Helvetireader² – A minimal, anti-social theme for Google Reader
Although it won’t change my main use of Google Reader (as a backend to one of my favourite apps – Reeder), Helvetireader sure does look fantas-slick-tastic.
I have to say that I don’t get the rationale behind the assumption that the only people using Google Reader would be Chrome users – Helvetireader turns ugly in Opera. Bah Humbug!
ps – In other news, a caveat, setting up Mac Journal is a tedious recursive post-check-fix process.
I had a plan. I took a detour. I now own a Macbook Pro. (Macbook Pro 15″ 2.66GHz i7 with 4GB RAM)
First impressions:
When I say, I don’t feel a big difference what I mean is that although it might be a faster when you measure using a stop watch, but it doesn’t make me feel so. It’s too early to complain about it though. I should say, it hasn’t given me any kind of problems whatsoever. But, it definitely hasn’t made me feel like, lets say, how I felt when I first installed 2GB of memory after using 512MB, back in 2004.
Happy with it. Hope it can work as a desktop machine for my photo-editing needs when I need it to. Looking at my current plans and some new developments, that won’t happen anytime soon. I might be city hopping for a fair bit of this year – hence the decision to buy a laptop, instead of the iMac.
So, in reply to mi amigo, Roberto Mateu, this won’t change the initial plan to use specialized tools for specific tasks. The Macbook Pro is solving my new-big problem (a portable workstation), which is what a laptop is supposed to do. As for the iPad, lets see how this changes things and we’ll get back to that in a bit.
From John Gruber:
I detected one other veiled insult against Google during the event — Jobs’s emphasis during the multitasking segment about how seriously Apple values the privacy of iPhone users, with regard to data and location information. In the way that the standard knock against Apple is that they maintain too much control over the App Store, the standard knock against Google is that they don’t value user privacy. Jobs’s message: You can trust Apple.
No matter what Apple says, or tries to sell this as; individuals all around the world are going to be tracked. People are going to let their locations be known to all kinds of 3rd party applications to extract relevant information (vs just a subset of the data, as is the current scenario) from the gazillions of terabytes of data on the internet.
Commercial apps will make your life a little bit easier in exchange for tracking you where you are. Constantly. That’s the carrot, for the bunny. The question is: how many will stay out of the system?
This comes from an earlier discussion with some friends which started with the statement, “I hate countries where you can’t even get insurance if you don’t have a credit card. Credit card’s track you everywhere you go & everything you do”. The conversation ended when we figured there are still places where you can survive without a bank account, for instance, India. It’ll be VERY inconvenient. The social defaults are being changed and other people around you, expect you to have credit information, bank accounts etc etc. So even if you have the choice, would you do it? Because, this inevitably translates into struggling against the system/ surviving outside the system or eventually – fighting the system.
So, is this system going to fail or is this just a precursor to being totally fine with having a tracking personal ID chip installed in your arms just so that you do not have to buy a metro ticket in rush hour?
Ofcourse I’m super excited about the new features Apple announced for the iPhone OS 4.0, but, I just hope the experience is less cluttered than what it feels like from the screenshots. Being a cynic, yes (that’s what I do best). Balancing simplicity vs features is not easy, I know.
*Screenshots taken from TUAW
You are currently browsing the Navjot Pawera's Blog blog archives for April, 2010.
UX, UI, Product design guy. These days, I'm working on creating new stuff at Bubble Motion. I am a silent partner at ExtraThought - a user experience design consultancy. I also curate the IXD Sessions in Singapore.