Well, Microsoft isn’t standing still on the collaboration arena – as a neat counterpoint to iWork‘s enhancements, we’re getting a Sharepoint and Office Live client and (finally!) proper Entourage Task, Note, and Category syncing with Exchange. Or, at least, public betas thereof with “final product later in the year”.

Conspiracy theorists need not apply here, I’ve been expecting/praying for these…

Yep, the last MacWorld keynote is over. And, across the Internet, everyone is weighing in on “the last MacWorld that mattered”, so even though I’m being pestered to play Mario Kart by every one of my colleagues who got a Wii for Xmas, I thought “why not?” and whipped out my laptop.

First off, a note on form. I think that getting Phil Schiller to deliver this was a good way for Apple to show that Steve’s presence, although important, isn’t mandatory for launching new products. And yet, I’m certain that a good many people will do him the injustice of saying this was “the worst keynote ever” (or other inane and immature ramblings) without even having been there, or (even worse) damn him with faint praise.

Not having been there (or seen the video yet), I nevertheless am compelled to think (from written transcripts and previous appearances) that he did more than just “a good job”. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be an Apple VP.

As to the keynote announcements, I think it was all about as could be (realistically) expected, considering that MacWorld has always been about the Mac and satellite products and that all of the announcements actually made sense (both the software suites and the 17” MacBook were in dire need of a refresh).

Of course, I’m already seeing widespread evidence that the news coverage is being anything but realistic. Particularly concerning the 17” MacBook, I couldn’t care less about it or the built-in battery.

That boat (pun intended) has sailed, even though we’re sure to have to wade through weeks’ worth of pointless rants regarding it.

The iTunes stuff was… kind of predictable if you follow the industry at all, and (of course) none of the stupid netbook/phone/whatever rumors panned out.

On Rumors

Before putting forth my take on what I gleaned from such sources as Ars’ coverage (yeah, we all know MacRumorsLive was “hacked” – life goes on, and people eventually learn to code better management interfaces…), there are a few things that I’ve been mulling.

Every year around this time I wish someone took the rumor mongers to task and published a summary rundown of every Apple rumor published over the past month or so. I’ll even provide a template and a couple of examples:

Rumor	Source	Published On	Target Date/Event	Accuracy
iPhone nano	some random accessory maker	(insert site name and date here)	MWSF‘09
17” MacBook with non-removable battery	someone with a clue	many more places by tomorrow	MWSF‘09
Apple webpad	“trusted sources”/wannabe analyst	everywhere, by now, around three times every month	every year around this time	(for effort)

…etc. You get the idea. If someone actually went ahead and published this nice, clean table somewhere (as the simplest possible thing), we can refer to the rumors, their sources and the idiots who published them, as well as matching any new rumors against the old ones.

I think it would be a pretty popular site¹. Maybe isthisapplerumortrue.com would be a nice domain name for it. Or, in homage to the (subliminally brilliant) Tony Bennet song selection for the finale, thebestisyettocome.com…

The “missing” mini

Most people whom I’ve been tracking on Twitter seem to think this is the (midget) elephant in the room, i.e., they were waiting for a new, revamped mini.

My personal take is that the mini refresh makes some sense, even though it is (literally) the runt of the Mac litter and never seemed to be something Apple invested much time and effort in marketing.

Then again, I have long been an advocate of there being some kind of home server (in largely the same fashion I once wrote about what “Apple” could do regarding mobile services and .Mac), but am realistic enough to acknowledge that that, if it happens, probably won’t rate more than a press release in this new, exciting age of Apple actually managing their own marketing agenda outside the trade show circus trail…

Note to Conspiracy Theorists: mix in any wishful thinking you might have concerning an Apple TV refresh. Discuss.

iLife

I wouldn’t call iLife’09 earth-shattering (especially not considering that with every iteration it seems to make iPhoto slower in real life), but there are a few things that struck my fancy.

For starters, proper geo-tagging was long overdue. I’ve been hacking away at EXIF for years now and am (sometimes painfully) aware of all the little nitty-gritty details that have to fall into place, so I’ll just brush aside the last four years or so and leave it at that².

And yet, due to the lack of a really simple UI for it, I’ve always been rather lax in adding location information to photos. But I have found it more and more useful since last year, and it’s great to see that they went well beyond the extra mile and that we’ll get some great-looking maps (courtesy of Google) and the ability to name locations. I personally find it very, very interesting indeed, for a number of reasons³.

I see Facebook and Flickr integration as Apple (finally) acknowledging that there is demand for other photo sharing services than their own. Many people will point out that Picasa is now also available on the Mac, but I personally don’t like it much, and it – regrettably – feels very alien on the Mac due to its use of some kind of WINE-like solution.

