January 2010 Archives

Steven Frank has written the best piece about the iPad. I was planning to write something like this but I don’t need to bother now. I agree with him whole-heartedly.

Although the iPad as a device leaves much to be desired, the computing model originally introduced by iPhone and recently blown up in size by iPad, is potentially the computing model of the future. Just as we shifted our paradigms several times in the last five decades, from punch card machines to command line prompts and from there to mouse and desktop computing, eventually the desktop paradigm will have to make place for something better.

Apple is betting with iPhone and iPad on ease of use and simplicity instead of flexibility and raw power. It is not yet certain if that bet is going to pay off but the next five to ten years are definitely going to be very exciting.

But did you really have to call it the iPad after Mad TV did this in 2007, Apple?

Umida Akhmedova is an Uzbek photographer whose album called “Men and Women from Dawn to Dusk” shows Uzbek people and their way of life and traditions. The album was published in 2007 contains about 100 pictures, 10 of which can be seen here.

It all sounds fine. But it isn’t. Umida is being accused of defamation and insulting Uzbek traditions because the authorities feel that she is depicting Uzbekistan as a backward country. A special commission set up by the general prosecutor has already found that her images distort reality. She has been banned from leaving the country and faces up to 6 months in prison and up to 3 years of public labor.

This is simply outrageous. Something is depicting Uzbekistan as backward, alright. But it is definitely not Umida Akhmedova’s pictures. They are one of the best examples of photojournalism I have seen recently. More of her fine pictures can be seen here.

I think this is a clear case of the ones in power reflecting their own dislike and disrespect for their own people to Umida. The Uzbek state can only see backward and uneducated people in those pictures because they think of those people as backward and uneducated people which need to be modernized, educated and westernized, to fit in with the image of the ideal Uzbek citizen the Uzbek state have in their mind.

This quite a common mindset of the state in many countries who had to go through a period of nation building in their recent history. Similar issues can still be seen in Turkey after almost eighty years of the independent republic. In Uzbekistan’s, case this is clearly even more drastic, having gained their independence from the USSR less than 20 years ago.

Developers, including yours truly, participating in Indie+Relief had pledged to donate all of their proceeds on Jan 20th to Haiti earthquake victims.

Now, that the Jan 20th is behind us, the results for Translate are in: Translate managed to raise $36 for Haiti.

Which is not much when compared to bigger boys participating in Indie+Relief, but it is still better than nothing and will be donated in full to Deutsches Rotes Kreuz - German Red Cross, I hope it helps someone help someone…

Indie+Relief organizers have yet to make the grand total public but latest numbers I heard were around $30,000…

Sanırım, ve ne yazık ki, Sezin Öney’in bugünkü yazısı, okuduğum ilk yazısı. Uzun uzun yorum yapacak bir şey yok, çok güzel yazmış, kalemine sağlık, gidin okuyun…

Torsten Curdt made the source code of his network sharing app for iPhone publicly available. Similar to once-available-on-the-appstore-for-a-brief-time NetShare, this app allows you to access the wireless connection of your iPhone with your laptop anywhere. Unfortunately this little app cannot be distributed on the AppStore to the general iPhone-toting public due to contractual issues with the mobile network providers.

However, if you have an iPhone developer account, download, build, install and knock yourselves out…

I am more than pleased and actually very proud to be part of Indie+Relief, where all participating independent software developers donate their proceeds on Jan. 20th, 2010 to Haiti relief effort. I am contributing with whatever humble amount Translate raises on that day.

Please go check-out the website and purchase any software you might need and rest assured that every single cent (after Apple, Paypal etc. take their cut) you pay will go to help the survivors in Haiti.

“You get great software, Haiti gets financial help in its time of crisis.”

The devastation in Haiti is large. There is not much one can say. Boston.com maintains a frequently updated page with pictures from the disaster zone.

The aftermath of an earthquake can be just as dangerous as the earthquake itself. Medical supplies for the injured, sanitation equipment and water treatment to prevent cholera outbreaks, food and shelter for the survivors are big challenges which need to be financed and organized…

Donating to aid organizations such as The Red Cross, Deutsches Rotes Kreuz, Türk Kızılayı, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, and others can go a great way to help the survivors.

Hani insan normalde tembeldir. Aklına yazacak bir şey gelir ama sonra o an zamanı olmaz, unutur sonra üşenir…

Ama bazen de böyle bir şey görür insan, şaşar kalır, yazıya ayrı şaşırır, yazana ayrı şaşırır…

Yılmaz Özdil, bu eşi bulunmaz yazısında geçen günlerde Haliç Köprüsü üzerinde mendil satan çoçukların bölge kavgasında öldüresiyle dövdüğü mendilci çoçuk Bedrettin’in dramına çare buluyor. Bir Marie Antoniette edası ile diyor ki, biz zaten ne yaparsak yapalım, aileleri bu çoçukları okula göndermek yerine onlara sokaklarda bir şeyler sattıracak. Bari gazete satsınlar.

Tamam kabul, Yılmaz Özdil ne derin analizleri ne de sağlam fikirleri ile kendine isim yapmış bir yazar değil. Ama “çocuklar mendil satmasın, okula gidemiyorlar, üç beş kuruş için birbirlerini öldüresiye dövüyorlar, onun yerine gazete sattıralım, o zaman gene okula gidemezler gene o durak senin bu durak benim birbirlerini döverler ama hiç olmazsa bizim tirajımız biraz artar” demek de ne mantığa ne de insanlığa sığar.

