Category: Events & Culture

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iTunes AppStore & The Tyranny of Choice

When I’m looking to buy a new video game, I have 2 primary sources: The first is Video Game blogs (I generally read Joystiq & the IGN Xbox feeds), the second is my friends – whom I mostly to use to ask about games I’ve first heard about via one of the above.

But my practice for learning about new apps is different – it’s nearly 99% from my friends, 1% from blogs (if I’m being honest, mostly from Daring Fireball, which is my (and many, many other people’s) go-to place for new Apple/iOS-related opinion. Since about 1 month after it opened, the iTunes App Store itself has been more or less useful useless (thanks, Evan!). Cream doesn’t rise to the top in that store. Look at the top 5 apps in any category – you’re as likely to see utter garbage as you are a beautifully designed app or brilliant, original game (based on how network TV works, I’d go as far to say as the most original NEVER get the most attention). This because the metric used for the top charts is based on downloads (Top) and sales (Top Grossing). There’s not really a mechanism for “most interesting” and if there were, unless it was weighted by people’s whose opinions I like, would still not be useful.

It ends up that I now more or less completely ignore the App Store as a source of recommendations for apps. Even the app-related blogs aren’t so hot, because, for them to be useful filters, Its needs to be focused on particular categories of apps – or it’s just too general – similar to how sites that review all forms of music pale compared to sites that mine just a few genres. Whatever the issue is, the App Store is failing for me as a source of new apps – I’m paralyzed by the Tyranny of Choice: Which of the 18283 education apps do I want? Hell, even deciding between the 120 “Hot” Education apps is too much choice.

What’s needed is a sort of “social ranking” mechanism – sort of like the vote up/down of Reddit, Digg, etc. But actually, what I’d like is something even more refined. I’ll state now that I really don’t care what the vast majority of the world thinks. I care about what people that I respect think. These vote up/down algorithms should be measured in concentric circles: First & foremost, what my friends like. If, say David likes an app, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll like it too – at least based on historic precedent. & I don’t care about 5-star ratings. All I care about is thumbs up/thumbs down. The next circle out from that should be what friends of David, but who aren’t my friends, think about an app – one of those birds-of-a-feather ideas – if David likes this people, maybe I will to. Beyond that, should be people who’re influential “generally” think. Leveraging something like Klout could be useful for this level of recommendation. I might not know the person from Adam, but if more often than not apps that they recommend are subsequently recommended by people in their circle of friends, that’s a good sign.

This seems like a perfect area to start exploring interest data-mining/app possibilities. While you could simply shoe-horn on an up/down voting method over the existing, more-or-less useless 5-star rating system, I don’t think even this is necessary. Here’s what I’m imagining:

  • An iTunes plug-in that allows me to share what Apps I own (I’m equating ownership as a “thumbs-up” – this might be overly simplistic, but it’s a place to start). This sharing could be anonymous or not. Maybe I need to actually “rate” an app to share it, so I can hide apps I don’t want to rate or share.
  • Leverage my existing social networks to see which friends I care about. This is a well-established method: Let me “follow” my twitter, facebook, linked in, google/yahoo/hotmail contacts, etc. I strongly believe that this system needs to asynchronous – more like twitter than like facebook.
  • As I like apps that someone else has already liked, the weighting the system gives to that person’s likes, relative to me, should be weighted higher – because it means that I’m more likely to agree with them in the future – a bayesian weighting system.
  • Over time, as my circle of followers grows & shrinks, as people in my circle add/remove/rate up/rate down apps, I’ll have an ever-changing list of suggested apps. Which makes app developers more money, makes apple more money, makes my devices more useful to me.

So there’s some hitches that I see in all of this as I currently have it down:

  1. People have to download a plugin to iTunes (or, they have to sign into a website then manually find their apps). This manual start-up process is a rather large barrier to entry.
  2. People actually have to rate apps & do it regularly as their app-library changes. A code-snippet that could be added into apps, similar to the existing “rate us in the app store” would be nice & helpful – but would require this get big enough.

