Wireless… Not Really.

Moto_360_by_MotorolaLooking at the otherwise seductive Moto 360, I’m struck by the beauty of the watch and the confusion it represents.

Its charger is labeled “wireless” which is mismanaged marketing of what is more correctly known as inductive charging.  Inductive charging means that the device doesn’t actually plug-in to the charger, it sits on a surface and the proximity of the device to that surface causes the device to charge.

These new “wireless” chargers sound like electricity will be broadcast to the device, through the air, which is technology that isn’t practical given today’s research and prototyping.  I recently bought a Lumo Lift (which I’m very unhappy with, but  that’s a column for another day) which also has a proprietary and ridiculous wireless charger.

In fact, these inductive chargers are wired, and worse they’re not consistently created.  With few exceptions devices require a proprietary and unique-to-the-device dock or other housing for the inductive charging to be made.

fajb_universal_charger_02_march2014So what’s the problem with that?  Well, there’s starting to be a very crowded amount of space on my physical desktop for these devices to sit and glow as they recharge, and most of these inductive devices require daily charging so hello docklands.  It’s really kind of absurd looking when the docks are sitting there empty. The idea of setting them up when you need them puts the whole “wireless” thing to an absurd test of practicality.

This is to say nothing about packing these docks up and finding plugs for them in hotel rooms when you travel.  Forget about it.  And want to keep a charger at your work?  These are never bargains to buy a 2nd one, even when they offer spares for purchase.

A few years back all phones and most devices in the US had different plugs, requiring you to have multiple chargers with different, typically company-specific, tips on them. There are laws in Europe that require standardization. Of late there’s been progress towards standardization on mini-USB as a charging type and USB power levels eliminating the need for even a standard-plug charger.  You can travel with a few USB cords and many hotels are even providing USB power plugs on desks or lamps for the traveler.

But if this horribly misnamed “wireless” fad catches on it will be a big step backwards for us all.  Not wanting to sound too “you kids get off my lawn” on this, but setting standards for and requiring manufacturers stick with them is always in the best interest of consumers. When it gets abused, the customer suffers.

And that’s why, while I love the looks and function of the Moto 36o, I won’t be getting one for my birthday or Christmas.

Ric Bretschneider
September 6, 2014

Posted in Business, Design, Geeking around, Hardware, Random thoughts, Technology, Travel | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Just checking in…

image

Why wear two watches? And why don’t they tell the same time?

A bit of a puzzle of course.

Posted in Personal, Random thoughts, Thoughts, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing | Leave a comment

Warning Wunderlist Users!

8-9-2014 10-40-49 AM

 

 

 

 

 

UPDATE:

Apparently @WunderlistHelp just tweeted the following.

If you’re missing lists, they are safe. Please sign out and back in again. So sorry for the trouble!

I have not tried this, will check and report back.  In the meantime, I believe Step One below is still a safe first tactic.

UPDATE ENDS

UPDATE 2

It apparently works.  My lists are restored.  My morning is wasted, and I’m still incredibly angry with Wunderlist.

I’m leaving the article up because I’d already sent out notices so this stands as both a data recovery tactic, as well as a reminder that some developers are sloppy and lazy when it comes to scaring the sh*t out of their customers.

UPDATE 2 ENDS

UPDATE 3

OK, finally something on the Wunderlist site:

http://support.wunderlist.com/customer/portal/articles/1163871-sync-issues—lists-not-updating-across-devices

UPDATE 3 ENDS

UPDATE 4

All may not be well with Wunderlist even given the support note.  Read the comments thread below, particularly the one just added by Nino.

Regardless, it does seem reasonable that if you use Wunderlist a lot, creating a local archive as described in Step 2 on a regular basis is just a sane thing to do given the history here.

UPDATE 4 ENDS

OK, the version of Wunderlist pushed out this week is deleting list items. It’s all over Twitter.  Additionally, if you have multiple devices sync’d to Wunderlist, when you will open Wunderlist you get a glimpse of your list data, and then watch in horror as Wunderlist deletes it forever.

Or almost.

Here are some things you should do now.

First and foremost: DISCONNECT

Do NOT run Wunderlist! If you don’t run it, your local data is safe.

Disconnect your devices from the internet before running Wunderlist. Different on wireless Macs and PCs, but for desktops this typically means just yanking the Ethernet cable out of the back of your computer. There, now Wunderlist won’t try to sync your data into nothingness. Once you’ve disconnected, you can run the app.

Second: Preserve your data.

For each list in Wunderlist, you can right click (at least on the Mac) the list title and choose “Email List.” This will compose an email with that lists contents, all the task names, their status (even completed tasks) and all the contents including notes you’ve added in the details view. You don’t actually need to send the list, copy it from e-mail to a Word or Text document and save that new document and you won’t lose your notes.

Third: Try to Restore

If you’ve already lost your data, the’res a chance you can restore it.
On the Mac, this is easy if you’re using Time Machine. Use the Finder “Go” menu command “Go to folder…” and enter

/Users/[username]/Library/Containers/com.wunderkinder.wunderlistdesktop/Data/Library/Application\ Support/Wunderlist

Search for a file named: WKmodel.sqlite

Frankly, I just restored the whole folder at

/Users/[username]/Library/Containers/com.wunderkinder.wunderlistdeskop

Run Time machine and restore that folder. If you’ve never used your Time Machine restore, now is a great time to go to Apple.Com for instructions.