Conspiracy Theorists: discuss whether or not MobileMe Gallery will become extinct or suffer an upgrade because of this, and try to draw a correlation between Picasa’s recent Mac port and today’s events, if any.

Still, on a more personal level, I find the Faces stuff as being the most interesting enhancement, both because I am fully aware of how demanding face recognition is and because the most common tag I have on my main iPhoto library (some 30.000 strong) is… the kid’s name.

I (like many others) tag each photo with each person’s name, and if the face detection actually works under the tremendously varying circumstances one comes across, including having many people in the same shot (something which is pretty hard), then I’m sold.

I have three qualms regarding the new iPhoto as far as my personal needs and wants are concerned:

1. I have a feeling this will only work properly on a pretty beefy machine, and my current iPhoto repository is… a G4 mini, which is the house server.
2. Based on plenty of previous experience for many years now, I don’t think it will update EXIF data on the photos themselves and stick to maintaining metadata separately (which sucks, bigtime). I sincerely hope I’m wrong here, because it’s the wrong way to do things. Metadata belongs on the photos themselves, not locked away on the iPhoto database.
3. Getting an iPhoto album printed and shipped to Portugal is (for now, at least) still an imperfect experience (we have to pretend we’re Spanish, which is somewhat ridiculous and, as you may well understand, isn’t generally accepted by the overall populace).

The rest is, huh… Ok, I guess. I don’t do movie editing and I don’t have time to learn to play the guitar (although there’s a guitar and a seldom-used piano in the house), so I don’t really care.

iWork

iWork’09 is a bit more interesting, though – at least relatively speaking, since I prefer Office 2008 and its native(ish) file format handling over ‘lite’ apps.

Sure, the new effects in Keynote are (as usual) pretty cool, but… I value clarity and structured content in presentations, and flashy stuff doesn’t add that much value in my neck of the woods. I do believe that a lot of TV newsrooms are going to have a ball with it, and that’s that.

The rest of the native apps are… humdrum, in a way, even if the Mac Box Set looks like a clever marketing ploy to round up the few stragglers that haven’t upgraded to Leopard yet. One purchase, and they get the whole enchilada, so to speak.

Conspiracy theorists: is the Mac Box Set is targeted at Hackintosh users? Again, discuss, but now without any sharp implements.

The only thing I really want is a Microsoft PowerPoint equivalent⁴ of the new Keynote Remote. Even though I favor simple two-button presentation controllers, that little app would be pretty damn useful for addressing big audiences.

The Online Collaboration Gambit

As to iWork.com, and having worked on all manner of CSCW since, oh, 1994 or something, I see it more as Apple’s take on Microsoft’s Sharepoint than (as other people have already gone on about) a more polished Google Docs.

Some Windows-minded theorists have previously put forward the notion that Apple is going for the stuff Microsoft has been delivering for years at the corporate level (Office, assorted OS features, etc.) and making it available to mom-and-pop shops. And extending that notion to iWork.com as a simplified Sharepoint sort of makes sense.

And maybe they have a leg to stand on, although my take is threefold:

1. Apple has occasionally (and timidly) dipped into CSCW (if mostly as research)
2. They believe having online services matters
3. They are certain that people will pay for simple collaborative tools that are seamless enough to use without hassle

And let me tell you that collaboration is extremely hard to do without hassle.

But everyone is going to ignore all of that and just try to compare it to Google Docs.

Still, I think it’s a good benchmark – sure, let’s wait and see how it stacks up with Google Docs not merely in terms of looks, but in terms of actual functionality (and speed, and compatibility, etc.).

But Apple is bound to be acutely aware that Google’s stuff not only has two orders of magnitude more likely users but also still seems to be trying to solve a problem that people in general effectively don’t have – at least not every day.

My point is that Apple isn’t doing this on a whim. Someone worked out the math for a business case and it was cleared to become a product (a decision which isn’t taken lightly there, regardless of what some people may think).

And even if Google’s is free, it’s not directly tied (yet) to a native office suite (which, believe me, makes all the difference in terms of usability).

In summary, I like the idea overall, and look forward to watching a demo and/or trying it out (as time permits).

Conspiracy Theorists: Complain that this is what MobileMe was supposed to be according to some rumor or another, and herald it as the office suite for the future Apple netbook/webpad. Pine for the as-yet nonexistent hardware yet again and/or complain about the price.

One Last Thing…

I’ve noticed that most of the people ranting about the matte display option on the 17” not being available on “regular” MacBooks don’t understand about component sourcing for manufacturing and the hassle that build-to-order is in terms of stocks, logistics, etc.

Yes, sure, Apple deals with component manufacturers in bulk, but it’s not just about an added cost for a different (and admittedly lower-volume) non-default part.