Thoughts, people? Is there already something like this out there? If not, and you’ve got some money, want to fund me to make it? Or, want to make it yourself? Let me know – I’ll be an eager tester of it!

 

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9 years ago today

Having recently been to New York for the first time since the mid-1990’s, and all the furor over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”, this 9th anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center has been on my mind. We went to the Tribute WTC: Visitor Centre while there, and it was hard to walk through for me. I really look forward to returning when the memorial has been built.

9/11 was on a Tuesday. We were living in a loft on Seymour st. Leah came in & woke me up really early – she’d been at the local coffee shop when the first plane hit, and came running back to wake me up & turn on the tv. We watched for several hours, until I went in to work. I remember that not everyone at the office knew about what had happened, so we all huddled around  my computer to pull up the news. I had started the current incarnation of this site just a few days prior, and that day, and for a long time afterward I wrote on and around the topic.

Curiously, what sticks out most for me is not the event, but that evening. I went to SHinDiG, UBC’s annual battle of the bands that is held every Tuesday night in the fall (reminder: it starts again this Tuesday!). Like every week, there was a section in the middle called “Jokes for Beer”, where people tell jokes to win beer. That night (actually, it may have been the following week now that I think about it. But in my memory they’ve become confounded together), someone told perhaps the most tasteless joke ever. Rarely is someone booed at Jokes for Beer, but it happened.

Here is the joke (I warn you now – if you are sensitive about 9/11, this might be upsetting. 9 years on, I find it darkly funny. Back then, I don’t think I even knew how to react – & I have no personal connection to the attacks):

Q: Why do more people like to fly American Airlines?
A: Because they fly right to your office.

I can no longer think about 9/11 without hearing that joke in my head. I think, somewhat curiously, that what made walking through the Tribute center extra difficult for me was that I couldn’t help but hear that over and over in my head. & then when I saw piece of debris from one of the planes alongside the ripped & melted gear of a firefighter who died trying to rescue people in the buildings, I had to leave.

There’s been a number of compelling pieces about 9/11 written today. These three are my favourites:

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The Great Canadian Ultimate Game

On Saturday night I participated in the Great Canadian Ultimate Game, a 25-hour, cross-Canada ultimate relay organized by Ultimate Canada where players in 23 communities across the country each played a single ultimate game to raise money for 2 really worthy charities, Right To Play and Boys & Girls Clubs of Canada. The Vancouver leg was scheduled to run from 10-11pm at Andy Livingstone field. I showed up expecting the game to be played much like a lot of pick-up ultimate is played – sort-of half-assed, with a lot of hucking, and not terribly serious. Boy was I wrong! Instead it was highly-skilled, hard-fought and really spirited, in the best of ways. I played on Team Red, representing Right to Play. In our particular leg, Team Red beat Team White 13-11. However, after the final leg, played from 11pm-midnight in Surrey, Team White won the overall game, 253-251.

The game was setup so that each player donated at least $10, and then the charities would receive the money in a 60-40 split. While the total funds raised isn’t known yet, it should be around $7000. A great amount for the inaugural year of this fundraiser. I certainly hope that this will become an annual event where we can raise even more money and awareness.

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MEC Paddlefest 2010

My Kayak
Looking across the bow of my kayak

A few weeks back I won a tickets to 2 events at MEC Paddlefest, courtesy of Karl Woll (and by his announcing the contest on twitter). Today was the big day!

I signed up for one dry-land course, “Navigation for Sea Kayakers” and one on-water course, a guided tour. I arrived, bright and early for my Navigation class, and was really looking forward to it. I’ve taken a bunch of land-based courses in the distant past, and am pretty good at guiding myself by landmarks, as I have lots of lake-and-river canoeing and kayaking experience. But I know nothing about reading tide tables, current tables, and what the various buoys all mean. But it seemed reasonable to get at least an intro to that in an hour, right? Sadly, no. Instead what I got was a 55-minute lecture on gear, why the Pleasure Craft Operator Card exam is useless, some personal reminiscences about sailing and then, crammed into the last 5 minutes, 10 slides about navigation. So it was pretty useless. But despite that disappointment I was still looking forward to my guided tour.

