Windows 9: The operating system formerly known as Windows 8.1

Paul Thurrot recently shared some of what he's been hearing about the next big Windows release — codename "Threshold".

Some interesting stuff about "Metro 2.0", and the first major "vision" announcement since Longhorn, but the bit I found most interesting was;

Windows 9. To distance itself from the Windows 8 debacle, Microsoft is currently planning to drop the Windows 8 name and brand this next release as Windows 9. That could change, but that's the current thinking.

This strikes me as a dangerously bad idea. So much that I just can't believe that it might happen.

Firstly, a big difference between an '8 to 9' upgrade and an update/service pack is the price. If the tainted 'Windows 8' brand is ditched, will it still be free, as previously reported? Seems like something that would be very likely for a point release, but would be setting a revolutionary precedent for Microsoft. (Unless they were to move to a 'free software, paid support' model – consumers get to run the latest version for free, businesses pay for ongoing support etc?)

But the bigger issue – is this really addressing the problem? Microsft had a problem with Vista, which it addressed by making Windows 7 a significant improvement. If Windows 9 does turn out to be a rebadged Windows 8.1, then it risks turning the "Windows 8" problem into a "Windows" problem.

And, if the future of the Windows device really is something more like the Surface than the traditional laptop form factor, that becomes a big problem.

My Windows Weekly cohost Mary Jo Foley notes that Update 1 will be tied, schedule-wise to Windows Phone 8.1 and that both releases are a step towards that future when Windows and Phone are combined.

Lots of marketing moves that make total sense. My worry is whether the company that didn't see the problems they had with Windows 8 before they released it will be able to fix them for the next release and restore the confidence of PC buyers.

Its not like the people selling PCs have enought to worry about. Even Intel looks like its hedging its bets.

SomeRandomNerd.net Redesign

I've just clicked the button to make a new template go live on the site.

I hope you like it - any feedback (particularly bugs or awkward looking pages) would be helpful.

Straight Outta Cullompton

I have a very good friend and colleague, who I have been badgering to start blogging, tweeting, and generally moving into the digital world of the 21st century.

Partly because I get excited about that kind of thing (see: everything I've written on this site. And the fact that this site exists…), and partly because I'd like to know more about what is going on in the world of music, which I increasingly hear about through him.

So, I was pretty pleased recently when – presumably through someone else's insistence (I had long since since given up) he started writing a blog about various music related things.

If music has an important place in your life, I would recommend that you have a look. A couple of good starting points — Mobile phones and pop music and a narrative context for music.

Oh - and he has written a book of the same name, which is a great read. Watch out for the film…

(Also worth noting - I'm in the band.)

Keeping my computer tidy with Hazel

Over the Christmas break, I went on a bit of a tidying and organising mission, clearing up my desk space at home, and clearing up my hard drive.

As anyone knows, the difficult bit isn't tidying up – its maintaining tidiness as you go along. And I thought thats something that I could really do with some help with.

The first thing is setting up some sort of 'system' – ie. what goes where, what do you keep, what do you throw away, what do you archive etc. (My own policy is that I usually don't throw away anything unless I am absolutely certain that it will have no value at any point in the future. This isn't always a good policy — especially when it comes to real world things — but in a digital world where I have a few terabytes worth of drives, backups and external storage, I think it makes sense.)

I tend to find myself with a few folders that gradually become general purpose dumping grounds – which is what I need help with.

Downloads (a massive collection of files that either stay around long after they are useful, while more useful/interesting things get easily lost in the clutter.) Desktop – where I put things while I'm working with but move out again much less frequently.
And Dropbox – a repository of things that I want to be able to access from work, home and mobile devices, but again – the system of putting things in doesn't have much of a 'companion' system for getting them out again.

So, in imposing some sort of order on them, I find myself building 'rules' – I want to keep software I've downloaded, data tables and MS Office files are usually related to work.

Which is what led me to the Hazel app for the Mac. $28 (£17), with a free trial (14 days with full functionality – which should be enough time to figure out if you are going to get any use out of it.)

Basically, its an automated organisation system for the Mac. The interface is simple - in System Preferences, a Hazel pane appears;

Here, I've got 7 folders that Hazel is watching, with 3 rules for my Dropbox folder.

