Certain

New iPod touch and nano

New iPods. iPod touches are guarantied, so are nanos. I believe that the rumors of a touch-based nano is true, but I don’t know if the screen is the only input.

The iPod Touch will be much more like the iPhone 4, certainly on the inside but also partially on the outside. At least one camera should be a given, but I won’t say for certain if it will be front, back or both. My gut feeling is that there will be both, but that the back cam won’t mach the iPhone 4′s.

Likely

iPod classic and shuffle

I don’t know about the iPod classic or the shuffle, but my guess is that the shuffle will be replaced or dropped. The classic is dependant on how much the storage is increased in the touch.

New iTunes

I haven’t read anything to suggest this, but I believe that Apple will launch a streaming service and iTunes X (10) to follow. It will have both music and movie streaming.

iTV

This rumor comes from the almighty Kevin Rose. The Apple TV will be redone based on iOS and renamed to iTV. It will be a part of the grand streaming plan. It will be priced to sell at $99.

The only rumor I won’t buy is the 720p limit. It would be downright stupid to have such a limit. It would put of many buyers, me included.

iOS 4 for iPad

This would be very possible. This hasn’t been mentioned in rumors, but the time is right. Media features may be the excuse for launching it at this event.

Unlikely but possible

• New iPhone with fixed antenna
• iTV is an actual TV
• New Macbook Air (with iOS?)

Edging to impossible

• Steve jobs uses the word “sorry” related to the antenna issue

Sunset from a family restaurant in Platanias

I’m back from a week in Greece. I chose not to tell you beforehand because of insurance reasons. I had a great time, both relaxing and getting much inspiration for food and drinks. I’m experimenting my way to the perfect frozen strawberry daiquiri and much more.

Being away from technology for week was easier and more refreshing than I’d expected. Getting back to my web habits will likely take some days, but I’ll hopefully throw up some articles and recipes soon. I’m also looking forward to my new iPhone project together with Kristian Hjelle. In his words:

Kristian Hjelle and Thomas Sunde Nielsen (That’s me) = awesome little application. In the meantime, enjoy your tea!

My nuke station

Every IT department should have a way to securely erase old hard drives before you throw them way. This is my suggestion for a DIY solution.

Find some free desk space

It helps to have a permanent place to do this. It can be dual-purpose as a test lab, but should not be someones desk. A great dual use is to use the same desk space for fixing problematic computers and preparing new ones.

Find a spare monitor, keyboard and mouse

These doesn’t need to be any good, just usable. I use an old HP 17″ flat screen and old PS/2 keyboard and mouse. If I weren’t using a permanent nuking machine, I’d go for USB instead.

The nuke machine

Here you have two options. You can either bring every computer to nuke to this desk, or you can take out the hard drives and have a permanent machine at the place.

I chose the latter one because many of the hard drives I need to nuke are in non-working computers.

Preferably the computer you choose has both SATA and IDE connectors. If not, you can find many nice external disk connection kits that use USB or firewire (or use E-SATA).

I use an old Dell Optiplex small form factor computer, because it is easy to open and replace the drives.

The software

Screenshot of DBAN. I use the autonuke option.

You can probably buy some expensive software to use, but I prefer to use Darik’s boot and nuke. It is free and very secure. Nobody will ever be able to recover the data when DBAN is done. The computer you use must be able to boot from a CD for this software to work.

Just download the CD image and burn to a CD, and you’re ready to go. Put the CD in the CD drive of the “victim” computer, and restart.

You might need to set the CD to a higher boot priority in the BIOS if the software doesn’t automatically run.

I use the autonuke option, because it is easy and will thoroughtly clean the system for all data.

Tips

• WARNING: All attached drives will be ereased, including USB drives!
• The time it takes to nuke a disk depends on the capacity and speed of the disk.
• Don’t use this for SSDs if you plan to reuse them! This can permanently degrade the performance!
• You can connect multiple disks at once.

Safari launching on an iPhone (it took many tries to get this screenshot right!)

More and more gadgets use fancy animated graphics. From your cellphone to your high-end Linux box running Compiz Fusion, they’re all looking better than ever. But animation is more than looks. And today I’m going to cover many of the benefits of animations in software, from multiple angles.

Animations are exciting

Animations makes people go “Ooh” and “Aah”. This makes people happy, and they’ll be more likely to like the software. Even Vista with all its problems was famous for its Aero flip 3D. Bringing animations to your software also makes it seem more professional and complete. Static software is boring, animations are not. Too much is not good either, so finding a place in the middle is important.

Using animation to hide slowness

Everybody hates slow software. Animation is a great way to hide this. Of course, the best solution is to make software faster. But when this is not possible because of limitations in hardware, animations can be a great solution.

A very good example of this is launching apps on an iPhone. You zoom from the springboard (desktop) to the app. It may only take milliseconds, but it gives the app some extra time to start that doesn’t annoy you. Many apps are ready to use when the animation is done, making the launch seem instantaneous instead of having a tiny delay. This gives a great user experience, and is one of the “secrets” to why people love the iPhone.

Using animation to give feedback

Animations is a great way to give users feedback on their actions. When you click something, you expect something to happen. A good example is the jumping dock icon on Macs when you launch a program. Another one is minimizing windows on almost any operating system.

On Windows 7, you get outlines when dragging windows to the edge of the screen, highlighting that you are about to invoke the Snap feature.

