Scharnetzki`s - line of reasoning

How to compete with Apple´s Apps Store? Offer a better user experience !

Juli 28th, 2010 Ralf Scharnetzki

To get you started here a simple but concrete example:

There should be a way for any developer to stop users updating an application if a problem on a specific iOS version is detected (and not yet fixed).

It does not look like that Apple´s App Store is offering this basic functionality today.

Posted in Issues explained | No Comments »

iPad as remote control for your media center : three conceptually different options

Juli 4th, 2010 Ralf Scharnetzki

1) iPad as remote control for one specific application (here iTunes running on a Mac)

Software: “Remote” from Apple http://www.apple.com/itunes/remote/

Software: “EyeTV” from Elgato Systems http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/eyetv/id329886711?mt=8

2) iPad as remote key board and mouse to control a nearby Mac or PC

Software: “Air Mouse Pro” from RPA Technology http://www.mobilemouse.com/

3) iPad to access and control the remote Mac or PC

Software: “LogMeIn Ignition” from LogMeIn Inc. https://secure.logmein.com/US/products/ignition/

Posted in Interesting Links, Recommended Products | 1 Comment »

What is Steam for Mac ? What is Steam on PC ?

Mai 16th, 2010 Ralf Scharnetzki

Steam is like iTunes an online application store but for games only and unlike iTunes (that is selling apps only for Apples iPhone, iPad and iPod) the games that can be downloaded from Steam will run either on a PC with Windows or a Mac with Apples OSX (but not on iPhone, iPad or iPod).

We asked this simple question before: Why is iTunes only selling applications and games for iPod, iPhone and iPad and not selling applications and games also for Mac and Windows?

We have no answer yet…

Posted in Good Ideas, Issues explained | No Comments »

iPad gaming potential shown in video: LAN multiplayer and cross platform

Mai 13th, 2010 Ralf Scharnetzki

This video is showing the potential of Apple’s iPad as a gaming platform. We are using the game Galcon Fusion to demonstrate cross platform multiplayer by running the game in parallel on Apple’s iPad and a Microsoft Windows 7 PC.

Posted in Good Ideas, Interesting Links, Recommended Products | No Comments »

Steam on Mac OS X : Great first impression !

Mai 12th, 2010 Ralf Scharnetzki

Steam was already on Windows our preferred online distribution and gaming platform.

Since 1 hour (12th May 2010) it is now also available on Apple’s OS X.

So far VALVE promised that its own games like Half Life 2 and Portal would become available on OS X for free to those who bought previously the Windows version of those games.

But it is even better: The ability to buy a game on Steam only once and run it on Mac and Windows is called STEAMPLAY. And not only Valve but also other companies offer their games with STEAMPLAY.

Steam

For us that means that after downloading and installing Steam on OSX we have directly 5 games available for download that we can play on OSX without having to pay again. This is how it should be, great customer service. Thank you VALVE!

Posted in Recommended Products | No Comments »

Google Reader power user tips : read it later, archive web pages, store bookmarks online

Februar 21st, 2010 Ralf Scharnetzki

Google Reader works great as a feed news reader. In addition Google Reader can be used easily as:

Simple ReadItLater alternative to gather webpages you detected right now and that you want to come back to later when you have maybe some more time to read
A very simple web archiving solution
Simple cross browser and cross operating system bookmark solution

How to do this?

Nothing special at all is required, it is just about changing slightly your Google Reader usage pattern.

The main enabler is that you first drag and drop the Google Reader bookmarklet to your browsers toolbar:

You will find this bookmarklet when you click here: http://www.google.com/reader/view/user/-/state/com.google/self

This bookmarklet seems to work in Microsofts IE, Firefox and Google Chrome (on Windows and Apple OS X tested).