The first rule is called 'Tag recent files' – named, because thats exactly what it does; anything in my Dropbox folder that has been recently modified gets a "Recently Modified" tag. I've also got this set up in Finder as a 'favourite' tag, so at a glance, I can see anything in there that has been recently modified.

It has a companion Rule, which will remove the tag from anything last modified more than a week ago;

So, where before I tried to maintain an "Active" folder of things that I was currently working with (which just ended up turning into yet another general purpose dumping ground), I now click on the Tag in Finder, and I'll see everything that I've been working on in the last week. (I could probably do something with Spotlight instead, but I'm playing with tags for now…)

The downside here is that the tags are Mac OSX only - so none of this organisation is much help on my work PC or iPhone/iPad, but I can live with that for now.

Another rule will pop up a notification to let me know if any large files are taking up space in my Dropbox folder, to help me keep the size down.

Right now, most of my rules are either moving files into some soft of folder organisation, or just throwing tags at files – one of the Mavericks features that I've only just started exploring (again, as a part of my Christmas tidying/organising drive) – I haven't quite figured out whats useful (ie. lets me do something faster, more easily) and whats just interesting (for example, I didn't realise that the download source domain gets saved as part of the file metadata – so, adding those as 'source:url' tags lets me then use that to file – like stuff from certain analysts gets automatically filed away into an 'analysis' folder.)

As far as official documentation goes, Hazel does seem to be a little thin on the ground. However, that said, the interface is simple enough – what is probably more useful is inspiration than direction – there is so much that can be done with Hazel, its more a case of figuring out what would be useful for the way you work (ie. taking care of things you do manually so that you don't have to) than trying to figure out how to go about doing whatever you want to do. Chances are, if Hazel can't do it on its own, then combining Hazel actions with Applescript/shell scripts will get you where you want to be.

A good starter for ideas on the official forums

Take 5 iPads into the shower? Not me…

This story is truly insane;

Master of His Virtual Domain

At one point, he was bringing five iPads into the shower with him, each wrapped in a plastic bag, so that none of his accounts would go inactive.
During this period, while children like Ichi were dreaming of becoming the next Jorge Yao, George Yao himself lost 20 pounds, almost without noticing.

I've been playing Clash of Clans lately – I have a strange sense of pride that I play 'casual games' with a policy of not spending any money (and certainly not losing weight over it), so I'm a long way away from playing it like these top players, but I do have some sense of what the article is talking about.

John Gruber's comment on the article was that;

Yao is obviously an extreme case, but in-app purchases are driving game design more towards addiction and less towards fun.

I would definitely agree that this kind of behaviour is a kind of addiction. But I'm not so sure that I'd attribute it to in-app purchases. I don't know how many people are playing this particular game, but with millions of dollars a day being spent, it must be well into 8 figures.

The thing that I find fascinating is how the players of the game spread out, in terms of this kind of behaviour. This particular game is clearly an extreme case – simply from the amount of money being spent. (There are hundreds of games out there that are barely covering their costs.) And this particular player would appear to an extreme case within that extreme case – no other player has managed anything close to his achievement.

But how many people are sinking money into this kind of game? (I have to admit, I have mentally planned what I would do if I were to spend some money within the game – a game which, I feel I should point out, I have probably spent a good few hours playing without either spending a single penny, or seeing any advertising – so the people who are paying for gems within the game are effectively paying for my games.) I'm pretty sure that most people are just playing for a little while, getting bored and moving on. A smaller number must – like me – be dipping into the game, providing live opponents for similarly matched players to play against. (The way this particular game works is that you can only fight a player when they aren't online.)

And – I presume – a smaller number still are putting money into the game. (I would guess that it starts out by buying a small bag of gems and building a second Builders Hut – and once that threshold has been crossed and that first purchase has been made, its a lot less thought to put a second payment through to boost your stock of gems…) And of those is a hardcore base, spending 'too much money' (I struggle to conceive of a value system where $250 a week on virtual goods in a casual, mobile game isn't 'too much money'), and/or too much time.

But… How many people are spending that kind of time and money on other kinds of computer games. How much do you need to spend on the latest games consoles (and games) to hit the 'too much' threshold?