The West End
The West End

And I’m very happy to say that I was not disappointed at all – it was marvellous, although much, much too short. I was a little apprehensive before I started because it has been so long since I last kayaked – probably since before Liam was born. My fears were totally unfounded – it felt completely natural and I was comfortable and at home the moment I sat down in my kayak, put my skirt on, and started to paddle. All those years at summer camp kayaking, doing whitewater training and what not came back to me right away. We headed off, going east from Jericho towards the RCYC. Much like I used to do when younger, as soon as I started paddling, I sort of zoned out. The same way I do when I run – I disappear, my mind empties and there’s nothing but that beautiful repetitive motion, my breathing, the soft susurrations of the water alongside the boat. Faintly, I heard my name – just enough to bring me from my reverie. I turned around to realize I’d left the rest of the group far behind me, so I stopped paddling and had a nice rest floating out there. After they all caught up, we continued on round to look at the big houses along the water, than turned around and headed back to Jericho. We saw a sea otter diving near the RCYC pier, which was really cool. It was only about 20 feet in front of me. Then, suddenly, too soon, I was beaching at Jericho, hopping out and heading home. A great day. Thanks to everyone who made this possible!

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LCD Soundsystem at Malkin Bowl: my review

Glowing mirrorball
LCD Soundsystem: not as brilliant as their mirrorball

My first show of the year last night (wow – so sad that that’s true!). But I waited for a good one. Well, an ok one,  seeing LCD Soundsystem last night at Malkin Bowl. Holy Ghost! opened. They were fun, but eminently forgettable – they mined the 80’s sound, but didn’t really do too much with it. Which is a shame – I’d listened to a bunch of their stuff before the show and it had been fun. Possibly they just don’t translate live well. Or at least not in a setting like Malkin Bowl. In a tightly packed sweaty nightclub it would’ve made me want to dance.

The weather all day had been terrible, so I was expecting to get soaked, but fortunately the rain stopped on our way down, and we even saw a little blue sky. Pre-show we went for a drink at Stanley’s Park Bar & Grill, which was fun – completely full of concert goers, they a good system of a beer garden with  smokies & corn-on-the-cob grilling on the barbeque.

LCD in lights
In the gloaming

LCD Soundsystem opened well, apologized for being so far back on the stage (they’d moved all the equipment under cover given the uncertainty of the weather – although I’ve yet to see a show at Malkin Bowl where that wasn’t the case), and got on with it. I’m a huge fan, and they played 2 of 3 songs I really wanted to hear during the set (“Daft Punk is playing at my house & “New York I love You” to end it, they didn’t play “North American Scum”), but I’m not sure I’d call it an particularly inspired set. They hit the notes, they did their thing, but they never went off the rails in either a good or bad way. It’s odd to be disappointed because an act is tight and on their game, but I want something more from a live show. Particularly from an act like LCD Soundsystem where they could so easily play with their songs a little. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, because I really did enjoy it, but it wasn’t stand-out by any means.

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A Day Apart Seattle – my thoughts on the workshop

Last week, I posted my thoughts on Day 1 of An Even Apart  (Seattle). I had fully planned on writing on both day 2 & the 3rd-day workshop, but after somehow losing a longish post to the ether, am skipping day 2. Suffice to say, the quality of the talks continued, as well as the laser-like focus on what can be accomplished with HTML5 and CSS3.

The A Day Apart Workshop was my primary reason for attending the conference. I wanted some hands-on learning & experimentation with these new tools that I had been unable to play with much. I have seen both Jeremy Keith & Dan Cederholm speak previously, so knew they would be good. And they were good. In fact, I would argue that the only thing that made this workshop worthwhile in the end was the quality of the presenters, who overcame everything to actually deliver quality.