You may have Time Machine save the old folder if you want, but it’s likely pretty useless.

Windows users will need to see if their backups include this path:c:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\6Wunderkinder\Wunderlist\Wunderlist.dat
Sorry, but I’ve only done this on a Mac, so you’re on your on on restore specifics.

Same basic situation, restore that file if you can.

BUT WAIT!

Now, you’re not really safe after restoring.  If you reconnect to the internet, Wunderlist is looking for time stamps on records, will see that records have been previously deleted, and then delete the task you just restored.  This is just a step that you might do and then follow-up with that Second: Preserve Your Data  step.  You might also preserve a copy of this folder to your desktop or another folder just in cast Wunderlist comes up with a fix.

OK, Now What?

Yes, now you have your lists preserved at least.  Getting them back into Wunderlist is another thing.  Likely you’ll need to copy/paste.  But first, know that they have a bug and haven’t commented on it, so you may want to use something else, like a paper list for a while.  Me, I pasted these lists into Evernote, which is a world-class application that has never lost my data.

Maybe Wunderlist will fix this soon, and maybe they’ll never have a bug like this again.

But I’m not betting on it.

Good luck!

Posted in Geeking around, Personal, Technology, Thoughts, Uncategorized, Writing | 3 Comments

Swallow the red pill…

As you may already know from prior posts, as well as producing the weekly podcast, I often write for a website called Fanboy Planet. Fanboy Planet reports on all the silly and serious aspects of being a fan in this modern day. Being involved in fannish media is a joy which keeps my sense of wonder alive, and gets me into a lot of cool places.

This week I continued new column, Digital Fanboy, where I examine the digital realm of media with an eye to how it affects the fannish folks and the movies, books, comics and other stuff they love.

The Second episode will be up soon, maybe already!  Here’s a tease and a link…

DigitalStipe

Digital Fanboy: Episode 2
Locking the Barn Door
or
Everything is Software, Coppertop

coppertop

When we last met, I closed with the following ominous paragraph:

Your relationship with your cloud library is your personal login to the various digital comics stores. This should give you access to your purchases on an on-demand basis. But the comics downloaded to your device are basically locked-in there, you’re dependent on that specific device to read them. And the ugly truth is that without a connection to the cloud, at least every few days, your digital comics can turn into something dead. Not really yours to read no matter how much you’ve paid for them.

It wouldn’t be fair to ignore that, so let’s get to explaining how easily the rights to what you’ve paid for can evaporate.

Eating Digital Media

The most obvious commercial media you consume is music. Back in the 90’s when everyone was waking up to the power of the Internet, file sharing proved just how much we loved to carry around music. Typically this meant that individuals would use programs rip music from CDs into computer files that could be played, and of course duplicated an infinite number of times. Of course giving commercial music away to your friends was 99.9% illegal, but music companies really had no way to prevent it. Very frustrating for them, watching all those uncollected profits scamper about the Internet. So they tried to make examples of the few the caught to scare everyone out of pirating music. But that just made people hate music companies more than they did before. What to do?

What to do indeed!  Read more here.

Posted in Business, Entertainment, Games, Geeking around, History, Media, Movies, Personal, Random thoughts, SciFi Fantasy, Software, Technology, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Take the Red Pill…

As well as producing the weekly podcast, I often write for a web site called Fanboy Planet. Fanboy Planet reports on all the silly and serious aspects of being a fan in this modern day. Being involved in fannish media is a joy which keeps my sense of wonder alive, and gets me into a lot of cool places.

This week I decided to start a new column, Digital Fanboy, where I’ll examine the digital realm of media with an eye to how it affects the fannish folks and the movies, books, comics and other stuff they love.

The first episode is up now, here’s a tease and a link…

DigitalStipe

 

Digital Fanboy: Episode 1
Your Digital Destiny
or
Where the Heck Are We?

Digital Fanboy is our exploration into digital media. How we use it, how it uses us, and how to get a better handle on everything. I hope that by breaking this down into small tastes I can help you understand what the present and future hold for us, just as I exorcise my own demons in this area. Come, take the red pill…

redblue

This is a subject that I love and fear in equal parts. I expect you have some excitement about digital media in your life, and you may have a bit of confusion as well. In these introductory episodes, I’m going to try to break down the basics of digital media, more bite sized than an overwhelming feast. Currently, this is a trilogy:

Episode 1 – Your Digital Destiny – Benefits and additional features we get from electronic media. The terms we hear and what they mean. That’s this episode!

Episode 2 – Locking the Barn Door – How digital media works, and how it fails. What DRM means and how it creates opportunity and complicates “ownership” of digital works. There’s a little Rebels V. Empire here that you can try at home.

Episode 3 – Dystopian Utopia – How digital media “ownership” breaks, the fragility of your digital library, and what still needs to be done to fix that. We’ll talk about the problems happening today, what’s likely to happen tomorrow, and what you and media providers can do to protect your new digital library.

And yes, we’ll be talking about digital comics.

READ MORE ON FANBOY PLANET…

 

Posted in Books, Design, Entertainment, Geeking around, Media, Movies, Personal, Random thoughts, Software, Writing | Leave a comment

Book Judgement is on Fire!

