The world as frankps sees it!
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Outdated Flickr Maps
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One of the few things that I really dislike with Flickr, is the use of outdated maps. I don’t know if that is a common problem, only a problem in Europe or in Norway. But I more and more often see that the maps that I’m using to geotag my photos with, are outdated. So also today. This weekend I was downtown making some photos of the Opera House in the harbor here in Oslo. The map provided from Flickr (Yahoo Maps?) must be at least 6-7 years old. Perhaps even older! So my question is, what is the update frequency on maps and satelite pictures in Yahoo Maps?
Another thing is the automatic naming of the places. It is also often horrible wrong. So also this time. Flickr mistakenly adds St. Hanshaugen to the map and the picture, which is a kilometer away and a quite different part of Oslo.
Here are some more pictures that according to Flickr and Yahoo Maps don’t excist:
Seesmic for Windows
0This week I installed a preview version of the native Twitter application, Seesmic for Windows. It combines a fully functional Twitter integration directly in the Windows environment.
It was funny to see how much attention a simple Twitter application still can get. I felt it to be overhyped! It got presented on Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC), during Ray Ozzie’s opening keynote. What? It’s a Twitter application, nothing more. It is a more or less feature complete application, I’ll give the developers that much. First of all, I don’t like that the installer bypasses the UAC. No administrator password is needed to install the Seesmic. First I thought that this could be yet another AIR application, but it’s not. There excists an AIR version of the Twitter client as well. By bypassing UAC, the application gets installed in user profiles instead of under Program Files. A nightmare for system administrators.
I find it almost unbelievable to read:
Microsoft has provided great support to help us get started on the Microsoft platform. I would just like to thank the team who has been working with us to make it possible for us to deliver a product in such a short period of time
I hope they will help you to work with UAC and not against it, as you have done so far.
Another problem I have with the client, is the horrible “font rendering” this preview release has. This is not a sleek and smooth user interface. I have tried it both on my 12″ laptop and my desktop computer with a 24″ screen. Both computers running Windows 7. I guess the tweets are rendered as images, and therefor the text is blur. For the same reason you can’t cut and paste text from tweets. The Seesmic preview is someting I simply don’t want to use or recommend to my readers.
The idea of having social services as native desktop application is great. This let you use drag and drop to add user lists, and gives you an increased performance, with easier and faster navigation through tab views. Native applications compared to AIR applications use less memory, and they utilize more Windows 7 features (e.g. location sensor).
I realize that this is a quite negative review, I have only written about the things that I find bad in this client. For a more positive review, please read WEB WORKER DAILY’s Seesmic for Windows: An AIR-less Twitter Client.
Notes Traveler on the iPhone
5At work we have updated our Domino servers to v.8.5.1, and gone is the need for Lotus iNotes Ultralite and Notes Pro for the iPhone. With the new version of Domino, Lotus now supports Microsoft’s ActiveSync. You can now have the same push functionality as with Exchange, and use your native iPhone applications. ActiveSync has become a de facto standard for pushing out information to mobile devices.
I have been writing lots of positive things about Lotus Notes, and I should continue a little bit more. Setting up Lotus Traveler on the iPhone is both elegant and easy,and done in about a minute. But seeing that the data of Lotus Notes desktop client, iNotes and the data on the iPhone not being in sync by default, can’t be said to be anything else then a sad story. I thought this was the whole purpose with Roaming User profiles. But ok, it could be fixed. I only had to go in to the Contacts preferences on the desktop and enable “Syncronize Contacts on the Replicator”. Just that this option didn’t make any sence to me. Syncronize my contacts with a replicator? What replicator? Why treat iNotes and the iPhone (or mobile phones) as something else then the destop client?
After having solved the replication problem, the solution has worked flowlessly. But sadly leaves me with a choice I have to make, Lotus Notes or Google Sync? The iPhone can only have one Exchange account, and I must admit that I liked Google’s Exchange service for Contacts, Calendar and Gmail better. It has to be said that we don’t use Lotus Notes for mail. But since this is a work phone, I guess I should stick with Lotus Notes. Not a bad choice if the amount of meetings increase, and if I was more on the move. But for now, I could have been just as happy with Google’s solution, pushing contacts and calendar entries.
I also found Google Contacts to have an easier accessable user interface, and it handles pictures of your contacts far better then Lotus Notes. I have not found what pixel size Lotus Notes use. So most faces look draged. It’s just a small thing, but it is nice to see when somebody has thought design all the way through their product. Google has!
But if it is Lotus Notes you have decided to use, Paul Mooney has put together a brilliant manual for how to set up the Lotus Notes Travel service on your iPhone / iPod Touch (this is only the client setup).
Google Wave with a small update
0Google Wave was this morning down for maintenance:
When it opened up it’s services again, I could see one nice change added. It is now possible to see who of your colleagues/friends are online. The feature should not be mistaken with available status. As far as I can see, the status system is not integrated with Google Talk and will therefor not inherit the status from this service.
I have so far, not been able to see any other changes.
What Google Wave is all about
0Finally somebody has gotten it right! I have been reading countless of headless reviews of Google Wave. So many tech gurus have been describing Google Wave as a disappointment. Most of that seems to come from the fact that nobody seems to get what Wave is for, as they have been comparing it to social media. Guess what, it is not to compete with Twitter or Facebook. It is simply what Google calls it, an “online tool for real-time communication and collaboration”.
Daniel Tenner has written an article that should be a mandatory read for all of us that have gotten an invite to preview Google Wave.