Pushing buttons

The Wall Street Journal featured an article "Must Consumer Electronics Be So Complicated?". The question can be posed for any human - machine interface. Most often is the interface overly complicated. I am sure you have your own list of favorite device interfaces or horror stories of complicated user interface. The iPod interface for sure rocks. Hooking up a home entertainment system is like throwing darts at a dart board. Or does any one know what all the buttons on your four or five remote controls are used for?

RTFM should never apply to the basic operation of a machine, computer program, or blender. I never got around to learn Emacs editor (even though it gave one geek street cred), as basic operation required you to read the manual. Allow me to explore the program intuitively, and consult the manual for power user features.

The best illustration of a simple and intuitive user interface is the following picture. I've been looking for this picture for a while. It was part of a Steve Jobs' presentation announcing Apple Front Row. In the middle is the Apple remote control: six buttons. To the sides are your standard home entertainment remote controls, include the one used by the Windows Media Center. (Sure a Windows Media Center has TV tuner card recording capability, but do you need all the extra buttons to make use of that feature.)


If there is one thing any engineer should aspire to is to design an incredibly intuitive user interface. Even if it comes at the cost of less feature support, so be it.

Pinger and Free international calls

I've been experimenting with Pinger the last month. It is a service which allows you to record a message from your phone, to be sent as an mp3.


This is great when you know somebody is in a meeting. Or when you have only a couple of minutes to spare and you don't want to be locked in a long conversation. Think of it like recording memo's.

I discovered the service via TechnCrunch. There is also a short description in a recent technology article from David Pogue in the Wall Street Journal:

FREE ‘PINGS’ Pinger is a new way to reach someone: a method that combines the immediacy of a text message with the personality of voice mail. (You can sign up at Pinger.com.) You call one of Pinger’s access numbers, say the name of the person you’re calling, and then speak a message.

Suppose you’ve just pinged your sister. She receives a text message to let her know. With one keystroke, she can hear your message — and with another, send a voice reply. There’s no waiting to roll over to voice mail, no listening to instructions, no outbound greetings.

But there is something even more interesting in his article: FREE INTERNATIONAL CALLS. That's right! (I haven't tried this yet, until tomorrow that is.)

You can now call any of 50 countries from the United States, free. Talk as long as you like. You pay only for a call to the access number in Iowa, which is 712-858-8883; if you use your cellphone on nights or weekends, even that’s a free call.

There’s no contract, no ads, nothing to sign up for. At the prompt, press 1 for English. Then punch in 011, the country code and the phone number. The call rings through immediately.

Fine print: In some countries, you can reach only landlines, not cellphones. And in part because FuturePhone’s lines have been flooded, its success at placing calls is not, ahem, 100 percent.

But it’s hard to argue with “free,” which, according to the company, it will be until at least 2010.

Wii, Oui Oui Oui

Je deteste le "Black Friday". But here we were, on the famous Friday morning when supposedly many stores become profitable for the year, trolling the local shopping fall for sweatshirts and shoes for the kids at reduced prices. Some of the deals are incredible: 30% / 40% / 50%. It's worth queueing in the parking lot or the standing in line at the stores' check-out (never more than 10 minutes). I was also worth checking out some new consumer products.

In the mall, a team from Nintendo was showcasing the Wii. While Sony and Microsoft are adding more and more triangulation power to the Playstation and Xbox, Nintendo stepped out of the arms race. Instead it took a new and innovative approach with the Wii.


The Wii consists of a base station and a wireless game controller. The Wii is motion sensitive. This is where the genius lies. Pretend the Wii is the handle of a tennisracket and you can partake in an interactive tennis game. Or clasp the Wii controller in your fists and throw some punches in the ring. This a great improvement from the multi-button joystick game controllers giving you a cramp in your thumb.

The Wii might not be very sexy to the hardcore gamer, because of the lack in built-in super computer cpu cycles in the base station. Nevertheless, I predict it will be a great hit among the plebs, because people want more interaction with 'The Machine'. Think of the tetris-like dance step games you find in the arcades. And at half the price of a playstation, it is a much easier gift to buy.

My rating on the Wii: 3 x Oui's !

UPDATE 12/07/2006: The improved user interaction now comes with a "Don't poke fork in eye"-sticker.

