JohnnyWorthington.com

Strap yourselves in kids, this one is a long-winded trip into my past.

My excitement by the release of Apple’s iPad can be easily be clasified by others as simple Apple Fanboism. The reason I push back so hard against this notion is it discounts my long love affair with touch interfaces and my standing hatred of the ‘computer’.

Don’t get me wrong, I love computers, I love my mastery of them… I just hate using a computer.

I love what they can do and what they allow me to create. I hate that a decent amount of background knowledge is required to get the most out of them. I do not roll gleefully in endless sheets of dot-matrix paper skillfully painted with masterpieces of coding. My passion is creating things with them, not things for them.

Despite using Macs from very early in my life at the advertsing agency at which my father worked, my first computer was an Atari ST 1040. I felt so cool having a computer. A computer which I bought with my own money gained from an appearance in a Toyota Lexcen commercial. The first computer we had in our house.

I was so pumped up. I was going to learn programming. I was going to be a computer hacker just like those ones I had read about… But 1 hour in… The fantasy faded away. I was playing games. I was typing letters to friends… I was waiting 10 minutes for the spreadsheet program to load.

This great fantasy I had crafted in my head about WHAT a computer was and what I wasnted to do with them was false. For me a computer was a tool for fun, creativity and communication. The most frustrating part of that expereince was the realisation that in order to do those things, and do them well, I still had to gain a solid level of knowledge about the inner workings of the beige box.

So, with my move to highschool. I got my first Windows PC and a modem. The world opened up for me. Again, the grandious thoughts of going hardcore filled my head. But, I was spending all my time chatting on IRC, playing games and surfing the emerging web.

Once again, I realized that I wasn’t a hardcore computer guy. The only issue was since I had confidence using the computer, I was fast becoming known as ‘the guy who was good with computers’. Anyone who has fixed a simple issue in Word or helped someone with a small task in Windows knows that the projection of confidence goes a long way in your status of ‘Guru’. This required me to level up my knowledge help others, again pulling me deeper than I truly wanted to go.

The biggest gripe about being ‘the computer guy’… viruses. It sucks. You can lobby as hard as you like to get enough money to put in place the best system possible but as soon as some downloads something or clicks on a link in an email etc… you have failed. It’s a lot easier to criticize the computer guy than try and yell at your employees for doing something you don’t truly understand yourself.

So as I moved from high school into University, and being a computer guy, I waded into a double major in Computer Science at Queensland University… and hated it. I could understand everything that was being taught, but my heart just wasn’t in it. I dropped out that year (not before switching to a double major in Philosophy and acing that for 6 months).

Next year I went to TAFE, kind of like practical university. I loved it. Hands on, the social interaction… but again, my heart slipped away.

So I went and got myself a 9 to 5 at a local fertiliser comapny, funnily enough, as their computer guy/graphic artist. It was the perfect job. I got to help people use computers, set up networks and do really practical stuff… without hardcore knowledge. This was also the first time when someone paid me money to use a computer to be creative.

Something I still do today.

So based on my non-hardcore use of the a computer, I just want something that does what I do.

Touch Me Baby

I love touch interfaces. When I use a keyboard or mouse, there is a mental disconnect. There is something very primal about touching something with your finger and it responding.

Anything touch screen I gotta try. The terminals at the malls for customer service. I use the self-service touch screens at my supermarket. Hell, Subway tends to give me gastro but I ordered it once JUST cause they installed new touch screen ordering terminals.

The Ahh-Ha! moment came for me when I found a funky looking phone on eBay from Germany.

The Siemens SX45.

To big to fit on my pocket (but I didn’t care). No microphone or speaker, just a tanglious headphone cord (I didn’t care)… It had a touch screen. While it did have a stylus, I was able to touch the screen and make things happen.

I bought it. $700. My life was complete. Yes it was a crappy Windows Mobile interface but it was tweaked just ever so to allow my big sausage fingers to whip through the menus. It had email, music player, Word, Excel, ‘web-browser’. Heaps of apps. I was like carrying around a brick but I loved it. I had direct control. Part of the reason I am so frickin’ ninja on the iPhone keyboard is I learnt to type on this about 6 years ago.

