Less than one year ago, most of my clients were requesting iPhone app design. Today they are still asking for iPhone app design but many also say, Do you do Android, too? Most of them plan to start with one platform, see how things go, and then decide whether to invest in the second platform. This roll-out strategy is often tied into engineering costs. Since few developers possess the coding skills required for each platformObjective C for iPhone and Java for Androidit's often necessary to hire two development teams. But what about design?

Would I, too, have to do twice the work when designing for the iPhone and Android? And what will happen if the Windows, Palm, and Blackberry app stores take off? Would I have to do five times the work? This dilemma reminded of the browser wars back in 1996, when Netscape and Microsoft used to hire evangelists to teach design and coding for their respective browsers. Eventually these proprietary standards were replaced with industry-wide standards but it didn't happen overnight.

Many say the same will be true of the different smartphone platforms, that they'll eventually be replaced with something like HTML 5. This could happen at some point, but we're not there yet. HTML 5 works well for web apps and hybrid apps. Web apps look very much like native apps but they can't access device data and hardware such as the user's contacts, the photo library, voice recording, and device movement. In contrast, hybrid apps, which provide access to web content through a web viewing area, can access the device hardware and include native user interface elements. Companies like PhoneGap provide tools to simplify cross-platform development for hybrid apps. Using these tools, developers can create apps that are nearly identical across platforms. This may be effective for certain apps, e.g., games, but productivity apps, e.g., email, may want to customize the UI for each platform.

So we're back to the dilemma: do designers have to do twice the work to create native apps for the iPhone and Android? Based on my recent analysis, I came to this conclusion: the app definition and concept phases would be very similar regardless of platform, but the app refinement and production phases would require adaptions to create full-fledged native apps for each platform. The remainder of this article discusses these differences based on these four phases: Definition, Exploration, Refinement, Production.

Definition

In the definition phase user research can help you acquire a deep understanding of your users' needs and how these needs are currently being met. With this research foundation, you may uncover opportunities for new apps and develop innovative solutions that improve upon existing apps. Your user research methods in the Definition phasediary studies, user interviews, shadowing will be similar regardless of platform. To learn more about these methods, consider reading Jan Chipchase's Methods Blog.

In the Definition phase, you'll also want to read each device's technical specifications and UI guidelines (e.g., iPhone Human Interface Guidelines , Android's User Interface Guidelines, Android UI Tips) Knowing what's possible will help when you get into concept development. App designers should also learn about multi-touch gestures which are well-documented in the following Touch Gesture Reference Guide. The iPhone and Android have significant overlap but there are a few exceptions.

Exploration

Armed with your upfront research, you'll want to start brainstorming and sketching app ideas. Try to be as platform agnostic as possible since it will allow you to freely explore a variety of concepts without getting bogged down by platform differences. This can be challenging if you have more experience with one platform since you'll naturally gravitate to what's familiar. For example, given my knowledge of the iPhone, I instinctively include Back buttons in my sketches, but Android doesn't use Back buttons. On Android, users must tap the Arrow button on the device to go back. As an alternative, a platform agnostic sketch could include arrows to illustrate navigation between screens. Similarly, storyboards can work well if they highlight the user and context and place less emphasis on screen designs.

Once you start prototyping and testing your app concepts, it will become increasingly difficult to remain platform agnostic, though this may depend on the app. For example, gaming apps tend to be self-contained so your prototypes may be very similar across platforms. But apps like Facebook and Yelp have different navigation styles for the iPhone and Android. If you test prototypes with users, they may be confused if the apps don't follow platform conventions. Notable differences between iPhone and Android navigation are summarized below.

iPhone and Android navigation differences

To illustrate these navigation differences, let's compare Facebook's iPhone and Android apps (see images below). Notice how the iPhone app has one button that goes Home/Back whereas the Android app uses the Facebook logo to go Home and the Arrow button on the device to go back. Tasks are also treated differently. On the iPhone primary tasks (status update and commenting) are accessed directly on the page; secondary tasks (load new posts) are accessed by pulling down the screen. On Android, status updates are treated the same way as the iPhone, however, other tasks are accessed through the Menu or by tapping and holding table rows.

Refine

Once you get into your app refinements, it will become increasingly difficult to incorporate abstract design elements. Even if you have an app that's self-contained, such as a game, you may have a sign up process, settings, or other features that require you to follow platform conventions. In some cases, you may be able to embed HTML within your native app but these controls may be less ideal than their native counterparts. For example, Android and iPhone have created widgets to make it easier to choose dates in the mobile context. Native apps can easily incorporate such widgets but embedded HTML pages can not. Below is a partial list of common UI controls for the iPhone and Android. For a complete list of iPhone UI controls, please see the Application Controls section in the iPhone HIG. Unfortunately, the Android UI Guidelines do not include UI controls. You may need to dig into the Android Developer Docs.

Production

When you reach the production phase of your app design process, you'll want to make sure your images are the correct resolution for each platform. Unfortunately, not only are there differences between platforms but there are differences within platforms. For the iPhone 4, the new Retina Display is at 640 x 960 whereas the earlier phones were at 320 x 480. And with Android, the latest Droid X is at 480 x 854 which they call HDPI, but older phones are lower resolution and called MDPI. Both operating systems will auto-scale high resolution images down, though some developers I spoke with don't trust the quality.