Well, it’s at least warming up…

Just a quick note that I’m so pleased to welcome Christopher J. Garcia back for his second submission to Book Judgement: A Book That Must Be Called Luscious

It is a love letter to the binding and typography of yet another well designed book.  And that’s what Book Judgement is all about.

Hope you enjoy!
Ric Bretschneider
July 16, 2014

Posted in Books, Business, Design, Entertainment, Personal | Leave a comment

Focus on You…

As technologists and tool-users we tend to focus on the tools in play in creating and playing our “presentation.” It’s easy to lose track of the fact that you are the presentation and everything else is just support.

Soft skills, the ones not involved with creating and animating graphics, are so important and often neglected – the expectation being “we already know how to talk.”

My buddy Garr Reynolds writes up and extends this list of “Seven” things you should not do when presenting. Great reading and something you can implement today, or in your next presentation with just a little awareness, thought and planning.

Ric Bretschneider
July 10, 2014

Presentation_Zen__7_things_good_communicators_must_not_do

7 things good communicators must not do

In this simple but informative TED TalkJulian Treasure offers up seven things that effective communicators must exclude from speech. This list of seven is a kind of “bad habits to avoid” list. They are not the only elements that can derail effective communication, but it is a good list from which to start. “I call them seven sins somewhat tongue in cheek,” Julian says in the comments section on the TED Website. “I am not saying these things are bad or wrong, simply that they tend to make it harder for people to listen, especially when they become habits.” Yes, suggesting that one avoid these behaviors always and forever can become a sort of dogma as well. However, he is right that these behaviors are for the most part injurious to our reputations, credibility, and over all effectiveness.

Read more on Presentation Zen

Posted in Business, PowerPoint, Presentations, Presenting | Leave a comment

And another new blog… Book Judgement

Have I mentioned Book Judgement?drinkbook

It’s a project I’ve wanted to do for years, but never figured out exactly what it was and how I would do it.  Together those are pretty inhibiting factors.

Simply put, I love books.  Not just reading books, I’m a big fan of their construction.  The art of book binding. The materials used. The covers, slipcovers, dust jackets, and even that library plastic the gets put over dust jackets to protect them (it’s commercially known as Brodart. 

Sometimes this stuff gets mentioned in passing in book reviews, but mostly it’s ignored and that’s a real shame.

Book Judgement is about judging books by their covers. That’s a labor of love for me, and I hope you’ll check it out. And if you have a similar passion for a book or two, I welcome submissions to the blog. Really, would love to have you write something about a book treatment you enjoy.

Ric Bretschneider
July 9, 2014

Posted in Audience, Books, Design, Entertainment, Geeking around, History, Media, Writing | Leave a comment

The Shiny New Blog

Hey, that's me!  Ric Bretschneider, also known as RicBret.

Hey, that’s me! Ric Bretschneider, also known as RicBret.

Hey! You either followed the breadcrumbs or somehow just got lucky and stumbled into the new blog location.  Congratulations either way. I’m really happy you made it here.

For years I’ve used the free WordPress-hosted blogging, and I was happy. But I’ve always felt that my web-based work was uncoordinated and hard to follow. So I recently started redoing everything!

This blog is one of the most important of the new “arms” of my web work.  This is my main blog, where I write about PowerPoint, presenting, writing, design, technology, and so much more. It’s coming along quickly, faster than I thought it would, and I’m so pleased you’ve found your way here.

Main blog? Yes, there are several others that are a bit more specific in their coverage. I’ll let you know here when they come online.

The upshot there is that old http://ricbret.wordpress.com blog won’t be updated any more.  The new blog here at  https://blog.ricbret.com, a subdomain of my main site http://ricbret.com, is where all the new stuff will happen.

OK, that may sound like gibberish, so if that doesn’t make sense here’s all you have to know.

All the old posts have been copied here, so you can leave the old site behind.

The old site won’t go away, it’s just not going to be updated.  I’m only keeping the old site available for people who linked to it from their own sites so those links will continue to work.

If you want to renew your free subscription to my posts you really should use the subscription button on https://blog.ricbret.com.

Note, for the moment there isn’t a “Subscription Button.” You can, however, use this link in any RSS reader to assure you’re connected until one gets set up.  For more information on how to do that, check out this nifty document.

Anyway, keep in touch! Keep dropping in to see what happens next!

Ric Bretschneider
July 8, 2014

Posted in Design, Geeking around, History, Personal, PowerPoint, Presentations, Software, Technology, Uncategorized, Writing | Leave a comment

Open Letter to Michael Bay

Dear Michael Bay

I watched you get messed up by Samsung’s presentation support staff at CES yesterday. You’re probably aware that it’s all over the net now, likely a skit on SNL this weekend and maybe you’ll make The Daily Show.  You’re a pretty easy target to begin with (*boom*) but add all the things that went wrong in the space of a couple of minutes to your already fiery personality and wham instant Internet meme.

It’s tough. It’s unfair. How many of the people having fun at your expense have themselves spoken live in front of an audience of 200 people? 500? The pressure of standing in front of thousands at CES and hundreds of thousands more virtually would make most of today’s detractors wet themselves on the spot. But the Internet is not big on walking a mile in anyone else’s shoes if they can feel schadenfreude or get a laugh instead.

