TenEighty Degrees

Saying Goodbye to kimages

After a long run, it's the end of the road for kimages. As many of you know, kimages was the image hosting service that I ran. It sparked a great deal of my interest in learning to script in PHP and allowed me to learn a lot about scaling web applications to large audiences.

In the past two years, kimages' user base scaled up immensely to the point where traffic became unmanageable and hosting became very expensive. Without a suitable business strategy for the site, it was bound to fail. After multiple efforts in creating revenue, I've decided to cut my losses and shut down the service.

Hopefully this won't impact the lives of too many users, seeing as though there are many other free image sharing services out there (ex: imgur.com). I can't say I'm too incredibly fond of any of them, but they most certainly get the job done, and perhaps more reliably as well.

As a side-note, I'm sure any returning visitor has noticed, I recently redesigned this site. It's a bit flashier, I suppose. I just needed to see a bit of a change. Love it or hate it, it's here to stay for awhile.

Best summer wishes to all. And be sure to tell me what you think about my new design by tweeting me (@1080degrees).

The Motorola Xoom: The Wrapup

Not too long ago, I wrote a longwinded review of the Motorola Xoom. In short, it brought to the table what I expected it to. It is a great product with a solid design and good software, but it felt incomplete. Partially because expected features were missing out of the box, and partially because the Android Market is widely devoid of tablet-specific applications.

From a web-centric interest in the device, Honeycomb's browser has its quirks. For those who are interested in the device for its prowess with Adobe Flash, take heed to my warning; mobile Flash support is still terrible. It slows down, crashes, and eats away at battery life.

In addition to its lackluster Flash performance, the browser advertises itself as an Android device, which leads to it being redirected to many mobile device friendly websites. It's a result of many inept JavaScript browser detectors thinking that the Android moniker applies solely to phones. This will change in time, but for the moment, it's highly frustrating to be presented primarily with mobile content.

My list of qualms with the device is extensive, and you can most certainly read about most of them in my full review, but I don't intend to do the same in this post. I just wanted to make clear the more web-developer-centric points for the Xoom.

All in all, it's a work in progress, but it has potential. I'll stick with the iPad as my tablet of choice, but it's good to see that the leader has to watch its back.

iPad 2 — More of the Same?

Let's face it. The iPad 2 isn't revolutionary. It doesn't "change the game" of the tablet market. And with an incredible amount of competition rising against the de facto mobile device manufacturer, you'd expect more than a few cameras, a sleeker design, and a faster processor.

In the coming weeks, I'll be taking a look at the Motorola Xoom, a recently released competitor to the iPad. It comes complete with a larger, higher resolution screen, faster processor, better cameras, and a slew of other nice features including the much envied on-board HDMI out. In almost every technical specification, the iPad 2 is inferior compared to the Xoom.

Similarly, plenty of other tablet devices have come into fruition including the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Dell Streak 7, and the Blackberry Playbook. All of which sport similar, if not better pedigrees than the iPad. So why isn't apple shaking in their boots?

The reason is simple. Apple's sheer dominance and definition of the tablet industry doesn't come from it's hardware, nor their incredible ability to market products successfully. It comes from their incredibly intuitive and saturated software platform.

Who hasn't used an iPod before? Or played around with an iPod Touch? From the very first use, the device seems intuitive and inviting. As you dive deeper, you fully realize the true ease of use of the device. No other software is at the same level of simplicity or usability yet. As an aside, Android Honeycomb is making leaps and bounds towards a more usable interface. I'm intrigued to get to test it out and run it through its paces against the iPad.

But yet, Honeycomb's major downfall is Apple's greatest strength (for the time being) — the App Store. While Android tablets are limited to a mere few hundred native applications, the iPad thrives with tens of thousands of available applications. And to be entirely honest, the applications on the iPad are of a generally higher quality than those on other marketplaces. Apple's dominance in the application marketplace is unrivaled.

So should Apple be worried? No. Competitors have a great deal of ground to make up before they're within reach of the iPad. And we all know Jobs has something up his sleeve for next year already. The upgrade from iPad to iPad 2 is enough to keep the technology relevant, and keep Apple's rivals on their toes.

While there are many areas in which the iPad could improve, the overall experience is unrivaled. Hence, more of the same is exactly what Apple needs, an uninterrupted excellent experience. Let the software speak for itself, and let the hardware elegantly update to match the software.

Needless to say, I'm excited for what we will see in the coming year from Apple.