I can think of a few games I've played where I have crossed the line between the fun of the initial stages of the game through to the 'work' of having to grind your way through some menial, time-consuming task or other.

Usually – unless there is an especially good storyline that I want to see through to the end – thats the point where I put down the controller and move on to something else.

But sometimes, games become an obsession. I've lost track how many people I've talked to who understand the phenomenon of playing too much Tetris and starting to see block shapes in things like wall tiles. Tetris didn't need micropayments to worm its way that deeply into people's brains. Whether in-app purchases are deepening those kind of 'addictions', I don't know – but my guess would be that its more of a social than economic effect. Its relatively easy to walk away from a financial investment (at least, to stop throwing good money after bad.) But is it as easy to walk away from a 'social investment', when you've spent hours getting to know people in your 'clan', helping each other out, and chatting with one another while waiting for your next match/power up/etc.?

I would guess that the answer is no.

Why take 'no' for an answer?

When I signed up for a renewed Wired subscription (which I originally received as a gift), I thought I was clear about what sort of marketing communications I wanted to receive from Condé Nast and their partners.

Now I'm not sure whether carefully checking the web form was even worth the effort…

How not to argue

Daniel Finkelstein, on the two rules of politics;

After several fruitless exchanges I fear that I responded to a personal comment by telling my interlocutor that I had reluctantly reached the conclusion that he was “pathetic”. I can’t say that I immediately regretted doing this. Or that, even now, I resile from the judgment. But the next day it didn’t feel as good as it did at the time. And a couple of days later I began to wince at the error.

The first might be considered the “shoot the messenger” rule…
When someone issues an angry rebuke, observers associate that person with anger. When accusing someone else of being pathetic, whatever the merit of my case, I mainly succeeded in making myself appear pathetic.

The second rule one might call the university fraternity rule. My favourite social psychologist, Robert Cialdini, points to a study of fraternity initiation rituals in the US. The more humiliating the initiation, the more the membership was valued. It’s a psychological trick we play on ourselves to make us feel the humiliation was worthwhile.

Thus by calling someone pathetic I was increasing my antagonist’s commitment to the position I was arguing against. He would become even more wedded to it in order to justify to himself the insults he was enduring.

I had made myself look small while simultaneously making my adversary feel more certain that he was right. Good work there.

Smartphone OS market share - Kantar Worldpanel data →

On one hand, its useful to know how market share is changing for the different smartphone operating systems.

On the other though, its hard to draw any sort of meaning out of change in market share without knowing what the change in the market size is. I know that there are more smartphones than 12 months ago, and that Apple's share has declined. But does that mean that Apple is selling more phones? Or the same amount of phones in a growing market?

iPhone vs Lumia 1020 camera test →

Especially for the "more megapixels means better photos" crowd.

(via DaringFireball)

Death of The Manual

It must be about ten years ago now when, stuck in a dead-end job and wondering what I wanted to do with myself, I decided that I wanted to write manuals for gadgets.

I had some experience in technical writing, I had a love of gadgets, and I felt that I could turn the terrible guides that came with a typical piece of technology into something that would actually be useful.

So, I started working on building up a portfolio and spoke to some people in that line of work. Generally doing my research — who is doing it well? Where is it all going? (Why are they so terrible?) But I learned three things;

1. Technology was going mainstream. iPods were fairly new at the time, and nobody needed a manual for an iPod. But as more people wanted the gadgets, there would be more need for help for people who wanted the gadgets, but didn't love the gadgets.
2. If printing something the size of a phone book containing instructions in every imaginable language and ship them all over the world seemed like a good idea, then having a better manual, in full colour (including videos and interactive elements) available online seemed like a great idea. (So I started learning about web technologies instead.
3. The reason those manuals are terrible isn't because they are being translated from Japanese. Its because 90% of the work done by the people who write them is writing for engineers. Engineers and

The second two made me change direction - 2. because I got caught up in web technologies, and 3. because the actual job of writing the kind of documentation I thought I could do well would involve doing another job which I thought would directly harm my ability to do what I wanted to do well.

The first point seems to be having a strange impact on gadgets in general though.

