Tyler Sticka

Some Welcome Variation In Our Increasingly Mobile World

The iPhone may be my favorite device of the last ten years. No other gizmo since the PC has so fundamentally altered the way I interact with the web and my social circle.

But the iPhone’s ubiquity in the mobile space scares the living daylights out of me.

It frightens me the same way I’m frightened by the deceptive feeling of serenity that blankets me as I continue to surrender more and more of my data to Google (current buddy, future megalomaniac). The thought leaders at Apple have crafted an experience so warm and fuzzy it’s nearly impossible to escape its allure, even as it wallops all of its competitors.

I simultaneously sing the praises of the Semantic Web (often at the expense of rich media plugins such as Flash and Silverlight) while gleefully supporting dozens of apps delivered via the iPhone’s closed, draconian marketplace. The irony (hypocrisy?) therein is not lost on me.

It seems pretentious to avoid these products solely on insular, geeky principal, so I continue to champion competitors in hopes that a superior device will emerge or, at the very least, keep Apple under enough pressure and scrutiny to maintain their innovation and avoid sinking into mediocrity (remember?).

I had extremely high hopes for Palm’s WebOS, but a still-floundering app ecosystem coupled with some truly strange hardware choices appear to have sabotaged its chances. While I have much more confidence in the Android OS as a powerful and capable mobile device standard (especially in the long-term), the platform seems troubled by a lack-of-consistency between devices and the same snore-inducing, incremental release cycle that eventually tempered my excitement for ambitious open source projects like Ubuntu.

It could just be my ignorance of the platform, but as the iPhone becomes increasingly capable at performing business tasks I begin to look upon Blackberry users as I did AOL users ten years ago—with a feeling of solicitude generally reserved for endangered species.

What we need is a platform with a distinctive and decidedly un-iPhone-like user experience (an iPhone killer killer), produced by a company with experience facilitating ecosystems yet still capable of supporting a wide range of hardware and service providers.

Did you just say Windows?

That’s right, Microsoft showed off Windows Phone 7 Series this week, and it looks great. The minds responsible for the well-reviewed Zune HD have re-designed the mobile operating system from scratch. Designers like myself who admire the HD’s interface are thrilled, but considering the Zune’s marketshare could be very generously described as having a “lack of ubiquity,” it’s a brave (and admirable) move to hand them the keys to Microsoft’s mobile future.

Instead of forcing the user into disparate applications specific to function (iPhone) or allowing the user to multi-task until their poor little phone grinds to a halt (Android), Windows 7 Phones establish contextual hubs of interest. If you want to see what your cousin has been up to this week, you don’t have to check email, Facebook, Twitter and chat in separate apps; simply tap “People,” then select your cousin’s profile. This style of traversing your media and social circle is extremely thoughtful and appears to be well-executed. I know it won’t please everyone, but I’m certain a percentage of the population will instantly prefer it.

The interface itself looks completely unique, at least if you’ve never used a Zune. Subtleties like highlights, shadows, soft corners and texture are completely absent, allowing only color, typography and your content to show through. While occasionally abrasive (especially in the calendar application), it’s a striking choice that’s extremely memorable and looks beautiful in motion.

It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. The browser is still Internet Explorer, albeit the improved (but sluggish) version found in the Zune HD. Until Mobile IE supports the same sort of HTML5 features that have enabled web app developers to deliver rich mobile experiences to the iPhone and Android devices, Windows Phones will still be an obstacle in the evolution of the mobile web. Perhaps most depressingly, hardware actually supporting this OS probably won’t debut until Christmas, and who knows what may have changed by then.

Aside from the platform itself, what excites me most about this announcement is that another Apple competitor has finally shown they’re awake. Watching Apple merrily stomp ahead with Android slowly gaining ground and Palm off in the distance is becoming tiresome.

But an Apple/Google/Microsoft/Palm slugfest? I’d pay to see that.

Google Wave Preview First Impressions

It’s common geek knowledge at this point that Google Wave is named after the predominant method of audio-visual transmission in the tragically short-lived science fiction series Firefly (and it’s feature film sequel, Serenity). What’s ironic about this association is how much Wave, at this stage of development, reminds me of Firefly character River Tam.