The Great 2010 Hosting Move

Late last month, I started to weigh my options. My image hosting service, kimages, has long outgrown shared hosting environments. With bandwidth in the terabytes, and ever increasing disk usage, it was time to change something.

Originally, I tried to see how much of an effect deleting all images over a year old would provide. Not surprisingly, it hardly made a dent in bandwidth or disk usage. Clearly the problem was larger than simple file management, hence I made the leap to switch hosting providers.

After checking out a bunch of providers, I decided on a virtual environment from BurstNET. I'm not going to get into the details of what I'm working with hardware wise, but I've decided to keep a typical LAMP setup for the time being.

So far, I've only moved kimages to the new server, and it is running quite well. I'm quite happy with how things are running thus far. I've started automatically trimming images that haven't been viewed for 7 days. Also, if a image uses too much bandwidth, its quality is reduced to reduce file size. If it continues to abuse bandwidth, it is removed. This seems to be the most sensible solution to the current bandwidth problem.

Here are a few resources / tricks I've picked up since switching to a new host.

fileatime() - For filesystems that support file access times, PHP's fileatime() call is an excellent way to check when a file was last viewed.

vnstat - For simple server-side bandwidth monitoring (without access to SNMP statistics), vnstat is a great tool for monitoring and logging bandwidth usage.

Postfix Piping
Ever wanted to be able to parse emails using a script without fetching the e-mails from the server? Postfix piping allows you to pipe incoming e-mails to scripts via STDIN. Simply add the following line (modified to your liking) to your /etc/aliases file.

EMAILADDRESS: "|/path/to/script.php"

Then run the command "sudo newaliases" which refreshes the aliases list for Postfix. Now all e-mails sent to "EMAILADDRESS" will be piped out to the script you specify. I personally used this for the new feature on kimages in which new images can be posted via e-mail.

All in all, I think the move was successful. Hopefully it adds some much needed stability to the platform.

July Already?

I suppose I've been taking my summer break from writing here. June passed without any articles, sadly. So to placate those of you who hang on my every word (you're out there, right?), here's my midsummer update.

Personally, I have less than two months before school resumes. My summer thus far has consisted of a relaxing vacation to South Carolina, the repeated fixing and modifying of kimages, and some occasional design and coding projects. In addition, I've continued reviewing products for ConnectReviews.

kimages

First, let me mention kimages. The site has grown in popularity over the past year. However, this growth has led to multiple outages due to extreme server load. Now, the code that runs kimages is relatively simple and similarly resource unintensive. The real problems lies in the fact that millions of images are served each month, leading to excessive amounts of bandwidth. So much so, that Apache even starts to struggle under the requests.

Now the only logical solution would be to throw more bandwidth and hardware at it. It's a great solution. The problem lies in the funding, however. So that's my existing predicament with kimages. Hopefully anyone who uses the service and occasionally sees downtime will understand why now.

iPhone 4

Call me a fanboy, but I ended up pre-ordering an Apple iPhone 4. It arrived June 23rd, a full day earlier than the public release. Boy, did I feel special.

Upgrading from the 3G is a huge leap. Now I have all sorts of iOS 4 goodies, along with a fantastic camera, amazing processor, and solid Jonathan Ive design. The sheer speed of the phone is a shock, with apps launching in a quarter the time it typically takes, photos instantly being saved to the camera roll, and webpages scrolling with very limited re-rendering.

I'll admit that I suffer from the "death grip" as reported by many iPhone 4 users. Judging by Apple's responses to customer complaints, there is a fix in the works in Cupertino, and we'll be seeing that in the coming weeks. In the mean time, I'll continue gripping the phone slightly strangely to avoid those pesky dropped calls and data losses.

What's Coming Soon?

Not quite sure to be honest. Maybe a reincarnation of CloudGate? Probably not. I'll probably just continue to tweak existing projects, maybe do a bit of third party design work, etc. We'll see how things progress.

I plan on attending a few more Cubs games and enjoying whatever nice weather Illinois throws my way. Who knows, maybe I'll even end up posting again by the end of the summer? A bit of a stretch, but anything is possible.

Until next time...

Pagination: Right vs. Wrong

Pagination is an increasingly popular method of breaking up content into multiple pages. Specifically, I'm addressing the method of navigating to older content using single buttons.

Above, "the good" is from the tech blog Engadget, while "the bad" is from The Unofficial Apple Weblog. In the good example, the buttons are specifically labeled "older" and "newer", with the older posts being located on the left.

