Software I Bought but Never Use
I just got done reading Alex Payne’s list of software he’s paid for but has since stopped using and I thought it would be fun to do my own. I don’t know what it is but I’m a sucker for new software. I love it. I like to try everything out and kick the tires but I often find that it’s not right for me and I’ve already given up the money. I don’t mind helping out the smaller developers but I really get irked when I dish out big money for a major app that ultimately goes unused.
Without further ado:
- Acquisition - Xtorrent killed it for me. At one time I used it like crazy though. - No Regret
- Adobe Design Premium CS4 - I use Photoshop, Illustrator and occassionaly Flash. Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Acrobat and InDesign sit dormant. There’s a slight chance I bust out InDesign but Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Acrobat are dead to me. The bundle was more cost efficient than buying those 3 programs 1 by 1. - Moderate Regret
- Apple Remote Desktop 3 - I bought this to help my Mom and my Grandmother with their Mac issues. When Leopard was released it kind of killed the need. - Moderate Regret
- Coda - I think Panic is one of the best app developers in the world. I loved Audion and I still love Transmit. But Coda wasn’t good enough to take me away from TextMate, CSSedit, and Transmit. I never use it. - Deep Regret
- Connect 360 - I still have it connected and I did use it a lot when I first had it. But when I bought an Apple TV that was the end of that. - No Regret
- DigiTunnel - I bought it to help me VPN into an ex-employer’s network. Why did I buy it on my own? Didn’t work anyway. - Deep Regret
- Disco - Ooh it makes smoke when burning a disc. That is all. - Deep Regret
- Fitness Brain - I used it to track calories for about a week but it was cheap. Developer abandoned project. - Mild Regret
- Intego Internet Security - STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. - As Deep of Regret as you get
- iTunes Catalog It sounded cool at the time. I bought this pre-Last.fm or pre-Twitter or any other social site. And I never used it anyway. - Mild Regret
- Memtest - My iMac RAM wasn’t the problem. Super cheap though. - No Regret
- Missing Sync for Blackberry - It worked better than Blackberry’s own Mac sync piece of crap software. But it was no iTunes/iPhone. - Moderate Regret
- NewsFire - I think I used it for a day or so before I realized that without the ability to sync, it was worthless. Moved to Google Reader and never looked back. Plus it became free after I bought it. - Deep Regret
- OmniPlan - I think Microsoft Project is a total waste of time for project management. Why did I think Omni’s version of the same software would be any better? I love OmniGroup and most of their products but this is too middle-management for me. - Deep Regret
- PandoraJam - It worked and I got some cool songs. But I just don’t use it anymore. - No Regret
- Pixelmator - Here was the thought: “I’ll get rid of all of the bloat and only run Cocoa apps!” Didn’t work. - Deep Regret
- Salling Clicker - This is still better than Apple’s own iPhone and iTunes sync. It was the bomb. I loved everything about it. I wish it worked with the iPhone like it did my Sony Ericsson K790a. Best bluetooth syncing software on the planet. - No Regret (none, zip, zero)
- Suitcase Fusion - Fat, bloated software. Having thousands of fonts was a necessity in the print design world but I’ve since simplified. A lot. - Mild Regret
- Taskpaper - Awesome and quick “Getting Things Done” task list. But it was too simplified. And OmniFocus worked better for me. Still cool software though. - No Regret
- Vector Designer - Same purchase date as Pixelmator and for the same reasons. - Deep Regret
Perhaps I Should Explain Myself
I realize that a potential client or business might be coming to my site to get a look at my work only to find a blog using a template I didn’t design (gasp!). There is a reason for that and hopefully if you’re in the business you can understand.
I was recently part of a workforce reduction from my previous employer. The market took a digger and the company I was working for was a financial institution. Before the economy started to crumble this was a great place to work. I believed I was going to be there for many years and really wasn’t interested in working anywhere else. During my first few months with them I was getting many calls from recruiters and businesses that were looking for someone with my qualifications. At that time my site was complete with a full portfolio and my past experience. I decided that I wasn’t really looking anymore so the best thing to do would be to bring my site down and only do a simple blog. The lesson learned here is that there are no guarantees in life and if you work in this field you should always have your most current information available.
Another problem that many web designers will be sympathetic to is that in my 30 months at my previous employer the sites I worked on in the past have been altered or altogether redesigned since I worked on them. So now I don’t even have a live portfolio of current web sites to show anyone. I’m really in a jam here. But I have a couple of web projects starting up so I’m hoping to rectify that problem very shortly.
I am currently working on a new design and portfolio section and hope to launch very soon. In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about me and view some of the work I’ve done there are a couple of places you can look. To get an idea of my experience you can visit my LinkedIn page. And to get a couple of samples of my work you can visit my Carbonmade portfolio.
The Misunderstanding of the Internet
Twitter changed everything I thought I thought about an online presence. I joined Twitter in January of 2007 but I didn’t understand it’s draw. My initial tweets were mundane, ridiculous things like “Going to a meeting” and “Heading home.” I didn’t follow anyone, no one followed me and I quickly grew disinterested. Over the course of 2007 many of the people I follow online were starting to talk more and more about how Twitter was making such a big difference in their lives. It got to the point where I felt like I was missing something obvious. And unlike MySpace, whose popularity was based on the social desire to be around other people, Twitter sounded more like it was an answer to a question that no one thought to ask. So I started really participating in it again late in 2007 and once I figured it out, it opened my eyes.
The Internet is the Ultimate Mind Sharing Tool
What I discovered was that people, not algorithms, provided answers and content that was more useful, entertaining, and enlightening than anything I’d ever discovered before. In the fantastic article “We Travel in Tribes” by Rands, he perfectly describes why Twitter works on such a fundamental level. After reading that article and participating in so many other failed social web sites I started to realize that most people simply don’t understand the power of the internet. Even though many people have been using the internet for over a decade, it hasn’t helped them understand the incredible potential of what they’re using.
