Here is what we have in iTunes 10 which is different from all the previous versions of iTunes and all other Apple software.

Hmm, I’m not sure I like the vertical buttons. The horizontal had a lot going for them. Will this be a new trend or did someone simply try something new to see how it went.

My guess, the intern got crazy with the UI because the App Store is back to the horizontal buttons.

Its not a huge change by any means, just different and inconsistent which is a break from what we typically get from the folks at Apple.

So which do you prefer?

Why I hate the Mediacom portal

1. One of my biggest pet peeves is that I cannot setup my credit card to be charged on a monthly recurring basis through the portal. They can accept a one time payment, but not recurring. In order to set up recurring payments, I have to call a customer support representative. When you call them, they cannot take your information either. Uh…what? Instead, they send you a form to fill out and send back in. If the process is to fill out a form and send it in via snail mail, let me DOWNLOAD THE FREAKING FORM ONLINE!!!!!
2. I can however place a one time payment at any time. However, you can place a one time payment multiple times and the owed amount never gets updated. For example, I apparently paid my bill online multiple times last month. So this month I owed a pathetic amount of $11.08. Which I paid several hours ago. Yet, when I go back to look at my balance, lo and behold, it appears that I still owe $11.08. Maybe I should pay it again.

An olive branch

While I appreciate being able to pay my bill online, I get extremely frustrated by the design and meager abilities of the portal. As a programmer, I find the whole site frustrating to use and annoying that it hasn’t been updated or fixed in quite a while.

If someone from Mediacom happens to find this post, please feel free to contact me about a consulting engagement (use the Call Me option on the right). Not only will I be able to help you identify what is wrong, I can probably just fix the problem for you as well. It will be better for both you and your customers.

My good friend asked me to do a web site for him and well, I finally got around to knocking it out. Its basically a business card web site but for an artist, its anything but cut and dry. Check out my latest development effort artbyluka.com

The site is pretty minimal as really, its best to keep the text to a minimum here and just show off the art work. One little item that I found a lot easier than expected was being able to harvest data out of facebook. With a little bit of coding, I was able to create a very function portfolio using images that were posted on the ArtByLuka fan page. The whole portfolio probably took me less than 2 hours to do. Its that freaking easy!

Anyway, take some time and check out Luke’s amazing art.

Here’s a demo of the app:

Pretty freaking sweet isn’t it.

And its free! Yes, FREE!

I still don’t get this. Its getting such great buzz around the web, why not charge some money for the app. I get wanting to get a bunch of people using your app and generating growth. But relying on advertisement revenue isn’t always the best plan. Why not get some of that cash in the door now.

Here’s the one problem that I have with FlipBoard (from the newsweek article):

Flipboard hasn’t worked out a business model yet, but plans to put ads next to articles and then share some advertising revenue with publishers. McCue believes that Flipboard on the iPad can deliver better-quality ads than the cheapo ones you see on the Web. And there’s no big rush to make money: Flipboard has raised $10.5 million from venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and other investors. “The first thing you have to do is create an experience that people are excited about and using a lot,” McCue says. That part, it seems, Flipboard has already accomplished.

How in the fuck did these guys get funding? Seriously? Can someone tell me who would invest in a company that hasn’t figured out the business model of how they are going to make money?

This is why we had a dot-bomb back in the early part of the century folks.

I would argue that they do have the model figured out, they just haven’t figured out how to execute on it yet. The app is simply a method of getting ads in front of users and it is only a matter of time until the advertisers come a running. So my argument is, why not make a few bucks along the way selling the great looking by product of your ad platform…the app itself!

Why?

You are not an unique snowflake so don’t try to make your icon stand out by “de-buttoning” them on the home screen.

No matter how beautiful you are, you are not better than everyone else by removing the border or gloss. You are not special. You are not being clever. You are hindering the overall interface consistency.

Source

Its definitely worth checking out.

I thought that this is a good motto to start the week out with. There’s a pretty cool back story on what inspired the design here.

