A great example of this belief can be found in the design and functionality of the iPhone. The iPhone isn’t great just because the hardware looks good and the software works well. It’s a compilation of a multitude of factors – everything from the materials used, the shape of the hardware, the arrangement of sensors and buttons, the way the homescreen is rendered with iconographic buttons that aren’t too big for small fingers or too small for big fingers. It’s the whole package that makes the device so sexy, usable, and amazing.

As I work every day at Monster to try and make our software products better, more intuitive, and better looking, I find myself looking back to the first thing I remember about Apple as an adult – the “Think Different” campaign. Until I’d heard the text of it again tonight, I had forgotten how inspirational the words were to me, and still are:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

I intend to print this out tomorrow and keep it in my field of vision at my desk at work. It’s something I need to read and remember and keep in mind every day. It is a mantra to those who care about making great things, and I intend to make great things.

Here’s to the crazy ones.

Technorati Tags: steve jobs, think different, user experience

Damn you, Angry Birds.

But, uh… I love you.

Damn you!

Technorati Tags: Angry birds, evil, iPad

The app itself is called “Exodus International”, named after the group that created it, and its purpose is to, essentially, make homosexuals into heterosexuals through the bible and their interpretations of their teachings – hence the “Gay Cure” moniker that it has been given, though they claim on their website that they aren’t seeking to “cure” anyone so much as they’re seeking to aggregate the resources on their website through the iPhone app – which essentially seek to cure people of homosexual tendencies. Heh.

I’m not going to rant or rave about the app itself, as I never got to see it before it was pulled from the app store, but from screen captures of the app and from the description of it in the app store and on the Exodus website, it was essentially a data aggregator. That is, it took the data from the Exodus International website and fed it through their iPhone app, likely using a web service of some sort to convert their RSS/XML feeds through to the iPhone. Pretty simple stuff, and very similar to what I’ve been working on. It’s the content of the app and the website that’s disturbing.

The body of their work can be summed up in a single sentence: their own Mission Statement from their website:

“Mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality.”

As a person who has many dear friends and even an Aunt in the LGBT community, I’ve heard one prevailing thing from them over the years when we talk about their sexuality: it was never a choice for them to be gay. To come out of the closet, yes, that was a choice – and a big one at that. Never, not once, however, have any of them ever said that they decided to be gay; they always felt that it was right for them.

That’s why, at the very core of my being, I’m offended by groups – religious, political, or otherwise – who feel that they can simply “change” a person’s sexuality through any means. People who are “changed” by these methods have come out later to say that they weren’t really changed, they were simply forced or guilted – be it by themselves or by other influences such as the church – to repress their feelings and “act” straight (some even going so far as to marry a person of the opposite sex and try to live out a “normal, straight” life).

That’s what makes this Exodus International “ministry” so despicable to me: they think they’re doing something good and holy and righteous, but in reality they’re simply trying to force their system of beliefs onto others – and that’s never the right thing to do.

For more information about the Exodus International App, and the controversy surrounding it, I’m going to link to both extremes of the spectrum – The Exodus International website’s “Debunking the Myths…” page about the app, and the TruthWinsOut.org press release about the petition to remove the app from the App Store (which, by the by, had over 150,000 signatures on it).

• Exodus International: Debunking the Myths about Exodus and their iPhone Application
• Truth Wins Out: Apple Dumps ‘Gay Cure’ iPhone App After 150,000 People Sign Petition Calling For Its Removal

What are your thoughts about this? Leave some feedback and try to keep the discussions clean and ad hominem free.

Technorati Tags: app store, exodus international, gay cure

It’s been an interesting last couple of days, actually. Friday night I went to a fantastic live music show at Jammin Java in Vienna, VA. My friend Rich’s band, the Chris Collat Band, was competing in the finals of JJ’s “Battle of the Bands”. There were three other bands competing with them, and while CCB didn’t win (an NC band called “Delta Rae” won – who were pretty good as well) they had a fantastic sound and great energy. I’ll be posting some videos of them playing a little later today or tomorrow on my Youtube account.

Saturday evening was my now-regular World of Warcraft raid with some of my great old friends from <Order of the Raven> (Aggramar-US). This week we hit the Bastion of Twilight again and downed the first two bosses with relative ease. We got a couple of pulls in on the Twilight Council but got locked out because of a bug after four pulls or so. Next weekend we’ll get them down, I’m sure.

Yesterday, President’s Day, was a work from home day and I actually got a lot accomplished. I had an idea back in August or September of 2010 to create an iPhone app for the federal agency that I contract with, and after a few months of planning we got approved to purchase the necessary equipment to begin active development in late January. I’m enjoying the process of designing my first iPhone app (although I’ve helped my friend Brian with a lot of the UI work for his soon-to-be-announced app, which I’ll post about here when it’s live in the App Store), and I’ll post some screen captures in a few weeks to preview what’s coming.

At the moment, my only real concern is about the congressional budget which, if not passed by March 4th (or another continuing resolution is passed…) will leave me without a paycheck for days/weeks/months. I’m hoping that congress does the right thing and approves a budget or CR quickly, but given how politics have played out in recent months, well, let’s just say my expectations are pretty low.

Technorati Tags: App, Bastion of Twilight, Chris Collat Band, Delta Rae, Order of the Raven

- It’s a whole lot heavier than I thought it would be.
- It’s extremely fast and responsive. Everything runs very fast on it and apps/music/movies took very little time to install from my MacBook.
- The keyboard is surprisingly easy to type on when you lay it down on a flat surface.
- Audio quality is outstanding. Video quality is outstanding.

