One good thing about Windows 8 preview

Posted on 2 June 2011 by john.kominetz

Making a computer behave like a web page on a tablet looks like a step backwards, albeit a pretty one, but there is one good thing in the following Microsoft video on Windows 8. The demonstrator half-drags another application onto the screen at 2:05 and 3:00 to create a resizable region so two apps can run side by side:

(Full article on microsoft.com)

The is a logical evolution of the one thing I like about Windows 7 and use regularly, window snapping. It’s also one step closer to a desktop that works like the Eclipse IDE with various resizable panels for different elements like object browser, code editor, and compilation messages. Apple is also taking a tablet-inspired approach in Mac OS X Lion. It’s about time operating system vendors step up and do something about the sad state of application window management, but I don’t expect Windows 8 or Mac OS X Lion to bring perfect solutions because of their inspiration: Tablets make great content consumption devices, but I need something inspired by a content creation tool as my desktop.

In the meantime, I’m using a little open source app called Shift It to get something like window snapping on the Mac. It uses keyboard shortcuts rather than the Windows-style border collision which the Mac already uses for virtual desktop management, Spaces. Here’s my somewhat-Eclipse-inspired desktop with the Shift It menu exposed:

My Desktop with Shift It

Dock and Twitter on one side, desktop files on another, and a perfect half-width browser window (with too many tabs as usual) in the middle. Sized and positioned Chrome by shifting it left then center with Shift It.

Shift It isn’t a perfect solution. It has some problems with window size or position being a little off sometimes, and the top/bottom options are practically useless on a widescreen display. Most people won’t mind, but my particular pathological need to organize (also expressed by my obsession with The Container Store) requires precision and symmetry and flexibility.  Steve Jobs has a similar affliction, so I’m hoping Lion will be like digital Paxil for my application window management OCD.

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When Relevance Attacks

Posted on 19 May 2011 by john.kominetz

I used to think all ads were spam. That sentiment had its origins in traditional media where some kind of adspace cosmological constant keeps pushing real content further and further apart, filling my field of view with a relevance vacuum of feminine hygiene, SUV, and sorority girl chat line commercials.

However, I’ve been coming around to V.’s way of thinking about ads in new media lately. I don’t mind as much because ads are at least loosely targeted to the topic-specific sites I frequent; sometimes I’m even grateful when I encounter something previously unknown and personally applicable.  That happens more when I’m willing to make Google privy to my electronic life or tell Hulu when ads are relevant. Old media pushes me further away while new media draws me into its less-adflated, more-relevant open arms.

So I came home from a MarkLogic event at The Palomar–ready to blog about some things they get that EMC is just starting to grasp–to find a new comment on an old post about the iPhone Clock app.  It was an ad (no surprise) but it was perfectly relevant to the post and even got me into iTunes to download the app (big surprise).  A few more things like this might even get cynical me to stop cringing whenever I see “please moderate” in my inbox.

The reward for that relevance is an extra plug.  I haven’t tried the app yet since there’s nothing to time at the moment, but I encourage you to take a look:

So, please do check out http://www.elapsedapp.com – you’ll find it to be a significant upgrade from the default Clock app. Oh, one last thing… its FREE!

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Lies My Folder Objects Told Me

Posted on 16 May 2011 by john.kominetz

Pie is having some folder object problems [ Tip: A Documentum Folder’s Existential Crisis « Word of Pie ] and it’s no surprise to me.  I trust folder objects less than I trust an insane homicidal computer; at least I know for certain that GLaDOS is still trying to kill me.

I’ve fantasized for years about replacing dm_sysobject with something light weight and implementing things like folder location and versioning as interfaces applied to that type as needed. Pie might not have had hair pulling to do if dm_folder wasn’t bringing along all of dm_sysobject’s baggage.  It’s another example of the junk DNA rife through Documentum’s API and schema.

Documentum did add lightweight objects a few years ago, but they fell far short of my fantasy.  They turned out to be a hack to deal with bulk object creation instead of a fundamental refactoring of the object schema. I wasn’t surprised; implementing something like my fantasy would be an upgrade/compatibility nightmare; every single sysobject would have to be folded, spindled, and mutilated in the process. Just the database part of that upgrade could take days on big docbases, and those upgrades could fail in spectacular ways noticeable only long after the fact. Oh well.

It’s a lesson to inform the creators of new systems like Documentum. Of course there are scaling problems at the database level if those interface abstractions result in lots of separate tables and joins at the concrete level assuming a relational database infrastructure. I think that’s still a safe assumption since object databases haven’t gotten that much better and NoSQL databases don’t seem to be a good fit to this problem space on first blush. I wonder: Did Alfresco learn any of these lessons? Maybe I’ll go take a look under its hood and see.

Related:

 

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