So I rocked that for a year or so until Rachael and I decided to get Motorola RAZRs. One of the best and worse phones ever (for me). I loved the usability, the camera and the games… but I couldn’t touch it. Phone navigation is hard at the best of times. Throw in sausage fingers and you’re screwed.

Then, one our 2 years were up, I bought my next phone. The LG KU990. It was the SX45 on steroids. It had a fat 5 megapixel camera and a touch interface based on buttons, not menus.

BAM! I had found sort of a computer that WASN’T a computer. It got out of the way and just let me rock the interface to get to where I wanted to go. It was rough but it was enough.

Now at this stage, the iPhone had just been released. For someone like me, Mr Jobs had just given me the next evolution of my dream device… But I didn’t get it year 1. It wasn’t until my fat ass broken the screen on my LG in a slide at a McDonald’s play ground that I got one.

It was the second Ahh-Ha. 95% of what I did on my PC and Mac was now in the palm of my hand and it wasn’t a computer. It had no File/Edit. It had no Maximize/Minimize… It was full screen environments running the task I was performing.

I’ll explain. The major thing I do on a computer is Adobe Lightroom for my photography. When I use it, I switch it to Full Screen mode and the Windows Start Bar or the Mac’s File Menu disappears. I simple use the application, not the OS.

I have used touch tablets before, all Windows devices. My most hardcore use was the set-up and maintenance of a DynaVox eyetracking computer with Windows 95. Despite all the bolted on features, at it’s heart it was the same tablet computer that Windows was selling off the shelf. I know this because when I unpacked it, I had to assemble it all and load the extra software on top of the pre-installed XP. It soon became clear to me that this was still a mouse and keyboard interface that you could touch. The Max/Min/Exit buttons were painfully small and trying to drag and select multiple files at once was almost impossible.

The attachment of a USB keyboard helped but eventually I had to submit and attach a mouse as well. Now, I am sure in future versions (Windows 7) that tweaks have been made but at it’s heart, and tablet OS maker must understand that a straight port without UI tweaks makes it difficult to use. Especially on anything under 13 inches.

I have the exact same criticism of the OSX interface. It is all still menu based and would be the same nightmare to use as Windows.

While my use may not be as hardcore as some, it is still valid and more closely aligned to the general population.

You win no badges for hardcoredness. It’s not what you got, it’s what you do with it.

So, now I have MY phone. The phone I have wanted for 6 years. The computer I have wanted for 20. It fits my work flow, my uses and I trust Apple based on years of solid service. Mr Jobs has stepped up again and said “Here is what you want, Johnny, but more powerful and a bigger screen”.

My answer? 1 please.

Since joining Facebook way back in the day, I have always been curious about the pixel limit they set for photographs. At this stage, the longest edge is limited to 604 pixels. This works into their UI.

As a photographer with a lot of photos on Facebook, I have developed my own Lightroom export preset to match this limit and allow for sharpening etc. I am resigned to the fact that no picture I have on Facebook will ever be a higher resolution.

Or will it?

[UPDATED] Thanks to Facebook’s Kevin Fox for pointing me to http://developers.facebook.com/live_status.php#msg_541. Facebook is rolling out an update over the next few weeks that will increase the maximum pixel size to 720. This move is not retroactive. This is still short of the 1024 pixels of the iPad but is a promising move for the largest photo sharing site in the world. [/UPDATED]

With the announcement of Apple’s iPad, and the success of the Facebook app for iPhones and iPods, this has raised a question regarding pixel resolution and the full screen display of photos from said Facebook app.

Currently, the resolution of the iPhone/iPod is 480 x 320 pixels. This is fine as the Facebook app down samples the picture to meet this resolution.

The issue I see is that the reported resolution of the iPad is 1024 x 768 pixels. This would mean that the current pixel restriction of 604 pixels (longest edge) is less than half of that. This would cause the Facebook app to up sample the picture to twice it’s size.

I have produced an approximate up sample example in Photoshop to demonstrate:

Yuck…

This is important as I like to display and browse photos using the app’s full screen mode. The question the is: Will Facebook’s iPad app display in full screen, the 604 pixel size with black bars around the sides or does Facebook keep higher resolution copies of all photos uploaded?

Knowing the importance of the Facebook app to sales of the iPhone (it has sold more iPhones to my friends than I care to mention) this is something that should be address before the 60 days are up.

