Zhephree

I’m pretty excited about the open-sourcing of the Enyo framework. This means big things for me as a developer, so I thought I’d comment on what my plans are.

1. Finish Developing Wooden Rows. This should happen this week, with a submission to the webOS App Catalog this weekend. (Hopefully!) The app, as promised, will be available on webOS first. It is TouchPad-only at the moment, but I hope to change that.
2. Make Sure Wooden Rows is Resolution-Agnostic. While it’s best a tablet app, I want to work on making it work at smaller screen sizes so it’ll be phone-friendly, too.
3. Port Wooden Rows to iOS and Android. Thanks to PhoneGap, this should be relatively easy. I’ll push to these two platforms as quickly as possible. Assuming the app scales down to phone screens well, it’ll be on phones and tablets with these OSes.
4. Port incredible! to iOS and Android. I’m targeting these platforms first since they’re the big ones. I’m aiming for tablets only on this one.
5. Begin Developing New App. I have plans for a new app. I’ll give more details as I get closer to starting on it.
6. Rebuild neato! in Enyo. By this point, Enyo 2.0 will be fully released and I’ll be able to bring neato! to webOS, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, allowing you to send stuff from your Pre to your iPad or your iPhone to your Kindle Fire or any other crazy combination.

So, there you have it: a rough outline of my development plans. I’m targeting iOS and Android first with the ports, but will work on Windows Phone after that. I also haven’t ruled out a web app for users that currently use the app on some other devices.

And, because of the new Zhephree Accounts, your settings and data will be available across all devices automatically. Have the app on your TouchPad? Sign in on your iPad and boom! it’s all there.

Obviously, you’ve heard about SOPA and PIPA, the bills that will give the government unfettered authority over the Internet. I won’t go into details here as others have done it far better. But it’s important for you to take action and let your Representatives and Senators know how you feel. They take an oath to vote as their constituents want them to vote. Yes, there’s nothing that says they have to and if they’re not up for re-election, they probably don’t care, but many Representatives and reversed their opinions and support because of citizen outcry.

So, to help you help us, here’s where you can find your representatives and senators to contact them.

1. Go to Wikipedia
2. When the blackout loads, enter in your ZIP code
3. Click the “Contact Form” link under one of your Congresspeople.
4. Fill out the form on their website and ask them to vote against SOPA.
5. Repeat this for all of your Congresspeople.

If you need help on what to say, here’s the message I’ve been sending out:

[NAME OF REP] —

As you are aware, the SOPA bill is about to be voted upon. As your constituent, I plead with you to do what you can to stop this disaster of a bill.

The internet is a font of knowledge and a communication platform like no other. It enables us to communicate with loved ones across the globe. It helps our troops over seas see their families while they defend our freedoms. It helps students learn and access information in ways and speeds never before possible.

As with all types of theft, there obviously must be something done about rampant piracy and copyright infringement on the Internet — this much is true. However, the carte blanche authority SOPA would give the US government is appalling, and frankly, scary.

The United States has prided itself as a place of freedom where one can go to escape oppression and inequalities from other nations — the very reason our great country exists at all. If SOPA passes, the US will be employing an overly restrictive Internet identical to those in place in China, Syria, and Iran — countries we’ve been trying to get to change their ways. It feels like a step backward to pass SOPA.

Passing SOPA does nothing to curb piracy. It does not go after those that infringe copyrights. Under SOPA, a news organization’s website could be shut down if an anonymous commenter leaves a comment with a link to a site with infringing material. This would be akin to a vandal spray painting the wall of a building and the owner of that building being arrested instead of the vandal.

In order to become a thriving, modern society, we need unfiltered access to the web and to do so, we can’t let SOPA pass. We need a better, more informed game plan.

Thank you.

The key is to explain why SOPA and PIPA are bad, but also why they should care. As you can see, I appealed to their patriotism and troop support. This shows them that this is an un-American bill and that it affects all of is. Likening the bill to “enemy” countries is also helpful. While these are tactics, they are 100% true and accurate.