"Do not let go of the remote during gameplay. For example, in games like Wii Sports Bowling, the ball is thrown by simply releasing the B Button on the remote, not by letting go of the remote. Hold the remote securely and avoid excessive motion during game play. If your hands become moist, stop and dry your hands." -- Nintendo responds to reports of Wii mishaps with a bit of cautionary advice. (from Good Morning Silicon Valley)

Technorati: Nintendo Wii Microsoft Xbox Sony playstation

Christmas madness - part one: November

I am not a big fan of the holiday season in the US. It is all about buying buying buying. Shopping malls become madhouses. I know because I used to live across one for two years. Out of the blue, a friend you might meet once a year, will show up with a Christmas gift because you are such great friends. (A better gift would have been to meet for a beer outside of the holiday season.)

It isn't even Thanksgiving yet and the Christmas decorations are out. No, not just in the stores, but in the street. People's houses glow in the light of the Christmas lights. A neighbour across the street already put up her Christmas tree.

Today, while grocery shopping, we came across reversible Christmas wrapping paper. My wife joked: "Have they run out of Christmas ideas?" I just thought there might be light at the end of the Christmas madness tunnel.

Pizookies

Our tools group hit a major milestone this week. Take a look at the suite of developer tools for applications using the Data Distribution Service on our website. To celebrate, we met in our breakroom for BJ Pizookies (also known as pazookie). Huh? My first reaction was this was some sort of game. Nope.

1. BJ = BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse in Cupertino. (Silicon Valley oldtimers know it as the old Peppermill in front of the Apple Headquarters on De Anza Boulevard)
   
2. Pizookies are giant, barely cooked cookies, baked in a pizza dish and served in a pizza box. Pizza+cookie=pizookie, get it? You can choose from: peanut butter, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, and white chocolate macadamia nut. They are best served with a scoop of ice cream and taste pretty great.
   

So there you go, a new word in my slang dictionary: pizookies.

Netbeans CND: revamped import wizard

The Netbeans CND project adds C and C++ development support to Netbeans. It is currently still in early access. However, it is made great strides forward in recent months and has proven to be a great tool in my day to day work. One of the latest updates, which I tried out in early access, is a revamped import wizard when creating a new project from existing source code.

RTI Data Distribution Service, our flagship real-time publish-subscribe middleware product, includes a utility called rtiddsgen. This tool will create source code from IDL data types. The generated code can be used to allocate, send, receive, and print user-defined data types. It is a great utility when developing applications using RTI DDS. So, for most Netbeans project I start, I already have some code generated, as well as the makefile.

The original C/C++ import wizard in Netbeans didn't work very well. For one, it couldn't create a Netbeans project within an existing non-emptry directory. I ended up with source code and NB meta directory in different locations. Secondly, the makefile was not automatically added to the important files, but rather included in the NB template makefile. If you needed to edit or tweak the makefile, you first had to add it to the project.

Luckily I was not the only one with these issues. The CND team created a new wizard, which makes creating a project from existing C/C++ source code a breeze. It is about to be released in early access, but is available from nightly builds. Here are a couple of screenshots (click to enlarge).

When specifying the make file, the working directory and build commands are automatically completed.

Also the source file directory is already specified.



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A heat storm credit? Count your chickens!

Fall has been very mild in Northern California. Yesterday the temperature was still 76F/25C. We barely had to turn on the heater in the morning. Our electricity and gas bills have been low. The Oct 15-Nov 15 bill was a grand total of $39. Something struck me as odd on the statement: the bill included a Heat Storm Bill credit of $4.35. PG&E 's website has more details:

PG&E is giving customers a credit. As we all know, California experienced unusually high temperatures in late July 2006. Higher temperatures led to higher energy usage and that, unfortunately, led to higher energy bills. Because of this unprecedented situation and because of our broader commitment to serving our customers, we’re taking unprecedented action. We are retroactively lowering your July bill. In October all residential customers will see a 15 percent credit based on their electric energy usage in July.

Let me repeat the PR-machine-at-work "Because of this unprecedented situation and because of our broader commitment to serving our customers, we’re taking unprecedented action."

When a big corporation is handing out cash, count your chickens!

Technorati: PG&E Electricity Environment Personal Finance