37signals Product Blog: Basecamp becomes more finger friendly.

Here is a good example of not to do. 37signals is a great company, and I agree with most of what they have to say about usability and KISS. Not everyone get’s it right all of the time. Please don’t tout your new iOS interface then put up a video of the demonstration in a format [flash] that I can’t even watch on my iPad or iPhone. #fail!

Aside from the video not being accessible from the target audience, the new features were much needed and look really slick. Why did it take 3 years to get these core features is my question.

Along with many of our customers, we’re iPhone/iPad users here at 37signals. We wanted to make sure Basecamp worked well on those devices. With that in mind, we just launched a new feature which makes Basecamp more finger friendly for the iPhone and iPad.

With apple’s announcement with the iPad there are two camps out there. You either hate it or love it. I’m in the love it camp.
When I first bought my netbook, I wasn’t looking for a laptop. I was looking for a casual internet device. One that’s easy to pick up and do a few things with and put back down on the end table, counter, or nightstand quickly. I wanted something as easy as a magazine to pick up and set down when I needed to interact with [mostly] the internet. I’ve had an iPhone since it’s inception and I wanted something with a little more screen real estate. The smart phone sized screen isn’t exactly ideal for extended reading.

The netbook is not this. I bought one because I was enticed by the moblin interface and wanted to play with it. After installing and finding out that moblin is not ready for prime time, the use of this device became less and less. It’s now exactly what it most people buy it for… a cheap laptop. I guess this works well for people that love cheap items despite their inefficiencies. I’m not one of these. My netbook is now my 5 and 2 year olds’ computer. It fits that bill perfectly. The netbooks’ biggest flaw is the crappy interface that is provided. A small ass track pad, no good scrolling, a crappy, not designed for the interaction interface like windows XP. I stated a couple of years ago that computers should have as natural an interface as the iPhone.

The iPad on the other hand, is exactly what I’ve been wanting. I wanted something to browse the web with. I wanted easy email and looking up recipes and reading RSS feeds. It does all of this. If you’re not looking for a device that fills this niche, yea – you’re not going to like it.

The hater camp that seems to find anything they can that’s wrong with it. They’re looking for a cheap Apple portable, expecting a full featured computer. They complain about not having multi-tasking, even though the apps load instantly when switching, or lack of I/O, or {insert whatever it’s missing here}. Multi-tasking, is it really needed if you’re casually using the device on a limited resolution screen? I use it all the time when sitting down to work at my computer, but how many things would I really be doing at once with this casual device that I probably pick to do a few things fairly quickly and put back down. I don’t miss it with my iPhone, I’m sure I won’t miss it here.

The biggest complaint for me would be Apple’s app approval process. The homogeneous distribution is annoying and genius at the same time – from the consumer and developer perspectives. As a consumer, I have extremely easy access to apps. Sorting, rating, and genius recommendations right there at the touch of a finger. But, I have to wait for upgrades and bug fixes longer than necessary. And some apps that would be killer (Google Voice anyone?) are outright rejected due to retarded terms. As a developer I can develop something and get rejected on a whim – this sucks! But, I have the best software distribution system available. Instant gratification purchases are constantly made. Make a good product, and get lots of free exposure.

HTML 5 to the rescue. This is, of course, a moot point with HTML 5 being in place on the iPad. There isn’t much that can’t be done with web apps anymore. Even smooth transitions that mimic the responsiveness of native apps. Many different applications could be replaced by web apps done right. As long as acceleration or gps isn’t needed, it would be a win.

Sorry for the delay guys, but I’ve had to deal with a lot of work and personal issues. It’s in the latest in the github repo http://github.com/buck2769/hellaphone/tree/master

Updated hellaphone. Finally fixed the download button bug. Also a few styling improvements.

Some bugfixing and behind the scenes work.

Replaced the old templating with HAML. Mainly because I wanted to give it a try. I like the cleanliness of it, and it is already starting to grow on me. 

Searching a second time replaces the original results now. If you liked the old behavior better (it was an oversite) feel free to muck around in the application.js. It’s rather easy to find.

As requested, I’ve implemented a category search filter for hellaphone. Neither the keyword, nor the category is required, but both will filter the results. It’s up in github

search with category

New Hellaphone release at github.

Now each news post has a post description available.

The new hellaphone at github can now monitor the queue and updates the progress. More to come soon.

What’s on the immediate horizon:

• Look and feel updates
• Slimming down the code for less to download
• Ability to reorder, pause, and delete from the queue

New release of hellaphone. I scrapped the old code, got rid of cakephp, rolled a lighter, custom framework. Got rid of the installation troublesome mod_rewrite dependancy that cakephp required. I may even end up with a super light MVC after it’s all done. Grab a copy at Github here.

Almost as soon as I announce that I was going to stop working on Hellaphone, I start using newsgroups again and start on the project. Partly because I keep getting emailed how to set it up. I didn’t spend any time creating an installer when I released it. In fact I hacked it up real quick to be a single user system.

I always planned on releasing it as a service, but became dis-interested and open sourced it. So now I’m concentrating on bringing the service up again. The project is still open and located at http://code.google.com/p/hellaphone . Check it out, contribute, or just use it.

(Update) There is a newer git repository at http://github.com/buck2769/hellaphone/. This is being actively developed.

HellaNZB.com linked me up on their home page and I’ve started to receive a lot of interest in HellaPhone. I’ve decided to make some time to further complete HellaPhone and add functionality that I wanted. Since I created HellaPhone a few things have changed. The most important one is the introduction of iui. This will help greatly in bringing some interface improvements that I wanted to do the first time around.

I plan on adding live monitoring for the downloads and queues of HellaNZB. That is my primary goal. At some point in the future I would like to be able to support all mobile devices, but I don’t have the time nor the equipment to test with at the moment.

If anyone has any suggestions or features they would like to see, please drop me a line and let me know.

HellaPhone 

I currently use hellanzb for all of my usenet downloads. It’s much simpler than anything I have used before and is a simple install. Very simple if you are on a Debian (Ubuntu), or Darwin System (Mac OS X).I developed this interface for my own personal use and nothing more. That being said, there is very little error checking if any, and even less error reporting in the interface. I planned on releasing this when it is more complete, but I have not had the time to spend on it due to other projects that put food on my table. The app does work pretty well for a quick newzbin search and download to your existing hellanzb install. It just doesn’t monitor the downloads or report an error if the download doesn’t initiate. I planned on rectifying that at some future date.The requirements are:

•  php5
• cakephp 1.2.x
• allow_url_open – (maybe, I may have changed it to curl, can’t remember, don’t care)
• hellanzb install with allowed network access
• newzbin account

If enough people show interest I may make time to work on it some more. Please, if you are interested in upgrading or continuing work on this project, Leave it in the comments. And of course donations are always welcome. Download from the HellaPhone page  Some screenshots