My dad just sent me a demo for jaw-dropping “computational knowledge engine,” Wolfram Alpha, which went live this past weekend. You put in a search term, which could be a mathematical formula, two cities, whatever, and it analyzes the term and its context and returns related statistics, plots a curve, gives you a map, shows mortalitiy rates, whatever! Off the hook!

The design reminds me of a suggested contextual search engine design from Tufte I remember reading somewhere…anybody remember?

Check the demo, it’s a must see.

Wolfram Alpha demo

I’m skipping around Vimeo in an infographic mood tonight. Here’s a history of the Internet. Apparently foreigners had something to do with it?:

History of the Internet

And a thoroughly modern retelling of Red Riding Hood: Slagsmålsklubben

More excellent news from the Pentagon: their new robot helicopter sniper is working and almost ready for field deployment!

ARSS is literally point-and-shoot for the operator on the ground, using a videogame-type controller. The software makes all the necessary corrections, and the system should ensure first-round kills at several hundred yards. The secret is in the control system and stabilized turret (on the right in the picture above), which is currently fitted with a powerful RND Manufacturing Edge 2000 rifle specifically designed for sniping work, using the heavyweight .338 Lapua Magnum cartridge.

I find it indescribably awesome that our government is building and deploying robot snipers so that teenagers playing video games can kill poor people in cities anywhere in the world!

HOORAY AMERICA!!!!

What’s not to like about spam like this?

Get your organism filled with needed Calcium.

Bash this site
salutary result assured.
With fat decrease pill

[Link to Polish website not included, for obvious reasons.]

So Apple does a lot of things well, and, usually, Software Update is among those things. For instance, in preparing my venerable PowerBook G4 for its new owner, I wiped it and reinstalled with the original 10.4.2 retail DVDs. When I ran Software Update, it “just worked” and left me with OS 10.4.11.

However, subsequent attempts to update yielded a new Java update, to “Release 5,” an 81 MB download. After downloading and installing that, Software Update told me that an update for Java was available, “Release 6,” also an 81 MB download. And so on:

It finally gave out after Release 8, which also seems to be when the Java/Mac engineers figured out how to release a patch, instead of giving you the whole thing each time. Crazy.

Found on NYT, some nice Radiology Art. The movies are particularly satisfying.

[Update: I downsized and recompressed the movie, exported it as an FLV, and implemented an open-source video player on the blog to play it back! –Steve.]

Learned an important lesson during a visit with my cousin (hi cuz!). As the family’s Resident Geek™, I spent some time updating and streamlining the house MacBook. He was trying to show me a video, and then pointed to a dialog box that had popped up, saying he needed to update his version of Flash. Let me paraphrase what he said:

It keeps saying my “Flash Player” is old, and so I clicked to update, but it just downloaded some file and nothing happened. I eventually double-clicked on the file it downloaded, but it says something about “closing all my browsers” before I can upgrade. What are browsers?

It’s an important point that can’t be stressed often enough: most people are not computer geeks! It’s really hard for geeks to design things that can be useful to actual regular humans. You’d think that a huge company like Adobe would have figured that out by now – and that they’d have some real user testing in place to catch things like the needlessly complex Flash upgrade process.

Geeks use jargon like it’s going out of style. Technical writers, user experience specialists, and product testers are essential, but apparently, they too can be corrupted by geekdom.

I could probably make a million bucks by starting a software testing firm staffed almost entirely by mothers-in-law working on Win98 machines and gigantic candy-colored CRT iMac desktops.

Apple’s iPhone only supports third-party applications that have been created with Apple’s software development kit, and then reviewed, approved, and placed in the iTunes App Store by Apple’s own employees. I’ve long thought that this restrictive practice was counter-productive, chiefly because it serves to severely limit the number and breadth of developers who can contribute great software creations.

But I realized this evening that, by pursuing its strategy of fiercely controlling access to its App Store, Apple in some ways gets the best of both worlds. Inside the App Store, only vetted, well-fundedtested, certified programs can be downloaded (usually for a small fee). Outside the App Store – in the land of the “cracked” and the “jailbroken” – novel applications, developed by pirates, provide in-demand features and must-have functionality.

Inside the App Store, applications are bound to conform to Apple’s enforced limitations on hardware and software in the iPhone. For reasons both financial and technical, applications can’t access system settings that pertain to core Phone or iPod functions. This stifles innovation, because Apple’s own employees may not get around to implementing these features, especially if they bump up against the concerns from Marketing, Legal, and Major Accounts. For reasons that are purely financial, Apple requires U.S.-based iPhones to work exclusively with AT&T. This limits adoption of the device, as many potential users prefer (or need) to use a different service provider.

But, developers outside the App store are a different story. Anyone with the skill, interest, and time can create applications for the iPhone, and distribute them. Of course, only users who have deliberately and systematically altered their iPhones’ software can use these “rogue” programs.

While Apple argues in court that these users are breaking the law when they “jailbreak” their iPhones, their App Store managers are keeping a keen eye on the gray market of unauthorized iPhone applications.

Applications like TouchTerm (sssh) have already migrated from the “jailbroken” hacks to Official Applications, in a way that can offer significant financial rewards to the developers (and to Apple). They create functionality that’s desired by a number of users, and it doesn’t infringe on anyone’s “digital rights.” Other apps, like iPhone Video Recorder, are still renegade, but probably won’t be for long. Finally, the process of “unlocking” a “jailbroken” iPhone will probably never reach the App Store, because it threatens Apple’s and AT&T’s precious recurring revenue streams.

By keeping tight control over the Applications that appear in the App Store, Apple² is able to enforce standards for reliability and compliance – and they can also cover their asses, legally speaking. Meanwhile, unpaid and unrelated (even unlawful) developers are busy creating and testing brand-new applications which, if they work, end up in the App Store. Apple gets a lot of upside from this, with little apparent risk.

Of course, if enough users jailbreak and then unlock their iPhones, Apple and AT&T lose revenue, limiting Apple’s further hardware and software development of the platform. But most user’s don’t bother, because the App Store’s selections are good enough. And those who do – the self-described bleeding edge – make great beta testers.

Notes:
1. By the distributive property, the phrase

Apple's App Store Approach

can also be written

(App) * (le's + " Store" + roach)

2. Similarly,

(App) * ("lications that" + "ear in the" + " Store," + le)

Programmers can’t report to program managers, which means, among other things, that the development lead, or the CTO, or the CEO, can’t be the person who writes the specs.

The number one mistake most companies make is having the manager of the programmers writing the specs and designing the product. This is a mistake because the design does not get a fair trial, and is not born out of conflict and debate, so it’s not as good as it could be.

As usual, Joel on Software is spot-on.