J

[Please note, Johnny is quite prepared to be wrong or not understand pixels. Plus correct him on Twitter @jworthington as, alas, the spam bots are pwn'ing my blog. Anti-Apple people need not apply, this is a Facebook issue]

If Apple brings out a tablet, that seems something I may be interested in. Here’s why:

1. I like Apple stuff and based on my history with them, I’ll have a look.

2. I tried showing my Grandma my photography on my laptop on Xmas day. Too hard. I just ended up giving her my iPhone and she swiped away with joy. Interacting with media in that way is something that is interesting to me.

3. I do a lot of photography and photoshopping on a Wacom tablet. If I can do that live on top of the photo I’m working on, that is interesting to me.

4. I have a large music collection, the only issue is at parties either the laptop has to be connected to my stereo or I have to surrender my iPhone with Apple’s Remote app. If I can hang a large iPod on the wall, or better yet hand that around, that is something that is interesting to me.

5. I don’t have a TV in my room and I don’t like having a laptop in bed. If I could hang a tablet on the wall, or even mount it near my bed, that is interesting to me.

6. Microsoft Surface. If Apple can build Surfacey-like features into this tablet, like music and photo sharing, that is interesting to me.

7. My 3 year old daughter uses our iPhones like it’s second nature. Unlocking, loading apps, playing games and drawing. Giving her a rich platform and a head start in the game is something that is interesting to me.

8. Cause it’s Apple and they make cool stuff. Being a fat bearded man in Australia, looking cool is something that is interesting to me.

Will I get one? Maybe yes. Price is an issue but it always is.

Will I get one on the day it comes out? Likely no… But then again, how many iPods did Apple sell year 1 verse year 6, 7, 8 or 9?

Regardless, I already have a piggy bank set up…

Johnny

It just clicked… I just figured out why I hate organisations that declare things ‘dead’… It’s just like ‘fashion reporting’ or ‘hot or not’ lists.

If I wanted the E! Channel, I would watch the E! Channel.

Johnny

I just read about flocking.me. This is a new service that lets you “Search for tweets from just your friends”…

Never really thought about it before but frankly, I’m stunned.

Really?
1) Twitter didn’t have this feature in the first place?
2) It’s took a third party to come up with it?

Further to this, despite Jesse Stay writing about this several days ago (Just in Time for the Holidays, FriendFeed Becomes First OAuth Wrap Provider) the news just ‘broke’ that Facebook is using FriendFeed to test it’s OAuth WRAP thingy (I don’t fully understand it yet, but it’s something about something that sounds cool… I’ll read it and come back later with an explanation).

Now I tried my hardest to find some discussion on Twitter about this but all I got was retweets of the TechCrunch article. Poor Brizzly was loading more tweets like a mad person. I found discussion on the places the tweets linked to but not inside the tweets themselves.

This, once again from my opinion, just proves to me why FriendFeed (and to some extent Facebook) is a Mack Truck of discussion and discovery… and why Twitter is still a 3 legged donkey on a unicycle.

Johnny

I recall talking with a friend at work last week about the death of the Christmas card. She commented on the lack of cards she had received this year and noted that she had received a lot more ‘e-cards’ from friends on Facebook. This disappointed her.

I noted that I had received many messages like this and valued them the same as a card in the mail. It was the thought that counted, not the piece of pretty paper.

And so,  this is my humble gift to you this year… this little ball of words scooped out of my brain…

“No matter if it’s Xmas cards or social media or life in general, if you care more about where you say it rather than what you say, you need to rethink communication”.

My family and I wish you all peace, love, joy, laughter and an afternoon nap…

Johnny

We were talking with my parents when Georgia (my 3 1/2 year old daughter) started playing with Rachael’s iPhone. This is something she has done for about 12 months now (since I got my iPhone) and she is very good at it.

She can unlock it, flick between screens and select her games and spelling apps. She also likes taking photos. This is something completely normal to her.

My dad turned to me and said “she is going to be an IT expert, she will know everything about everything”

I replied “No, she will know a lot about how to use IT and ‘knowing IT’ won’t be a thing someone of her age does.” I finished with “She will know what works, what doesn’t, and just do it”

In short, we are all just marking time until the next generation takes this revolution and uses it as naturally as a pen and paper.