To minimize the work involved with multiple platforms and resolutions, make sure all of your custom assets are absolutely necessary. Aside from your company logo and/or symbol you may not have to create many assets. Both platforms provide icons for common app tasks (take a look at the iPhone icons and Android icons) and there are a number of services that sell icons at a reasonable cost. If neither of these options meet your needs, consider hiring a skilled illustrator for the work.

Summary

iPhone and Android are the current market leaders in the smartphone space but things are likely to evolve in the years to come. We may see Windows, Blackberry, Palm or another competitor edge into first or second place. Whatever happens, more and more designers are going to be confronted with the question: Will I have to do twice the work? Five times the work? Part of me would like to see standards evolve, mostly from a user experience standpoint but also from a business perspective. Standards will make it easier for companies to provide smartphone apps on multiple devices. As it stands now, they need to prioritize devices because of the costs involved. At the same time standards could slow down the rapid pace of smartphone innovation, which would negatively impact everyone. And of course HTML 5 holds great promise but it's too soon to tell if it will eventually replace the native app platforms. For now, I hope this articles helps you in your endeavors and perhaps you'll only need to do less than 1.5 times the work.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Omar Younis, Marty Picco, Jonathan Stark, Michael Mayo, and Emmanuel Carraud for sharing their insights on this topic.

Further Reading

• iPhone Human Interface Guidelines: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/Introduction/Introduction.html

• Android User Interface Guidelines: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/index.html

• Android UI Tips: http://www.slideshare.net/AndroidDev/android-ui-design-tips

• iOS Icons Made in Pure CSS: http://blog.graphicpeel.com/post/740928981/ios-icons-made-in-pure-css

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Research in Motion, the Waterloo, Canada-based company behind the iconic Blackberry smartphones is rumored to have snapped up DataViz, a Milford, CT.-based company that is well known for making mobile productivity suite, Documents to Go. The CT-based company makes this extremely popular app for all major smartphone platforms including iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Nokia's Maemo. It also supports the iPad. DataViz recently suspended work on the WebOS version of the suite.

If the rumors are indeed true, then RIM has made a great buy. Unlike the Cellmania purchase, this one actually makes a lot of sense and I would put it right next to last year's acquisition of WebKit browser maker, Torch Mobile.

Given how much of Blackberry is used inside the enterprise, it makes perfect sense for RIM to add apps for the enterprise to its arsenal. The company despite a higher install base than some of its newer rivals has struggled to capture the imagination of developers. Many of the best Blackberry apps are infact being made by RIM itself. DataViz's products would also be ideally suited for the company's rumored iPad competitor.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub. req'd): To Win In the Mobile Market, Focus On Consumer

Shared by A. Kachmar
Morons.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bHappy films releases their second snowboard flick called Happy Thoughts' completely free online. Have fun with this 23:38 minute long vid with riders Sammy Spiteri, Ian Bigley, Cole Atencio, Zander Blackmon, Colton Morgan, Dylan Thompson, Benjamin Strause, Brent Oftedal, Durell Williams, Joshua Parker, Casey Detweiler, Sean Anderson and more.

Click here to view the embedded video.

bHappy films heeft hun tweede snowboard film Happy Thoughts' gratis online te kijk gezet. Veel plezier met de 23:38 minuten lange video met riders Sammy Spiteri, Ian Bigley, Cole Atencio, Zander Blackmon, Colton Morgan, Dylan Thompson, Benjamin Strause, Brent Oftedal, Durell Williams, Joshua Parker, Casey Detweiler, Sean Anderson en meer.

Klik hier om de embedded video te bekijken.

Namco wants Enslaved 'to stand out amongst the crowd,' will actually market it originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Image: Eric Fischer [Flickr]

Eric Fischer took data from San Francisco's Municipal Transportation agency (Muni) bus routes and turned it into a graph titled "A day of Muni":

Eric Fischer took publicly available data from the Muni (San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency) showing the geographic coordinates of their vehicles to create this map showing average transit speeds over a 24-hour period. Muni is one of America?s oldest public transit agencies and today carries over 200 million customers per year in 80 routes throughout the city and county of San Francisco.
Black lines represent very slow movement under 7 mph. Red are less than 19 mph. Blue are less than 43 mph. Green lines depict faster speeds above 43 mph.

Link via Holy Kaw

GeekDad Review of Machete (Wired)

Botched Transformers 3 Stunt Sign of Negligence? (Spinoff)

Another Adorable Japanese Robot (TechnaBob)

Star Wars Smash Bros. You Know You Want It (Kotaku)

This Is A Spinning Black Hole (APotD)

PAX Cosplay Gallery (1Up)

Pokemon Fusion! (Alex Onsager)

(pic via Reddit.)

Shared by winjer
I always thought the assumption that all those weird constants were actually constant was quite a big reach.

A particularly mind-bending (and controversial) physics paper surfaced in the past week that should make you feel pretty special. It seems the laws of physics can change after all, and it just so happens they're uniquely suited for us right here, right now.

The paper, recently submitted to Physical Review Letters and posted to the physics arXiv, suggests the fine structure constant is not actually constant at all. This could mean that if we were in a different place or time period, atoms would not stay together and nothing - neither planets nor people - could exist.