Now whenever you are on a page that you would like to read later click on the bookmarklet in your toolbar and:

Page bookmarked in Google Reader for “read it later access”: http://newteevee.com/2010/02/19/youtube-expands-video-rental-program/#

1) de-select the “Addd to shared items” tick-mark, because here we do no not want to share but only access this page later

2) add a tag ” readitlater” that will help us in Google Reader to find this page more quickly (see below)

3) click “Post item” so that you save this page for later access to Google Reader

Access in Google Reader is later simple and straight forward:

Additional hint:

Select and highlight the text in the page before you click on the “Note in Reader” button. Now you will have a “personal copy” of this selected part of the page stored in Google Reader (that you can now also search for in Google Reader). This way Google Reader is becoming your “on-click-button” cheap web page archiving solution.

Page archived in Google Reader: http://www.appleinsider.com/print/10/02/20/inside_apples_ipad_adobe_flash.html#

Sure, specialized solutions offer many more features, but we like a lot to achieve more with less (tools).

Posted in Good Ideas, Recommended Products | No Comments »

Current Apple iPad marketing approach not recommended by ex Apple evangelist

Februar 3rd, 2010 Ralf Scharnetzki

Guy Kawasaki (who worked in the past for Apple as evangelist) explains in Seth Godin´s free ebook “What matters now” that you:

Never describe your cause by using bull shiitake terms like “revolutionary” and “paradigm shifting.” Instead, explain how it helps a person.

Apple just launched this new product everybody was so excited about before it was announced:

Source: Apple

So Steve Jobs clearly does not follow in Apple´s initial iPad marketing campaign the advice of his former employee. Time will tell if he is right or wrong.

Posted in Interesting Links, Thematic Web Archives | No Comments »

Explanations for Twitter trending topics getting a trend

November 25th, 2009 Ralf Scharnetzki

This is part 3 of our Twitter related mini-tutorial (part1, part2).

Twitter.com is providing a short list of currently popular keywords from within the most current stream of tweets.

This list is called “Trending Topics”.

It provides a convenient way to connect to what is currently happening on that global message bus called Twitter:

expl0

Recently some explanations started to show up after one clicked on a specific trending topic:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%22Happy%20Thanksgiving%22%20OR%20Thanksgiving

Brizzly, a new Twitter client, is also providing explanations for trending topics. For some this is even a differentiating feature of Brizzly:

WhatTheTrend is a Wikipedia like community website to provide explanations for always new trending topics on Twitter:

WhatTheTrend seems to be used by Twitter as a source of some of the explanations it is displaying.

Closing comment:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted in Interesting Links, Recommended Products, Thematic Web Archives | 1 Comment »

Microsoft wants less Windows

November 23rd, 2009 Ralf Scharnetzki

Microsoft is continuing to invest into user interfaces that will help users to open less windows.

Quadrant and Pivot are the code names of two new Microsoft applications that make use of a zooming interface to let users change from overview to detailed views in a seamless way.

1) Microsoft “Quadrant”

“Microsoft code name -Quadrant- is a graphical tool for easily viewing, editing, and exploring data found in any SQL Server database.”

Screenshot taken from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/ee789913.aspx

Overview of Quadrant features:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd857506%28VS.85%29.aspx

Movie showing the user interface:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/ee789913.aspx

2) Microsoft LiveLabs Pivot:

“Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun.”

Screenshot taken from: http://getpivot.com/

Overview of Pivot features:

http://getpivot.com/

Closing comment:

It is good to see some user interface innovation happening in Microsoft.

Posted in Good Ideas, Interesting Links | No Comments »

How to show all tweets related to a web page with a single click

Oktober 11th, 2009 Ralf Scharnetzki

Tweets link often to web pages. The reverse direction works too: with one click you can see tweets that are related to the current page your browser is showing. This is the second part of our mini Twitter tutorial (part 1 here).

You could use a URL Twitter enabled search engine like http://backtweets.com/search?q= to find tweets related to a specific URL.

We like best the sidebar from bit.ly (in October 2009; new and often better Twitter related tools and services are becoming available every day).
When you would like to see what people say on Twitter about the current page in your browser you just install this bookmarklet.
From then on you just have to click once on its button and the bit.ly sidebar will show you all tweets related to the page that you are currently reading.

Great!

Find here a tutorial and all instructions: http://bit.ly/pages/tools/sidebar/