I am excited for what I will be able to learn from her.

Johnny

I like reading stuff, but I don’t like swimming through a sea of press releases and @replies to find it. I use human filters on services like FriendFeed to get the good stuff.

I have a trusted group of people who find information and share it with me. They pull from their feeds and their interaction gives me markers on what to pay attention to.

I’m not a seeker, and neither is a lot of people. I have stuff to do, finding information isn’t one of them.

Doesn’t matter how killer your Twitter list is, it’s still a raw feed of press releases and @replies. Until you can set up a list and then mark items inside that list that I should be paying attention to… it’s just a consolidated noise list.

Johnny

Did a quick informal poll of my friends on Facebook tonight. I went through some the people I have meet in the flesh (about 70 of them) and only 14 had Twitter accounts.

Most of the ‘normal’ people I know have knowledge of Twitter, but don’t use it or do not intend to.

They want a deep social space with pictures, fun and popular culture. They don’t want to know someone has posted new photos, they want to see them. They go on Facebook as an activity, not use a tool.

So, in my small sphere of if the world, Twitter is dead. Facebook has won.

But Johnny, look at these stats and you don’t know what… BLAH BLAH BLAH…
From what I have learnt, being a social media expert allows for lapses of logic and fact. My space may be a bath tub in a sea of fact, but why look over the sides when my the water inside my walls feels fine.

I also plan to frequently tweet how dead Twitter is, just to stab the wound and convince myself I wasn’t wrong about joining Twitter back in January 2007 and banking my reputation on it.

Twitter broke my heart, so the bitch must pay.

Hi, my name is Johnny. I’m here to tell you about a social networking site so good, Facebook bought the people who designed it.

What is that service you ask? It’s called FriendFeed.

That’s right, you may have heard of us before. We have been called a rival to Twitter or Facebook etc but that’s not really the point of the site. We are a central hub, an aggregator, a Twitter client, a RSS catcher, podcasting client, photo sharing service and discussion platform… The most important part? It’s a community.

It’s at this stage I would like to speak to all of you who are Twitter Fanbois who are going to fill my inbox with things like “there are communities on Twitter” and “I can have discussions here” and “Twitter is the place to be because everyone is here”. I ask of you two things. 1) Realize that this post isn’t for you. It’s not about Twitter. You won, congrats, don’t be sore winners and 2) Send me a tweet @jworthington with the hashtag #wrongjohnny explaining your point. Only 1 tweet though. With those two elements, you have 115 characters left.

OK, let’s get down to it.

FriendFeed is great for not only aggregating your social media happenings but those of your friends.

But Johnny, my friends aren’t here… Don’t worry, we’ll come to that.
Right now you probably have close to 10 different social media sites at which you have accounts or place you content. Imagine if you could have a place that would combine all those into one visual, media rich spot.

But I already have that with Twitter and Facebook.
You may have your content importing into Twitter but let’s face it, it’s just links. FriendFeed shows your photos, audio as well as a the first section of text and images contained in your blog posts.

Johnny, I have all these tools on Twitter that I use.
Excellent point, let’s go feature-deep. What are they?

@replies?
Oh crap. Well, we don’t have that exactly.

Direct Message?
Ah! We do have those. What is great about FriendFeed’s implementation of it is you can DM more than one person. You can DM yourself (puts it into your own feed), your friends and a group (which we will come to).

But how can I DM a bunch of people, doesn’t that take up message space?
No. The structure isn’t built into the message. You can DM 1 or 20 people, just like email. What is even funkier is that you can have this set up through email so you can send a receive them just like regular email. Did I mention you can post pdf, docs and other media too?

RT?
We go about this in a few ways. Firstly, you can reshare the item into your own feed. This creates a whole new item. Also, on the share screen, you can click on the quick link icons to send the message directly to that service.

But we have Likes and Comments. Now this has been confusing in the post so let me explain.

If I am subscribed to you, I not only see your content but I can see the other items you comment or like. When you like a post, it shows up in my stream with the note that you liked it.

In return, if you follow me, anything I like or comment on shows up in your stream. Now this can be overwhelming at first but if you use our hide and block tools, then it will be cool. I’ll give you a quick run down on those in a sec.

