Uncanny Valley? Nah, Most Software Just Sucks

I was reading about Sam Ruby’s experience as an OS X switcher and he mentions the phrase uncanny valley which is an interesting theory on the emotive response of humans to technology (robotics actually) based on how similar the tech is to humanity.

Now I’m guessing our connections to tech are highly subjective and I might not be as nerdy as Sam and therefore less in tune with my virtual desktop, but I’d posit we’re a hell of a long ways from the uncanny valley. The iPhone is probably the most intuitive and enjoyable device I’ve ever used and its not too far up the food chain from an industrial robot. Regardless, it’s an interesting subject to reflect on as a both a tech contributor and consumer.

What’s your gut reaction to your computer, phone, television and the software applications that run on them?

Flex / AIR Serialization Lessons Learned

A few lessons learned while serializing custom classes.

Compiler metadata tags only get you part of the way. Metadata alone is perfectly suitable when you’re not serializing classes with members that contain complex datatypes where those complex types have private members.

If there are private members in your complex data types then you’ll need to implement IExternalizable.

IExternalizable requires implementing two methods, ‘readExternal’ and ‘writeExternal’.

Another thing to watch out for is that it appears you must use a no args constructor in order to deserialize an object. If anyone knows otherwise please leave details in the comments.

AS3 makes it ultra simple to serialize variables via the IDataInput and IDataOutput objects. You just need to remember, when writing out things like Strings, to use writeUTF / readUTF rather than writeUTFBytes / readUTFBytes. The writeUTF method inserts a UTF string representing the number of bytes in each String which means you don’t have to do any grunt work when deserializing with readUTF — nice.

The Future of Screencasting / Screen Capture is Bright.

Here in the US, and Michigan in particular, the near term economic forecast is pretty gloomy, but I don’t think the same is true for the screen capture / screen recording (screencasting) industry. I was struck by this thought as I was reading how shark fans are tracking the location of a great white shark on the web after its recent electronic tagging by the Monteray Bay Aquarium. I know it seems the article is completely unrelated to screencasting, and it is, but it’s subject belies a much greater truth — consumable information (data) is growing exponentially and that is good for the screencasting industry.

Data growth in turn means more software applications will need to be created to process the data and still more applications built that consume and present that data. There’s an inherent cycle here — creation to consumption to creation that’s reached critical mass. The World Wide Web is the most well known example of such a data consuming and spawning system.

So how does screencasting fit into this picture you might ask? Human beings are the end consumers and interfaces between all of these systems and data. Human beings are the spark that spawns the data collection. Human beings build software to process, organize and present the data. Ultimately, human beings consume the data and renew the data life cycle. All of this implies a fertile food chain of people who must communicate with each other about highly technical subjects and systems embedded within digital devices. Rich, visual communication makes sophisticated technical ideas accessible and that, folks, is what screencasting is all about. By turning our virtual desktops into rich media screencasting lets us learn via our most basic senses — our eyes and our ears.

Add the ability to share your activities within the virtual desktop quickly over the web and the data creation / consumption life cycle speeds up. What’s the best way to show people how to utilize the shark tracking data that’s now available? With a screencast of course. What’s the best way to explain the meaning of the data? That’s a bit more complex, but here too a screencast is an excellent medium.

Perhaps, the economic news has got me reaching for straws, but there certainly seems to be a flurry of new screencasting tools popping up on the market and an increasing amount of screencasts in circulation. Maybe, just maybe its because of the quick maturation of self-sustaining data ecosystems / communities on the World Wide Web.

The Empire Strikes Back: How Silverlight 2 Got Installed On My Macbook Pro

One thing you have to give credit to Microsoft for is they know how to get boots on the ground and press flesh. At SXSW, Josh Holmes managed to get Silverlight 2 installed on my otherwise pristine Macbook Pro by proffering that age old question, “have you ever seen Silverlight’s ‘Deep Zoom‘ feature?” Naive, thirty-something man that I am I replied, “no,” as I simultaneously realized that I had just opened Pandora’s box. I’m not sure how effective this adoption mechanism is, but so far its proven superior to their killer app theory.

I saw Josh about a month ago at TechSmith’s HQ, but managed to remain Silverlight free due in large part to the Flex chest protector Adobe provided at their last UG. Betsy suggests I look like a Ninja Turtle in this picture, to which I’d reply, in the words of Carl Spackler, “Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort.”

Ultimately, I was non-plussed by the ‘Deep Zoom’ given, as Lee points out, the capability has existed in Flash for a long time. However, I give Josh high marks for not only getting Silverlight installed, but then coming over to the TechSmith booth and doing a demo on my Mac for another person he met at the show. Mark one battle won by the emperor’s troops.

SXSW 2008 Pictures

Just got back from SXSW — Austin definitely lives up to its reputation as killer town full of music. Here are the pics that made the first cut in my digital lightroom (Adobe Lightroom is by far my favorite piece of software ever).

3.07.2008

3.08.2008

3.09.2008

3.10.2008

3.11.2008

The killer Lightroom generated gallery was provided by Airtight Interactive.

Postmodern Addiction – My Needle; My Spoon

On my way to SXSW I was sharing a cab ride from the Austin airport to my hotel with coworker and friend Nick Gorsline when I turned to him and said, “**ck you, I don’t need to talk to you, I’ve got my iPhone and the Edge network–I’ll just check my email.”

This got me to thinking..the internet represents an addiction; a veritable needle & spoon. If you take 5 seconds you’re left bewildered by the drug war and our national obsession with wiping out “bad” addictions while feeding all other forms.