River (Google Wave) is a prodigy, exceedingly gifted in nearly every respect, consistently one-upping her older yet still talented sibling Simon (Gmail). As striking as her abilities are, they are only experienced through a fog of schizophrenia and instability. While Simon lacks any of River’s psychic  insight, he is nonetheless remarkable and ultimately more reliable.

Okay, maybe I’m stretching the metaphor a bit. My point is that Wave has really cool moments, but they’re fleeting in this early state. While I haven’t experienced the rampant bugs reported by other users, I have noticed that the interface leaves a lot to be desired (it’s shockingly similar to Microsoft Outlook,  neglecting the emphasis on conversation Gmail achieved), and things become cacophonous when a conversation has many participants.

What I dig about Wave are the live conversations, the ability to structure those conversations in any order you please, and the freedom that plugins give the service. What’s wonderful about these high points is that they aren’t unique to Google’s implementation of the Wave platform. Remember, Wave is an open source creation aimed at replacing email as a standard, with Google’s offering the inaugural product. Regardless of the current user experience, one can’t deny the capabilities of the service, which any group of enterprising designers and developers could leverage into something truly wonderful.

That’s not to say we should necessarily write off Google’s interface at this early stage of development. Sure, it’s a little loopy, but who knows? It might kick email’s butt after all.

Make Email Suck Less (Why wait for Google Wave?)

Like so many geeks on Twitter, I’ve been shamelessly begging for a Google Wave invitation. I’ve heard numerous tales of the product’s rampant bugginess, but email feels so broken in the wake of the initial demo that I can’t help but pine for its modern, collaborative goodness.

In spite of this, I realize my wait will not end with Wave’s arrival. The service will likely taking many years to establish itself as the ubiquitous standard it aspires to be. I can’t just ditch email and twiddle my thumbs until that happens.

Here’s how I attempt to thwart email’s crappiness and continue to maintain that Merlin Mann nirvana that is Inbox Zero.

Step 1: Gmail

The setup begins with Gmail which, despite the handicap of our dilapidated email standard, still manages to rock 90% of the time.

I choose Gmail for its massive (and ever-expanding) storage capacity, the ability to send email from my personal domains, the versatility gained from “tagging” messages with labels, and the freedom to access all that cool stuff via POP3, IMAP and Google Sync for free. No competitor even begins to compare at this point and, even if they did, Gmail’s the easiest to escape from should you ever wish to switch.

In accordance with Merlin’s inbox makeover article, I immediately move every email I receive out of the inbox and into an action label after a brief skim. This protects me from workflow disruptions and insures that Gmail’s inbox and archive are used faithfully (for unsorted and archives items).

I prefix my action labels with an underscore so that they’ll be at the top of Gmail’s labels and any folder view in another application. They are:

_Action

For items that require some sort of action or task on my part before I can respond.

_Hold

For items I’ll want close at hand in the next week or so (login information, URLs, attachments, etc.).

_Respond

For items requiring a short message from me without any major tasks or required research.

_Waiting

For items which will likely require action once the sender has responded.

For added goodness, use Gmail’s Multiple Inboxes (enable it in Labs) to put these front and center:

I then follow Adam Pash’s lead and organize all other labels into Contexts and Projects, abbreviated to ‘C’ and ‘P’ respectively. Contexts might be something like “Events” and “Appointments,” whereas Projects refer to things like “New Web Site,” “The Big Account,” etc.

Once all your conversations are nicely organized and you’ve got a great bird’s eye view of your actionable items, Firefox users may want to install FaviconizeTab and Gmail Favicon Alerts for at-a-glance incoming mail alerts without additional applications.

Step 2: iPhone

If you set up Gmail on your iPhone using Apple’s baked-in, shiny logo button for the service, you’re missing out on the best experience.

I highly recommend using Google Sync, which gives you push mail, calendar and contacts from Google’s services. There’s nothing quite like the warm, fuzzy feeling you get having incoming messages pushed directly to that red badge on your home screen.

If you must have full multiple label goodness on your iPhone, or if you already have an Exchange ActiveSync account associated with the device, you should definitely use Gmail through mobile Safari. It does nearly everything the desktop version does (including offline support) and trumps the default mail app in numerous ways.

