Guimikko

A long-time interweb friend of mine wrote a lengthy forum reply to me on a forum about rethinking social media. And it was really, I mean really about properly rethinking social media. It began like this: "Mikko: You and/or your cohorts could code this up:[...]" thus I replied, thus realizing I had a blog post for my blog:

In fact it was over already before Christmas, when the initial enthusiasm over smudging the touchscreen and palying Angry Birds started to fade. I finally installed that notorious Samsung Kies-software's new version 2.0. So that is used to transfer data and sync the phone among other things. Well, at least it lives up to its reputation. Sure, I've used worse, but only slightly worse pieces of software. And just enough to find out once again that the data, meaning photos and empeethrees and whatnot moves noticeably smoother between the phone's memory card and computer's harddrives by just via the operating system's file management. Geez.

For those wanting me to be more precise, I can say that if a software like this one, that is meant for the common people to use, requires too much thinking to use, it's not good. If it is slower and clunkier transfering files with it, than done using the operating system, it's not good. The way you browse and choose your target folder and on the host computer in it could be implemented a little smarter. A company called Palm Inc. by the way, already in the last millennium, made a device whose desktop software was more functional and more usable. Using a Palm Vx (RIP) with it was a pleasure. In essence they made a standard with the Palm Desktop, but for some reason few have attained the same level thus far.

Yeah, my Samsung Galaxy 3 isn't all that bad a device at all, as some of my tweets might lead you to understand. It does, however, have a couple of features that take their toll on the level of user experience ad justify the complaints. Especially, since it is a phone. An interesting feature is the way it randomly drops itself off the phone network and asks for the PIN. Nope, it doesn't notify it at all by for instance beeping. The only way to tell is when you happen to wipe over the turned off screen, or just right in the middle of everything while I'm for example playing games or surfing with it. And it doesn't appear to be anything other than a good old awkward feature, for which hopefully there will be a fix sometime in the coming firmware update, if there even will be one for a cheap model this old. A while back I missed one fairly important call even because of it. Luckily it wasn't crucial, but still. A phone called missed is not a good thing for a telephone, if it is in fact because of dysfunctionality of the device's telephonic feature. So yeah, I am totally convinced it is a feature, not a bug. So there. The other awkward feature having a negative effect on the user experience I already mentioned, the Kies.

On the other hand, my user experiences are a bit contradicting. The camera is oh-kay, when you are not expecting any top-level exposure levels out of a squinty lens, but like a friend f mine once wisely elaborated on the matter: cameras are separate.  Good enough for meaningless shares in social media, as long as you are not expecting high quality. Android itself is a rather nice OS. The openness of the software is something I dig at a principle level, although Apple's closed architecture does have its virtues. The privacy on Android is in reality at the same level as Facebook, which is not-quite-so-good-but-manageable-somehow, no matter what you Fandroids may say against these claims.

There are even apps for it and surfing, reading emails and facebooking are all less painful than on my  SonyEricsson C702 or before that, the RAZR. Quick checkings are actually even more convenient on it than on a the computer. Texting with Swype is like from another planet when compared to thumbtapping texting. All in all Anrdroid is not a usability and menu hell like many nokias and other non-touchscreen phones. The truly hyperbolic user interface enabled by touchscreen is something I've been longing for a long time. As a Gmail user I can appreciate the good internet integration and the easy transfer of gmail contacts onto the phone. As a Mac user I cannot appreciate the lack of iSync support and miss being able to sync my iCal calendars as they are, instead of hacking them through Google calendar. Were I to use Outlook and the calendar in it, I'd actually be cursing at the same problem. Furthermore, the Samsung proprietary tweaks on the OS just eat away the user experience and this would most likely be the case regardless of the manufacturer. All of them Android-manufacturers do happen to make their own version of Android.

