Why the hype?

So, the European Commission decided that the next version of Windows shouldn’t include Internet Explorer. Consumers should be able to choose a browser, they say.

I think it’s Mozilla’s turn to get a bigger user base in Europe. If, somehow, they manage to give people a way to install a browser by telling them “copy this text and paste it on the window that opens when you do Ctrl+R (or whatever the shortcut is)”. The problem is, how do you get to someone that’s not in the Internet yet.

That’s a good problem to solve, get on it Mozilla. Me, I’m to busy to think about it.

Oh, and please do read more about the issue here and here.

The last months of work at Webreakstuff were entirely dedicated to the second version of Goplan which we just launched yesterday.

Despite the stressful day, full of last things to complete before the great opening, the whole team is very happy with the result and I’m personally proud of our work.

Goplan isn’t really “done” and probably it won’t ever be. In the next weeks we’ll focus on fix small bugs that may arise with the mass use of the app. Along with this bug-fixing period, we’ll start working on the iPhone app for those who want to manage their projects on the road.

Give Goplan a spin (by signing up here) and send your feedback over. We love hearing from you guys.

We’re now a couple of days away from the next Portuguese BarCamp. It’ll be held at DEI (the Computer Science Dept.) in Coimbra.

You can find more information about the event at BarCamp PT’s home at http://barcamppt.org/.

If you’re portuguese or happen to be in Coimbra the next weekend, do drop by, but don’t forget to sign up.

Btw, you may have noticed whythehype.com down — I just changed the hosting provider, everything should be back to normal now.

I just read Dan Moren’s (Macworld.com) article on Apple’s iPhone Push Notifications system and how Apple seem to stopped talking about it. I guess thousands of developers are waiting for a solution, but push notifications may just not be it. I mean, that would be something, but it won’t solve all the limitations an application has by being allowed to run only on foreground.

The iPhone is a great platform and it surely means, above all, Cocoa in your pocket. Although, there’s a lot on the background that Cocoa apps are missing.

I hope Apple didn’t bury this feature. Push, over-the-air, notifications can be useful and I can surely see where they can be put into use. Still, I guess everyone wants more: sending an application to background while the user checks his email or text someone—and keep downloading something on your app, for instance.

I’ve been looking more and more around myself, looking for interesting things. Some of them amaze me, some bore me and others sadden me.

This is not something I have done for long. Fred got me into this “experience” thing. Working (and having dinner almost daily, and shopping, and getting bored) with a design and experience addict taught me a sense I never knew I had: minding small details. Now I find myself observing instead of just looking. Often I take a second, deeper look at things, think about them, and sometimes take pictures of things like weird messages, great interfaces or poorly-designed objects.

Today, to start off this series, I have a picture of an eating place on a mall that got me confused for an instant:

Where do I put the parenthesis? Does this mean that I should:

a) choose a juice OR a soup - and have the dessert in both cases: (Juice OR Soup) AND Dessert;

b) pick either juice OR the soup and the dessert: Juice OR (Soup AND Dessert)?

Although the former seems more likely to be the correct answer, to me always having a dessert seems as odd as having to choose between “just juice” and “soup and dessert”.

There’s a solution to this ambiguity through design: breaking the sentence into two lines would make it much easier to tell what the choices here really are.