MetroTwit

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:software-category ]The beauty of the Metro UI and all the creamy goodness of Twitter!

Twitter, oh how the 140 characters seem so interesting.  But, like all web applications, the web part kind of lets it down.  This is not to say the Twitter website isn’t good, it’s just that a real desktop app seems so much better.

Hence my search for a desktop app for Twitter began shortly after installing the Spaz HD beta on my TouchPad.  I didn’t want an app that was simply written in another runtime (Java, AIR or something else) but instead a real desktop app for Windows.

After reading some reviews I found MetroTwit.

As I’ve said before, the Metro UI model that Microsoft has come up with is just an absolute joy to work with and MetroTwit has done a great job of bringing it to a desktop application.

My use of Twitter, like so many, is just to follow some interesting people, MetroTwit allows me to just have my timeline displayed with nothing else on screen.  But of course it allows for all kinds of other functionality as well.  You mentions and direct e-mail are displayed by default in columns side by side.

MetroTwit has some very nice features baked right in, including:

  • URL expansion, make those nasty short URL’s disappear forever.
  • Built in viewer for media, like Twitpic and Youtube, you don’t have to load a browser.
  • Integration in to the Windows TaskBar, shows the under of unread messages on the icon.
  • Displays a highlight on the vertical scroll bar where your last read tweet is.
  • New tweets come up as “Toast” messages, which are displayed for a set amount of time, at the top of the message you get a progress bar showing you how much time is left and if you hover over the message, the bar auto-pauses for you.

A feature I’m looking forward to in the future is synchronization of the client settings across multiple installs (I use MetroTwit on three separate systems).

There are a few area’s that need polish:

  • Load time is abysmal.
  • If twitter disconnects for some reason and MetroTwit reconnects, a large dialog box pops up and stays up until you hit the OK button, this should either be a toast message or another column of information that can be disabled.
  • There are a few user interface features that are not obvious on the outset.  Like how to mark a tweet read (simply click on it).
  • There doesn’t appear to be a way to pin the trending topics to the main UI.
  • There are (just like Windows Phone and the Zune HD) very limited options for themes.
  • There is no Help file.
  • Once in a while MetroTwit will stop updating the timeline, and hitting refresh does not resolve the issue.  Exit and restart does.  This happens less than once a day so people who shut off their systems at night may never even see it happen.

MetroTwit is of course still in beta at this time so some of the above must be taken in stride, however it is a pretty solid app and it’s made my Twitter experience much better.

I’d recommend it to anyone who like the Metro UI design and is addicted to Twitter.

The Good:

  • Windows native application
  • Beautiful design
  • Great functionality
  • Customizable

The not so bad/not so good:

  • Limited Theme support
  • Load time
  • Still a little ruff around the edges, its beta after all

The Bad:

  • No Help file
  • Seems to hang the timeline after 24+ hours

A study of contrasts: Microsoft Kin vs. HP WebOS

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]At first glance there are many similarities between MS’s ill fated Kin phones and HP’s WebOS phones and tablets, but when you look a little deeper, the differences far outweigh the similarities.

MS Kin

MS purchased Danger Inc. several years ago and didn’t seem to be doing much with the company until they announced a new generation of phones, the Kin One and Two.  These phones were a radical change from previous Danger products and seemed to be targeted at a different demographic as well.

They were launched with much fan fare and MS was very enthusiastic about them, then just a few months after launch, they were terminated after poor sales.  Microsoft took a billion plus dollar hit in the debacle.

HP WebOS

HP Purchased Palm just over a year ago and immediately announced a slew of new products and plans for WebOS.  Then nothing.  Finally the new hardware was announced, including the Veer, Pre 3 and TouchPad.

The launch for the new hardware had a massive ad campaign behind it and HP pushed hard in to the tablet market.  Just over a month after the launch, HP killed the entire WebOS lineup, taking a multi-billion dollar hit in the process.

Seems kind of the same, so what’s the difference?

At the summary level, everything looks the same, new tech, high hopes, billions lost.  But where as MS had a clear strategy with killing the Kin, HP has none.

MS killed the Kin, not because of the poor sales (though I’m sure that made it easier), but because internally MS had two phone platforms, Kin and the upcoming Windows Phone.  The battle royal that went on inside MS as these two platforms competed to survive is the stuff of legends, and in the end the Kin was killed, gutted and consumed by the Windows Phone team.  But at the end of the day, MS was still in the phone business.