But you could have done better.

No jokes here, just a couple of things to remember the next time you get in front of an audience.

Fight or Flight

One of the basic human reactions to pressure is fight or flight, especially when it’s a surprise. We civilized folk tend towards flight, because it’s more socially acceptable. And obviously that’s what happened yesterday. But maybe fight doesn’t have to always mean throwing a punch. Fight can just mean fighting yourself to stay on that stage and keeping your audience involved.

Expect the unexpected

Murphy is my traveling companion. He always makes something go wrong. Always. Because of his tenacity, I believe in multiple levels of redundancy in anything that matters to my performance in front of an audience. And you should too when you can.

Of course, much of it is out of your control, no amount of planning can cover everything.

So just go into it expecting something to go wrong. It’s not frightening, it’s just realizing that you need to remain flexible in all situations involving pressure and performance. If you’re expecting someone to fail to hit their cue, step on your line, the wrong slide to be showing, anything unexpected can be dealt with.

And most important here, you must keep your sense of humor about it. Taking yourself too seriously will lock you into a situation where you can’t think and have no alternative other than flight.

Accept the situation

When something goes wrong, accept it. It can’t be undone now. You now have choices as to how to proceed.

Grace

It is somewhat paradoxically important not to apologize too much, and not to find others to blame. Both may be your immediate urge, but you must suppress it. Your team may have let you down, but they probably feel worse about it than you do (and it’s likely going to be a topic for discussion with their own management!) Focus on getting back on track, not on how you got off track – your audience doesn’t really care.

Humor

Humor is a powerful ally when you can do it off the cuff. You don’t have to have the audience rolling in the aisles, just keep them on your side. “Ever have one of those days?” or “Pardon me while I burst into flame here.” will let them know you’re off-script and the personal aside will keep them in your corner. Resist the urge to be the butt of your own joke, that’s an easy way out, but like too much apologizing it undercuts your relevance and credibility. It’s important to remember that very few people in the audience really want you to fail. They’re basically on your side.

Improv

One of the greatest exercises a speaker can do is improvisational speaking. Develop some level of familiarity with improvisational tactics. Lots of forward-thinking organizations bring in formal improv training for team building and management seminars. You can approach this in many ways, but once you do you’ll find it’s value surprisingly useful.

For example, at our Pecha Kucha events, we warm up with a form of presentation called PowerPoint Karaoke. Here presenters must string together a presentation based on slides they have never seen before. And we do this for fun! Of course presenters are expecting the situation,  developing their ability to expect the unexpected, and again the audience is on their side. And it’s damn funny. But it’s a terrific exercise for any presenter wanting to develop their list of public speaking calisthenics.

While you’re in the moment, look around. Quickly appraise the situation and prepare to deal with it. Look for inspiration, allies, audience reactions… these are all fodder for your response to bridge back to the topic at hand.

Continue the Dialogue

Now that things are composed, and assuming you’ve done your homework, you can probably wing your presentation for a short bit. Hopefully the support staff is working frantically to correct things. And hopefully the well-managed disturbance takes on no more significance than an interrupting sneeze.

But if it goes longer, nothing changes in the advice. Remain graceful and move to transition out of the confusion. Lots of alternatives here. Consider:

  • Engage other speakers already on stage or invite other participants onto the stage. This is what you really should have tried with Joe Stinziano, senior vice president of Samsung Electronics yesterday. He’s probably conversant enough to answer an off the cuff question or give you a clue as to what you want to move onto next. A conversation is a lifesaving improvisational step that can take the pressure off while keeping the audience’s attention. (Improv Hint: Read up on “Yes, and…” technique!)
  • Backtrack and start over. Often the easiest thing to do. It doesn’t have to be a complete recreation, but a summary of what you’ve covered so far can also help the audience shake the confusion of that moment off themselves.
  • If all else fails, moving on to another part of the agenda and returning to your message once the situation is corrected is the graceful way out of a presentation that has burst into flame. Inform the audience, and move gracefully to the side until recalled.

Always Prep

Yeah, good advice in hindsight. Easy, right?

I can see it right now. Someone asked you to get on the stage and get some promotional value for the next Transformers film while pushing some technology you actually liked.  Your protests of I haven’t got time to prepare for a presentation! were met with assurances that all you have to do is read the teleprompter. Well, we see how well that worked out.

Even if you can’t take the time to memorize the speech, break what you have to talk about into one or two salient points that you can fall back on should the unexpected happen. Winging it still means you stay on topic, and you need the facts to do so.

Of course preparation is the activity that pays off in gold. It makes everything above that much easier. If you can’t take 10 times the amount of time you’re planning on being in front of an audience in preparation, you really should bow out.

And That’s About It

Hope this somehow gets to you Michael. While I’m not the biggest fan of your movies, my heart went out to you at CES. It wasn’t your fault, and the Internet is having a lot of fun at your expense today.

I know you already addressed the situation in your own blog with the self-deprecating comment I guess live shows aren’t my thing. I know it’s tough right now, but with just a little prep I think you could turn that impression right around.

Posted in Audience, Business, Improv, PowerPoint, Presentations, Presenting, Random thoughts, Thoughts | Leave a comment

She’s Giving It Away…

resonate

No secret to anyone about my love of this book.

So why is it news today?