This was the first A Day Apart put on by the AEA folks, so I expected it to not be perfect. But I did expect more. I’m certain that the next iteration will improve slightly on this one, and so on and so forth. But let me list my complaints, with some hopefully helpful critique:

  • Size of workshop: There were simply too many attendees in one room. It meant, for the most part, that it was hard to carry on a Q&A thread, because you don’t want to take up everyone else’s time & B, radically changed the possibilities of how run the workshop. To fix, I’d recommend a)lessening the number of spaces available and b)split the audience into 2 groups. Group A would get presenter #1 in the AM, presenter #2 in the PM. Group B would get it in reverse. Yes, this would double the work-load for the speakers – but I think would vastly enhance the experience for the attendees.
  • Format of workshop: The workshops were really just extended seminars – not so much a workshop.  While Jeremy’s seminar & workshop topics were different, Dan was talking about CSS3 in both, so his workshop felt like an extension of his earlier seminar. Jeremy had us guess the definitions of elements from the HTML 5 spec, and actually work that out. The result? I remember those definitions more than virtually anything else. Because I got to actually interact with the material. So here’s my suggestion to fix this: Each workshop was divided into 3 parts (if I recall correctly). If, let’s say, 10 minutes was cut out each (maybe even 20 minutes) and replace with a related exercise for the audience to do, suddenly the interaction with the material would increase greatly, and, I suspect, both people’s comprehension & retention of the material. If, in addition to 10 minutes of homework, there was schedule in 10 minutes for post-homework Q&A, that provides a nice way to summarize each content block.
  • Density of Material: The material-to-time ratio was way off, which meant we raced through the material. Either cover less or make the workshop longer. Both spent a long time on the history of the material – this was useful, but could likely have been done quicker, given the quality of the rest of the meat they were delivering.
  • Related Assets/sample code: We were all given a book with all the slides printed and bound into it. This is a great reference. But an online wiki, perhaps specific to the course, that was setup by the creators, but, going forward, be looked at, edited, updated by the attendees would be awesome. If a laptop was required (given the audience, I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request) and we were provided links to download some source code, we could then, in the workshop, very quickly build a site each, to see the material in action ourselves – this would work great with the ’10 minutes of homework per section’ model – you just keep building on. This has been, more or less, the standard for programming workshops I’ve attended. For me, this is likely the biggest miss.

Despite everything I’ve written above, I do feel that I came out that workshop with a better understanding of the two tools I went into the workshop wanting to learn. As I said above, this is almost entirely due to the quality of the speakers, not the format of the workshop itself. If there was to be another A Day Apart at a future conference, on a topic of interest to me, I would certainly consider attending it again. But while it was OK, it could have been great.

Update (2010-4-12): I had initially remarked that both workshops felt like extensions of the seminar. Jeremy, thankfully, corrected me that his seminar and workshops were quite different. My apologies.

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An Event Apart Seattle (2010) – Day 1

I spent the first 3 days this week at An Event Apart (Seattle). This is a conference that I’d been wanting to attend since its inception, but somehow never actually made it down to one. I was really looking forward to a few days of self-affirming web-geekery. And that respect, I wasn’t disappointed.

I don’t know the process by which An Event Apart selects their speakers, but whatever it is, it is good. From start to finish, the quality of the presentations were excellent – even those whose content I wasn’t particularly interested in. Jeffrey Zeldman got us started in fine form, with a talk, essentially, about mistakes that would be good to avoid in running a studio. Having been running a shop (or studio) for the past 7 years, this was of very little interest to me – I’ve made those same mistakes previously, I’ve come to many of the same conclusions, I’d offer the same advice to anyone wanting to strike out on their own. But! I still thoroughly enjoyed it. A light hors d’oeuvre before the meaty sessions that followed. He’s a great speaker, which made this otherwise too-low-level talk appreciable by all.

