Riccardo Mori

Three mechanical keyboards

April 26, 2012

Shawn Blanc has written a great, thorough review of three ‘clicky keyboards’ — the Das Keyboard Professional Model S, the Apple Extended Keyboard II, and the Matias Tactile Pro 3:

After a month of using and testing the three most popular clicky keyboards for Mac, I am extremely glad I jumped into these waters. The sound and the feel of a clicky keyboard only takes a few days to get used to, and what follows is this intense feeling of productivity that now accompanies anything I type.

Something I like about mechanical keyboards is that each key has its own unique sound and feel. You could tell how many words someone types, and how many in-line typos they fix, simply by listening. Space Bar, Backspace, Return, and the letters — each produce a unique sound and have their own tactile feel. There is variety when typing on a mechanical keyboard. […]

If you too want to adorn your desk with an ugly keyboard — one with a loud personality and which increases typing productivity — then I recommend the Das Keyboard. I prefer both the tactile feel and the sound of the blue Cherry MX switches, and though I find the Das to be the ugliest of the bunch, a serious typist knows you shouldn’t be looking at your keyboard while you’re typing.

As for me, I started typing on a mechanical typewriter and on a Commodore VIC-20, and from there it’s been a mechanical keyboard after another, including a fair share of Model M keyboards. When I switched to the Mac as my main system back in the early 1990s, my first Mac keyboard was the not-so-bad Apple Keyboard II (M0487), then the much better Apple Standard Keyboard (M0116); then, when I acquired a used Macintosh Quadra 700 in 1999, it came with the glorious Apple Extended Keyboard II, which I’ve been using ever since, alternating it with the Apple USB Keyboard (M2452) and later with the first-generation Apple Wireless Keyboard, the one that retains the looks of the Apple Pro Keyboard.

I’m not a fan of the latest Apple keyboards. I find them to be great for short typing sessions, but for heavy-duty typing (which is 95% of the time for me) I go back to my Apple Extended Keyboard II or the first-gen. Apple Wireless Keyboard. Now that the Extended II is temporarily decommissioned (it needs cleaning and I have to figure out why the ‘P’ key behaves erratically), I’m using its more compact equivalent Apple Standard Keyboard (M0116). The only drawback of this kind of keyboard is that it lacks function and media keys, but I truly love its size. If you want the most compact and beautifully mechanical keyboard ever built by Apple, by the way, check the Apple Desktop Bus Keyboard (A9M0330), first released and sold with the Apple IIGS in 1986. I have one attached to my Macintosh SE, and it’s a joy to use.

But you know what my secret dream would be? That someone built an adapter to let me use the Macintosh Plus Keyboard (M0110A) with my modern Macs. It’s probably the sturdiest, loudest Apple keyboard available. Too bad it has that quirky, proprietary connector.

Tumblr, ads, and a humble request

April 20, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

As Ars Technica reports, Tumblr will launch ads starting May 2:

As recently as April 12, Kamp told Ad Age that advertising was “a complete last resort.” In 2010, the CEO famously said, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, that the company was “pretty opposed to advertising. It really turns our stomachs.”

Yesterday, however, 25-year-old CEO added that putting ads on Tumblr Radar would get an advertiser 120 million impressions per day and will be available as of May 2.

I don’t know the reasons for this sudden U‑turn. Some speculate that Facebook acquiring Instagram may have scared Tumblr somehow, but whatever the reason, I hope the Tumblr user experience won’t be too drastically compromised. It’s not clear to me how ads will be shown. Will they appear only when users are browsing other tumblelogs in the Tumblr dashboard? Will they appear in every tumblelog? And where will they be placed? Will they appear in the left or right sidebar? At the end of a post, like in WordPress blogs?

I have a few active tumblelogs, and those I consider most important are The Quillink annotated and Minigrooves, and I’d hate to see them ruined by ads appearing alongside my posts or, worse, above or immediately below the masthead.

My humble request to Tumblr is: Please, please, introduce Pro accounts. Follow other examples (LiveJournal and Flickr come to mind) and give Tumblr users the possibility to pay an annual fee for an ad-free Pro account. It’s also a increasingly common practice in iOS apps, where you’re offered the choice of having a free app that shows ads, and an in-app purchase (or a separate ‘Pro’ or ‘HD’ version) that removes them. I would gladly pay such a fee in exchange of a tumblelog without ads — I’m not even interested in other bonus options or offerings: paying only to remove ads would be absolutely fine by me. I’m sure other Tumblr users — who use their blogs to do more than just post links and funny videos — share my concerns and sentiments.