A team led by John Webb at the University of New South Wales, Australia, has been studying whether the fine structure constant, otherwise known as alpha, changes over time. Alpha is a special number that essentially describes the strength of the electromagnetic force. The famous physicist Richard Feynman called its value "one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics." If it is not 1/137.036, things fall apart.

If alpha was different in the past, the universe might have looked different, too, which could be determined by looking at distant interstellar gases and how they absorb light. Observations by Webb and others at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii suggest that this is exactly the case - over time, alpha has changed ever so slightly.

Related Articles

	Researchers Devise the First Experimental Test of Controversial, Confusing String Theory
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Tags

Science, Rebecca Boyle, cosmology, physics, richard feynman, Telescopes, universe

This paper happened because Webb and his team wanted to reexamine their Keck findings, which suggested alpha was a tiny bit smaller about 9 billion years in the past. They went to the Very Large Observatory in Chile to check it out, and were shocked by what they saw: the further they looked, the bigger alpha got. The discrepancy is even stranger given the two telescopes' positions: they are in two different hemispheres, so they look in two different directions.

So, to recap: in one direction, alpha was once smaller; in exactly the opposite direction, it was once bigger. This implies that alpha continuously varies throughout space. As Technology Review's physics blog puts it, that's a mind-blowing result. If it's true and can be verified, it could mean the universe is much larger than what we can see, and that the laws of physics vary within it.

It would not be possible for our type of life to exist in a place where alpha were any different. So here's to here and now.

[The Economist]

Continue reading BlackBerry Torch 9800 gets the Colorware treatment, sees value increase infinitely

BlackBerry Torch 9800 gets the Colorware treatment, sees value increase infinitely originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON - The security company Blackwater Worldwide formed a network of 30 shell companies and subsidiaries to try to get millions of dollars in government business after the company faced strong criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq, The New York Times reported Friday.

The newspaper said that it was unclear how many of the created companies got American contracts but that at least three of them obtained work with the U.S. military and the CIA.

Read More...
More on Blackwater

Take it from those of us who know: An easy way to ruin your relationship with the news media is to send a bad press release.

Newsroom fax machines and reporters' inboxes are flooded on a daily basis with press releases from companies, government agencies, non-profit groups, and even average citizens trying to get their neighborhood plight noticed. If you send in a press release that's riddled with grammatical errors, buried in a convoluted e-mail, or completely irrelevant to the reporter's coverage area, you might as well be tossing your press release down a sewer drain. If you deluge a news organization with unprofessional or uninteresting releases, your chances of ever getting favorable news coverage are zero-to-slim.

But when done correctly, a good press release will grab a reporter's attention and force their curiosity to want to learn more about your announcement.

"I want to be a trusted resource for that media so I'm trying to give the journalist all the information when they need it so they don't have to go anywhere else," says Gillian Pommerehn, director of public relations for Crosby Marketing, which is based in Annapolis, Maryland, and whose clients include the U.S. Department of Agriculture and DuPont.

The trick, professionals say, is knowing how to format a good release, where to send it, and what information to include. The release is the face of your company that you're sending out into the world, so it's not a task to be taken lightly. Don't forget: With most press releases now available online through wire services or your company's website, customers or clients may also be reading them, not just reporters.

"Really good, clean, crisp, grammatically correct writing is so important in creating a positive impression of your company," says Lauren Selikoff, chief marketing officer for Allison & Partners, which works with Samsung and Michelin and is based in San Francisco. "This is not a task to turn over to the intern."

Here's some tips to help you craft your message.


Writing a Press Release: Mind the Message

One thing comes to the mind of any good journalist when they receive a press release: Why would I care? The "news" in your news release has to be obvious, or else your notice will be on a fast route to the recycle bin. The first step is figuring out exactly what message you are trying to get across, and how it qualifies as news.

"The hardest thing for people who are new to PR to grasp is you really have to take your ego out of it when it comes to finding something the press is going to write about," Selikoff says. "What's newsworthy to a publication's readers is often completely different than what you are trying to get across."

That means your release needs a good headline. That can be something saying how your new product is going to make life easier, or how it relates to a news event. Your headline should be an attention-grabber, so reporters can see right away how the announcement affects their audience.

Dig Deeper: The Art of the Press Release


Writing a Press Release: Seek out Examples

If you've never written a press release before, you're in luck: The Internet is chock-loaded with examples and models you can use. More than likely, someone has already composed a press release on the same topic that you can use for inspiration. Don't copy but do soak up their style and manner of ordering the content.

PR professionals recommend checking out press release distribution services such as PRWeb and PR Newswire to find a model on which to base your release. Searching Google for announcements related to your business promotions, new product launches, new branch openings, etc. is also likely to produce an example you can copy.

Dig Deeper: How to Manage Your Own PR


Writing a Press Release: Mastering the Structure

Experts say press releases should be no longer than one page. Every press release has a basic structure:

Top:
Put the words "For immediate release" at the very top of the page. The headline the key to grabbing attention should be centered on the page, and usually written in bold or capital letters. Under that, put a subhead, often in italics, that elaborates on the headline.