Some of the early names for the internet were spot on. The “www” in web site addresses stands for World Wide Web, a name given by the internet creators to help describe what the internet was. Another name, albeit cheesy, was The Information Super Highway. The early users of the internet understood the potential and usefulness of sharing the vast amounts of information around the world. The internet was a web of information that was not defined by your geographic location.
Unfortunately businesses started looking at the internet as an extension of their brick-and-mortar stores which required an extension of their print and television advertising campaigns. To marketers and advertisers it represented an “always-on” connection to their customers that could be marketed and advertised to on a constant basis. According to this view, if you could find a way to drive people to your web domain you could hit them with your marketing message and the customers would buy. This ushered in the rush for online advertising dollars. The internet was the next big medium after radio and television. But this view of the internet was flawed. Unlike radio and television the internet was not there solely for entertainment. The audience wasn’t an audience.
The Internet Deserves it’s Own Category
The internet can’t be lumped in with newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. It can’t be lumped in with encyclopedias, dictionaries, and educational books. It also can’t be lumped in with business-to-customer or business-to-business sales. It’s in a category all by itself because the world has never seen anything like this before. And very few marketers and businesses understand what to do. They continue to use old measuring sticks for success. “Please fill out this form” is the online equivalent to “for more information write to” from television and mailer marketing from years past. Page hits are like counting the number of people who enter your store. Web addresses with special character strings are the online version of 800 numbers with special numbers to indicate if an ad is working or not. This has all been done before in the world before the internet and so few have made any adjustments at all, they just continue to do what they did before.
The biggest misconception is that customers, or anyone for that matter, will come to your website and consume your content in the manner you want it consumed. This can be seen all over the internet at company websites where the content doesn’t change much, there’s no way to subscribe to the content, and no way to easily share what you’ve found. It all boils down to the idea that the customer (or researcher or whatever) has to come to you to get what they want. They have to come to your web site address and your little spot on the web just like they would have to go to a store or a library in the physical world.
Put Your Message in the Hands of the People
Something I keep coming back to in my thoughts is that web sites should think of themselves as a broadcast rather than the pages of a newspaper. Instead of requiring people come to you and absorb your content, broadcast your content to the right places and allow people to tune into you. As the internet matures and younger generations grow up with the technology, they are going to abandon the old model of “you produce content and I come absorb it.” That movement has already begun with the more tech-savvy users.
Over the course of the past few days I’ve been driven to videos, photos, web pages, store sales, and more by the people I follow. Either through Twitter or Digg or my RSS feeds I’m finding content that I never would have found before. The very idea that I’m going to waste my time to come to your web site and comb through your pages of marketing material as I scan for what I’m looking for is absurd. There was a time I used to do that but those days are over. If your content isn’t out there and people can’t find it and share it then that means your content is being overlooked. You are officially missing the boat.
I don’t have the answers to the marketing conundrum presented by the internet. But I know that the old model is the wrong approach. Feeding your information to the right sources is one aspect of a successful online presence but there’s more to it than that. And that’s where I get a little stuck. I know I’m onto something, I just don’t have all of the pieces yet.
OK. So I Was Wrong.
I really thought I was onto something when I decided to move away from the traditional site and broadcast my content. I also thought Tumblr would be an acceptable replacement for the traditional blog. But I was wrong.
I have few visitors and very few comments but I still miss the opportunity for debate. But the only way for someone to disagree with me was to take the time to write me via email or Twitter. And no one else would know that someone else had something to say and that made the content even less compelling. My content was all over the board since I could just share everything I read or saw on Tumblr. If anyone was subscribed to my feed for a specific article I’d written in the past then they would have been disappointed with what I was sharing. I need to focus.
This blog is going to be about web design, information architecture, usability, and the overall web trends that are happening. Every time I write a new post I will ask myself if it fits within those topics. If it doesn’t then I’ll use Tumblr. I will be creating my own custom theme and I will try to populate some of my tweets and tumbles here. But this site is going to be dedicated to the progression of my craft.
iPhone 2.0 App Trouble Theory
I have a theory about why there are so many apps crashing or not working on the latest version of the iPhone software. I believe that due to the nature of the iPhone’s handling of applications with no background processes, the installation of an app that you downloaded directly from the mobile version of the App Store or the direct deletion of an app right from your iPhone, the installer app (both install and delete) is killed when you try to open another application.
For example, I tried to delete 3 apps from my iPhone that I knew I wasn’t going to use anymore. I clicked the X on each app and I was asked if I really wanted to delete the app and I said ‘delete.’ At that point, the app disappears from the iPhone screen and it seems to be deleted. But what I think is going on is that it is actually being uninstalled in the background. So when I click 3 in a row like I did, it was uninstalling each one individually. As soon as I click another application, like Settings, the iPhone kills the delete process to try and open Settings. But instead of getting the Settings I get a white background where the Settings should be and then Settings crashes. At that point I can’t open any applications and frustration ensues. And there’s a half-deleted application that is still half-on/half-off of my iPhone. When I try to sync with iTunes there’s a noticeable lag in iTunes recognizing the iPhone and then I get an error about syncing the apps I was just trying to delete. This also happens when the iPhone is attempting to install a new app you just downloaded. If you don’t wait until it’s all the way done installing before opening another app, you’ll get a crash.
The kicker is that there’s no way to tell how long to wait when deleting an application. You just have to wait a while and kind of guess when it has actually been fully removed from your phone. The install process has a progress bar and a notification pop-up when it’s finished.