Kirby Panel 0.6

April 19, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

Bastian Allgeier, Kirby’s developer, writes:

It’s been a while since the first Kirby Panel Alpha has been released and I’m very happy about all the help and positive feedback. Today I’m releasing the next alpha version. There are still a few missing features for 1.0, but I feel the beta is getting closer.

Please understand that not all suggestions from testers are in this next release. You guys had a bunch of awesome ideas, but the entire process of testing and coming up with the first version of the panel is taking longer than expected and I try to get it done finally.

Kirby is a file-based CMS, which means that it doesn’t rely on a database. Content is managed through a simple files/folders structure, you create posts by using your favourite text editor, backups are a breeze, and the whole installation process and general interface are very simple and user-friendly. Kirby has very modest requirements, server-side; it only costs €30 per website (no monthly fees); and comes with a bunch of free extensions. Kirby’s source is available as a free trial on Github.

I really like Kirby, and I’m glad to have helped Bastian by providing the Spanish and Italian localisation for the admin panel.

If you’re setting up a new personal site on a domain you own, and prefer a simpler approach than WordPress or other similar blogging platforms, you might consider giving Kirby a try.

Mattebox

April 19, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Software

Mattebox interface

I don’t remember how I discovered Mattebox for iPhone, probably after following someone’s mention of it over Twitter, but I’m glad I did. Yes, my first thought was ‘Great, another camera app on my phone’, as Mattebox was joining Hipstamatic, Camera+, Instagram, CameraBag, ShakeItPhoto, Lo-Mob, and a bunch of other camera and photo editing apps which by now take up two folders on my iPhone.

But Mattebox by Ben Syverson is a whole different thing. The best overview of its interface, features and user experience is provided by the beautiful website itself, so please explore it for further information. I’ll just share some of the reasons why Mattebox has quickly become my favourite, most used iPhone camera app:

Landscape as default orientation. I like how Mattebox’s photo-taking experience makes me ‘think horizontally’ and use the iPhone more like a compact camera than just a smartphone with a camera. Too many camera apps are focussed on taking square photos or photos in portrait mode. You can, of course, shoot in portrait mode with Mattebox, but the interface doesn’t rotate and adjust. It stays in landscape mode, like any ‘real’ camera.
An elegant, minimal, usable interface. Mattebox’s interface is clearly inspired by professional cameras, as Syverson says in the Philosophy page. I love how the interface is almost completely out of the way, letting me concentrate on the subject. I love how well thought-out the controls are. It may be an abused term, but they’re really intuitive. The dual-stage shutter release can feel a bit strange to operate at first (in most camera apps, the shutter is just a button, not a slider), but you soon realise just how useful it is to be able to lock focus and exposure.
The adjustments screen. Speaking of well-designed interface, Mattebox’s adjustments screen is one of the clearest, easiest and most effective interfaces I’ve ever encountered in an iPhone camera app. Take a better look at its controls and how they work at the Image Adjustments page. Even in the photo editing stage, the app’s interface doesn’t get crowded with abstruse controls or a multitude of options and previews that take up whole screens. I love Mattebox’s direct approach: you slide your fingers and see the result in real time. And all the icons are very easy to understand, despite the lack of labels. Everything looks and feel really fluid, and you get to adjust and fine-tune your photos in a way that resembles a painting or drawing app, more than a photo app.
It’s not about filters. Mattebox’s default filters are few and very well executed, and give very pleasing results without further modifications. I particularly love Mattebox’s black and white results (see this photo I took a while ago). You can also save your adjustments and create a filter out of them, if you like, which is another welcome feature. But what I really like about Mattebox is its lack of emphasis on filters and gratuitous effects. Most camera apps are basically galleries of effects to play with, some of which are so outlandish it’s hard not to think of them as mere gimmicks. Instead, I love how Mattebox’s main focus is to provide you with a series of selected, professional-looking tools to really perfect your shots.