Enough for now. Back to playtime! Oh, and how cool is it that I’m making this post from the iPad via the WordPress app?

Technorati Tags: Apple, awesome, iPad

Technorati Tags: Kindle, Nook, TheresAnAppForThat

"Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it." - Wall Street Journal

You don’t even have to ask.  I’m getting one.  The 32 gig non-3G model.  Why get 3G when I can just tether with my jailbroken iPhone?

Technorati Tags: Apple, eBooks, iPad, Jobs, Keynote, Kindle, Tablet

Basically, I’m looking for a software package that offers the following features:

• The ability to create “tickets” which can be used to assign individual work tasks to individual developers or groups of developers. The tickets must also be able to handle multiple iterations of changes and hold onto conversations between the developer and the requester.
• Should have the ability to support 10+ “projects”, as well as have hierarchical categorization for projects and tasks.
• Must be able to handle over 250 users.
• Must have a built-in, modifiable workflow.
• The ability to generate metrics based on input/output, open/close rate, iterations, length of ticket life, etc.
• Web-based interface.
• Must be enterprise level and hosted on-site (NOT off-site like Basecamp).

I know it seems like a lot of stuff but it’s really not. I’ve evaluated large and small packages like Jira, RightNow Web, MS Project, PVCS Tracker. We’re currently using an old version of PVCS Tracker and it’s just not cutting it. My developers didn’t like Jira, nor did my clients. RightNow Web was the closest I’ve found to what we’re looking for but our clients balked at the $40k+ price tag.

Anyone out there have some ideas?  Please post a comment if you’ve got some ideas.  Thanks!

Technorati Tags: bug tracker, Jira, MS Project, Project Management, PVCS, RightNow, Software

1. Password masking causes users to make more errors during entry, thus making users less confident which then leads to lost business, and,
2. If users are uncertain as to whether or not they’ll be able to properly enter passwords into masked input boxes they will either resort to keeping their passwords in a text file to copy & paste or “employ overly simple passwords.”

While I can see where he’s coming from here, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of any website losing customers/business in my 12 years of being a website designer/IT professional because its users were lacking in confidence because their passwords were masked.  For him to validly make that claim I’d like to see him back that up with some real world metrics from companies who have masked login systems.   On the other hand, I will give limited credence to his second argument – that people may use overly simple passwords or keep their passwords in a text file.

However… masked passwords aren’t the only (or primary in my opinion) reason why people use overly simplistic passwords or store passwords in text files on their computers.  In fact, I can give you an example of the latter that I know happens frequently.  Some of my World of Warcraft friends are very concerned about keyloggers (which are somewhat pervasive in fake WoW addons) – specifically those who haven’t bothered to buy the Blizzard Authenticator’s or use the Blizzard Authenticator iPhone app.  So, as a surrogate for that higher level of security, they instead store their passwords in a text file on their desktop and copy/paste their password into the password prompt each time they login to that.

While that method does avoid getting their password caught by a keylogger, it opens them up to accidentally pasting their password into in-game chat or private messages.  Obviously not a very smart, or secure, method anyway.

To illustrate the other part of Mr. Nielsen’s second point I can give you a real world example of people who have overly simplistic passwords: our parents generation.  While I’m not saying my parents have overly simplistic passwords (thankfully my parents have been smart enough to not share them with me when I’m doing tech support for them), I know of many people who are my father’s age – in their 60′s and 70′s – whose passwords are the name of their cats or their kids or their spouses simply because it’s easy to remember.  Also, because they don’t worry about security as much as younger, erm, more aware folks do.

A great example of why removing password masking is a bad idea stems from one of the great features of web browsers that we sometimes take for granted these days: local login info storage.  A quick example: Timmy is at his office and walks away from his computer to get a cup of coffee.  Timmy forgets to lock his workstation.  Mark is on his way to a meeting and forgets exactly which conference room his meeting is in.  As Mark is walking through the office, he walks by Timmy’s desk and notices that his workstation is unlocked.  Mark figures since no one is around and the workstation is unlocked he can use the computer briefly to check his e-mail and find out which conference room his meeting is in.

When Mark opens up the web browser on Timmy’s workstation, it takes him directly to Timmy’s homepage – Gmail.com.  Timmy stores his username and password for Gmail.com on his web browser.  Because the password box for Gmail.com is now unmasked (in Mr.Nielsen’s world), Mark has now inadvertently seen Timmy’s username AND password.  Immediately, Timmy has now opened himself up for all kind of potential harm and privacy issues.  If Mark is a malicious guy and Timmy doesn’t use different passwords for other services, Mark may potentially have access to Timmy’s online banking, credit cards, investment accounts, and other avenues of identity theft.

While the argument could easily be made that even with obfuscated password fields Mark could still access Timmy’s e-mail account and read his mail/change his password in the same situation, he would still only have access to that one account after the password was changed.  Without seeing Timmy’s password, he wouldn’t know what password he was using or if he used it for all of his accounts.

In closing, for once I’ll have to go against what Jakob Nielsen says and firmly stand against the removal of password masking in web- and software-based forms.  It’s just not safe.  The potential for identity theft is higher without obfuscation.

For further reading on this topic, have a look at one of the best responses to Mr. Nielsen’s Alertbox post, which came from Kyle Weems at CSSquirrel.  He also posted a hilarious comic to go with his response.  Both are totally worth reading.

Technorati Tags: Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen, Obfuscation, Password, Security, Usability, Useit.com