Using animation to show relations

Animation is a great way to show how things are connected. A perfect example is switching screens in a table-based iPhone app. When you press an item in a table, the table slides off to the left and a detailed view comes in from the right. When you go back, the opposite happens. This gives the user a sense of relations between objects on and of the screen. The app seems more logical and self explanatory.

This works so well because we humans are wired to see relations between objects. This is also the reason why interfaces inspired by real world examples often work well (provided they are well executed).

How to implement the correct animations in your software

Knowing that animations can be used for many things is good and well, but how do you use them the right way? The easiest way to know if animating something is the right thing to do, ask yourself these questions:

1. Are you sure it won’t impact performance too much?
2. Will it help users understand what happened?
3. Will it make the software look better?
4. Will it make the software seem faster?
5. Are users going to be excited by it?
6. Is it fast to implement?

If the answer to at least three of these questions are yes, you should really consider implementing animations.

Finding the right animation for the task is even harder, but this is so different from case to case that I won’t recommend anything specific. A great general tip is to look at software you love to use and learn from it.

Often used animations most people undestand are zooming, bouncing and sliding. Be careful not to let the animations become the main focus. They should generally last for under 1 second and be gone. A bouncing icon that repeats over and over until you click is not a good user experience.

Debate, test and ask

Are you unsure about animations in your software? Do you want to learn more? Debate with friends, test software yourself and ask people what they think. Hit me up at twitter if you have any specific questions, or leave a comment below.

They also (as I predicted) unleashed the beast of Jobs With Numbers™, showing how small this issue really was. 0,5% of users have even called Apple about the issue, and only 1,7% have returned their phone (compared to 6% on 3GS, which is also quite low if we are to believe Apple).

Me, I believed all along that this issue was overblown. I am going to get an iPhone 4, now happily with a free case. I use a case for my 3GS at work already, to stop myself from destroying it when I accidentally bump into stuff or scratching it when I get the phone up from my pocket past my keys hanging in the belt, ready to scratch anything in their path.

They also announced release dates for many more countries, including Norway, to be 30. July.

Well, today Apple will hold a special event, most likely to address this issue. I write “most likely” because they haven’t explicitly said so, just that the event will cover iPhone 4.

Predictions

I have two predictions, each quite likely. I think option 2 has a slightly better chance of being correct, detailed below.

Option 1

Apple will give out free bumpers or gift cards to all iPhone 4 buyers to date. New iPhone 4s will be bundled with a bumper of your choice.

Option 2

Apple will explain that they have discovered two possible issues, one in software and one in hardware. The software issue was partially fixed with today’s 4.0.1 update, but will be fully remedied by 4.1 coming soon. This will fix the problem for most people. The hardware issue will be explained to affect only some of the early adopters. Those who have experienced problems will be eligible for a free exchange at any Apple Store.

Apple will also announce that they’ve perfected the production method such that new iPhones will not experience this issue at all.

The usual stuff

Of course this will come after Apple goes through the usual list of iPhone reviews and numbers, praising the phone as the best smartphone ever. They may even be bold enough to mention that Consumer Reports rated the phone as the best smartphone to date but won’t recommend it, and hope they will change their mind now that the issue is resolved.

Altering the mindset

“Video conferencing is scary and difficult”. That was the vibe I sensed from my users when we first introduced it last fall. This is a bad starting point for teaching stuff. People who are scared of technology are way less likely to learn it well than people who are intrigued by it. What to do?

First I started with some good old marketing. The central court administration had already written a paper about the advantages of using videoconferencing in courts. I distributed this to every user in the court. This caused some judges to become excited about the possibilities, while some were still skeptical.

Demo time

This is one of the Tandberg VC units we use.

The next step was a demo. This was probably the single most important step of turning their mindset around. I structured the demo as following:

First I talked about the possibilities with this new technology. Cost savings, faster trials, shielding witnesses from people they don’t want to or shouldn’t meet, and so on.

Then I told them to think about the equipment as a phone with a display. Dial a number or select from the address list. This was an eye-opener for many. Suddenly the technology wasn’t as arcane anymore.

Thirdly I demonstrated a call. I did it slowly so everybody could follow along. Then I let judges who wanted to try for themselves repeat the call. When they exclaimed “wow, that was easy”, I was relieved.

When several people had tried to call, I proceeded to demo some more advanced features like PC presentations and camera movements.

Finally I promised that I would personally help everyone the first time they used the system during a trial, and in trials with lots of advanced uses.

The result

All this resulted in changing the mindset of many people from being scared of the technology to being intrigued by the possibilities. We have since become one of the district courts who uses this equipment most.

I’ve continued to support my users, and have written detailed guides for users who want to learn more. I’ve also shared our experiences with other courts.

I think the success of this technology introduction to three simple points:

• Compare the tech to simple tech the users use often
• demo the equipment and let the users try it voluntarily
• provide great support in the first phase and continue with support when needed.

If you follow these steps you can teach tech much more easily to non-techies and techies alike. Good luck.

Questions?

If you have any specific question about this product rollout, please feel free to contact me @thomassnielsen or use my contact form.

What is that plus icon next to the price?

I’ve heard many people ask what the plus icon next to app prices in the app store is.

The explanation is very simple: Apps with a plus symbol are adapted for both iPad and iPhone. Buy once, use native on both.

This is nothing but good news for you, so if you have an iPad or are planning to buy one, you should choose these apps when available.