When MS killed the Kin, they made it VERY clear it was to focus on Windows Phone.  It was in the announcements, the executives recited the party line time and again.  When it was all over, no one wondered what was going to become of the Kin, Windows Phone or MS.

HP on the other hand kill WebOS with no plan B.  They simply exited the market, tail between their legs.  The announcement created far more questions then it answered and days later everyone is still scratching their heads.

So what would MS’s announcement have been like if it was the same scope as HPs?

For MS to have made make the same kind of announcement HP did, it would have had to included:

  • The Kin is dead.
  • Windows Phone too, the consumer space is just too competitive.
  • Oh, and we’re dumping all our mice, keyboards, webcams, etc., anyone what to buy that business?
  • But we’re going to keep Xbox because we make a boat load of cash from that.

Not really the same at all when you think about it.

#@$^ HP…

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]I’ve spend all weekend since the HP announcement on Friday which killed the TouchPad pissed off at HP.  So much so that I really had to take a look and ask why?

It’s not that the TouchPad is such a great product as to be a great loss to humanity or anything.  Yes, it showed promise, but had a ways to go to get there.

I think what pisses me off about it is HOW HP killed the TouchPad.  HP spent $1.2 billion to acquire Palm, hundreds of millions more to build the product and hundreds more to advertise it.  The cost to HP must be north of $2 billion at this point.  Dropped like radioactive hot potato.  With shards of glass protruding from it.  And was on fire.

Dropping all WebOS devices so soon after launching them just reeks of a clueless management.  And I do blame management at the highest level on this one.  Yes I’m talking about Leo Apotheker, ex CEO of SAP and WebOS butcher.

How can a CEO reasonable tell his board that he’s not even going to try and make a go of a multi billion dollar business and instead is going to focus on a highly competitive space that the company has failed at several times already?  Ok, fail might be too strong of word, but the HP services and software group have never been the star of HP.  Printers, PC, servers and other hardware has been.

Maybe that’s because HP is a hardware company.

And what’s so wrong with being a hardware company these days anyway?  Yes the margins aren’t what they use to be, but you can still make a profit and with the volume you do it’s a good business to be in when you’re the largest player.  And let’s face it, Apple is a hardware company and they seem to be doing just fine.

Let’s look at what HP did keep from the consumer market… printers.  Something that has always been a cash cow for HP.  But really, if Leo wants to be out of the consumer market, then nothing screams consumer hardware more than an HP printer.

Killing WebOS was just plain laziness, Leo couldn’t be bothered to put in the work required to get HP to the top of the tablet and phone markets but was quite willing to stay in the printer business because it didn’t involve any risk or work.

Before Friday, if you had asked me what words I would use to describe HP’s products, one of them would certainly have been “stability” and another would have been “long term support”.  Today, well not so much.

And what did HP get for it’s big move?  HP’s stock price tumbled by 25%.  How many billion did that cost them?

Do I expect HP to reverse course?  No, that ship has sailed and even if they change their mind and stay in the PC business, WebOS is dead at HP.  The only hope it has is that HTC or Samsung decide to license it, which is a possibility, but seems like a long shot at this point.

I guess for me HP’s total lack of commitment to the TouchPad has soured my view of HP, so much so that I’ll never buy or recommend an HP product again just on simple principle.  It’s not like they do anything unique any more, they’re just another enterprise services company now.

Firefox and the rapid release schedule

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:software-category ]Firefox 6 was released this week and I can’t help but think why?

Mozilla has decided that taking months to release a new version of Firefox is too long, with Chrome releasing a new version so often, I guess they feel left behind.

But is it really a good thing to release a major release so often?  What constitutes a major release?

Over the years I’ve developed a few projects, both closed source and open source and to me a major release had better have something big in it.  If your and end user piece of software like Firefox, then the user had better be able to see the change.  If you’re a server side piece of software like Apache, then it had best bring new features or simpler administration to the table.

Point releases should be the exact opposite, minor fixes and updates that the users and administrator should hardly notice.  Security fixes, bug fixes, a few new options in existing features.

By this definition, FireFox 6 is really only Firefox 5.1.  Maybe not even that.

And it only gets worse, if we start talking a new release every 6 weeks, in just 5 years we’re at FireFox 46.

That is just silly.

And now Mozilla is talking about removing the version number from the about dialog, which of course makes perfect sense when you have a stupid numbering system that will make you look foolish every time anyone displays the about dialog.  They say it will still be in the troubleshooting dialog, but come on, it’s the about dialog, it should show information about the product, including the version.