Please educate yourself on the issue and please pass some links to your friends on Twitter and Facebook and Google+ and wherever to educate them. E-mail your parents and explain it to them.

http://blacklists.eff.org/

http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/22/2648219/stop-online-piracy-act-sopa-what-is-it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act (Yes, it still loads)

http://mashable.com/2012/01/18/sopa-dark-ages/

While we as US citizens don’t have a very loud voice, we do still have a voice and it’s time for us to use it.

I’ll preface this post with some back story. When I first got a cellphone in like 2001, I was a Verizon customer. My first for-real job found me becoming their Director of Technology right after I graduated high school and they offered to pay for my cellphone, but it required me to switch to their plan, on Sprint. So I did and got a nice little LG camera phone. A few years later, I left the company but remained on Sprint. I picked up an HTC Mogul running Windows Mobile 6.1 as my first smartphone. 

After a while, that Mogul started to wear thin and, seemingly just in time, Palm announced the original Pre. And lucky me was on Sprint. It seemed different and new and hey! apps are made in web technologies, the very thing I’ve done for a living for at least 10 years of my life. So I bought the Pre at full retail (with a portion of the cost subsidized by my current employer). I instantly loved it. 

From there, you guys know the story: I was frustrated at the lack of a webOS foursquare app, so I built one with some help from newly-found Internet-friend Chris van Buskirk. Then I got heavy into development, became a part of the community, incited a few Twitter riots with comments on webOS and HP, made a few dollars, and made a bunch more Internet-friends, many of whom I hung out with and drank with in New York. webOS is and will be for a long time, in my opinion, the best and most intuitive and beautiful mobile OS available.

However, my Sprint contract ran out in August, freeing me from their clutches. As you also know, I recently got married and when you get married, you start consolidating stuff to save hassles and money. In the New Orleans area, Verizon’s network quality outshines Sprint’s with no contest and Rhea has been a Verizon customer for years. It made better sense to move her to a family plan and add me as a second line. And so that was the plan — port my Sprint number to Verizon. (Monthly, we’ll actually save about $40 by being on one Verizon family plan vs. one Verizon single line plan and one Sprint single line plan).

At this point, I had a choice to make: take the Verizon Pre 3 I had for development purposes over to Verizon, or, try something new. It was a tough decision to make, but, as a developer, it makes more sense for me to diversify my familiarity with mobile OSes, so I decided to go with Android since it’s a market leader right now. That decision was finalized with the announcement of Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Nexus.

So, I got my GNexus in a day early on Monday and got it activated Tuesday morning. I’ve been playing with and using it pretty straight through all that time and I felt I should comment on Android as a webOS guy.

Since webOS has its awesome Synergy, setting up my GNexus was a breeze. I logged into my Google account and all my contacts were there. My calendar events were there. My email showed up. And after adding my work’s Exchange account and downloading the Facebook app, my contacts and calendars mirrored exactly what I had on webOS.

The UI is really slick-looking. It’s fluid and really intuitive. The ever-present Google search bar on your Home Screen is reminiscent of the JustType bar in webOS 2.0/3.0. Tapping it allows you to search the web and your phone for apps and contacts and email. It doesn’t have the fancy actions like JustType (like sending a tweet from the search), but I didn’t use that very often anyway so for me, it’s not a big loss. Plus, since you can add widgets to your homescreen, finding a widget to do those things is pretty trivial.

Multitasking isn’t AS good as webOS, but on Ice Cream Sandwich, the experience is similar. While the apps aren’t running live like in webOS, switching between them is very webOS-like (which makes sense, considering the same guy designed both). Whereas in webOS you have a horizontally-scrolling list of thumbnails of your open apps and you swipe them up to close them, ICS has a vertically-scrolling list of thumbnails (and text) of your open apps and you swipe them to the side to close them. While different, it was intuitive enough to figure out, especially coming from webOS.

The buttons at the bottom of the Galaxy Nexus aren’t really buttons at all. They’re soft buttons, that is, the buttons are digital buttons created by the OS at the very bottom of the screen. I like this a lot. For one, you only get the buttons you need, when you need them. For instance, the menu button. It only appears in apps that have menus. And when you rotate the phone, the buttons rotate as well.