I did mention the Kiesin already, did I? According to my friend, it has been even worse in its earlier incarnations, so actually I'm just glad I haven't installed it earlier. Well, I haven''t even needed it really. Just that while waiting for the iPhone the Kies and the UX it produced had me open up a bit. And I just happen to like to bit...errr...to give constructive criticism, whenever there's a reason. And I didn't exactly bash the phon Yeah. And the problems with using the thing as a phone are currently solved by removing the SIM card and putting it back in my old phone while having my Android at home as a wifi terminal for now.

Now that I've been an entrepreneur for two years, I guess I should make some kind of introspective deep probing retrospective analysis, which seems to be the thing to do at this phase. But I quite won't. I mean, (by Finnish law) sole proprietorship doesn't even have to make an annual report like a public company has to.

I don't even read any sorts of entrepreneuring and success guides, as they only seem to help their authors to succeed at best, if even that. The most important books I've read have been the autobiographies of Mahatma Gandhi and Malcolm X, and in both, the main character bit the dust, even though both happened to be tough guys. But anyway. I feel that from those two books I've learned - in addition to everything else I've done and experienced - much more about life, being and success and failure, than from any "When you do like this, you canot fail" -book.

So I'm doing my own thing. I've also been in big company as working stiff making substantially big projects for substantially big clients and seen some of that world, too. And all the while gone through two burn outs. There's some explaining about my CV with all the risk it brings. Now I'm happy to be to doing my own thing in my own biz.

Small and bigger things slowly growing. Basically the same work I've been doing probably since nine and eight. In my opinion, it doesn't take more of a business idea and plan of operation or goalsetting than that. Some might deem it inambitious even, but I'm not making noise in town about my biggest plans, but rather realising them on my own pace all the while. And learning to play punk rock with chords with my guitar. Little by little.

As a web designer, and a developer, I've come across some nifty apps for my line of work over the years and here's the essential tools of my trade.

I'll start off with the one that gets started up first: no, not Photoshop, I am talking about when starting the development phase here. Nope, not Dreamweaver, either, although both of them are essential.

First, I fire up the MAMP server. It is just awesome when I'm working on a site and don't want to work on an actual web server all the time and don't want that top secret confidential hot new upcoming site to be public before launch. Obviously, it saves time, too, and the old rule says it's always a good idea to test things thoroughly before going live. And well, test again on the live site and server. MAMP (Mac/Apache/MySQL/PHP) - ever heard of L(inux)AMP? - this is basically the same, but for Mac. This is probably the simplest way to set up a MySQL/PHP web server locally on your Mac. Honestly.

CyberDuck is my no.1 ftp client for the Mac. It's simple, intuitive and Mac-like and covers about 99% of my needs. Ftp is ftp, fairly straightforward and you probably know it, so I'm not filling any more text space with mindless jargon about it.

For that occasional 1% and also when using Windows I use FileZilla. Although FileZilla is geeky like Linux, not sleek like Mac, it has saved my derriére a couple of times. On Windows side I have also had good to great experience with FlashFXP in the past.

And for testing I like to use Opera a lot, although it is not my casual browser. Reasoning being is that Opera follows the W3C guidelines precisely by the book. Even to the point when it's not funny anymore, but helps you maintain the quality of your code. If your code works in Opera properly, chances are, it works on other browsers, too. Never forget the separate Internet Explorer testing and optimization, though..trust me on both claims. I think Opera has failed me only once, and even then there was actually a bug in Opera's rendering engine that caused one css element to render improperly.

File sharing and such with clients, collaborators and whoever over the net is what the DropBox makes simple. Free version already gives you 2GB of space and money buys you more. Most of you probably have it already, but if you don't, grab it. It's also available for iPhone and Android, but not yet for Nokia, so put it on your phone, too, to really maximise its benefits. Oh yeah, one time I put a recipe for pancake on mine as a text file so I didn't need to lug my MacBook over to kitchen. It also installs Growl, if you don't have it yet, so don't be surprised. Just turn Growl off if it bothers you. That's what I've done.

Sometimes I need to fiddle with language files, too, and for that I use PoEdit. So it's not that polished and sometimes the Mac version acts buggy and crashes, but hey, when the job needs to get done, it gets done. No excuses. Period.