The headline and subhead are the prime places to work in keywords that will help search engine optimization and draw traffic to your release once it's online, says Leyl Master Black, managing director at San Francisco's SparkPR, whose clients include Bing and Barclays. For instance, she says, if you're launching an e-commerce platform, you want the words e-commerce, platform, and software to appear in your headline and opening paragraphs several times.

First paragraph:
Black and others say you should assume no one is going to read beyond the first paragraph, which makes it the most important. Many releases also take up a journalistic style, beginning with a dateline, or the city and state the news is coming from.

"You need to have the theme and anything that is newsworthy summarized very concisely and neatly," Selikoff says. "The remainder of the press release is kind of fleshing out the story. But the main story has to get across in the first paragraph."

The old standard is that a release should be similar to a story the journalist would write. Reporters often stick to a structure known as the inverted pyramid, which means the most significant parts or the story should be at the top, with everything getting less important as you go farther down the page. This ensures that even someone who just reads the top of the release will get the most important information, and makes it easier to cut text from the bottom for space.

Quotes:
Experts recommend that your release should also include at least one quote in the body. The quote should come from someone knowledgeable about the announcement being made, such as a product manager if you're announcing a new invention, or a top executive if announcing company wide changes. The quote can also be used to explain how your announcement makes you stand out from other competitors, even if you don't mention them by name.

"The quote is where you can add context to your announcement and offer an opinion about it," Black says. "The quote is where you can talk about why this is important to the industry."

Selikoff also warns against using a canned quote talking about how great your company is. Use a quote that provides some insight instead. It's also helpful to know some publications' standards on using quotes from a release. While blogs and very small publications will often use information directly from a release, and re-use quotes you include in the release in their story, major publications most often will not.

Boilerplate information:
The last paragraph is typically a standard set of information about your company, including your mission, when the company was founded, awards it has received or other achievements. This provides basic background information the journalist or the public can use to put the release in context and understand more about who you are.

Contact information:
You don't want to pique a journalist's interest only to have that person scrounging and searching to find who to call for more information. Contact information can either be at the top or bottom of the page and should include the name, e-mail, and title of whomever the media contact for the story is. Usually, it will be your company spokesperson or a dedicated staff person familiar with the topic who can answer reporters' questions.

"There is a certain format for press releases that media are accustomed to getting, " Pommerehn says. "It's Important to kind of keep that format."

Multi-media:
You'll most likely be sending out releases through e-mail and posting them on your company's website, so experts say you should consider including some digital features, such as video and audio. It's also an opportunity to link back to other company information available online previous press releases and related matter such as customer testimonials or performance reports that will give the news media additional context.

Dig Deeper: The Power of Press Releases for Small Businesses
http://www.inc.com/marla-tabaka/2009/01/the_power_of_press_releases_fo.html


Writing a Press Release: Target Your Distribution

The first rule of sending out a press release to know which reporters you're trying to reach.

"Not only is the press release itself important, but who you're communicating with is very important," Pommerehn says. "It's a major pet peeve for journalists when the PR person or the person doing the press release does not do their homework."

If it's a local news event, find out who in the local media covers your neighborhood or issue. Do some research on bigger news organizations to find out which reporters or producers cover your industry. Some media organizations have designated e-mail addresses or fax numbers to which all releases are directed.

Professionals say to be mindful of what kind of organization you're reaching out to as well: a reporter at an environmental magazine, for instance, might be turned off by a flood of paper-consuming messages coming from the fax machine.

Most journalists expect press releases to arrive by e-mail these days. Put your document in the body of the message because most reporters won't open an attachment from someone they don't know.

If you have a public relations budget, you can also send your release to a wire service for broad geographical distribution. Small companies can distribute through PRWeb.com for as little as $80, Black says. Other services such as Businesswire.com and PRNewswire.com are pricier but will expose your release to a broader audience.

Don't' forget that media organizations run on tight deadlines. Pommerehn says the morning is typically the best time to send a release for most publications while late morning or early afternoon is better for television and radio outlets.
Advance notice helps too. If you have an event you are trying to get covered, waiting to send notice until editors are rushing out of the door on Friday evening could lead to a missed opportunity for media exposure. Editors will have to scramble to fit it into their story budgets for the weekend, leaving a bad taste in their mouth about your company.

Dig Deeper: How to Talk to the Press About Your Company

There's a mildly rollicking little discussion going on the in the Software Testing Club at the moment, in which Rob Lambert observes, I've seen a couple of conversations recently where people are talking about red, green and yellow box testing. Rob then asks There's the obvious black and white. How many more are there?

(For what it's worth, I've already made some comments about a related question here.)

At one point a little later in the conversation, Jaffamonkey (I hope that's a pseudonym) replies,

If applied in modern context Black Box is essentially pure functional testing (or unit testing) whereas White Box testing is more of what testers are required to do, which is more about testing user journeys, and testing workflows, usability etc.

Of course, that's not what I understand the classical distinction to be.

The classical distinction started with the notion of black box testing. You can't see what's inside the box, and so you can't see how it's working internally. But that may not be so important to you for a particular testing mission; instead, you care about inputs and outputs, and the internal implementation isn't such a big deal. You'd take this kind of approach when a) you don't have source code; or b) you're intentionally seeking problems that you might not notice so quickly by inspection, but that you might notice by empirical experiments and observation; or maybe c) you may believe that the internal implementation is going to be varied or variable, so no point in taking it into account with respect to the current focus of your attention. I'm sure you can come up with more reasons.

