Josh's Thoughts

Adobe launched Adobe Photoshop Express today. It’s a free web-based trimmed down version of Photoshop that requires Flash 9 and gives each user 2GB of online storage. I just signed up for my free account. The app is very polished, but occasionally slow. I am currently attempting to upload my first picture a 76k photo of me and my friend Jen outside of BLT Fish. It’s obviously not a large picture, but the upload took approximately 20 seconds. Pretty understandable if everyone is hammering it today, but I hope it gets much faster in the future.

My first impressions:

• The user experience seems solid. I’m a bit more than a novice at Photoshop, and I had no problems figuring out how to do basic common image manipulations in Express. The only complaint is that it seems to be unnecessarily sluggish in some areas, but that could be a product of the user experience feeling so much like a piece of software that my brain isn’t registering the standard Web limitations in the same way I would with other web-based applications.
• The design is polished and seems to be more closely aligned with Apple’s UI guidelines than Microsoft’s or Photoshop’s.
• When trying to access an external album on Facebook (they import from Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa) I had bit of a problem when I decided to cancel out of the process. The window to Facebook didn’t go away no matter how many times I clicked “Close” and I ended up having to refresh and log back in. I’m using the most recent version of Firefox.
• They’ve integrated some nice photo sharing features like email to friends, link to, and embed which are pretty standard on most photo sharing sites, but are nice to see in a photo manipulation tool. I might try them up once I upload a few more photos.
• In “view as table” mode it wasn’t initially obvious how to edit information about the photo (adding a caption for example), but once I figured out to just click on the blank space where a caption would have been it made sense. This is similar to editing a contact in Addressbook, something I’ve complained about for a long time.
• When creating my first album, the instructional text asked me to drag photos over to create an album. When I did, I was able to create an album, but the photo I dragged over wasn’t in it. Not sure if I did something wrong or the app is behaving oddly. The fact that there was no explanation for the unexpected behavior is not optimal.

Overall it’s a pleasant application experience, and a perfect use of Flex. I don’t take or share many photos, so it’s probably not something that I’ll use often. If I have the time, I might google around to see what real photo nuts have to say about it.

Full review on C|Net that points out an interesting fact about the TOS and that users can’t print, upload directories, import contacts, or upload enormous files yet. In the comments a few people complained that the confirmation email took a long time to show up in their inboxes. I also noticed a slight delay in the confirmation email. Which makes me wonder why Adobe decided it was necessary that users have a verified email address, especially considering that they also include a captcha. Having to verify an email address is very disruptive to the sign up process, definitely reduces registration numbers, and the only gain is to ensure ability to contact users. It’s not as if having an email address is a prerequisite to owning a digital camera. I would have considered merely asking users to enter their email addresses twice and making the out of band verification process an aside.

So someone threw a lit cigarette butt out of their window from a couple floors above mine and lit the trash on fire. The fire filled the hallway by my bedroom with smoke and probably could have caused a major disaster. The building manager posted a notice asking people not to do that, but still hasn’t taken the time to mop and disinfect the floor in the basement where all of the sewage backed up. I totally understand not wanting the building to burn down. I don’t want it to burn down either. I just don’t understand why, if they’re obviously at the building putting out fires, they can’t take the time to clean up the damn mess in the basement. They did sweep all of the water/sewage up and it’s not like there is poo on the floor, but I do think bleach or disinfectant should be involved if they really want to avoid a plague.

Chris Webber is retiring, and he’s retiring without a championship. The only thing better than seeing Chris Webber retire without any jewelry is having been lucky enough to watch Karl Malone do the same. In memory of Webber’s career, please join me in a chant:

“Over-Rated” “Over-Rated” “Over-Rated”

Courtesy of Fox Sports

“And he was finished.

Somehow it figured to end this way for Webber – nothing but empty promises, just at varying levels. Even so, he played in four All-Star games and his career numbers are special. But he was never destined to win the biggest prize, not on the collegiate level, nor in the NBA.”

Experienced something brand new today. It didn’t kill me, but I doubt it’s made me any stronger.

I live in a duplex in Manhattan with a roommate. It’s not luxury, but it’s definitely not cheap. We pay enough money to have some reasonable expectations about the quality of the building and general maintenance. We’ve lived there for about five months now, and have had nothing but problems. When we moved in, the unit had just been remodeled – new floors, recessed lighting, new kitchen, new bathrooms, the works. It looked good, and things seemed to work. However it turns out that it seems to have been remodeled by a bunch of special needs elementary students on a field trip. Btw, I really don’t mean for this post to denigrate children with special needs. In all honesty they probably could have done a much better job than the assholes who worked on my apt. In fact, I think my most recent apt manager qualifies as special needs, and he is remarkably able to hold down a job and occasionally answer his work-related mobile phone all by his-self.

Back to the story.

