two of cabernet, but just not so clever the next morning.

Google Mail Envelopes by Rahul Mahtani & Yofred Moik » Yanko Design

Just cause, in the last five minutes, I haven’t yet lost interest in this Google Maps Envelopes thing. Lots of pictures this time. First-world humor here.  

Google Envelopes turns Gmail into snail mail

Here’s a concept that couldn’t have come together until all the right technological planets aligned, and is still about 25 years late.

The envelope itself would be a Google Maps representation of the quickest route to transfer said message from you to the recipient if roadways and kayaks were used in place of fiber and coax, giving the receiver a crucially awesome keepsake each time you dropped him or her a line.

Gizmodo’s Essential iPad Apps

Particularly interesting how all three major newspapers went with a more traditional newspaper design. Smells a bit like they’re trying to remind me of just how great it was when I paid for something that looked a lot like paper, too.

I think it’s fair to say that Amazon is a bellwether for things to come in the swirl of holiday purchases. This year’s announcement that the company fulfilled more ebook sales than paper book sales seems like an appropriately big deal, even if it’s guaranteed to give my mother-in-law palpitations.

Likely the biggest culprit at Amazon is the Kindle, and while we don’t know how many were actually sold this year, Amazon says it was the highest-selling product in the company’s history. It beat the iPod touch — historically top-seller around the holidays. This is all well and good, but remember that Amazon is the only place you can buy the Kindle; clearly not the case with the iPod, or any other top sellers at Amazon.

Still, according to this, if you’re not reading an ebook now, you will be soon. Prepare for the robot uprising, people.

I was a skinny kid. Through elementary school and middle school, I was the tallest in class, and the scrawniest. I wasn’t very athletic, and dealt with some gross motor coordination issues that kept me from being anything terribly graceful. When I was 11, my dad brought home our first computer, and Apple II in 1983. When I was 13, EA released Bard’s Tale I: Tales of the Unknown. I was 11 when I discovered computers. I was 13 when I fell in love with technology.

And, since I wasn’t naturally good at moving around, and had some internal spark of talent at the keyboard, that’s where I stayed. I was, by in large, sedentary through highschool, unless by act of grade hijack. Luckily, my metabolism was on my side, and I managed to stay the skinny kid through college. When I got married, at 26, I was still at my fighting weight of 190.

All this is coming back to me tonight because of Alex Fuka. Alex married Lily, a good friend and client, less than six months ago. Alex is the love of Lily’s life; they have been blessedly perfect for one another.

A few hours ago, Alex suffered a massive heart attack and died while out walking in the cool afternoon air.

And tonight, my friend Lily is alone. She’s surrounded by family, her daughter, her friends, her chaplain, but she is alone. When she started today, she was of a pair. This evening, she is deserted.

As much as I could try to post something pithy, some link to a fabulous new tool, all that seems to matter today is this cold reminder that I — that all of us — need to take better care. As technologists, we need to move more, eat less, and stay strong.

I don’t know the details yet about Alex’s condition that lead to his heart attack, but I know mine. I’m no longer at my fighting weight. And I’m still not very graceful in dancing shoes. But every day that passes the stakes on my health go up just a little bit.

So tonight, I offer this bit of grist for the mill, since it’s where my heart and head will be: hug your loved ones, and may your rest tonight be sound. And as your days fill with business, step back and muse carefully on the things that matter more.

The great thing about the vast majority of musicians is that they are at the same time gracious and generous people, and hungry for attention. That means, if you point a microphone at them and turn on a little red light, by-in-large, they start singing.

So it was when Curt and I started Acoustic Conversations a few years back. The first show was a convoluted mix of stunning flamenco riffs lovingly gifted to us by our good friend John Carlson and poorly mic’d wannabe talk radio. Still, that conversation sparked something cool, and posted a stitch in time that leads to today, the last show of our second season, and our newest addition to the family, James Jeffrey-West.

James is a stunningly warm person. I say that as a point of contrast, I think. He’s a contrast to jokers who try to own a room with ego and pomp; he’s a contrast to yahoos who enter a room with jokester hippery; he’s a contrast to crooners who slide into a room with sticky smug insincerity. When James came into the AC lounge, well, we wanted to give him a hug.

In his bio, James says he plays “good, honest acoustic” music. Insofar as we couldn’t see the allusion when we kicked off the interview, we were wrapped up in it by the end. His songs are gracefully simple packages, easy on the ear and difficult to shake. His song-writing is at once worldly and approachable; he weaves his broad life experience into tales that are most often too short to be completely satisfying.

We talked a lot in this show. So much, in fact, that we didn’t actually get to all the music that we’d intended. It’s a shame, too, because for my money, the best tracks of the evening were those recorded after the show had ended. Take a special listen to Sacramento International, a haunting lullaby to congested air travel; and Half a World Away, an anthem to bifurcated love in ticklish harmonics. You’ll find the show, as well as all six of the tracks we recorded with James available free in iTunes. Please subscribe to support the show.

I deeply hope you enjoy the music of James Jeffrey-West. He’s a new favorite of ours and we’re thrilled to bring him to the show. As ever, comments welcome, but mostly, just go buy his CD. It’s in iTunes, CDBaby, and just about everywhere else music is served.