Of all the talks, Nicole Sullivan‘s, who followed next, was the least inspiring. It fell between two worlds for me. She was talking about object-oriented CSS. Given her background, I was hoping for a super-nerdy, intense look at site-speed optimization & whatnot. We got a little bit of that – but not with the detail I’d like, and then the second-half of her talk was spent looking at her wish-list for things to be included in future CSS spec. So, not even actual proposed spec. Things that she proposes should be in proposed spec that I might get to use in bleeding-edge browsers 3-4 years from now and actual projects a decade or so in the future. Which felt like a waste of my time, to be honest. So, while I’m down on her talk, her answers in the brief Q&A were great and I’d love to hear her do a “developer” talk, rather than a “designer” talk, which this seemed to be.

Dan Cederholm talked CSS3, and gave some nice tips & tricks. His presentations are fantastic – but I’ll talk more about him later. Luke Wroblweski gave the talk that I wish every designer in the world could hear. Titled “Mobile First!”, I think Jeffrey Zelman summed it up best: “Luke Wroblewski’s extraordinary “Mobile First” presentation changed the way I think about web design”. It was compelling, well-backed-up with samples, and, perhaps best of all, seemed very easy to implement.

Aaron Walter‘s talk ‘Learning To Love Humans—Emotional Interface Design’ was funny, humble  and very very smart – all about how to create an emotional response to design, and moving beyond the idea that functional is the goal (paraphrasing Aaron to sum it up: You never hear a chef say ‘taste this, it’s edible!’ so why should a designer).

If you’ve never heard Jared Spool talk about usability, design & process, chances are you’re doing it wrong. His insights are incredible. His talk here was about the anatomy of a design decision – what ‘kind’ of design to teams do, how they arrive at that process, and what effect it has both on productivity and on end-user experience. The 101-take: Experience is what happens in the space between actions. His talk, to me, nicely summed the internal conflict that makes Pencilneck Software work so well. I am, by default, an intuitive developer. I rely on tips, tricks, experience and instinct to guide me through what I do. Jeff, by contrast, is a firm believer in process & methodology to get things done right. Where we meet in the middle is why we are successful where lots of other firms have failed, I feel – and Jared Spool really captured both the differences in approach and how they each affect teams & workflow.

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Announcing: Vancouver Stories 2010

Last year, Think City held the first annual “Vancouver Stories” fundraiser event at Heritage Hall here in Vancouver. This event is a fundraiser for our now third annual Jane’s Walk event, in celebration of Jane Jacobs. This year’s event is coming up very soon, March 24th, also at Heritage Hall.

Vancouver Stories is a cocktail party and silent auction featuring Vancouver products, services and experiences, along with stories past and present as told by Vancouver notables. Last year, over 130 people turned out to listen to the tales told about our city (you can watch my embarrassingly amateurish video of Kim’s introduction from last year on YouTube). My bias is clear (I’m a Think City board member), but the silent auction had some pretty awesome items last year, and it looks even better this year.

Storytellers for 2010 include First Nations government advisor and Musqueam member Michele Guerin, recording artist Veda Hille, and architect and past Jane’s Walk host Annabel Vaughan.

The cost to attend this event is $60, and you can buy a ticket at the Think City website.

When: March 24th, 2009, 7-10 PM
Where: Heritage Hall, 3102 Main St., Vancouver
How Much: $60.00

Note: If you’d like to come, but cannot afford $60, contact Think City – we have a limited number of sponsored tickets for people who cannot afford to come but would like to be there. Likewise, if either you yourself cannot come, or would like to sponsor a ticket for someone else, you can do so on the registration page.

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Canadian islamophobia

Listening to CBC’s The Current this morning I heard the Québec immigration minister Yolande James state that a woman cannot wear the niqab to learn french, “point à la ligne” (full stop). The woman, a recent Egyptian immigrant, had chosen to learn french, presumably to better integrate into her new community, and has now been expelled from two separate government-run French classes. That blanket statement by the Québec government is frankly disgusting – I cannot comprehend how the wearing of a Niqab interferes with learning French.