In the five months we’ve lived in this apt we have noticed the following:

• Front door buzzer won’t turn off
• There is no way to get out of the basement (where the laundry room is) when the elevator doesn’t work because there are no stairs
• The dryers are consistently broken (reported to super)
• Pipes bang so loud that it sounds like a marching band is playing upstairs (reported multiple times to management)
• Water leaks from the base of my roommates toilet and from an exposed hot water pipe in his bathroom (reported multiple times to management)
• Water leaks from radiators (reported multiple times to management)
• Heat does not come on consistently (reported to management and there have been violation notices)
• Water leak caused by mis-installation of valves caused the ceiling of my bathroom and part of my bedroom to cave in and soak my entire room (obviously reported)
• When they fixed the ceiling they never finished, mis-installed a hatch in the ceiling recommended by the plumber in case there’s a future problem, and left me to clean up the mess
• New neighbors have complained of mice (reported to management)
• One window does not open or close properly
• Numerous state and city notices near the post boxes stating violations including at least 1 for heat and another for waste disposal
• I have seen at least 3 different building managers and multiple supers since moving in. I am certain that no one in the building knows who to contact if there’s a problem
• This morning the basement of the building flooded with sewage (SHIT) and my shower drain backed up putting sewage (SHIT) in my shower (reported to management)

OK did you read the last bullet point? If not, please read it again.

At this point I am so angry I don’t even know what to do.

OK. So a couple months ago I bitched about not being able to find any books on web product management. Interestingly enough, Amazon sent me an email a week ago telling me to pre-order “Subject to Change: Creating Greate Products & Services for an Uncertain World” by Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path. Now I don’t know if the book will address the stuff that crosses my mind when developing a new product, but I have a feeling it will be a damn good read.

It looks like it’s going to be out sometime at the end of April. I’ve never actually pre-ordered a book, not even the last Harry Potter, but this one is going on my list for sure.

Wow! In a show of complete incompetence and lack of concern for customers – HP Refuses to Update Certain Printer Drivers for Leopard (Courtesy: Gizmodo). It’s not like Leopard isn’t the best selling OS Apple has put out or anything.

This isn’t a surprise to all the folks who’ve found my little blog via Google or all the folks who are looking for help on HP’s forums. Is there anyone listening at HP?

I’ve been a product manager for a few years now, and if I browsed the web and saw this many complaints about my products I’d be pretty upset. Does Mark Hurd (Chairman and CEO) ever google the products his company makes to see how people really feel about them? His face is on a contact page on the corporate site, so maybe he should get an email or two.

The Lakers are currently 42-18 and just squeezed by the Mavs in overtime w/ a 52 point performance by Kobe. The Lakers are my NBA team and have been ever since I went to my first game in 4th grade. Note: They lost that game to the Clippers, but I came away with a fantastic “Big Game” James Worthy poster.

I was doubtful at the beginning of the season (so was everyone except my friend Glenn), but with the addition of Pau Gasol, I’ve regained my confidence. When the Lakers win the championship this season there are going to be a lot of people saying that trading Shaq was the right thing to do. On that point, I’ll just say that I was disappointed to see Shaq go just like I was disappointed when Eddie Jones left, but another championship banner won’t hurt.

If I had a car, I’d have one of those lame flags poking up from the passenger side window.

Went to MoMA today to check out the “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibit mentioned in my earlier post about the Nokia Morph. While there I realized that I love compelling and thought provoking exhibits, but I hate going to them. It’s always a matter of time. When exhibits are crowded I never have enough time to explore without feeling pressured to move on, and when I go to an exhibit with other people they never move quickly enough through the uninteresting parts. I like to browse exhibits like I browse the Web. Zooming through until something catches my eye, then stopping at length to explore the eye-catcher in detail. I’ve been known to zoom through an entire museum in less than an hour just because nothing caught my eye. Maybe I’m a philistine who should stick to television and TMZ, but maybe it’s because much of what is called art is truly and objectively uninteresting. It’s like the time I went to Barnes & Noble when I was a teenager and realized that a majority of books are so unoriginal that they never should have been written in the first place.

OK so my take on the exhibit (I won’t go into detail about the specific pieces because I don’t have the time)… Pretty damn cool with the occasional yawner. Put simply the exhibit focused on the future of design as technology affects what can be done. They had pieces on organically influenced design, human sensory extension, genetic design, interaction design, material design, information visualization, nanotechnology and molecular design, and probably some other crap I missed cause it was too crowded.

The nanotechnology stuff was interesting, but too small to see. Ha. Actually it was probably the most interesting as an example of how technology will cause a fundamental shift in what is possible for designers. Speaking of small, the interaction design section was WAY too small. I admit that I’m biased because of my affinity for IxD, but I doubt if anyone wouldn’t have been disappointed with the samples of future interaction design displayed. There was some good stuff focused on information visualization, but it definitely seemed more art than product. Not a bad thing for an art exhibit, but I would have liked to have gotten more of a sense of proposed value. One thing that strikes me is the number of exhibits that focused on mobile communications devices that look like mobile phones. There’s something deep in my soul that whispers to me every time I see a futuristic mobile phone. It whispers “twenty-five years ago there were no mobile phones, what makes people think that in twenty-five more year there still will be?”

One thing that really stood out at the museum was a kiosk in the book store on the 6th floor. The kiosk is in place to allow visitors to select and purchase prints from the museum and have them sent directly to their address. It’s supposed to be a one stop shop for buying prints. Here are the instructions:

1. Select your MoMA print using the touch screen catalog
2. Decide on the size of your print
3. Review framing options
4. Confirm your order
5. Please go to the register to pay for your order
6. Your print will be delivered to your chosen address

Notice anything umm retarded in that process? If not, please take a closer look at # 5. It’s absolutely ridiculous that they could not have added credit card processing. Why in the world would you disrupt the process like that? It’s as if you went to Amazon.com and at checkout they asked you to call in to purchase your order. It’s sad. No wonder the interaction design component of the exhibit was limited.