On the contrary, the bad example is simply labeled "previous" and "next" with no indication as to which will display older content. In practice, the button on the left here takes you to newer content. This is entirely backwards with respect to the good example.

Here are my guidelines for page-to-page navigation:

Clearly label buttons with "Older" and "Newer" to differentiate the direction of content navigation
Keep the button that leads to older content on the left

Consistency in site navigation is very important, and these little changes can help users navigate with less confusion.

Commenting Systems Roundup

Through the multiple iterations of this blog, I've written my own commenting systems to use. While they were not necessarily the most feature-packed, they most certainly got the job done. Now, as I just somewhat rewrote my blog engine, I'm considering bringing back commenting.

Lately, commenting has become a much more social experience. Comments are threaded, trackbacks recorded, tweets inserted into the list of comments automatically. All this leads to something that would take quite a long time to code. Naturally, I started looking for an existing alternative to writing my own code.

Most of the fully-featured commenting systems are now remotely hosted and javascript powered. This means no database management on your end, and easy integration into blogging systems such as Wordpress, Movable Type, etc. There are probably three main contenders in the commenting systems world right now.

Note that while Disqus and IntenseDebate are free options, JS-Kit Echo only has a 30-day free trial before costing you a minimum of $12 per year.

Disqus

Disqus is probably the most common remotely-hosted commenting platform these days. Everything works well. It's fast-loading, reliable, and feature packed. They support all sorts of login methods, sharing methods, customizations, etc.

However, I'm quite tired of seeing Disqus comments. To be completely honest, it's not a very pretty commenting system, nor is it as customizable as I'd like. Simplicity is key for most users, and Disqus just has a lot of things going on (as seen above). I don't know why real-time comment updating is necessary, but nevertheless, it's there. To me, it feels like Disqus takes up more space than necessary, but it's still a free and stable commenting system.

IntenseDebate

IntenseDebate is another option for commenting brought to us by Automattic. It sports the same long list of features as Disqus, but is, in my opinion, somewhat better looking. While not perfect, it seems to be more customizable than Disqus, and because it's brought to you by the same people that built Wordpress, it'll be stable.

It still suffers from a bit of a cluttered look (especially below the comment box), but it's better than Disqus. If you're looking for a free commenting option, I'd definitely give IntenseDebate a try.

JS-Kit Echo

Echo is the only commercial commenting system of the bunch, and I suppose for good reason. It's significantly better looking, and even more feature-rich than Disqus or IntenseDebate. Interfacing is smooth and compact while comments are attractive and free of clutter.

Now that's all fantastic. If it were free, I'd jump on it in a heartbeat and call it, by wide margin, the best I've seen. However, it's commercial. Outside of the free 30-day trial, the branded version of the service will cost you $12 per year. Want to remove the Echo logo? That'll run you $48 per year.

If you're a site turning a pretty decent profit, and want to include powerful, attractive, and user-engaging comments, I'd say Echo is right for you. If you're a smaller site that is unwilling to spend a pretty penny on comments, try out IntenseDebate.

However, if you want to bypass all these silly social commenting systems and stick to simple comments, by all means, do so. Wordpress comments are more than enough and there are plenty of plugins to help you add any features you'd like to have.

Ultimately, however, my verdict is to try out IntenseDebate if you want a free option, and if not, go spend your money on Echo. It will be worth your while.

iPhone 4.0 Wish List

Tomorrow, Apple is slated to unveil their roadmap for the iPhone 4.0 operating system update. In the last three versions, we've seen a great number of feature additions (need I mention the App Store?), but the overall look of the operating system has remained the same. While it's an elegantly designed interface, it's time for some changes. I'm not talking a complete revamp, but there are a good few things I'd like added / redesigned.

Primarily (in no particular order):

A new lock screen, heck, maybe even make it customizable. Display the time, basic weather info, unread emails / text messages, RSS feeds, etc.
A new springboard - The current iteration has had a good run, but a new method of organizing and launching applications would be warmly welcomed.
"Disable Landscape" option - While many iPhone users do utilize landscape applications, I don't. It's just frustrating to have applications switch to landscape mode if I accidentally tilt my phone too much.
Multitasking - While this doesn't necessarily impact me much, many people have been crying for the ability to multitask. I would like to see Apple at least come up with a way to let applications store what the user was doing at the time the application closed.
A usable filesystem - I'd like to be able to store files on my iPhone, have a system to organize them easily, and transfer them to my computer without much trouble. Can't be too much to ask.

On Flash...