Step 3: Postbox

I’m somewhat of a zealot when it comes to having a local backup of my email on a hard drive. Call me skeptical, but cloud solutions are too new for me to have complete and total confidence in their archival potential. I was a happy Thunderbird user for years, but Mozilla Messaging has moved forward at a snail’s pace.

Postbox is Thunderbird with super powers. The interface is much more polished and boasts great features like tabs, attachment aggregation and social network integration. In many ways it’s the email client I wish Thunderbird was (and hopefully will be).

Setting up Gmail in Postbox is a snap. The big “archive” buttons acts as you’d expect, conversations are threaded, and the search accepts Gmail-like arguments (such as “from:Mom”).

Unlike Thunderbird, Postbox is a commercial application that’ll set you back $39.95 for a single license after a 30-day trial. Luckily, they’re nice enough to give purchasers a discount to hand out to friends, so the first ten people who purchase using this link will get ten bucks off that price. You’re welcome.

Why are we doing this again?

Because email is a beast, a sickly mutant beast that eats at your productivity and requires specialized care no matter how you access it. This is what it takes to make me happy with it. Using this setup allows me to access the same email everywhere, maintain a local backup on my home PC, and receive new email notifications no matter where I am on my iPhone. My conversations are threaded, helpfully organized and quickly searchable from anywhere.

But I still wouldn’t mind playing with Google Wave. I’ll even trade you a Typekit invite. Anyone? Update: Thanks to Ryan Williams and Chris at Studio 625 for the invites! I’ll publish a reaction to Wave soon.

Introducing the Ice Cream Social Icon Pack

This week’s web site redesign came with a set of custom-tailored social networking icons for easy sharing of articles and portfolio items. Inspired by Rogie King’s excellent social media network icon pack, I wondered if I, too, should unleash these little sixteen-pixel lovelies into the web design wilderness. With encouragement from Peter Wooley, Jim Gray and Vin Thomas, I’m doing just that!

The Ice Cream Social Icon Pack is a set of twenty 16 square pixel PNGs representing your favorite social networks, including Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Lala, Last.fm, LinkedIn, MySpace, NewsVine, Reddit, Stumble Upon, Technorati, Twitter, Vimeo, Virb and YouTube. Generic icons for feeds and email are also included.

Update: Ice Cream Social Icon Pack 1.1 is now available with even more icons.

Forget what I said before: IE6 is a goner

Boy, is my face red.

Back in March I wrote a post about developing for IE6 without much compromise, citing its 20% market share as reason enough to maintain support.

I’m happy to report that, as of today, that article’s importance has plummeted dramatically.

Last week, the folks behind news aggregation site Digg revealed that nearly 70% of IE6 visitors had no choice as to what browser they were using, and that IE6 usage was most prevalent from work rather than home. Although Digg’s audience is admittedly more tech-savvy than that of the entire web, it validates a broader report by CNET stating that 60% of the enterprise market still maintains support for this out-of-date (and insecure) browser. The article further states that, according to Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish, “IT control trumps technology populism.”

The struggle has remained the same since the 2006 release of Internet Explorer 7, with developers and companies eager to escape the IE6 productivity vacuum but stuck doing so for a sizable market segment frozen in time by corporate-mandated bureaucracy. Where reason and persistent whining have failed, only two solutions seem possible:

1. Microsoft must introduce a new version of Windows with features essential to the enterprise (trojan horsing the latest Internet Explorer in the process)
2. Large and influential web presences must phase out support, forcing IT managers to upgrade or risk an influx of costly support requests

With poor performance (and a healthy dollop of FUD) plaguing Vista from the outset, my hopes for Windows 7 making the first scenario a reality are understandably modest. Lucky for us, the second option yields far less pessimism.

You see, YouTube is phasing out support for the eight-year-old browser. Let me repeat that: YouTube. You may have heard of it. Alexa says it’s the third most popular site on the entire freaking Internet. It’s owned by the most popular site on the Internet. You can’t get much larger (and more influential) than that; few online properties have more visitors to lose from such a decision.

We knew the demise of IE6 was only a matter of time, but when a content behemoth like YouTube announces they’re going to run (slow motion) into the wide open arms of today’s web, it’s an understatement to say the pace has picked up significantly.

It’s about damn time.