It also has to do with it being easier (and cheaper) to allow for a different SKU in machines that will have lower production volumes (and where exceptions can be handled more easily) than on the higher volume (and less configurable) devices.

Still, I, too, wish it could be done. I hate my black MacBook’s reflective screen with a passion.

—

¹ Who knows, it might even become a better business model than whoring rumors for clicks. ↩

² I started that particular Wiki node in 2005, and was interested in it even before it deserved a node of its own. ↩

³ In case you missed that bit, I now work in location services, and Apple just gave me a great set of new toys… ↩

⁴ With the same degree of polish. There are third-party alternatives already out there, but I’d rather have something from Microsoft. ↩

My year in review post spawned an interesting amount of personal correspondence, and a couple of people have asked me (both due to my Disclaimer and my rare mentions of work) two distinct, but closely related questions:

1. If I would/could consider blogging (openly, without reservation) about my work and what I do at my company if they asked me to.
2. If I would ever accept that a company included a “gag order” in my contract (as apparently some companies are doing) preventing me from discussing any technical or business issues online.

As it happens, my answer would be yes to both – guardedly, but undoubtedly. Let’s go through these in turn, shall we?

The Background Static

First off, let’s try to understand what the water is like before dipping in.

According to Technorati’s state of the Blogosphere for 2008 (which, like any kind of statistics, should be taken with a pinch of salt), corporate and/or professional blogs are becoming widely popular, not just in absolute terms but also in terms of reach.

And although the outlook seems mostly positive, when you start trying to correlate data to figure out if it actually makes sense to have corporate blogs, things start to get muddled.

I think this chart (taken from here) shows it best:

There is quite a bit of overlap, and that’s really no surprise. There are plenty of “blogs” that straddle the personal and business domains¹. And, as we all know, the distinction between content and advertising is blurring fast.

For instance, this very nice table (taken from here) makes it plain that brands do gain a degree of exposure from blogs:

What I don’t agree with, however, is that the intersection between that exposure and blog credibility is necessarily worth the risk for a corporation.

The pundits and blogosphere nuts in the audience will at this point start piping that the perception of authority regarding blogs seems to be increasingly positive…

…which makes for a very pretty chart until you take a step back and remember that this is Technorati’s take, based on a panel of… bloggers.

So there is a significant echo chamber effect here, and the chart above tells us more about bloggers’ navel-gazing than true authority³.

Going Pro

First off, allow me to state that I still stand by what I wrote three years ago – i.e., that blogging does not necessarily have a positive effect on your career. More to the point, I think that the following chart (taken from here) is mostly bunk:

…and that it, too, is a result of the “echo chamber” effect of surveying bloggers about blogs.

Still, I have no doubt whatsoever that I could take up doing a corporate blog. In fact, there is considerable openness inside Vodafone to the notion of internal blogs – there’s even a pretty active Wiki, and the company intranet continues to grow by leaps and bounds⁴, which was fun to have seen grow from nothing to a pretty active culture.

And I have, once or twice, wondered about starting an internal blog. The thing is that not only do some of the things I wrote back in 2005 still apply, but I simply have no spare time. Referring to the Technorati figures one last time, consider these two charts, which reflect an insane amount of time spent writing and a breakneck pace in posting:

Me, I’m lucky if I have half an hour a day to use a computer at home⁵, let alone spend this much time pouring my intellectual guts out on the Internet (or an Intranet, or anywhere else by that matter).

Good writing takes time, and the kind of writing I prefer (short, concise, focused) takes at least twice as much. Pascal (not Mark Twain, like a lot of people think) said it best:

“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter.”

And I, at least, don’t think that there are many well-written blogs out there – regardless of editorial/personal style, the quality of writing on the Internet at large isn’t that hot, and even though there is no direct, mathematically correct way to correlate the graphs above without the source data, it’s plain that the output of all those hours folk spend on their blogs is biased towards quantity rather than quality.

But going back to where it regards my taking up an “official” assignment, there’s another (somewhat related) barrier, which is that writing quality prose is seldom a valued activity outside the media industry – and judging by the declining standards of most publications, maybe not even there.

So there would have to be a number of adjustments (both cultural and in terms of subject matter). Not to mention that I prefer to write as a way to relax, and writing even the least bit of a blog post at the office feels completely wrong to me. For now, at least, the cons clearly outweigh the pros.

Still, it’s something I can see myself doing if everything fell into place. Beats me if it will ever happen, but provided I could avoid turning into a PR mouthpiece (hard, given that I sometimes do PR myself), it would probably be fun.

But, on my private time, I prefer to err on the side of caution.