Russell Davies has documented his recent experience of buying a new gadget. (Spoiler: His discovery was that "the manual" hasn't gone online. Its just gone.)

The thing I find most alarming is that the gadget he's bought appears to be a digital camera, made by one of the biggest consumer electronics brands in the world.

Dedicated digital cameras are currently in danger of becoming one of those gadgets that suddenly gets very old and dies - like VHS recorders in the age of Sky+, or portable CD players in the age of iPods. Whether there is a place for the dedicated digital camera in the age of smartphones remains to be seen.

Actually, its not quite that simple. Sky+ is better than VHS. iPods are better than portable CD players in certain ways. Probably not in terms of how good the sound is though - the music on iPods (and other MP3 players) is — usually — compressed. The amount of music that fits on there is more important than the fidelity of the sound.

Dedicated cameras are generally better than smartphones. I say "generally" because it depend on what you want from a camera. If you want;

• Better ISO for low-light picture quality
• More space for storage (and hot-swappable SD cards)
• Good zoom lens
• Adjustable aperture/shutter speed
• Specialised features
• RAW images

…then you're probably thinking of dedicated compact cameras as "better" than smarphones.

But, if you want;

• A camera that is always with you
• Something to show your pictures as well as take them
• Quick sharing online (as soon as you've taken the picture)
• Ability to add titles, comments and conversations around your pictures

…then you might well be thinking about investing that £100-200 in a better smartphone, instead of a new camera.

But here is the problem. Apart from the zoom lens (which is pretty straightforward to use), all of those benefits of dedicated cameras need some sort of explanation. The typical person (who has never read a photography book, taken a class, followed a photography blogger, joined something like a Flickr community etc.) needs to be told what those features are before they can figure out why they would want them, when they should think about them, and how to actually use them.

So, maybe that isn't where cameras are going. Maybe they are all about convenience — point-and-shoot for the masses, who are never going to read the manual (whether its a multi-lingual tome or an interactive online experience) and don't want a £600 telephone?

It doesn't look like it. Camera complexity seems to not just be a selling point — it isn't even a choice.

But camera manufacturers don't seem constitutionally capable of making a super-simple camera. They must be deeply convinced that the complexity of the feature set (which certainly does appeal to a lot of us) is an indivisible part of how they add value to their product, and the temptation to add more and more is something they can't forswear even for one product. I mean, with hundreds of cameras on the market, wouldn't you think they could make one that was super-simple, just for that segment of the population that wants it? And market it that way. You'd think. But no.
I think it's one of the "stealth reasons" why cellphones are encroaching on the camera market so rapidly. Not the only reason, not the main reason, but a reason. (I also think that as cameraphones gain an ever-enlarging share of the camera market, the cameras in them will inexorably get more complicated.)

via DaringFireball

I can only assume that the likes of Sony either believe that people today don't need a manual, because they can just google for a general "how to use a camera" blog post and figure out what they need to know. Or, that they are making gadgets like iPods — so simple and intuitive that they don't need manuals or handbooks.

So, thats the situation for the future of "manuals";

• Being written by the worst possible writers — people who don't write for "normal people"
• Its existence is an indication that the gadget isn't good enough
• Seems to be worth less than the paper its printed on

I'd say that things aren't looking too good for a well documented future for gadgets…

Why "Natural Interfaces" are important

"A bit of video I was looking at recently stuck with me over the past few months. It showed a toddler sitting up holding a magazine. She tries to swipe it – she tries to expand it – she bangs it to try to make it play. Nothing happens. And in frustration she throws it away. To a toddler a magazine is a tablet that’s broken. That’s how this generation is growing up. It will have a totally different set of norms and behaviours."
Director-General of the BBC Tony Hall, in a speech about the future of the BBC.

This is a refrain I've heard many, many times over the last few years (I assume that this video is the one he is talking about); todays toddlers have grown up with touch screens. They expect screens to do things when you touch them. Something that doesn't react to physical interaction is broken…

There is a fundamental truth here. Touchscreens are just a part of it — "natural interfaces" are the new category of user interfaces. Once you start using a touch screen to interact directly with content, its jarring to go back to a similar device where you have to operate a cursor with a keypad.

But… does a toddler of today think that a magazine is "broken"?