If the story were that simple, this would be the end of it, but of course, it’s not. Over the course of the interview on the CBC with (I believe – my apologies if I have got the wrong person) Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum, it comes out that the reason she was expelled from the first class was her reaction to a request to do a class presentation (again, I’m working from memory of an interview I heard while driving Liam to school – I hope I have all the facts right here):

When joining the class, the woman, Naema, had made an arrangement with the teacher to sit in the front row, as she was uncomfortable having strange men look at her (presumably in the face) – the teacher agreed – that to me seems like “reasonable accommodation” of religious beliefs. Where I start to lack support for Naema is when, asked to present to the class, she refused to stand up in front of the class and speak, unless the men in the class weren’t there, or turned around. For me, at that point, she crosses the line from holding firm in her own beliefs over to imposing her world view on the others in her class. It is reasonable, to me, to accommodate her beliefs and ensure she has a seat where she is comfortable. It is not reasonable to allow her to speak from her seat, not facing the class, when everyone else must speak from the front. If you wish to attend government-run classes, some concession to the cultural mores of your new country should probably be expected. If you’re not comfortable with making those concessions, find a different class. Perhaps immigrant services, or groups such as the Canadian Muslim Forum could keep lists of privately-run classes that are more sensitive to the (for Canada) unique needs of devout Muslim women.

However, while I agree with the stand to not let her have special treatment relative to the other students, it in no way excuses a blanket ban on niqab-wearing women from learning French. It seems to be part of a growing (and worse, growing in acceptance) trend in Western Nations to isolate, demean and alienate Muslims living here. Given how already culturally isolating it would be to wear the niqab in Québec, it would seem right to encourage women such as Naema to attend French class, to have a better chance of assimilating somewhat into francophone culture in the province.

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How to improve the Oscars

Like (based on the evidence of my Twitter feed) a lot of people, I watched some of the Oscars on Sunday night. It was a pretty horrible telecast, as is standard. The hosts were desperately unfunny, the “in memoriam” forgot Farah Fawcett, the dance number was cringe-worthy. And yet, somehow, listening to the winners give their thanks, whether pointed & cogent (Mo’Nique), touching (Jeff Bridges) or so sweet I assumed a team of Hollywood’s best writers had been hired to craft it (Sandra Bullock), it rises above all the crap to be touching. The Twitter back-channel chat, like all live “communal” events I’ve watched recently (with the exception of the super-bowl – apparently football fans are not witty), greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the show.

aside: Given how much I love the twitter back-channel chatter, I would love some way to show my twitter feed on my TV for certain events – as a sidebar, perhaps. Not sure if that should be a cable-provider interface or built into the TV, but I could see it being fun.

But, as always, the middle part of the show sags. And there’s a very good reason for it: None of the recipients of the mid-show awards are celebrities. Virtually none of the tv audience knows who these people are, and they, as a rule, don’t know how to deal with the limelight. So here’s my (by no means original) suggestion for the Academy for upcoming awards: Only televise the acting/directing/music awards. Don’t let screenwriters, editors, designers or even producers speak. These are the behind-the-scenes heroes of cinema, not whom the public associates with the films.

There’s already a technical Oscars. Why couldn’t either that show be expanded, or there be a third show, for the “technical production staff”. This show could be expanded to include all sorts of vitally important on-production technical work that isn’t currently awarded (my vote for first new award: Credits design). These technical production people could then have an awards show that is truly about them, where they can actually invite their friends and family, not just be the one guy in the crowd no one recognizes. By getting rid of all of the categories that don’t highlight the celebrities, the show itself could be shorter, tighter. There’d be room for special recognition for lifetime achievements, letting recipients speak, rather than just standing & waving as Roger Corman did on Sunday night. Much like they have a presenter talk briefly about the technical awards, someone could talk briefly about the production awards, highlighting the winners there.

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