I’ve had a few issues with it and various hoops that I have had to jump through. Many of which I have not had a chance to document on this blog. Those will hopefully come out in the coming months.

Today, I was dealing with a speed issue that we have been having in our customer portal that hits HMC. The page is pretty basic, it gives a listing of all the users, the name, login address, what package they are assigned and then some actions that can be taken on the user such as edit, delete, disable. This is all in house code that shows this information with calls being made to HMC to get the data.

Unfortunately, I made a mistake in my initial development. Originally, I got a listing of all the users and had 90% of the information that I needed. Another call was needed to get the assigned package for each user. If you have 5-10 users, this isn’t a huge deal. Try it with 100, or 1000. It gets really ugly really fast.

On one particular customer that I was looking at, they have 120 users. Their page was loading in 41 seconds. 41 freaking seconds!!! 7 seconds for the AD search to grab the users with mailboxes. Then somewhere between .1 and .3 seconds per user to equal 34 seconds of the page load.

The solution, remove the package display code.

What? But doesn’t the user want to see this data?!?! Maybe. But seeing as they have to go to the edit page anyway to change the package, it really isn’t needed on the account listing page. So why display it there. It slows down the user experience which is more of a negative than having it on the page.

It wasn’t an easy decision to remove this information. I thought of a whole bunch of ways where I could tuck that data away so I could grab it more efficiently. But in the end, less is less. Removing that data cleaned up the look of the page and vastly improved the load times. Its only been in the wild for a for hours so we’ll see what the users have to say about the change.

This worked out for a while and I had a pretty basic CMS built that I could plug in where needed. But, as with everything, the feature set that I needed kept growing and I was pretty short on time to implement the features that I needed.

To solve this, I started looking at the various blogging engines that were out there. The one that seemed the easiest to pick up, was pretty popular, and had a ton of plugins for the things that I was looking for was WordPress.

As a blog engine, it does great! It is actually what is powering the site that you are reading now. As a CMS, it does OK. I can create static pages, setup some assemlance of structure with sub pages and decent navigation. There are a ton of themes out there and a lot of people have tutorials that can tell you how to hack them up to make them look the way that you want. But there is one major thing that is bugging me. The code!

Seriously, have you looked at it? Maybe I’m anal retentive. But there is html and PHP mixed together all over the place. The code looks like it tries to implement some sort of MVC where the view is in the theme. But good god, do not go looking through that pile of poo.

Here is an example of what I am talking about:

I couldn’t even do that big of a snippet due to all the hell it causes when you post wordpress code on a wordpress site. But the <?php ?> tags are scattered all over the code base. Its a royal mess.

What WordPress needs to do is come up with some sort of code standard or guideline. Then reject anything that doesn’t meet that criteria that they have linked up on their site. This is a full review of all the plugins and themes that they have.

Yes, I’m serious about this!

It will take a long time to do. It will take a lot of man hours to complete. But in the long run, the code will be easier to maintain, extend, and quickly allow users to join the rank and file wordpress developers. It will also allow the hacks out there to become better programmers. Which is something that the code base desperately needs.

However, they are not without fault. I’m finally moving from a free plan to a solo plan in my backpack account. I am doing enough side programming jobs for friends and family that having a page for each project just makes sense. So I’m finally moving up to the solo account to add more pages, space and overall functionality. While I was on the upgrade page, there was something that stuck out to me as just not adding up. Take a look at the packages below:

I’m all for having limits to packages. It makes sense. It makes you want to upgrade to the next level. What I don’t understand is the SSL Security. I get it on a solo level but once I move to the home or basic level I lose it? Logically, that removes my desire to upgrade. Sure, I could skip to the plus level, but that is a big step up in price from the $7/mo solo plan. This seems like a short coming and something that quite frankly, should be a standard option for those paying a fee on a monthly basis.

With that being said, if you are looking to see for yourself how great these application are, please use the following affiliate links to help support this blog. All the products have a free plan of some sort so give it a try today!

Basecamp – a great for project management,

BackPack – You can setup your own personal intranet site or use it for your entire company.

Highrise – manage your contacts, leads and deals.