Find where your Twitter friends blog with TweetPlus

In a matter not entirely unlike Isaac Newton’s obsession fascination with alchemy, I find it difficult to stop making mashups. I’m fascinated by the wealth of publicly-accessible information we have at our fingertips, and my gut tells me greater understanding may be earned should I discover the right combination. Like my Twitter/Flickr mashup Portwiture before it, this latest experiment was born out of both this desire and a healthy sense of play.

TweetPlus uses the Twitter and Google AJAX Feed APIs to find where your friends are blogging. Simply enter your (or any user’s) Twitter username and TweetPlus will find their friends, ask Google where they blog and show you the results. If you enjoy what your friends are saying in your Twitter feed, you may just discover a wealth of wonderful content that exists beyond the limits of 140 characters.

I’m certainly not oblivious to the potential criticisms of this application; one might call it a “Twitter inflater.” But unlike Portwiture, it is not without obvious utility; I’m happy to have found at least a dozen new blogs I continue to enjoy thanks to the service.

Take a look yourself, and be sure to let me know what you think in the comments. You may just find your new favorite blog!

Google Wave will move our industry

Are you a designer? A web or tech geek? You have no excuse to avoid watching the introduction of Google Wave. To quote my good friend Matt Lohkamp, “just watch the first 15 minutes, then see if you can stop.”

At least two of my presentations (and a fair amount of my college lectures) have included the assertion that the web is still in an early, pupa-like stage. Email is a classic example of this: an impressively prevalent new media standard based almost entirely on the constraints of dead wood pulp traversing the globe on planes, trains and automobiles.

Wave excites me because it sheds those pre-conceived notions of written communication in order to take advantage of the web’s unique strengths. It is truly an infinite canvas project at heart, free from the bindings of “messages” and “inboxes.” In the spirit of Google’s flagship search product, Wave gets out of the way. It allows us to simply talk to each other.

As amazing, fluid and instantaneous as the default interface appears to be, the commitment to introduce Wave as an open standard is a far greater and more important statement. Google’s first level of ubiquity came with their efficient, fast and relevant search. They pushed it further with the introduction of extensible services which continue to organize our information in increasingly intuitive and exciting ways. I am truly impressed at the level of objectivity and foresight required to acknowledge the only barrier between them and world domination: themselves.

I’ve often heard that the increasing prevalance of Facebook and MySpace messaging may reveal email’s successor, but we may have failed to see the forest through the trees. The future is a standard of communication that exists in and apart from all our communication services, that accomodates our Grandma’s desire to share photos with the same appropriateness as our IT manager’s requirement of easily-managed, secure and efficient collaboration tools.

I normally reserve judgment of a product until I’ve used it myself, and I realize this entry must have an air of naiveté, but I can’t help it! For all my hyperbole, I confess to being an email codger who relies on a combination of Mozilla Thunderbird and Gmail born from a distrust of pure cloud communication. Fifteen minutes into this presentation, I was ready to abandon all of that.

The truth is, I want to be using Wave right now. Will you join me later this year?

(Apologies to Engadget for the movie reference.)

Your Gmail tab just got more informative

Continuing this month’s theme of making the most out of 16 square pixels, I got to collaborate with my good friend and colleague Peter Wooley on the next version of the excellent Gmail Favicon Alerts script for Greasemonkey.

Many Gmail users will keep the application open in a tab while browsing to expedite the process of obsessively checking one’s inbox. But wouldn’t it be great if you could be privy to the arrival of new mail or chat notifications at any point in your browsing experience, regardless of your current tab?

That’s where this script comes in. I’ll let Peter explain:

• A Blue icon lets you know you have unread mail. New to version 3, the number of unread messages is indicated in the icon beyond 10!
  
• A Red icon means you’ve read all your mail (or, at least, clicked on them all).
  
• A Speech Bubble icon means someone has sent you a chat message.
  

The newest version of Gmail FavIcon Alerts brings both a visual and functional refresh. Many thanks to awarded-winning designer Tyler Sticka, who has redesigned the iconography from scratch. The updated icons are now visually balanced, evenly shaded and gorgeous. In addition, Tyler designed numeric indicators for displaying the number of unread items in your inbox. As we both avidly watch our inboxes, knowing how many messages are unread allows us to make a better decision on when to switch tabs. The indicator counts up to 10 unread messages and hides when more unread items exist. Much like the Chat alerts, you can choose to turn this feature off through the Greasemonkey User Script Command menu.