This virtual button area makes for an unintended feature — the back button is on the far left of the bottom button area. As a webOS user, when I want to go back, I Instinctively swipe to the left of the bottom area of the screen. I can actually do this on the Galaxy Nexus, as long as I lift up my thumb when it’s over the Back button. While not an intended feature, it will help me with the transition.

I’m used to looking at the bottom of the screen for notifications in webOS, so I often think I have none since they’re at the top in Android. That’ll correct itself over time. Swiping down on the top of the screen reveals all of your notifications, similar to how tapping the notification area in webOS expanded all the notifications. And, just like in webOS, you can swipe the notifications to the side to remove them. There’s also an X button at the top to clear all of the notifications, which is a welcomed feature.

I’m getting used to the virtual keyboard and while it’s waaay different than a hardware keyboard, I like it. I type horribly on it, but I type horribly on the Pre2’s keyboard and even fullsize keyboards on computers. The difference is the autocorrect in Android is really pretty good, so no one knows how terribly I type.

The size of the phone is WAY bigger than my Pre2. Surprisingly, the Galaxy Nexus is pretty light. I honestly think the Pre2 weighs more, and that’d make sense due to the sliding mechanism and keyboard. So, the phone fits perfectly in my hand and in my pocket and weighs a bit less. I’m fine with that. The screen is HUGE, and while I’d be fine with a smaller 4.3” screen, I’m also fine with the Galaxy Nexus’s 4.65” screen. The guy at the Verizon store by my house compared it to his Droid RAZR and it’s just about the same size — even in thickness. (The GNexus is obviously thicker, but it’s only by millimeters and we all know the Metric system doesn’t count). Compared to an iPhone, it’s bigger, but it’s so negligible that I think all of the people complaining about the size are complaining just to complain.

The phone is super duper fast. Way faster than my Pre2. No sluggishness.

Battery life isn’t at all what people said it’d be, and that’s a good thing. I charged my phone to 100% around 9am yesterday morning. I didn’t get a warning about the battery being low (at 14%) until about midnight, and that’s after spending almost the whole day setting up the phone, playing around with it, and downloading and installing a couple dozen apps. I also have push notifications for like a billion apps. Now, to be fair, while I was at work, I turned off 4G to conserve power, but when it’s just sitting on my desk at the office, there’s no reason for it to be on LTE.

I think one of my favorite things though is the apps. Every time I think “Ooh! I wonder if there’s an app for this!” and I search the Marketplace for it, it exists. I have apps for PayPal, Chase, and ING Direct, which allows me to handle all of my money from my phone, which is a huge win for me. I could go on with examples, but that’s what excited me the most.

It is really weird not using my own apps on a day-to-day basis. The Android foursquare app is nice and well-made, but there are some subtleties I miss, like how the Android app opens up to your friends’ check-ins instead of nearby places like the webOS app. To me, using foursquare is for checking-in first, so I’d rather that be the first screen, but, that’s minor. Plus, since it’s an official app, I have access to all of the features, like Events, which they can’t open up entirely to third party developers due to data sharing agreements with their partners.

Chrome-to-Phone is nice and it does what it needs to and does it well, but it’s no neato!. Luckily, that won’t be forever because I plan on making neato! the first app I take to other platforms.

The official Untappd app is obviously more robust than my growlr app, but that’s expected since I never intended to make growlr a full Untappd app. Plus, Untappd hasn’t opened up photo uploads to third parties yet, so the official app is the only way to do that.

Installing apps from non-official Marketplace sources is pretty straightforward — download the APK (after enabling the ability to install from unofficial sources, a simple checkbox in your system settings) and open it and it’ll install — usually. Some APKs don’t install so easily and to do that, you have to download a (free) app call APK Installer from the official Marketplace to install those APKs. Since the app’s free and super small (like under a meg), it wasn’t a huge deal. I’ve been able to install a beta version of both Dropbox and Untappd by downloading APK files from two different web sites without ever connecting my phone to a computer, so, that experience doesn’t differ from webOS too much.