Search?
Our search will blow your mind. You know how you can search for a term or terms on Twitter? FriendFeed search lets you pick who wrote it, who commented on it, who liked it, how many comments, how many likes… on and on and on. I mean, the creators worked for Google, they don’t play around with search.

You can also set up saved searches, lots of them, and you can even have them ping you when something new comes up. You know that whole real time web thing? We were kinda in the front carriage of that roller coaster.

The great thing about FriendFeed search is when you block someone, they don’t show up in your results.

OK, so do you guys have spam?
It’s very small, but the team have given us the tools to combat people we don’t want to see.

Block
Very powerful tool. If you block someone, they not only dissapear from your feed, along with any of thier comments, but they can no longer access you content. The same works in reverse. if someone block you, you can no longer see them. Block at your discretion, but do block if someone gets too much.

Hide
Great tool. If a post comes up that you don’t like, press hide. It disappears. Don’t like the posts that come from a certain person’s feed (like Last.fm or Soup.io), press hide then go to ‘hide other items like this one’ and press ‘hide all entries from that person’s service’. Don’t like a service in general, no matter the person, do the same thing but hide from everyone.

FriendFeed is a garden, and like all good gardens, require some work to get a healthy bloom.

Hashtags?
We have those. What is cool is if you make a native FriendFeed post, the hashtag links to a search within FriendFeed. If the hashtag is imported from Twitter, the link goes to Twitter search. Nifty, right?

What’s also cool about FriendFeed is we have groups. Groups are like hashtags except they are a place where people who share a common interest can share thier content and ideas with others. The great thing is you don’t have to be subscribed to everyone in that group for them to see your stuff or for you to see thiers. You can also share your items to both a group and your main feed so both sets of people can interact on the one spot.

So, here, I have created a group called “Hi, I’m New Here“. In here you will find a cool bunch of people who are willing to help you with any questions you may have or issues etc. A lot of my friends will be here and they are all cool people. This is a good place to start looking for people to follow.

But Johnny, like I said earlier, I have friends on Twitter already who aren’t here.
This is where you get to play Early Adopter. FriendFeed has made it so easy to join FriendFeed it’s not funny. If you click here, this will take you to the signup page. Now you can log in with either your Twitter, Facebook or Gmail username. It will even find those friends already here.

Now send your Twitter friends this link and ask them to take a minute to sign up, even if they just set up the import of their content and never come back. Now you can see their tweets ‘natively’. If you comment or like any of them, your followers will be able to comment, like or response to. You can response to tweets directly from FriendFeed.

Now, let’s just say a friend doesn’t want to do this. you can set up Imaginary Friends. Grab all your friend’s feeds, chuck them into an Imaginary Friend, slap on their Twitter icon and you’re away. Now this is just your imaginary friend so any comments or likes you make won’t be seen by others.

Failing that, set them up an account, email them the username and password and tell them to pull their butt out of their head.

But now everyone is in my feed?
Now that you have friends, you can sort them into Lists (Twitter stole that from us). You have one major list, called your Home Feed. This is what you see when you log on. Now you can take people out of your main feed and put them into other lists. This will remove them from your main feed but you can still see their stuff by clicking on the list name. you can even have that person in your home feed and a number of lists. You can set notification settings for those lists to be alerted by email or IM etc.

You can set up a Favorite Tweeters list so you don’t miss anything.

About that, there is a lot of content here.
That’s what Best Of Day is for. Now it is important to state at the outset that what you see doesn’t equal FriendFeed. Clicking on BoD shows you the top posts that have been commented or liked by the people you follow. Now BoD works inside lists to.

OK, but no one is commenting or liking my stuff?
FriendFeed is really designed to find information and talk about it with others. This really isn’t a good broadcast medium. The amount of time you spend interacting on other people’s posts correlates directly to the amount of interest you get back. FriendFeed is a party, no one will talk to you if you don’t introduce yourself. We won’t bite.

We are a great community, and would love to have your contribution to the discussion. We have a wide range of interests and talents.

I could go on and on and on about features but I have given you the basics to get started. Visit the room, comment and like and introduce yourself. I am always happy to help as well as heaps of other people.

Even if you just join, pipe your feeds in and leave. We don’t mind.

We aren’t here because we’re trying to be cool. We’re here because we believe this is a great place to experience the world, together.

Johnny