This morning Nancy Duarte announced that “the multimedia version of Resonate is now available on HTML5 and iTunes for FREE! You can read, learn, and share on any platform or device.”

So stop reading this and go get it. Even if you already own the book, this is the multimedia enhanced version so you’ve got brand new levels of coolness to explore.

Posted in Books, Business, Design, Personal, PowerPoint, Presentations, Uncategorized, Writing | Leave a comment

Leap Motion – First Impressions and Demo

Leap_Motion

Postman bought my new Leap Motion controller this week.  Minutes after installing it (and figuring out I’d placed it on the desktop upside down!) it was up and working.  This video is my first few impressions of the orientation application and the OSX integration application.

Video is in high resolution so click the zoom button to view full screen.

So, will this be a permanent and well-used addition to my physical desktop?  Hard to say.  Right now it’s a real cool demo, and it’s got some potential, but the fine tuning will the real test here. Even games require an exacting “touch” that will hard to match. And the reality here is that if you really want to replace my mouse this new method to exceed my current input devices.

Leap_Motion 3

Does it do that?

No, not really.  But I hope it will soon.

Leap_Motion

Posted in Business, Geeking around, Hardware, Media, Personal, PowerPoint, Presentations, Software, Technology, Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Screwed-Up is Apple Safari? I Think It Needs Therapy.

Some people think that because I worked for Microsoft for so many years that I’m an Apple hater.  Well, that’s not actually true.  Fact is, I’ve had a Macintosh on my desks, at work and home, pretty much constantly since their release in 1984, two of my family members have iPhones, and we have iPads, iPods, and Apple TVs scattered throughout the house.  This is being written on a 27″ iMac, the one use for about 90% of my day.

OK, part of that 90% is in Parallels running various versions of Windows and Windows Office.

Unfortunately this post won’t help my argument that I’m an open supporter of both leading operating systems.  Partially because these days I’m finding Apple so caught up in their image, their products exclusively, that they’re impressing me as a bunch of pompous jerks. Doesn’t make me automatically hate the products, but I’m no cool-aid drinking fanboy.  Apple is doing plenty of crappy stuff to their customers, turning them more into consumers than unlocking their potential as creators is the big one.  However, I’m getting off the point.  Which is a case in point of how douchy and inept they can be.

Earlier this month I wanted to watch the Apple WWDC Opening that was streaming from Apple.Com.  However, if you weren’t using Safari as your browser, you were blocked. My default browser is Google Chrome. Yeah, if you weren’t going to wear their colors to the party, they shut you down at the door.

OK, I don’t like Safari myself. Apple claims it’s the #1 installed mobile browser, but they don’t tell you that you aren’t allowed to remove it from their mobile devices, and you can’t set a different browser as preferred on their mobile devices.  How’s that for anti-trust?  (Remember the US Justice Department vs Microsoft for “bundling” Internet Explorer with Windows?)   I think Safari is way behind Chrome in so many ways, and Chrome’s cross-platform support is superb.  So I don’t use Safari.  I keep it around when I have to access some non-standard Apple site, like the one in question.

So I manually fired up Safari and started watching.

I may find time soon to comment on how sad the state of design has gotten at Apple, this Ives guy really isn’t impressing me as anything more than someone trying to create a new fashion, not as a real product designer, but I’m getting off track again.

So I watched the list of features borrowed from other OS’s that Apple was rolling out as Innovations.  And at some point I decided to see if there was a way to pop-out the video window, so it would take less room on my screen and I could continue to work on things that actually mattered.  No button on the video, so I started hunting…

This is what I saw when I right-clicked the Safari-embedded video.

safari

OldMacIE

The disabled PowerPC version of Internet Explorer, that apparently still works it’s mojo.

Yeah, it was like some amazing wormhole to an alternate reality had opened up on my screen.  There was Safari suggesting that if I want to open this streaming QuickTime, I should use the Ten Year Old, PowerPC-only, Macintosh version of Internet Explorer.

Wow.

Granted, the old app is still on my machine.  But even Finder recognizes it won’t run in the current OS.  If you double-click it, you get the message “You can’t open the application “Internet Explorer.app” because PowerPC applications are no longer supported.

I’ve kept the old app, and a couple of others, around because I’ve considered creating a virtual machine running the old PPC supporting OS X, just thinking I might write about some history there and it would be an easy way to pose the screen shots I’d need.

But this was strange, and kind of pathetic Safari.  I’d almost feel sorry for you.  If you weren’t such a douche.

Posted in Business, Design, Geeking around, Media, Organizations, Software, Technology, Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rotten Bitter Apple

Update:

Word from comiXology now after many hand-wringing updates overnight is that Apple didn’t prevent comiXology from pushing to iOS apps, but comiXology made the call.  In a letter on their blog page, comiXology CEO David Steinberger noted:

After hearing from Apple this morning, we can say that our interpretation of its policies was mistaken. You’ll be glad to know that Saga #12 will be available on our App Store app soon.

It would be very interesting to know which policies, their actual nomenclature, comiXology was concerned about violating. Expect they were spot-on in their interpretation.  This smells of Apple making an exception after the fact to avoid bad press, and a small company falling on its own sword to keep in the fruit monopoly’s good graces.
Apple is a blatant censor, they just don’t want to be known as one.  Their role as a publisher who censors other publishers is a net-negative, regardless of the details.

