Last Friday, both Mark Forster and I braved the (short) queue at our local O2 store to grab our new iPhone 3Gs.
I need to make it obvious now that I am an Apple fanboy. Given that I am impressed by everything Apple, I was pretty excited to grab hold of the iPhone 3G, especially for the ability to get to the App Store and download some applications.
The web is already abuzz with iPhone 3G reviews and opinion, so let's skip over that for a minute and concentrate on the new SDK and the applications.
There is absolutely no doubt that the SDK was a step forward and a chance for the iPhone community to develop interesting applications. However, after a week of trying out some popular applications, I must say that I am pretty disappointed with almost every one of them. This is down to 2 factors.
Quality
With the exception of Super Monkey Ball, every single application I have on the iPhone either fails to work (Last.fm, Twitterific), is very slow (Facebook), or is poorly designed (NetNewsWire).
I agree that this has more to do with the developers than anything Apple and I agree that this will get better as time goes by.
Suitability
The bigger issue I have with a lot of the applications is the suitability. Do we really need 10 more native iPhone apps for a To-Do list? Do we really need native iPhone interface to Facebook (I get the point about location-aware data but it really doesn't matter when it comes to Facebook)?
In fact, the best app I have come across on my iPhone (ok! It does still have some quirks), is Google Reader for the iPhone and it is a web application.
There are valid cases for using a native iPhone application, when you need access to native iPhone functionality, but let's not jump on the band-wagon and build iPhone apps just because we can and because it's cool.
This is precisely the reason (now we get to the interesting bit), our new iPhone interface to fixx will be entirely web-based, delivered from your fixx installation.
While we are working on this iPhone interface for fixx, we would love your ideas on what you would like to see in this interface in the long term.
fixx 1.3 is out! This release includes key bug fixes and some general improvements to the tagging system and searching for tags. Also look out for the cool OpenSearch feature for those of you with IE7 and Firefox.
While this comes as no surprise, I am still baffled at the lengths people will go to squeeze another hour into their working schedule. I am personally no stranger to working long hours, mostly because I enjoy doing so. However, I certainly don't believe that working longer = greater productivity.
The reality is that probably 70% - 75% of your working time is probably wasted in trivial non-productive tasks like gossip, reading the news (or feeds if you are a geek), fighting over who makes the coffee, and if you are really unlucky, in boring marathon meetings that suck the life out of you and never end with any real decisions.
If you are a developer or an entrepreneur in software, the best thing you can do is "work less but work smarter".
Why not try working for only 4 or 5 hours in the day but focus that time entirely on the task(s) at hand. So whether you are writing code, content for your new site or designing the next home-page, give it 100% dedication with short breaks to keep you fresh.
This means you still get time in the day to do the things that interest you, like reading your feeds, catching up on e-mails/calls and any gossip around your workplace.
Turn off your instant messaging software or at-least make it obvious you are busy. When was the last time you had an important conversation on IM?
I know that IM has become an important communication medium at work, so if you have to use it, make it obvious to colleagues when to use it.
Turn off your e-mail notifications (unless you are in a job where all you do is respond to e-mail). Again, it is unlikely that most e-mail you get is urgent enough to warrant an immediate response. Using the phone for matters of urgency is definitely a quicker and less time-consuming way to communicate.
Spend money on tools to boost your productivity. Open Source (as in free and open source) software is great but unless it is one of those rare systems that is magic, your time is better spent focusing on your business, whether that be writing more code for your product, or your clients.
Whether you have a work-life balance is your choice but the fact is, in the software business (and probably many other fields), the longer you work, the less productive you are.
Let's stop propagating this myth of longer hours and corrupting the next generation of budding entrepreneurs!
We are all about open standards here at the lab and have always taken pride in implementing little standards-based improvements that make your life and job better while using fixx (ex. OpenID, Microformats etc.).
fixx is now OpenSearch enabled and the feature will be available from 1.3, which is due for release soon. I committed a patch last night that brings OpenSearch auto-discovery to your Firefox and IE7 browsers (and any other browser that supports OpenSearch).
When you navigate to your fixx installation, you should see the search icon in your browser search box turn blue and you should see an action to add fixx to your search engine list. You can then use your browser search box to directly navigate to fixx issues, by typing their issue number, or search for issues in fixx, even when you are browsing another site.
Note that the title of the search engine will be the same as the title of your fixx installation (so it might and probably will be different to what is in the screenshot).
Fluid is a SSB that allows you to wrap your frequently used web applications and sites in it's own browser and activate them as individual applications.
This means you get a separate application for your fixx installation that you can launch from your Applications folder (or using Quicksilver) and use the fixx icon for your application and have it appear in your dock.
Here are 2 high res logos for our products that you can use to your heart's content in your Fluid applications.