Used in combination with the PermaTabs and Faviconize Tab extensions, you can easily keeps tabs on your Inbox status with less screen real estate than usual.

It’s always a blast redesigning something you use every day, an experience which always yields fruitful lessons. My first instinct was to switch things up and use the more vivid red icon as “unread” and a desaturated gray when there were no new messages. I abandoned this solution for two reasons:

• Having used Gmail Favicon Alerts for years, changing the colors completely threw off my learned behavior, impairing usability.
• The gray icon was markedly uglier than other variations. After all, you do have to look at this thing all day.

In the end, changing the color scheme presents little immediate user benefit, whereas introducing an unread count bares plenty. As such, Peter and I are both extremely proud of this version.

Download and install Gmail Favicon Alerts from its Greasemonkey homepage. If you dig it, why not leave a comment or write a review?

Update (2/19): Gmail Favicon Alerts has been featured on Lifehacker! Maybe they’ll integrate it into the Better Gmail extension? (Crosses fingers)

Update (3/17): Updated the imagery and description to match the latest version. Thanks to user feedback, we’ve replaced the orange chat icon with a more appropriate chat-bubble icon a la Google Talk.

Update (4/8): Updated the description to match the latest version, which no longer caps at 10 unread items. Whee!

Google is taking over my data

Competition is awesome. I applaud the innovations evident in the Palm Pre despite owning an iPhone because I know that the Pre’s existence will challenge Apple to make better products.

Google is a bit scary, not simply for how big they’ve become, but for how many of their products are simply the best solution available. There are a number of very worthy competitors that I’ve attempted to stick with through thick and thin, but slowly they’ve fallen from my bookmarks toolbar like some sort of Web 2.0 natural selection.

The latest casualty: Netvibes. I’ve been using the service for roughly 2 years, during which time I recommended the service to many. The single biggest caveat of the service is simple yet overwhelmingly irritating; it rarely remembers which items in a feed I have or haven’t read. When navigating dozens of feeds, this feature isn’t just useful; it’s essential!

As of Tuesday, I’ve switched on over to Google Reader. I had some problems with the UI, but many of those were solved by installing an excellent OSX-inspired theme. I’m also quite smitten with Reader’s snappy iPhone interface which is both easier to navigate and faster than Netvibes.

To make matters more alarming, Google Calendar and Contacts have finally invaded my iPhone. It’s all explained in this ginchy video:

I’ve heard a few users have had problems with syncing, but mine went off without a hitch. And with that, I’ve surrendered to Google even more of my personal information.

Why do we let this happen? I think there are a few key ingredients to Google’s success in owning our brainspace:

• Reputation for simplicity. Google is synonymous with simple and easy search, and has delivered that so consistently that we expect the same easy-of-use from all their products.
• Shared login. Even though we constantly absolve ourselves of more and more information, the obstacle of creating an account is only encountered once. Want to try out Google Reader? Just use your Gmail credentials.
• One big platform. Google services look like each other and often talk with each other. As such, we trust Google like we do an operating system to organize our information and present it to us in as unified a way as possible. Signing up for Google Calendar is less like buying OS X as it is firing up iCal for the first time.
• Exit signs are clearly marked. Google products typically come with multiple solutions for exporting your data, which makes them appear trustworthy. With the ability to pack up and hit the road any time you want, it feels more like lending your information than giving it up.
• Conforming to our needs. Google does an amazing job at growing with meeting the needs of power users while catering to beginners. IMAP in Gmail allows someone like me to use my beloved Thunderbird and custom domains on my iPhone; typical users won’t even see the option, hidden deep in their settings menu.

Ultimately, all of these observations boil down to a simple, overarching theme: no obstacles. As I said in my Google favicon post, the company excels at making every process, whether it be finding an email, making an appointment or searching out an image online, as painless as humanly possible (hence the lack of shiny, pretty things to distract you).

So listen up, competing services (I’m lookin’ at you, Netvibes and Zenbe): I want to like you. Please alleviate obstacles. And while you’re at it, make it look pretty, too. Thanks.

“Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.” - Paul Rand