20130410:12:45PM PST

Ric’ Originally Wrote on April 9th:

Apple Computer’s been pretty absurd about trying to prevent mature individuals from enjoying mature content on their mobile devices.

What’s so special about mobile devices? Nothing, except that Apple has implemented a file system and application system that they can control, they can prevent the user from using for any content. There is only content Apple approves of, on apps Apple approves of. And they’ve been your nanny since day one.

But now they’ve gone a little nuts.

a1Tomorrow, one of the finest comics available, Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, will not be available in digital form on iOS devices. This is due to two “postage stamp sized gay sex scenes” that appear in the magazine. They’re kind of background images, literally like someone left a TV on in a scene, context is ambiguous and not flamboyant.

Still Apple takes umbrage, and is shutting down all iOS apps that might try to down the comic. No iPad, no iPhone, no. Because they’re trying to protect you from an image you can walk into any comic store tomorrow and buy without showing your driver’s license. And it’s not the first nudity or sexuality in the magazine. It’s undoubtedly because of the gay context that they get out their big censor stick.

This is a crime against art.

I’m not exaggerating, Saga is one of the best comic books available today. Smart, inventive, human, witty, lovely, and unique.

All things Apple used to be.

And now they’re just disappointing.

Posted in Books, Entertainment, Geeking around, Media, Organizations, Personal, SciFi Fantasy, Thoughts, Writing | 2 Comments

Savino Wine Preservation System Unboxing

Sometimes we have to put the tech, and the presenting and the other stuff geeky aside and just enjoy a glass of wine.

But maybe we can combine a few of these. The latest tech in wine storage. The geeky flavor of an impromptu unboxing and demo. All on a Friday afternoon.

Enjoy.

Savino Wine Storage System Unboxing

 

Posted in Entertainment, Food and drink, Geeking around, Personal, Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Calming Down the Grandpa in Office 2013

I got a lot of good feedback on The First Thing to Do to Your New PowerPoint 2013, thanks and wow – happy to help.

So OK, here’s the second thing you should do after you install Office 2013.  It’s a bitter post, full of my opinion, and I’m perfectly willing to accept that others may disagree.  However, in my opinion this trick corrects one of the most ridiculous mistakes made in Office 2013. You may consider it more of a taste issue. But I think that if you have taste you’ll want your Office interface to not look like somebody’s grandpa sending e-mail with the CAPS LOCK key on.

HEY, YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!

Yeah, that’s right. For some reason the designers at Office decided that years of calming down the interface, using readability methods developed and proven literally over centuries, should be abandoned so they could inject some “style” into the product.  Beware of designers attempting to make their mark.

Application design should fall back against the content, should not stand there screaming HEY LOOK AT ME, or HEY, GET OFF MY LAWN, or HERE’S A JOKE THAT ALL MY SENIOR FRIENDS THOUGHT WAS FUNNY SO I’M ADDING YOU IN MY REPLY-ALL… just for example. UI should be clear, it should be available, but not garish and hard to interpret.

So one of the first things you’ll notice looking at Office 2013 is the ribbon. The ribbon that so many hate, and the rest just find somewhat annoying. Sure it makes it easier for novices to find things, but it’s proven that the ribbon limits experts from levels of productivity they had with the prior menu UI. But we’re kind of stuck with it, and I digress. You see how easy that is.

What we’re looking at most is the tabs. The little label tabs at the top of each ribbon. And they’re all screaming like grandpa.

FILE  HOME  INSERT  DESIGN  TRANSITIONS  ANIMATIONS  SLIDE SHOW  REVIEW  VIEW

Hideous, right?

Well, maybe you’re not bothered by it, and hey, good for you.  But there’s so much basic knowledge about how typography works, how the eye interprets words and breaks, how recognition is speeded by properly applying basic typographic conventions… all ignored here. It’s tragic really when you consider the scope of Office, how many people deal with this UI on a daily if not hourly (if not constant!) basis.  There were lots of people bringing up how ugly and broken this was in the open Beta for Office 2013, but Office designers decided they knew better.

Sigh

Anyway, you can fix this, calm it down. I can show you how. It’s a little tricky, so follow closely.

We’re going to go into the customize ribbon command. Right-click somewhere on the ribbon where there isn’t a button or control, and you’ll see the hidden commands. Choose Customize the ribbon and you’ll see the ribbon customization mess… er… UI.

right click taskbar and select Customize the Ribbon

Now, if you’re pretty perceptive you’ll notice something kinda weird.

customize ribbon ui

We’re looking in the right column, a list of the ribbon titles and the controls each ribbon contains. Funny thing is, all the labels are already in initial cap case. They are not in all-capitals. The UI let’s you change the name of any of these labels, see the Rename button beneath the list, but if you want to continue using the right names you’re kind of stuck.

The developers have special-cased these label titles for each of the individual ribbons so they display in all caps if they match the intended default label. Why did they spend their time doing this instead of fixing bugs or getting good features into the product? Who can tell. We can imagine the passionate arguments the designers put forward about not allowing users to destroy the delicate balance of their screaming grandpa design, but that’s just me recalling similar conversations. Probably nothing like that. But again, digressing.