Brecht’ten serbest uyarlama tekrar geliyor: Düşün ki koca koca adamlar böyle lakırdılar ediyolar ve kimse gülmüyor…

Şimdi oturduğum yerden ahkam kesip boş boş eleştirmek kolay denebilir, hatta gerçekten öyle de. Ama madem Sayın Özdil, hem çocukların maddi durumu kötü olan ailelerine katkıda bulunmalarını kaçınılmaz, hem okula gitmelerini gerekli görüyor hem de gazetesinin tirajini arttırmak derdinde, buyrun efendim işte size proce, bir taşla üç kuş birden, yanında da bu tükenmez kalem bedava:

• Hürriyet, mendilci çocuklara satmaları için gazeteleri hibe etsin yada makul bir kar edebilecekleri fiyata versin. Ancak, yalnız haftasonları… Elde var aile bütçesine katkı, haftaiçi okula gidebilecek, derslere çalışabilecek zaman. Fazladan satılan gazeteleri saymıyorum bile onun bana faydası yok, Yılmaz Özdil sevinsin…

• Hürriyet, Doğan Medya Grubu, sivil toplum örgütleri, hayırsever hali vakti yerindeler, el ele verip bu gazete satan çocukların asgari okul masraflarını karşılasın. Kampanya düzenleyip halkı da desteğe çağırabilirler, karşılığında karnelerine bakıp “aferin evladım ama matematiğe biraz daha gayret” deme ve hep pekiyi getirenlere bisiklet hediye etme haklarını da saklı tutabilirler, bence bir sakıncası yok. Etti mi bize aile bütçesine biraz daha katkı ve çocukları okula yollamak için teşvik? Böyle bir hayır işi üzerinden yapılacak reklamı, sulanacak gözleri, ferahlayacak gönülleri de saymıyorum, onların da bana faydası yok.

• Neden helva yapmıyoruz bakkal amca? Derdimiz sadece çocukların üzerinden iyi insan gibi görünüp, boş ve saçma sapan lakırdi edip tribünlere oynamak, fazladan gazete satmak mı acaba?

Yok bence öyle değildir…

Kurt Vonnegut was a private during the second world war and was taken prisoner by the Germans in the last days of the war. He was shipped to Dresden to work, where he witnessed and survived the fire bombing of the city by the Americans and the British. He tells his story from the perspective of a foot soldier in “Slaughter House 5”. An amazing book where the official glorious and heroic acts of war get a more and humane face.

Letters of Note recently published a letter written by Vonnegut to his family back home after he was freed by the Russians. The letter is a concise summary of his story after being captured and is unmistakably Vonnegut in its tone.

Google released their mobile phone the Nexus One yesterday. Let’s ignore the “super-smartphone” marketing-speak and try to look at it as what it claims to be: an iPhone-killer.

On paper the Nexus One looks like it is the real deal:

• Same size as iPhone: slightly taller but slightly thinner as well and slightly lighter
• Slightly bigger screen with more than double iPhone’s resolution
• Higher resolution camera with DVD-like video recording capability
• All mobile radio technologies from UMTS to stereo Bluetooth on-board
• Similar claimed battery life as iPhone
• Processor based on the same Arm design as iPhone but at a faster clock speed: 1GHz compared to iPhone 3G S’s 667MHz)
• Twice the RAM (512MB) as iPhone 3G S
• Similar amount of storage, but removable instead of fixed.

Nexus One seems to at least match if not surpass iPhone on all relevant hardware specs.

It seems to me, though, that the real difference between the iPhone and Nexus One is not going to be the hardware specs, but rather the user experience and 3rd party software. On paper there are also some cool user experience features that such as street navigation that the iPhone cannot match without some expensive software.

I did not get my hands on a Nexus One yet but from what I have seen, it appears that the user interface is not as polished or as unified as on the iPhone. But the predictive the on-screen keyboard with multiple suggestions seems to be an awesome idea. However the user experience flies or falls by the actual hands-on experience. So the jury is still out on this…

It can be claimed that the success of iPhone was closely related to the availability of a large selection of high quality third party software with a huge number of ready customers over the iTunes Store architecture. However you can also turn the last sentence on its head an claim that the flood of third party software was caused by the immense success of the iPhone as a gadget and the promise of an easy-buck to be made over an established and exclusive distribution channel to millions of customers. There was no app store, when Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone almost three years ago, after all.

Experience has shown that the get-rich-quick-by-selling-a-million-99-cent-apps model worked more like a lottery when the iPhone platform was new. But as the platform matures, the market weeds itself out and the serious developers remain to develop more sophisticated apps.

Obviously, Google does not have anything as wide-spread as iTunes for the distribution of 3rd party software. However the Android platform also does not have a draconian software review process for the third party software. Thus, the developers can distribute their own software over traditional means. What remains to be seen is, how successful this ecosystems is going to be in attracting developers and generating high quality, easy to use software.

Overall, color me undecided on if the Nexus One is the iPhone-killer, but it sure heats up the competition. Let’s wait and see what Apple have up their sleeve come June…

UPDATE:

I have just read Pogue’s review of the Nexus One.

And I have changed my color: the Nexus One is definitely not the iPhone-killer. Here’s why:

• It can supposedly handle only 190MB of apps, regardless of how much storage you have on board
• There is no multi-touch. Sorry, but no multi-touch, no cake.
• To quote Pogue:

the Nexus just doesn’t attain the iPhone’s fit and finish. The buttons under the screen (Back, Menu, Home, Search) are balky, often ignoring your finger-presses completely. One of the animated wallpapers freezes the phone with a message that says: “Sorry! The application Android Live Wallpapers has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.”

I came across a small but really impressive portfolio by the photojournalist Peter Turnley on T.O.P. I thought I’d share. Here are two appetizers: