Technology Isn't Perfect

"No More Ticker" - Remove the new Facebook ticker on Google Chrome

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:59:00 +0000

I just made a Chrome Extension to remove the new -and annoying- Facebook Ticker!! :)

To get started, download Google Chrome -if you don’t already have it- then download the extension from here :

→ Download the extension

Once this .crx file downloaded, you just have to open it with Google Chrome.. & follow the installation process.

Enjoy!! :)

PS: Yep, I know that there are some extensions on the Chrome Webstore that do the same job.. but since Facebook is a “sensitive” website.. I couldn’t trust all those extensions.. so I decided to make one myself :D

Break time!! Let’s have some fun :)

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:12:42 +0000

Break time!! Let’s have some fun :)

Two Interfaces, One Future | The Future Of Computers and Mobile Phones User Interface - Part II

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:53:00 +0000

What if your Phone replaces your PC?

Photo credit: iPod Touch/iPhone dock, made of bread - Alex Efimov.

I know many people will definitely say “no!!!”, without taking any time to think about it, and those people are programmers, designers, geeks… They need powerful computers and they’ll with no doubt shift their cool i7 computers with “simple” mobile phones :P.

As we see, smart phones are being more and more powerful and tasks like text editing, email, web browsing… - which are the most used activities- are as cool to use in the phone as in the PC. Except the fact that using a real keyboard to write is more comfortable ;) .

So the solution would be to create a kind of dock for mobiles that makes it possible to connect to a set of display screen, mouse and keyboard. This solution is most likely to be possible. In deed, many concepts present this kind of technology: Mozilla Seabird, Microsoft Mobile Surface.

But let’s think about it.

This solution is easy to be done, even now, no need to see it as a “futuristic” thing. Most phones have a video output and a simple Bluetooth connection can be used to connect to the keyboard & the mouse.

But there is a problem -of course, otherwise I wouldn’t have written this article :D. It’s all about the interface, IT’S NOT READY YET FOR BIG SCREENS!! (See Part I ).

We can say that Android is the one who can be used now for this purpose because it has a desktop, icons, and folders… But still, it’s not perfect. Using it with a mouse will not be so cool unless we change some things to adapt it to the mouse use that the user can have a rich user-experience.

And this is another reason why we should create a new interface for mobile phones as well as computers, an interface that combines both touch and cursor usage (see part I).

I’ll soon publish a mockup of how could this dock look like.

You can do it too, just publish a link to your mockup in the Facebook page: [Technology Isn’t Perfect], I’ll publish some of yours on the blog :).

Don’t forget that this kind of articles are just to make us think, to create a little light on our minds that shows us many things we can do and that we should never stay limited by what we see, because:

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

-Alan Kay

Have a great time,

Amine

Two Interfaces, One Future | The Future Of Computers and Mobile Phones User Interface - Part I

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:33:00 +0000

Computers are now touchable, but.

Photo credit: Evernote - Johan Larsson.

Let’s forget the title a second and focus on this date: January 2007. Do you know what this date refers to? Uh? No, the earth didn’t stop spinning that month… :)

January 2007 refers to 2 things actually. On January 9, 2007, Apple introduced a product that gave a real meaning to the word “touch”: the iPhone. With the iPhone and its amazing touchable screen, people discovered a new way to use their phones, to play games and to connect to each others.

But, two days before the official announcement of the iPhone, another touchable product was announced, but this time by another company: Microsoft. On January 7, 2007 , Bill Gates introduced the first touchable desktop PC: HP TouchSmart, which can be used as a normal computer or as a touchscreen.

From these 2 announcements, the technology industry was officially in a kind of war. Every company wanted it own touch product. The touch was THE thing to have.

Back to 2010, only 3 years after the start of the “Touch Buzz”, touch products are now clearly the future of IT.

But let’s think about it.

What made the touch products from 2007 cool? I mean that touch screens did existed, but, from the announcement of the iPhone, everything was being renovated.

The reason is the iPhone was the first touch device with such an amazing interface. Apple has always been one of the companies that innovated in the interface design - this confirms their first initiative to bring a user-friendly interface to operating systems in the beginning of the personal computers’ revolution. And with the iPhone, they invented a new way of user interaction, a new user experience. So icons, animations, buttons…were all adapted for fingers touch, no need anymore for a stylus to interact with the touchscreen, and the icing on the cake, the iPhone’s screen was multitouch, you can use more than one finger to move things, zoom or play…

So let’s see why I chose this title. Let’s take for example the TouchSmart PC, it’s a cool computer I had an opportunity to try, the touch quality is quiet good, but what made it unfavorable for me was the OS running. The TouchSmart was running Windows 7. I’m not saying that Windows 7 is bad; yet, the OS is GREAT, but for a mouse use only. Actually, all the computer operating systems’ are not so suitable for a touch use, and you can now realize why Apple made a new mobile adapted OS ( iOS ) which they used for the iPhone as well as the iPad. And, yes, the iPad with a large (touchable) screen -and so approaches a computer’s screen- was commercialized with iOS, the touch system by Apple, because they knew that Mac OS wasn’t suitable for the iPad -without forgetting that they’ll also lose the mobile apps advantage if they would have done so.

So the question now is: If the future of technology is touch, for when THE operating system that will make the difference? The OS that’ll be cool for mouse use as well as touch use? And how would it be like: and mobile phone like interface, a normal computer interface with some tweaks (the actual interface) or a new one specially made for touchable computers?

As you may have noticed, this topic was divided in parts (I don’t know yet how many parts there will be), but keep checking the blog to know that ;) .

The blog has a Facebook page; you can use it to see the latest news from the blog. Visit the links bellow to follow the news:

Twitter: @techisntperfect

Facebook page: Technology Isn’t Perfect

Technology Isn't Perfect

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 01:50:00 +0000

Photo credit: Who Else Has A Bright Idea? by nhuisman.

That’s all this blog is about.

You may have seen products, apps or web sites that left you amazed by their usability, their design or their utility. But if you take some time to think about each of them, you’ll certainly find something to change, to add, you’ll certainly find something you don’t like or find useless. And then you think that maybe we could have this menu gone and replaced by something else, maybe a button that could be removed, a new functionality to be added…This blog is about all those “maybes” that keep coming in our minds, about those “personal bugs” -I’ll comeback to it later- that need a correction.

In the technology field - as well as in every domain - users are always complaining, they’re never fully satisfied by the product they are using. By this, I mean that depending on their needs, they’ll certainly want to change somethings.. and if you ask them how the product could look like, or what changes we can make to improve it, the answers will be different, because each user have his personal vision of the improvement depending on his needs, habits…

Thus, in every product, users can see things that may need a change or improvement - that I called “personal bugs” earlier- and this depends on every single user (needs, habits..). Those bugs are special, because if we take the best of them, and discuss all those ideas, they can lead to create new content, they can help to innovate.

This is why I made this blog, to share all those ideas and put them all together that we can discuss them, and bring them to life if we can or helping other people do so.

Don’t forget to follow this blog ;) , you can also get the latest news on twitter @techisntperfect.

Regards,

Amine