This black box idea suggests a contrast: glass box testing. Since glass is transparent, you can see the inner workings, and the insight into what is happening internally gives you a different perspective for risks and test ideas. This is especially important when a) your mission involves testing what's happening inside the box (programmers take this perspective more often than not); or b) your overall mission will be simpler, in some dimension, because of your understanding of the internals; or maybe c) you want to learn something about how someone has solved a particular problem. Again, I'm sure you can some up with lots more reasons; these are examples, not defnitive lists.

Unhelpfully (to me), someone somewhere along the way decided that the opposite of black must be white; that black box testing was the kind where you can't see inside the box; and that therefore white (rather than glass) box testing must the name for the other stuff. At this point, the words and the model begin to part company.

Even less helpfully, people stopped thinking in terms of a metaphor and started thinking in terms of labels dissociated from the metaphor. The result is an interpretation like Jaffa's above, where he (she?) seems to have inverted the earlier interpretations, for reasons I know not why. Who knows? Maybe it's just a typo.

More unhelpfully still (to me), someone has (or several someones have) apparently come along with color-coding systems for other kinds of testing. Bill Matthews reports that he's found

Red Box = Acceptance testing or Error message testing or networking , peripherals testing and protocol testing
Yellow Box = testing warning messages or integration testing
Green Box = co-existence testing or success message testing

Sources:

http://www.testrepublic.com/forum/topics/define-red-box-testing-yellow

http://www.geekinterview.com/question_details/27985

http://www.allinterview.com/showanswers/7077.html

http://www.coolinterview.com/interview/10080/

For me, there are at least four big problems here. First, there is already disagreement on which colours map to which concepts. Second, there is no compelling reason that I can see to associate a given colour with any of the given ideas. Third, the box metaphor doesn't have a clear relationship to what's going on in the mind or the practice of a tester. The colour is an arbitrary label on an unconstrained container. Fourth, since the definitions appear on interview sites and the sites disagree, there's a risk that some benighted hiring manager will assume that there is only one interpretation, and will deprive himself of an otherwise skilled tester who read a different site. (To defend yourself against this fourth problem, use safety language: Here's what I understand by chartreuse-box testing'. This is the interpretation given by this person or group, but I'm aware there may be other interpretations in your context. For extra points, try saying something like, Is that consistent with your interpretation? If not, I'd be happy to adopt the term the way you use it around here. And meaning it. If they refuse to hire you because of that answer, it's unlikely that working there would have been much fun.)

All of this paintbox of terms is unhelpful (to me) because it means another 30,000 messages on LinkedIn and QAForums, wherein enormous numbers of testers weigh in with their (mis)understandings of some other author's terms and intentionsand largely with the intention of asking or answering homework questions, so it seems. The next step is that, at some point, some standards-and-certification body will have to come along and lay down the law about what colour testing you would have to do to find out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, what colour the pin is, and whether the angels are riding unicorns. And then another, competing standards-and-certification body will object, saying that it's not angels, it's fairies, and it's not unicorns, it's centaurs, and they're not dancing, they're doing gymnastics. And don't get us started on the pin! Courses and certifications on colour-mapping to mythological figures will be available (at a fee) to check (not test!) your ability to memorize a proprietary table of relationships. Meanwhile, most of the people involved in the discussion will have forgottenin the unlikely event that they ever knew that the point of the original black-and-glass exercise was to make things more usefully understandable. Verification vs. validation, anyone? One is building the right thing; the other is building the thing right. Now, quick: which is which? Did you have to pause to think about it? And if you find a problem wherein the thing was built wrong, or that the wrong thing was built, does anyone really care whether you were doing validation testing or verification testing at the time?

Well maybe they do. So, all that said, remember this: no one outside your context can tell you what words you can or can't use. And remember this too: no one outside your context can tell you what you can or can't find useful. Some person, somewhere, might find it handy to refer to a certain kind of testing as sky testing and another kind of testing as ground testing, and still another as water testing. (No, I can't figure it out either.) If people find those labels helpful, there's nothing to stop them, and more power to them. But if the labels are unhelpful to you and only make your brain hurt, it's probably not worth a lot of cycles to try to make them fit for you.

So here are some tests that you can apply to a term or metaphor, whether you produce it yourself or someone else produced it:

• Is it vivid? That is (for a testing metaphor), does it allow you to see easily in your mind's eye (hear in your mind's ear, etc.) something in the realm of common experience but outside the world of testing?

If the answer to these questions is Yes across the board, it might be worthwhile to spread the idea. If you're in doubt, field-test the idea. Ask for (or offer) explanations, and see if understanding is easy to obtain. Meanwhile, if people don't adopt the idea outside of a particular context, do everyone a favour: ditch it, or ignore it, or keep it within a much closer community.

In his book The Educated Imagination (based on the Massey Lectures, a set of broadcasts he did for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1963), Northrop Frye said, Outside literature, the main motive for writing is to describe this world. But literature itself uses language in a way which associates our minds with it. As soon as you use associative language, you begin using figures of speech. If you say, this talk is dry and dull, you're using figures associating it with bread and breadknives. There are two kinds main kinds of association, analogy and identity, two things are like each other and two things that are each other (my emphasis MB). One produces a figure of speech called the simile. The other produces a figure called metaphor.