And really, who wants to update their browser ever 6 weeks anyway?  Oh sure, it should be transparent to the user, except for the 2 or 3 add-ons that fail, or the theme that no longer works, or the new bug that gets introduced.

This is just an outsiders opinion on the matter, but I think the FireFox developers have forgotten that they are not the typical user of their product.  Typical users just want things to work, they hate installing new stuff and hate big numbers even more.  It’s why IE 6 kicked around so long, if it works, they don’t want to fix it.

Microsoft knows this, they’re even running a TV ad at the moment showing a person with a 4 your old PC saying its good enough.  They’re spending big money to convince users to upgrade because users hate to upgrade…

…unless they’re getting something new and flashy of course Winking smile.

Motorola Mobility and Google?

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]This week we had the big announcement that Google is going to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.  That’s a big chunk of change even for Google, but what is really behind the move?

There have been several theories floating around the net, but the one that makes the most sense to me is the patent portfolio that Motorola Mobility holds.  Google is a late comer to the tech industry and as such doesn’t have a large number of patents.  This puts it at a disadvantage to people like Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Nokia in any field that they compete.

Several articles have suggested the deal was struck very quickly over the weekend and I can believe that as even as late as last week the CEO of MM was hedging his bets about mobile OSs saying he was open to Windows Phone 7.  Truth or shrude salesmanship to get Google to move even quicker?

But none the less, what does it mean moving forward?

From a patent perspective MM is a granddaddy in the mobile space so the patents will be helpful in many aspects of Google’s future, but for the short term, it won’t help them much with the multiple lawsuits that are already in play.  Longer term, it seems likely a good bargaining chip to have the next time someone comes knocking on their door with infringement claims.

From a product perspective, it certainly cuts out Windows Phone from being an option on Motorola hardware and brings in to question the future of Android on other third party vendors.  Yes, I know everyone lined up on announcement day and sang the party line that this was good for Android and everyone was still committed to it being open and free.  But let’s be pragmatic, when Google goes to make its next phone its not going to ask HTC or Samsung to build it when it can do it it’s self.

With Android 3, Google close the source code to everyone and still hasn’t released it, can you image when Google owns MM that they won’t have access to the code first and then everyone else.  It is just in Google’s own best interest to do this, to make sure MM comes out with new products based on new version of Android before everyone else.

So what do Samsung, HTC and the other do?  Sit back and accept they have just been demoted to the second tier of Android vendors?  Or do they start hedging their bets?

Business is business and any Android vendor that isn’t looking to reduce their reliance on Android is not doing their job at this point.  This is probably a really good opportunity for Microsoft all things considered.  Samsung and HTC have long support WP7 and Acer was announced a while ago, but they put out many more Android models than WP7 (which is to be expected up until now) but I think we might see that change over the next 6-12 months.  Should Sony Ericsson or other vendors start up conversations with Microsoft?  Might not be a bad idea all things considered.

Microsoft has always know that you can’t be an OS vendor and a hardware vendor for that OS at the same time, you have to choose what you want to be and run with it.  When Microsoft does make hardware (Xbox, Zune, etc) they build a custom OS and don’t license it out.  It makes no sense as you’re just helping others take you business away from you.  With the OSs they do license (Windows, Windows Phone, etc.) they just stay out of the hardware business.  I can’t imagine the number of times a vendor (HP, Acer, etc. Ok, maybe not IBM) must have gone to MS and asked to make a Microsoft branded PC to put on store shelves and MS wisely said no thanks.

If multiple Android vendors do start to move away, what can Google do?  The most obvious move would be to spin Android out of the company in to some kind of industry consortium.  But that would really defeat Google’s real reason for making Android in the first place as the consortium would no longer be tied to Google’s services and could even select other search engines and advertising providers if they wanted to.  It would just give up too much control to people who aren’t all that interested in Google’s advertising business.  In this scenario, could MS actually pay the consortium to make Bing the default search engine?

Could we see a fork of Android?  Certainly there’s a lot of competition in the marketplace already, with multiple app stores available and several forks of Android , but without the big handset makers behind them they are not really an option at this point.  But if Samsung, HTC and other put their weight behind a new app store and a forked kernel?  That would make it very interesting for Google and MM.

What the Google purchase of MM really shows us though is that the smartphone business is still experiencing growing pains, it hasn’t even reached puberty yet.  It’s still anyone’s game to win and everyone is using everything they’ve got to win it.