All in all, I’m really happy with my switch to Android and Verizon (except for Verizon’s data and LTE outage this morning…). It’s not webOS, which sucks, but it’s a great OS for how I use my phone. It’ll be fun getting into Android development and being able to bring my apps to even more users.

And, as I’ve said before, I’m still a webOS developer and I still have my TouchPad, so I’m still a webOS user, too. I’m still going to push apps out onto webOS (sometimes first!), so don’t worry. I just needed a new phone and I figured I’d try something new. I’m a gadget guy first and I love playing with new gadgets.

So, if you recall, a little over a month ago, @zeldamac and I got married. Around that time I made a similar post about how I wouldn’t be available.

That time is coming up again! We’ll be on our honeymoon/holiday break at the end of the year, so I will not be able to offer support for my apps during this time.

I will be unavailable from December 22 until January 3.

If you have any problems with any of my apps, you can still email me or tweet me with your issues, but I will not be responding to them until after the 3rd of January.

Thanks! And enjoy your appropriate winter time holidays!

littlebigdetails:

Facebook - When you try to post your password on Facebook it turns into asterisks.

/via jan

Apparently, they have never seen this bash quote: http://bash.org/?244321

Hey, LittleBigDetails — you guys should verify things before you post them.

I Work For The Internet

staff:

We work for the Internet. And we’re guessing many of you do too. Whether it’s researching, selling, coding, supporting, designing — so many of our careers depend on the Internet.

One argument that’s been made to Congress is that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is needed to protect American jobs. In truth, the new liabilities this bill would impose on startups could stop American innovation in its tracks.

To make this clear to Congress, we’ve built IWorkForTheInternet.org to show the world how many of our careers depend on the Internet.

If you work for the Internet, please add yourself and spread the word.

Pretty much everything we do on the web these days requires some sort of account or profile. We gladly (or sometimes, begrudgingly) fill them out. We enter our name, location, maybe a birthday, our gender, and hit “submit” and move on with our day.

But for many people, that little “gender” field sometimes is source of hesitation. Generally, a site will offer two choices: “male” or “female”. Some add the option of not specifying. Some include “other”. But, if I were one who did not identify with “male” or “female”, would I really want to be lumped into “other”? I wouldn’t.

The topic of gender on web sites has come up on many sites and many have blogged at length about the topic. The folks at AllOut.org have a campaign to get Facebook to add more options than the two standard ones.

People have come up with various ways to combat the problem. Google+ keeps your gender visible only to yourself, and, presumably Google’s demographic statistics. Supposed Facebook-killer Diaspora has gender as a freeform textfield, allowing you to enter in anything you want for your gender. MetaFilter has done this for a long time. In fact, someone over there compiled a list of everything people have typed in as their gender, and the frequency in which users do it. There’s a great discussion on the topic over there, too.

With the upcoming Zhephree Accounts for (almost) all of my apps, I knew I’d hit this problem with gender. Obviously, knowing someone’s gender when they keep track of the movies they own isn’t really necessary or useful. I also have no desire in running any stats on what gender has more books than movies. So, I decided to make gender optional. In fact, during the signup process, you’re only asked for a username, password, and email address.

Screenshot of the Zhephree Account signup page. No gender!

This is all well and fine, however, when a user shares an item in their Wooden Rows library out to their social networks, the landing page gives a little blurb about the user.

Screenshot of the Wooden Rows item share landing page.

It says “Geoff is using Wooden Rows to catalog their real world…” Anyone that paid attention in high school English class will know that “their” is a plural-possessive pronoun, that is, referring to more than one person. Some newer English teachers will reference the “singular, gender-neutral ‘they’”, but in reality, English doesn’t have a gender-neutral pronoun of any kind. Sure, it’s accepted by most English speakers, but it weirds me out when I read it.

So, then I thought “Guess I have to ask for gender…”, which brought me back to the whole gender identity issue. While it doesn’t affect me, I like to make things work for everyone, not just some people.