When we're trying to describe our work in testing, I think most people would agree that we're outside the world of literature. Yet we learn most easily and most powerfully by associationby relating things that we don't understand well to things that we understand a little better in some specific dimension. In reporting on our testing, we're often dealing with things that are new to us, and telling stories to describe them. The same is true in learning about testing. Dealing with the new and telling stories leads us naturally to use associative language. Frye explains why we have to be cautious: In descriptive writing, you have to be careful of associative language. You'll find that analogy, or likeness to something else, is very tricky to handle in description, because the differences are as important as the resemblances. As for metaphor, where you're really saying this is that, you're turning your back on logic and reason completely because logically two things can never be the same thing and still remain two things.

Having given that caution, Frye goes on to explain why we use metaphor, and does so in a way that I think might be helpful for our work: The poet, however, uses these two crude, primitive, archaic forms of thought in the most uninhibited way, because his job is not to describe nature but to show you a world completely absorbed and possessed by the human mindThe motive for metaphor, according to Wallace Stevens, is a desire to associate, and finally to identify, the human mind with what goes on outside it, because the only genuine joy you can have is in those rare moments when you feel that although we may know in part, as Paul says, we are also a part of what we know.

So the final test of a term or a metaphor or a heuristic, for me, is this:

• Is it useful? That is, does it help you make sense of the world to the degree that you can identify an idea with something deeper and more resonant than a mere label? Does it help you to own your ideas?

Twitter CEO Ev Williams posted a blog entry Thursday with an update on the microblogging service's usage, which continues to grow sharply. More interesting than the numbers, though, was the message written between the lines: Twitter now has 145 million monthly users, and for the marketers who want to reach them, Twitter is the only way to go.

The numbers don't lie. Third-party developers, who played a large role in Twitter's early growth and buzz, just don't matter.

The passive-aggressive blog post is a Silicon Valley art form, and Williams, who helped push blogging into the mainstream with his earlier startup, Blogger, is surely a master of the medium. A chart Williams includes tells the story: After Twitter introduced its own iPhone and BlackBerry apps, on top of its own website, SMS, and mobile Web versions, it now controls the top five most popular ways people access Twitter. No third-party app amounts to more than 4 percent of Twitter's audience and the most popular of those is TwitPic, a photo-sharing service.

You'll also note that third-party clients continue to play an important role for many people, Williams writes in the most anodyne of tones. He gives a nod to services like TweetDeck, which power-user social-media marketers adore for pumping out their endless messages to followers. And 300,000 apps connect to Twitter using a technology called OAuth, which allows them to broadcast messages through the service. Foursquare, the fast-growing location-based check-in service, is a notable example; users can announce to their friends on Twitter when they arrive at a venue.

But those followers, by and large, are getting those messages on Twitter.com, which is used by 78 percent of Twitter's audience. One in seven are going to Twitter's own mobile website. And Twitter's text-messaging service still reaches a bigger audience than users of Twitter's iPhone or BlackBerry apps.

The real question is who Williams wrote this blog post for.

One possible audience: Twitter's developers, who continue to be restive after Twitter moved to buy the leading iPhone app, Tweetie, and announced its intentions to take over key functions currently provided by third parties, like TweetMeme's button for publishers to share stories on Twitter, now rendered outmoded by an official Twitter sharing button. By sharing these statistics, Williams effectively puts them in their place, reminding them that while they may still have their uses, they don't drive Twitter's value anymore. Twitter's a casino, and while a few developers may make money, the house always wins.

The other audience: Would-be acquirers. Google Friend Connect, a technology used by the search giant to link its properties to other Web services is mentioned as a third-party app. But it only counts for 2 percent of Twitter's audience. If Google wants to get Twitter's juice, in other words, they can't just hook up to its servers. They've got to get serious.

There's no reason to believe Google and Twitter have renewed acquisition talks, as PaidContent founder Rafat Ali suggested yesterday on Twitter, naturally.

But Google desperately wants to counter Facebook in social media. Twitter's the only player with a meaningful social network anywhere near Facebook's scale. If Google's long-rumored Google Me social product doesn't pan out, if its shopping spree of social acquisitions doesn't coalesce into a coherent strategy, will buying Twitter be its Plan B?

Williams, who sold his Blogger to Google, surely knows how this game is played. Consider his post just another smart move.

[Photo: Joi Ito]

Tags: acquisitions, passive-aggressive blog posts, Social Media, social sharing

Companies: Google, Twitter

People: Ev Williams

Ubuntu 10.10 Beta Now Available

The first beta for the next version of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, dubbed Maverick Meerkat, is now available for testing.

While the final release isn't expected to ship until October 10, users who aren't afraid of encountering some bugs are encouraged to download and test the new version.

For netbook users, the Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition features a brand new default user interface designed to better take advantage of screen proportions for smaller devices. The desktop version will feature improvements to the Ubuntu Software Center and faster boot times.

Users can download Ubuntu 10.10 beta 1 from Ubuntu.com.