Now, note that I didn't mention Flash. It's not going to happen. Beyond the fact that Flash would perform terribly on the device (Flash is even slow on my laptop sometimes), it would destroy Apple's business model. Instead of buying games through the App Store, users would simply go online to one of the hundreds of existing flash game sites. Online flash game stores would open, and offer more competition for the App Store. Apple wouldn't like that.

Besides, what is Flash that good at anyway? I'll agree, Flash video players are currently a better solution than HTML5 video (only have to render one file type, nearly universal support, etc.), but any other use of flash is a bit of a stretch (besides maybe simple online games).

All in all, I think iPhone 4.0 should prove to be a good step forward. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for a new iPhone hardware release as well. Sadly, I doubt I'll see that until this summer.

Update:

Out of my requests, Apple has (so far) granted 1.5 of them. We don't see a drastically redesigned springboard, but we do get Folders which will be nice for organizing apps. More importantly, however, multitasking is here. Sadly, it won't work on my iPhone 3G. One more reason to upgrade this summer.

iPad-Specific CSS

Continuing with my enthusiasm about Apple's iPad, I checked out what Apple has done to update Safari for the iPad. In general, not too much. People have been complaining about poor rendering of certain websites, etc. However, Apple has implemented some new CSS media queries to allow designers to make sites that work more dynamically with iPads.

Specifically, there are now media queries that let the iPad select CSS files based on whether it is currently in a landscape or portrait orientation. For example:

<link rel="stylesheet" media="all and (orientation:portrait)" href="portrait.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" media="all and (orientation:landscape)" href="landscape.css">

This bit of code will select portrait.css if the iPad is held vertically, and landscape.css if held in landscape. I really don't expect many web developers to be iPad optimizing their sites in this manner, but for those who want to create immersive iPad web apps, this will be a good addition to their toolbox.

If you're curious, this media query also works in newer versions of Firefox and Safari, selecting portrait if the height of the visible screen is greater than the width and vice versa for landscape. Check out this demo page if you'd like to try it for yourself.

Apple iPad: Hype or Revolution?

It's been a long time since we've seen a truly revolutionary device enter the computing world. Within the past decade, computers have grown in performance while shrinking in size. However, the way we interface with computers has remained unchanged. The first computer mouse was prototyped in 1963 and has been the de facto method of interfacing with computers ever since. Apple's iPad attempts to change that.

Now, note that I refer to the iPad as a computer. Many skeptics make the iPad out to be only a "giant iPod Touch". I can guarantee that is not the case. Not only is the A4 processor in the iPad significantly faster than its iPhone counterpart, the 1024x768 screen real estate makes the possibilities for this device infinitely greater than those of the iPhone.

The key to the iPad's success lies in Apple's App Store. Mobile application stores have been around for ages, but none have been remotely as successful as Apple's iteration. By providing developers with a readily accessible SDK, the iPad App Store will have over 150,000 applications available the moment early iPad adapters get their hands on one. This is mainly due to the existing iPhone apps which can run on the iPad at a native or pixel-doubling resolution. However, hundreds of developers have already announced iPad native applications, some of which are simply excellent.

Because of the iPad's increased screen size, many applications that would be infeasible to run on an iPhone will be available on the iPad. One great example is "Mixr" (seen above) which is a high-quality DJ app that will be launching on the iPad soon. Due to the sheer size needed for crossfading, equalizing, and effect controls, the iPad opens new possibilities unavailable to developers on the iPhone. This same increased size promises more productivity and unique experiences than ever before.

While I will agree that the iPad isn't necessarily a very revolutionary technical device, I reject any claims of it not being revolutionary to the computing industry. The iPad will be the first device to take multitouch computing, put it in the hands of the masses, and do it properly. This is not another tablet running an existing OS where everything seems to be awkwardly modified to be touch-capable. This is a user interface that has been built from the ground up to be used solely with a multi-touch experience.

While I haven't personally pre-ordered an iPad, I'm absolutely interested to try one out. As Walt Mossberg of the The New York Times states, "My verdict is that, while it has compromises and drawbacks, the iPad can indeed replace a laptop ... a lot of the time." While not for those who are doing heavy content creation, the iPad serves as a perfectly usable device for browsing the web, watching movies, and internet communication.

Providing that, in the first week alone, 190,000 iPads were pre-ordered, the technology will definitely be in enough hands to make for a new App Store gold rush. My verdict: don't write the iPad off before you try one out. Chances have it, it might change the way we think about computer interfacing as a whole.