So I thought about the reason I needed gender and the answer was simple: knowing which pronoun to use. That made me realize that if what I really wanted to know about the suer was which pronouns to use, that’s what I should be asking, instead of inferring from their gender selection.

As a result, after one signs up for a Zhephree Account, they’ll be able to modify their profile, which contains the original username, password, and email fields, but also adds other fields (like location, etc). 

And, it asks which pronouns the user would like to use, with freeform text fields.

Screenshot of the Edit Profile page for Zhephree Accounts

Obviously, while this approach asks the real questions so I get the real answers, it is three fields instead of one and assumes the user knows what these parts of speech are. To make it a little easier, the text field is located in its proper place in a sample sentence to give context. The text fields’ placeholder text shows some typical English pronouns as examples. And, to personalize it, the “Username” portion of the sample sentences changes as you type in a username.

Screenshot of Edit Profile page while a username is entered.

Another obvious flaw is, of course, misuse. I trust my users, and I feel that because its kind of a fun feature, people will respect it. I’m all for users using funny words, or just entering their username (“bob307 is sharing bob307’s library.”). I’m going to apply a swear filter though as the apps are all-ages. There will also be a 5 character limit.

But, all in all, I think it’s a novel approach to an issue that many feel dear to them. If I can help solve it, then so be it. I’ll see how this goes after the accounts go live and people start using them. It’ll be interesting to see the results of what users enter. By default, if the user leaves a field blank, it’ll use “their/them/they”.

I’ve had a few questions asked about Wooden Rows and the new Zhephree Accounts, so I thought I’d address them in one place.

Are Zhephree Accounts free?
Yep! Always will be. The apps that’ll use Zhephree Accounts will be paid apps in the various app stores/markets/catalogs/etc, so that’s where support for the services will come from. That way you only pay a low fee once (to buy the app) and you get an account for free. Cool, eh?

What other platforms are you planning on developing for?
I have no hard plans at the moment, but Android and iOS are high probabilities, mostly because of their marketshare. Windows Phone is also a high possibility. Availability of specific apps on specific platforms will depend on the app and the platform. For instance, there are already official foursquare apps on all of those OSes, so I obviously won’t be porting my foursquare app to any others.

Will we be able to import/export our Wooden Rows libraries?
Specifics on this aren’t available yet because I haven’t explored all the possibilities. I do plan to allow you to import CSV files of your library from applications like Delicious Library. I also plan to let you import a “shelf” you’ve created on GoodReads into your library (if you’ve got a “shelf” of books you own).

Other expressed interest in being able to export the WR library, especially with the uncertainty of webOS. Since a Zhephree Account will automatically sync your device’s WR library to the Zhephree server, all of your data will be safe and sound on the web, still accessible through the WR website. I’ll most likely do a simple CSV file export from the website in case you’d like to import it elsewhere, or just use Excel or something.

What about a companion app on a phone to scan barcodes into the app?
That’s a great idea! It’s been suggested by a few people. On webOS, utilizing Touch-to-Share on the Pre3 and TouchPad would be an obvious choice, though there’s always the neato! technology to have it beam instantly to the Wooden Rows. I’ve already developed a barcode decoder in JavaScript, so the hard work’s done. I’ll look into this  after WR launches.

What about cataloging other things, like beer and wine in your home cellar?
This is a cool idea! I’m currently using Amazon’s product API for the media items. Anyone have any good beer/wine databases? Untappd seems like a good option for beer. I’ll think about this for a post-1.0 set of features.

Thanks for sticking with webOS!
Hey, I always said: as long as I’m a webOS user and there are other webOS users, I’ll support the platform. That said, this will probably be the last app of mine that is initially a webOS exclusive. I’ll probably simultaneously launch future apps on more than one platform at a time. Sadly, regardless of the webOS future, this seems like the best options for me as a developer right now.

So, after about a two-week long contest to see who could guess what my new app would be based off a few hints I dropped on Twitter, Rod Whitby, Mr. @webosinternals himself, correctly guessed it. While his guess wasn’t 100% correct, it described two core features of the app, neither of which could exist without the root of the app. So, without further ado, allow me to introduce Wooden Rows!