I think its nonsense. I can't speak from experience — my eldest child was playing with an iPad before he could talk — but I'm pretty sure that before 2010, toddlers were not a significant part of the Vogue/Heat/FHM audience. (Its hard to be sure, because the NRS doesn't measure readership of under 15s. But I'm pretty confident.)

I'm pretty sure that before 2010, a toddler's reaction to a glossy magazine would have been to touch it, see if it did anything — maybe try to eat it, if they were below a certain age — and then either ignore it or rip it up. (Which is one of the reasons we tend not to give magazines to toddlers unless we don't mind them being screwed up, ripped and eaten. I do speak from experience when I say that toddlers are agents of chaos, on a mission to destroy everything they come into contact with.)

Earlier this week, I attended Microsoft's Advertising Retail Forum, where I heard a great example of what not to do with in-store technology; a big "outdoor clothing" brand had put a nice, interactive thing in their stores — you've probably seen the kind of thing; a computery thing where you can browse their catalogue or see a store guide or watch their TV adverts or whatever is is that they thought their customers would want to do. All well and good.

Except… they had to put a sticker on the thing to ask people not to touch the screen, because below was a keyboard and trackball, because this was a computer, and people's greasy fingerprints on the non-touch screen were making it very dirty.

That is an illustration of why natural interfaces are important. Because grown ups, who have spent their entire adult lives (and probably more) using computers with keyboards and mouses are suddenly assuming that big screens are things to be touched. I've seen it happen with large screen installations, with non-touch smartphones, with computers in kiosks, car park ticket machines - you name it. Touch screens are now the default for many adults. Thats why anyone dealing with technology today — hardware or software — needs to be aware that expectations have changed.

Not because toddlers don't read magazines.

Today's Twitter

So, how many tweets does one need to be considered a social media expert?

— Jason Kottke (@jkottke) October 10, 2013

Twitter is looking for a new "Media Evangelist" — officially titled "Head of News and Journalism", NBC News Chief Vivian Schiller is currently the favourite for the position. But an opinion piece by Ruth Bazinet on Medium says that she is the wrong person for the job.

Why? Because of her Twitter profile.

But it lacks the most important element that should be ringing alarm bells at Twitter HQ —a significant number of tweets. How can someone who has tweeted less than 1,200 times have the practical, hands-on knowledge of the platform required to evangelize it to other news media professionals? Twitter needs a veteran, someone who is an expert not only about the platform itself, but who also understands how people, including other journalists, are using it.

In short, the view is that Twitter is heavily reliant on "power users" — those who are tweeting dozens of times a day.

I think thats a view that misses the point of what Twitter is and where its heading. Maybe three or four years ago, when Twitter was a social network for the bloggers, journalists and technorati, it would have seemed a more valid point; but today, Twitter is something different. It has changed.

Most obviously, it is bigger. "Power users" today don't have follower counts in the tens of thousands any more — at the time of writing, there are 839 Twitter users with more than 2 million followers (with Mohammed Morsi just about to cross the mark.)

The best way of summing up this change probably comes from Twitter itself — at the top of their "About Twitter" page is the big, bold sentence;

The fastest, simplest way to stay close to everything you care about.

Below that;

An information network.
Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find interesting. Simply find the accounts you find most compelling and follow the conversations.

View fullsize

Compare that to what it said a couple of years ago;

Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what's happening now.

Note the differences; out with "share", in with "follow." Out with "powered by people all around the world", and in with "latest stories, ideas, opinions and news".

View fullsize

Those screengrabs come from this blog post at Harvard Business Review, talking about a study on how people's Twitter usage changes when they get more followers;

We had two hypotheses as to why they do post. One is that they like to share information with world, that they want to reach others. This is an intrinsic motivation. They enjoy the act of contributing. The second hypothesis is that posting is self-promotional, a way to attract followers to be able to earn higher status on the platform. Judging by how people behaved once they achieved popularity—they posted far less content—we believe the second hypothesis is probably the primary motivation. If the primary motivation were to share with the world, most people would not slow down posting just because they were popular. But most people did slow down as they gained followers.

So I don't think the role of Twitter's "Head of News and Journalism" is going to be about showing journalists how they can talk to their audiences; its in showing news organisations how they can use Twitter to broaden their audiences.