Mattebox is $3.99 or €2.99 on the App Store, and believe me, it’s money well spent. What’s more, Mattebox has also a Web interface at Mattebox.net that lets you apply Mattebox’s adjustments to any photo you’ve uploaded on the Web. Just enter the image URL in the address field below the sample photo, click on Open and start editing. You can save your changes by clicking on the Save button.

There are free services and free services

April 13, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

In the intense debate following Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, one piece I’ve seen a few pundits link to is Stop Crying About Free Services by Michael Schechter, and the following bit in particular:

If Facebook buying Instagram pissed you off, I have a suggestion. Don’t just stop using Instagram, stop using free social networks and services period. Stop using sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare or Pinterest, because it is a given that they will all inevitably let you down in favor of the bottom line. More often than not, when you actually quit a service, it’s not because they were evil. It’s just because they either became useless or boring. The reality is that you’re not going to stop using services that are useful to you. You’re just going to waste time switching from one company to the next until your latest service inevitably falls short or sells out.

I’ve seen this bit quoted without commentary, which implies full agreement. Well, I don’t agree with Schechter. I know this piece of ‘advice’ is meant to be provocative, but I find it to be a little too generalising for my tastes.

For starters: Facebook buying Instagram pissed me off mightily, but not because of the fact that Instagram decided to sell. It’s not the acquisition in itself that annoys me, it’s because the buyer is Facebook. Those who know me well know that I’ve been anti-Facebook since day one, and know that I don’t like the increasing power the company is gaining in the social network landscape. That I despise Facebook’s methods, its concepts of ‘social network’, the way it treats its users, and so on and so forth. If Instagram had been acquired by anyone else, I wouldn’t have cared at all. But the fact that it was Facebook, yes, it pisses me off. Especially because, like Om Malik, I too think that

Facebook was scared shitless and knew that for first time in its life it arguably had a competitor that could not only eat its lunch, but also destroy its future prospects. Why? Because Facebook is essentially about photos, and Instagram had found and attacked Facebook’s achilles heel — mobile photo sharing.

Back to Schechter’s piece, the gross generalisation, to me, is suggesting that we should “stop using free social networks and services period. Stop using sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare or Pinterest, because it is a given that they will all inevitably let you down in favor of the bottom line.” These free social networks and services all have different histories and backgrounds, and may very well have different futures. In other words, they might give me a bitter taste in my mouth at a certain point, but it really depends on how the change, if any, is carried out. Will these other free social network and services be acquired by another giant company whose sole interest is to buy and destroy them? Will the change involve asking users to pay? Will the change involve more intrusive ads or a complete redesign of the user experience? There are changes I can live with, and there are deal-breakers.

I know I’m probably in the minority here, but I have my code of conduct, and I still act on principle. Despite what Schechter may think, I can and will stop using services that are useful to me if their way of changing becomes what I consider a deal-breaker. I’m not a slave of convenience. All these free social networks and services, in the end, are comforts built on the basic building blocks of the Internet: email, mailing lists, newsgroups, websites and weblogs. They enrich certain experiences we already know, they make them cooler, easier to access and enjoy. But anytime these comforts change in ways I don’t like or in ways that go against my principles, I’m ready to abandon them in favour of paid alternatives, and I’m even ready to go ‘back to the basics’ if necessary. The other day, David Chartier was provocatively asking What if Facebook bought Tumblr? and my answer is: I’d move all my content on a second site I own and keep dormant just in case. I certainly wouldn’t “waste time switching from one company to the next.”

Sometimes I think that if more people acted on principle instead of out of convenience, if more people refused to take the path of least resistance, companies like Facebook or Google wouldn’t be where they are, and certainly wouldn’t be as powerful as they’re becoming day after day. Instead, it’s sad how much users are ready to give up in exchange of comfort and convenience.

I could keep using Instagram because it’s a very cool, very easy way to share photos with a network of contacts and friends whose photos I like and whose opinion on my photos I value, but I can’t ignore the fact that I’ll be uploading my stuff on something that is owned by Facebook, a company I despise. So it’s highly likely I will stop posting photos on Instagram, though I’ll keep checking on my friends’ snaps, ‘liking’ them and commenting on them.

But I’ll keep using Twitter and Tumblr and other free services selectively, because not all of them are created equal, and making blanket decisions looks a bit silly to me. But if you fully agree with Schechter’s point, then I suggest you go all the way and stop using Facebook and Google’s services as well. Who knows, we may end up with a better Internet in the long run…