What is it?
Wooden Rows allows you to catalog and keep track of the things you own in the real world: CDs, video games, movies, and books. You can sort and search for things in your library, You can “lend” an item to a friend (anyone in your contacts, so even Facebook friends if you have your account added to Synergy)  to keep track of who has your stuff (that’s why the Harry Potter soundtrack is translucent).

You’ll also be able to share individual items via Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. The link it sends out is a landing page much like that of Instagram or something in that it shows a picture of the item and some information about it and the user that shared it.

That’s the short version of it, but it goes a bit deeper and is the first app that opens up the Zhephree ecosystem.

Zhephree Ecosystem?
As I begin developing more and more apps on multiple platforms it’s becoming increasingly important that I allow people to keep track of their stuff. So, with Wooden Rows, I’ll also be introducing Zhephree Accounts. You’ll have the option of using a Zhephree Account with WR or not, but if you do, you get a lot of benefits:

• Your entire library will be backed-up in the cloud
• You’ll be able to view your library from a mobile-friendly website (Perfect for when you’re at the store and can’t remember which special edition DVD you have or what season of a TV show you last bought)

OK, so 2, but those are big. Plus, more of my apps will move to this model, allowing one username/password for keeping track of your stuff. For instance, eventually, incredible! will back-up your Rules, Groups, and even your social media accounts so that it’ll stay synced across multiple devices. Another future upgrade is neato! will be going cross-platform (hooray!) and a Zhephree Account will allow you to log in on one device, authorize it, and do the same on your computer or another device and instantly see all your devices you can send to. No more adding your TouchPad as a “friend” on your Pre!

There will be a main account login area on zhephree.com where you’ll be able to manage all of your app data AND be able to remotely revoke any app’s ability to connect to your account — perfect for if you lose your device.

This is a lot of big news and I can’t wait to have it all done and available for everyone! I don’t have a release date or beta period decided upon for WR, but the app itself is about 95% done. Most of the work is server-side.

Wooden Rows will be a TouchPad exclusive at first, but will most likely be ported to other devices in the near future.

So, there you have it. More screen shots? Sure!

Video Game Detail

 
Music CD Detail

Detail of a Music CD that is currently lent out to a friend.

Multiple ways to add an item (No, the camera on the TouchPad isn’t good enough to read barcodes. They must be typed in.)

 
Dialog of Search Results

I’m still here and I’m still developing for webOS! My next app will possibly be my last webOS-exclusive app. That doesn’t mean I will stop developing for webOS. It just means that my apps will likely be cross-platform from here on out. I may even move some apps to other platforms…

I’ve been teasing my new app on Twitter lately; trickling out some hints here and there. I haven’t announced functionality or a name… yet.

Here are the hints so far:

1. It is a slight departure from my usual apps
2. It allows you to share things within the app via social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ (Whaaa?!) but isn’t centered around these social networks
3. A flower is involved. Sort of.
4. The name is not all lowercase, nor does it contain an exclamation point
5. I had to make my own API running on my own server
6. It ties into your Contacts for one feature
7. It’ll backup/sync stuff in the app to my server
8. It involves things in your real life, physical world
9. You can search and filter things in the app

I’ll update this post as more is “leaked”.

And here are guesses people have made:

• RSS Reader
• Flower purchasing app
• Super Mario Bros.
• ICQ client
• Photo (Instagram-esque) app
• Recipe app
• A Game
• SMS Client
• Dating App
• People of Wal-Mart
• Wedding-related
• Sharing things You Like over Social Networks (Not right or wrong, since one hint was basically this)
• New Orleans-related app
• Fart app
• Birthday/anniversary reminder app
• Greeting Card app
• Calendar App
• Image editor-style app that places friends’ faces on the photos
• Life planner/organizer
• incredible! 2
• Social media app combined with Google Voice
• “Siri” for TouchPad
• app that maintains “seen notification” state across social networks
• Yelp
• Augmented Reality game

I’ll say this: whomever guesses correctly what the app does (before I announce it) will receive a promo-code for a free copy.