A little experimenting will show you that the labels

Home displays HOME
HoME displays HoMe
HOME displays HOME

but it’s kind of hard to get it to just display “Home.” But not impossible. Just give it some space.

Or one space to be exact

Select one of the tab labels in the list and click the Rename button.  Adding a single space character, either before or after the letters “Home”, apparently is enough of a Jedi Mind Trick that  the developer’s force to upper-case code is told “these are not the glyphs you’re looking for” and they pass along to be displayed unharmed. Do this to each label, and you get a nice initial cap label and a much calmer interface.

lowercase tab labels

Yeah, Grandpa is still yelling FILE. If you can figure out a way to get him to calm down there, let me know.

A couple of things

You may want to do all the labels ahead of time. There are more than what are initially shown. Just open the list at the top of the right column and choose All Tabs.

alltabscontextual tabs display at the bottom of the list

Notice a bunch of items got added to the bottom of the list. These are the “contextual tabs”, tabs that show up when you select certain things, like shapes and tables, to give you control over their options.

It does take a few minutes to change all of these labels, but you’ll find the pattern is pretty easy to get used to. Might take you 15 minutes to add spaces to the end of each label. I think that’s the easier technique to use.

And don’t worry about making a mistake. If you do, you can nuke all your changes and reset the UI to the defaults again. That’s what the Reset button at the bottom is for. You can reset all, or just the selected tab.

And One Last Thing

Which leads us to the last tip here. It’s Extra Credit, so feel free to skip it.

If you’re a writer or instructor or someone who needs, occasionally, to make your UI look like it’s fresh out of the box, you can use the Import/Export UI changes command.  It’s just beneath the Reset button.

the import/export change file command

This lets you save a file with all the customizations you’ve made as a file that you can reload later, even share between machines. So if you need to undo your changes and go back to the just out of the shrink-wrap smell, save your customizations, then Reset everything.

Later when you want to stop grandpa from screaming, just Import the saved settings again and you’re back to a calm, mature looking UI.

Let me know how this works for you.

This somewhat silly article is dedicated to my dear departed father, a grandfather and computer user himself, who eventually learned to just use all lower-case in writing his e-mail.

-Ric

Fun Fact: Did you know that the first few versions of the 
Apple computer did not have the ability to display 
lower-case letters? The keyboards had a shift key, but 
it was used almost exclusively for shifting number keys 
to access punctuation characters. The Atari and Commodore 
Computers were among the first personal computers to 
introduce lower-case letters as a standard personal 
computer feature!
Posted in Business, Design, Geeking around, Health and wellness, Personal, PowerPoint, Presentations, Random thoughts, Software, Thoughts | 6 Comments

Love of Books – An Unboxing of “The Fifty Year Sword”

I’m a big fan of books. Not just the stories, but the book construction as well. From bindings, paper choice, typeset, typography, layout, it’s all interesting to me.

Mark Z. Danielewski is most famous for House of Leaves, an inventive experimental work of layered stories and typographic morphing of most everything we think of as the printed page.

In this video I do a short review of House of Leaves for those who are not familiar with the work (and to allow those familiar with it to berate and chastise me for “getting it wrong” I suspect) and then do an unboxing of his latest work The Fifty Year Sword, which comes in a unique box and exhibits some of the same traits found in House of Leaves.

I hope you enjoy, and I hope those trying to make a purchase decision on this book are aided in their decision making.

 

preview

Posted in Books, Design, Entertainment, Geeking around, Movies, Personal, Technology, Uncategorized, Writing | 1 Comment

The Facebook Face Flip

This is not a political post, although a quick reading without comprehension will surely give some that impression. Trust me, and read on.

I was reading this evening about how you can actually see people “unliking” Mitt Romney’s Facebook page in real time graphics on a web site called Disappearing Romney. It sounded pretty wild, and the graphics on the page were conceptually stunning, but the whole thing was kind of sophomoric.  It looked like it might have been a prank.  So I decided to check his Facebook page to see if their math checked out.

It did check out, was really easy to confirm with a couple of page refreshes. But that’s not what caught my eye.

You see, around 100 years ago I took both high school and college journalism. A lot of it stuck, writing of course, but also a lot in the area of page layout.  There’s one guideline that borders on being magic in making a page and subjects on the page look appealing and interesting.

If you have a photo, or graphic, where a subject is looking in a left or right direction, place that element such that it is looking into the page, away from the edge they’re nearest.  If you have to, you can consider “flipping” the element such that it can do this regardless of what side of the page it’s on.

(Pause here to note how well I’m avoiding unnecessary political metaphors. Thanks for noticing.)

Check out the original, and see what happens when you flip both the photos.  It really is like a magic trick!

Flipping the elements of Mitt Romney's Facebook page we come away with a completely different impression.

You always try to have faces looking into the page, it makes them look better, the page look better, and the reader feel better. In this case, we have original Mitt back-to-back, looking very disconnected, even defensive. Look at how flipping both photos around makes him look, well, happy to see himself.

Arguably the wider cover page might work in either direction, and if it were left right-facing the light sourcing for each of these photos would match up, but that’s not a big deal.  I personally liked them facing each other, but your mileage may vary.

And yes, this is eminently applicable to your presentations!  Ah! You knew I’d get there eventually!  It’s one of the simplest things you can do to make your slides look more intriguing, trustworthy, or even happy.