Plex Partners with LG to Take On Apple TV, Boxee

Plex, a popular media center for Mac OS X, has announced that it will be partnering with LG Electronics to bring the Plex platform to LG's 2011 NetCast line of HDTVs and Blu-ray devices.

On the Plex blog, Co-founder Elan Feingold discusses how Plex will now be able to compete with Boxee and the Apple TV, while remaining free to use on a Mac or iOS device (Android coming soon) or via an LG HDTV or Blu-ray player.

Plex, which like Boxee is a fork of the original XBMC project, recently released its latest version, Plex Nine. For users interested in running their own home media server, Plex is a very attractive option.

Verizon Offers Pre-paid Data Plans for Some Smartphones

Verizon Wireless will be offering no-contract prepaid data plans for some smartphones later this month. The company will be offering a $30 per month unlimited data pay-as-you-go plan for eligible devices. Multimedia phones (non-smartphones with media features built in), customers can prepay $10 per month for 25MB of data, plus 20 cents per megabyte over that limit.

Eligible smartphones include select BlackBerry models (Curve, Storm, Storm2, Tour, Bold); the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus; Motorola's DROID, DROID X and DROID 2; and HTC DROID Eris, HTC DROID Incredible.

Prepaid smartphone data plans will be available on September 28.

Further News

• Six Apart is shuttering its Vox blogging service on September 30. No new posts can be created after September 15, and blogs will be inaccessible after September 30. Vox has a page dedicated to helping users migrate their content to TypePad, Posterous or WordPress.com.
• Apple's new iTunes Ping social network is off to a rocky start. Facebook turned off access to the app and musicians are confused as to how to actually use the service. Many international users continue to be unable to access the service.
• Google Wave may live on as its own stand-alone project known as Wave in a Box. Let the jokes begin!
• Facebook has just introduced a remote logout security feature. This means that when you accidentally decide to check Facebook from your boyfriend's computer, you can log out before he gets smart to the fact that you're chatting with other guys on the side.

This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America's first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The First to Know series keeps you in the know on what's happening now in the world of social media and technology.

More About: Apple TV, boxee, first to know series, itunes ping, plex app, prepaid data plans, Ubuntu, verizon, Vox

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Continue reading Global Qi wireless power standard released, Energizer and Sanyo announce products

Global Qi wireless power standard released, Energizer and Sanyo announce products originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I talked in my last post here at Econsultancy about whether the PR industry had missed the boat on SEO. Although there were some differing opinions in the comments, I think the consensus was that the public relations firms could have done more to get into search engine optimisation.

Despite this reticence to get going I think there's a scary truth that the search firms need to wake up to: If and when the PR industry gets its act together a lot of the link development tactics search companies are delivering could be delivered by someone with a public relations background.

PR is built on relationships

The best PR people generate and sustain great friendships and relationships in the world of publishing. Some are no better than press release spammers; but the best genuinely have a little black book of contacts built up over the years, and this is where their value comes from.

Search marketing link builders just don't have this type of network. They're far more likely to see link request as a one night stand, and even if they have taken a longer term view, they just don't have the years under their belt.

Vertical specialism

There are a few search marketing firms which have great experience providing services to a particular type of business, but this is more by fluke than design. Sensibly PR companies tend to work with certain types of clients which means they are even more likely to have built up the relationships with the journalists who also specialise in that area.

If you're building links to financial service clients, IT customers and an entertainment brand you're not going to gain much vertical specialism.

No lack of talent

Search marketing as an industry is still a very young sector. Ask many graduates what they want to do when they leave university, and not many will say SEO, even if they are taking a digital marketing degree.

This doesn't mean that they are not well-qualified, or that they wouldn't necessarily enjoy the work. It's just simply the fact that they don't know the industry exists. Compare that to PR where demand for roles is so high, long term internships are the norm. That competition for work really drives up standards and instils a hunger in young PRs that serves them well throughout the rest of their career.

Once PR firms get their head around link building, we have an industry with the cream of the crop in terms of graduates up against a career that most people happen upon by accident. That doesn't mean link builders are hugely gifted individuals, they are, but there aren't many of them who set out to be a link builder.

Offline contacts will soon be online contacts

The little black book of journalists any good PR has used to only be able to get them offline coverage. The online team was separate and siloed.

Not any more.

Most publishers are integrating their teams. People from newspapers are moving to pure-play online publishers. B2B experts are starting their own specialist websites aimed at micro-niches. Suddenly there aren't online journalists and offline journalists, there are only journalists, and those working in public relations have a huge head start.

What does it mean for search agencies?

Most are recruiting from PR firms, and many are taking graduate recruitment seriously to get the strongest applicants.

The best link builders are building relationships as well as links, but those who take their eye off the ball could quickly find they are only left with onsite technical SEO, which, while essential, is only part of the business models that's been working so well for most SEO companies.

Shared by Jesse Stay
I wish they'd go with the number their competitors are going with - number of active users. Just stating # of registered users is an unfair comparison (unless they really want Facebook to start touting the number of registered users on their system). My own estimates show only about 30% of Twitter's numbers are active, based on a sample of 5-10 million users I have cached.

Mobile use of Twitter has climbed by more than 60 percent since April, when the company introduced its official iPhone client, Twitter CEO Ev Williams said in a status update posted to the company's blog. The Twitter founder also said that the microblogging service has 145 million registered users, up almost 40 percent from the number it had four months ago.