The Brick Wall

As to removing my web presence altogether if the company required it, the answer would also be yes. A clear, resounding “yes, of course.”

Even if it pains some people to read this, if I ever went to work for, say, Apple or another company that made it a requirement to do so (like some management consultancies), I would vanish from the face of the Internet as best as I could – which is tough, considering the wayback machine and whatnot, but entirely feasible.

And yeah, that includes time sinks like Facebook (which I practically don’t maintain) or Twitter (which I tolerate only because most of my friends seem to be on it these days), and any other form of social network. I would most likely freeze everything except LinkedIn (which is a better and less intrusive way of keeping track of colleagues), and wipe all the content there if whoever wanted to employ me asked me to⁶.

As much as I love writing in general, the challenge of working at one of those places would far outweigh the loss of one creative outlet (and I suppose I could devote more time to other hobbies like outdoor photography or music).

There are no absolutes in either scenario. There would be no loss of individuality either way, too, given that I’m rather a bit more than a bunch of prose rendered as HTML, and don’t intend to have my whole life hinging on whether or not my writing is out there for everyone to see.

The bottom line is that the present, like they say, is merely a convenient arrangement for everyone concerned.

So enjoy it while it lasts.

—

¹ I have (many) gripes with the Technorati numbers and methodology, since the numbers belie inputs from bloggers that would otherwise be considered news site owners rather than individuals… ↩

² These, in case you haven’t noticed, are the idiots. The sentence “about company information or gossip I hear about” can be read in at least two ways, but that essentially means the questionnaire fostered that ambiguity. ↩

³ I personally can’t wait until the local Portuguese blogosphere pundits start rolling out their personal take on this and make fools of themselves for yet another year, but that’s beside the point now. ↩

⁴ This, by the way, is public information. ↩

⁵ I honestly have no idea of where people find enough time to blog. This post was started on December 29th, late in the evening, and has been written in 15-minute slices for nearly a week, in between holidays, errands and family life. ↩

⁶ I would, of course, expect them to be nice and up front about it. ↩

Here’s a nice way to start the year – dealing with iPhone bugs.

I’ll make it short and simple: while downloading and archiving photos from my iPhone, I came across a few inconsistencies in the EXIF data, namely:

• A photo taken during Xmas eve had no EXIF tags whatsoever
• Two photos taken on Dec 31st 2008 had the date one year in the future:

$ jhead IMG_0353.JPG
File name    : IMG_0353.JPG
File size    : 817115 bytes
File date    : 2009:01:02 12:01:37
Camera make  : Apple
Camera model : iPhone
Date/Time    : 2009:12:31 15:45:53
Resolution   : 1200 x 1600
Aperture     : f/2.8
GPS Latitude : N XXd XX.XXm  0s
GPS Longitude: W  Xd XX.XXm  0s
Comment      : AppleMark

Although I have CameraBag installed, none of those was taken (or otherwise manipulated) with it or any other third-party app, since I seldom use anything but the camera (and even when I use CameraBag, I like to have the originals around).

Given that firmware 2.2 is apparently rife with image handling bugs, I suppose this isn’t too surprising, but since I archive all my photos by date using jhead and a few helper scripts, this drops a very large spanner in the workings of my photo workflow.

(One could argue that images taken with an iPhone aren’t really “photography”. but all my years dealing with EXIF and phones tell me that if there is one thing that you absolutely need to get right on those are the time-stamps – otherwise, taking photos with your mobile as a memory aid becomes rather pointless.)

I fully intend to file this on Radar, but only after searching OpenRadar to see if there are any dupes. Still, I would suggest that you take a good look at the photos you’ve been importing into iPhoto from your own phone, preferably using jhead or a similar non-Apple utility (although iPhoto and Preview also display the same erroneous dates).

And now I am going to go back and check the other 230-odd photos, matching them against my memory of when they were taken…

Well, title says it all, really. For years now, we’ve been sending out New Year SMS messages in hex, octal and (once, when I was really, really bored) in binary. And every year I’d whip up some neat graphic, optimize it to bits, and send it out via MMS as a personal note (complete, in some instances, with hand-picked MIDIs for good measure).

This year, since I’m using an iPhone, the joys of mass-messaging my entire address book, forwarding on “cute” messages or sending out a mini holiday e-card are not to be, although I’m positive our folk are tossing around more than a few MMSes, which go up against the proverbial brick wall when they address them to me.

I’ve been fiddling with the site logo over the holiday season to compensate, but yeah, I’m feeling kind of left out of the multi-million SMS and MMS extravaganza that fills the Portuguese holidays with beeps and chimes from every pocket.

But hey, there’s Twitter and stuff. Now I can just mass-message the entire Internet, in one go:

A Very Happy New Year to everyone, and see you on the other side!