Anyway, it’s not like it cost him the election or anything, but I found it really amazing that nobody on his staff, or even Facebook friends suggested fixing this classic journalistic page layout gaff.

Yes, I am available for consultations.

Posted in Business, Design, History, Media, Organizations, Personal, PowerPoint, Presentations, Random thoughts, Technology, Thoughts, Writing | Leave a comment

The First Thing to Do to Your New PowerPoint 2013…

Warning, I’m pretty opinionated when it comes to a garish design that I have to look at for hours at a time. I find it personally offending and I’m not going to mince words here.

Luckily there’s a quick fix for PowerPoint 2013, and I’m happy to share it with you before you suffer permanent vision loss…

 

Posted in Business, Design, Geeking around, PowerPoint, Presentations, Software, Technology, Thoughts | 3 Comments

Four Days to Better Presenting – Yes, You Can!

Oh dear. Another drab blog entry about presenting.  Well, maybe not.

If you hear the title Presentation Summit, you might picture an international cabal, those folks from around the world whose job it is to keep presentations bland, sleep-inducing and dreaded.  The Illuminati of bullet points, of text too small to read, creators of impenetrable charts, and irrelevant clip art.  Lord, I can picture them too!

But no, that’s not it at all.  In fact, its almost exactly the opposite.

Scottsdale AZ, Presentation Summit 2012

For almost a decade Rick Altman has been bringing expert professional presenters together at events around the country to show attendees that there is no inevitability to Death by PowerPoint.  Originally titled “PowerPoint Live” this Presentation Summit is something I personally look forward to each year whether I’m presenting or not.

What you will learn

To be a great presenter you need a number of things.

  • Respect for your audience – to know them, to know their needs, and to know how to move them
  • A message – what you are delivering, where you want to move your audience
  • Skills – crafting your message, making it meet your needs and engaging your audience
  • …and a certain je ne sais quoi. That certain something in your presence that makes the audience want to follow you to the end

And I’m not exaggerating when I say that you can grow your presenting skill set in all four areas at the Presentation Summit.

How’s it work?

The conference is three tracks of presentations, over three days.  There’s a bonus fourth day you can sign up for even more intense training.  The three tracks are

Design It, where you learn how to better construct slides to more clearly communicate with compelling graphics and just the right amount of message per slide.

Build It, the track that concentrates on learning the tools, presentation, photographic, and graphic construction, that help you craft the right presentation to support your conversation with the audience.

Present It, the art of standing in front of a room full of strangers and helping them see the benefit of your message. One of the most difficult things to do well, and certainly one of the most valuable skills to build.

Over the course of the summit, there’s more than enough to keep you busy and build your ability to present.  But there are also larger group sessions, mixers and networking opportunities, vendor fairs, group excursions… it’s hard to imagine how it all gets crammed into a few days.

Who is there?

OK, I’m one of the people presenting, and I’ll talk more about me later.  But I’m only a small part of a big talented crew.  Professionals from all over the world, from England to Australia, from India to Silicon Valley, it’s a talented team.

But I want to spotlight a couple of folks who attend who are closer to being the Presentation Illuminati, and certainly a lot nicer.  The PowerPoint MVPs.

PowerPoint MVPs at the Presentation Summit, left to right: Geetesh Bajaj, John Wilson, Echo Swinford, Me, Julie Terberg, Sandy Johnson, Troy Chollar, and Glenna Shaw – A few of the Microsoft PowerPoint MVPs who will be in attendance.

If you don’t know what a Microsoft MVP is, you should read about it here.  In short, they’re experts in a Microsoft application, chosen by Microsoft to have direct contact with the development team to provide feedback and help other users of the program.  The PowerPoint MVPs are the best of the best.  No brag, just fact.  Google any of the names above if you need evidence of this.

Interested?

So if you’re interested in finding out more, Rick Altman the father of the feast says it best on the Presentation Summit web site.  There’s more information on session specifics, the presenters, and how to justify going to your boss.  No kidding, it’s like he’s doing all the work for you!

A little fun

OK, a little fun now.  You may have noticed that the Sessions page for the summit has little videos from most of the presenters.  Mine should be up there, but I was late getting them to Rick and he’s off on some island now resting up for the run-up to the October event.  So they’ll be up there eventually, but in the meantime I thought I’d give you a sneak peek at what I’m presenting at this year’s summit.

Enjoy

-Ric

Pecha Kucha Lessons for Business at Presentation Summit 2012

I’m presenting on how business presenters can learn from Pecha Kucha presentations at this year’s Presentation Summit. This video is a short introduction for that session, which will appear on the Presentation Summit schedule page. I’ve given it a little twist of humor, which I hope you’ll enjoy.

Yes, some of the punchlines blink on a little too fast to see the first time. That’s intentional. I’m weird. Thanks for your concern.

 

Presenting on the iPad at Presentation Summit 2012

I’m presenting a how-to and how-not-to session on using the iPad as your primary presenting tool at this year’s Presentation Summit. This video is a short introduction for that session, which will appear on the Presentation Summit schedule page. I’ve given it a little twist of humor, which I hope you’ll enjoy.

Hint: Pay attention to the background.

Posted in Business, Design, Personal, PowerPoint, Presentations, Software, Technology, Travel | Leave a comment