Williams said that 16 percent of all new users to Twitter start using the service via a mobile device now, compared with five percent before the first official mobile client arrived in April with the purchase of Tweetie which was renamed Twitter for iPhone (the company now has official clients for BlackBerry and Android as well). Almost half of all users access the service via a mobile device regularly, Williams says, and the Twitter CEO argues that the decision to develop and/or buy official Twitter clients played a big part in this growth:

We did iPhone user tests and confirmed that even though there was a plethora of third-party Twitter apps, people were having trouble finding and selecting one because none were called Twitter. This kept them from using Twitter at all.

What's interesting is that based on the statistics provided by the Twitter founder in his post, almost as many people use the Twitter mobile website as use the iPhone or the BlackBerry apps put together. This could be because new users of the service prefer the website when they are just starting to get a feel for Twitter, and then develop a need for dedicated apps once they become more frequent users.

Twitter's purchase of Tweetie was controversial at the time, because the company was seen by some as targeting third-party developers and applications or hole-fillers, as they came to be called after a post by Union Square Ventures partner and Twitter backer Fred Wilson. Some of those tensions were smoothed over at the company's Chirp conference for developers in April, where Twitter made a point of reaching out to the third-party app community. The company has also worked with app developers to implement the recent switchover to using OAuth as authentication for the service.

Twitter recently launched a new app for the iPad the first app that the company has built from the ground up which Liz wrote about and James reviewed.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req'd):

The App Developer's Guide to Choosing a Mobile Platform

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Spencer E. Holtaway

Twitter has gone OAuth-only and it is judgement day for the scores of Twitter apps still using basic authentication. Developers have had a few months to switch across to the new OAuth protocol (and the deadline was extended again to accommodate the World Cup), but it seems like quite a few never made the switch, or still have users running older versions of their software. A quick Twitter search reveals some frustration:

• rsalas96: @Twitterrific my ipod touch twitter login fail, it look like API Problem
• sarumbear: @PockeTwitDev I'm quite unhappy that someone as capable as an XDA developer would fail to see the Twitter API change announced so long ago
• tazhossain: twitter #fail. Iphone not connecting to API keep getting errors !
• sn0w_crash: twitter disables basic login over api, HTC Peep has never been able to work with oauth @htc fail. So HTC Peep is dead atm.

It is not all doom and gloom: many apps, including Echofon, TweetDeck, Twitterrific, Seesmic, and Twitter for Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry, are already using OAuth. Some of the complaints are from users who still have older version of these applications installed. However the rich mashup ecosystem built on the Twitter API will likely thin out over the next few weeks as those applications that have not been updated to conform to the new API requirements die off.

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A white tiger cub born at the Vandalur zoo in Chennai, India is turning black. From The Telegraph:

Biologists believe a large presence of melanin, the dark skin pigment, is the likely reason for its unusual colouring.

Tigers' skin colour is determined by the presence of black and yellow pigments. In most tigers, the colour yellow dominates over black to give them their characteristic colouring.

"In this cub, the reverse has happened black is the dominant colour," senior zoo biologist Dr Manimozhi told The Times of India.

"It is the dominance of yellow pigment that enables tigers to survive in the wild," he added. "In fact, this is the reason why most white tigers are found only in zoos and not in the wild," Dr Manimozhi said.

Twitter CEO Ev Williams wrote just now on the company blog that mobile usage of the site is up 62% since in just over four months, and 16% of all new Twitter users are starting out on mobile devices as opposed to web signups (this number is up from just 5% earlier this year).

In the days before Twitter started issuing official apps on a platform-by-platform basis, the company wasn't seeing the kind of mobile adoption it had hoped for. Williams wrote, Even though there was a plethora of third-party Twitter apps, people were having trouble finding and selecting one because none were called Twitter.' This kept them from using Twitter at all.

The company adopted a new strategy for mobile; rather than leaving all the mobile app development to third parties, Twitter decided to consolidate efforts. In the short term, this caused some consternation for third-party devs; however, looking at Twitter's stats, it's clear the company did the right thing for its shareholders and bottom line.

Twitter acquired Tweetie in May this year; this was our first indication that Twitter would be creating and distributing its own mobile apps for a change. Tweetie was revamped and renamed Twitter for iPhone in May. A BlackBerry app was released in April, and the company's official Android Twitter app was released later the same month.

Twitter is also seeing strong growth in its mobile site and SMS service, and Williams notes that third-party apps such as TweetDeck continue to be valuable and important parts of the Twitter mobile landscape.

And as for the long tail, Williams writes, There are a tremendous number of other apps that people are using, not necessarily as their main Twitter client, but as an alternative way to create or view Tweets. The number of registered OAuth applications is now at almost 300,000 this number has nearly tripled since Chirp [Twitter's developer conference, which was held in April in San Francisco].

While the above chart shows percentages of unique users per app, we'd also love to see a breakdown by volume of tweets.

Has your own mobile usage of Twitter changed or grown at all with Twitter's releasing several official apps? Do you still use third-party applications for tweeting on the go? Let us know what you think about these stats in the comments.

More About: apps, Mobile 2.0, twitter

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