It isn't about showing editors how they can "listen" to what their readers are saying; its about showing them what they can learn from the data coming from Twitter.

In other words, its going to be showing news organisations how to move forwards from the "old Twitter" world that Ruth Bazinet's article seems to be talking about, and towards the "new Twitter" that it is becoming, where Twitter isn't a platform for "engaging" or "interacting", but a platform for distribution.

Old Twitter wanted to be the internet's watering hole, where everyone came together to talk. New Twitter wants to be the internet's front page; Google will tell you what you want to know, but Twitter will tell you what you didn't know you wanted to know. Discovery, rather than Search. Ultimately, thats not really a change in what Twitter wants to be — but it is a slightly different way of becoming it.

I should probably note that I'm not particularly in favour of this shift that is going on (or rather, has already happened.) I like old Twitter, where it felt like the place where interesting things on the Web were happening, and it was small enough to feel like a community — where a celebrity making a typo or grammatical error wasn't seen as an invitation for hundreds of people to correct them. But… its probably just a natural consequence of Twitter's need over time to grow its user base and develop its business. If they had decided against advertising as a core business model, perhaps it would be a very different story today.

But thats a whole other story…

(Thanks to Mat Morrison for pointing out the change in Twitter's description to me.)

[Edit 18:10, 11/10/13 - added screengrabs]

Lesson of a lifetime →

Fascinating story of an exercise by a teacher in the 1960s the day after Martin Luther King was shot, and the impact it has had.

Well worth a read.

(via a Mental Floss article of famous experiements that could never happen today.

W3C and 'protected content' →

An interesting point of view from the EFF on the decision by W3C that "playback of protected content" is within the scope of the W3C HTML Working Group, meaning that an Encrypted Media Extension protocol may be included in the HTML5.1 standard.

1. This means that ultimately, the user is no longer fully in control of their web experience (in the way that they have been to date.)
2. It also raises the question of what makes video so special? (Why don't writers, font designers, photographers – and web designers' HTML, CSS and Javascript code get this special protection for their work?)
3. The EFF also argues that it could be damaging for the W3C – the view being that engineering consensus is that DRM is a headache for designers, fails to prevent piracy, and is ultimately bad for the users.

It seems to me like the principle of the web is device independance; ie. no matter what hardware, operating system or browser you are using, web standards mean that web content is still accessible. The intrinsic 'openness' of the web is (or, maybe, has been) a side-effect of this principle, rather than a fundamental component of it. If this is what it takes to make sure that the future of video over the internet lives in web browsers rather than closed applications (which, by its nature, means limited to the most popular platforms), then it might be a pragmatic choice.

But the alternative is most likely going to be proprietary browser plug-ins (ie. Flash or Silverlight) alongside native mobile applications for iOS and Android (maybe Windows Mobile at a push – I'd be surprised if anyone is focussing much development time on BlackBerry or Symbian these days), then it doesn't really change too much.

So, if this isn't something that is going to improve the web – but could start closing down other technologies, resulting in a less open World Wide Web – then its probably not the kind of change that is going to get much love from the Mozilla guys. My guess is that whether it succeeds is going to depend almost entirely on what Google think of it. If they are in favour, then we should expect to see it embraced by Chrome and implemented in YouTube. If not, then don't expect one of the world's most popular browsers and biggest video platform to rush to get on board. (Also bear in mind that Apple don't have any particular reason to want to support it, and if Google aren't in a rush to implement it on Android devices it could be a technology that is dead in the water on mobile platforms.) Which makes me worry about the amount of control that Google have over the widear web.

Worth a read

(Vaguely related; I recently spoke to someone who had been on a short coding workshop, who assured me that one of the great things about Javascript was that you could look at any website, inspect the Javascript code and figure out how it works. I held back the urge to ask them to explain how the javascript on Google+ was doing its thing…)

The ".com" button in iOS7 →

Do You Miss the .com Button on the iOS 7 Keyboard? Use This Trick

Have to admit I hadn't noticed that it had gone away (although it constantly bothers me when apps and websites don't make use of the different iOS keyboard layouts, so I might have assumed that it was the 'wrong' keyboard instead.)