12 Days of iTunes App Suggests New Functionality?
Apple have posted their new iTunes 12 Days of Christmas app, which will let you know when their now traditional Christmas freebies are available. Something very interesting in the description of the app is this:
Allow you to download a free gift from iTunes direct from your iPhone or iPod Touch
Now, this could just mean that the app will open the link to the iTunes app to give you your free song, music video, TV episode, or movie. But much more intriguing would be if the app downloaded these directly into your iTunes library. Could we see Apple opening access to third party apps that can start to interact with iTunes library on the phone to add content? Imagine a band app that could add music directly to the phone’s music library, or a YouTube downloader? Maybe a game that allows you to save replays to your video library? Sure, they would need to get through the approval process first, but opening this up to third party apps would be a great move forward.
The free downloads start from the 26th of December, but the app is available now and will send you push notifications when each download is available.
How to do RSS right
I love RSS. There are very few sites I visit regularly, but dozens I like to hear from when something new gets posted. Today I subscribed to the Lifehacker feed (something I’m not sure how I neglected until now) and was given the following options:
Perfect. I hate sites that don’t include the full post in their RSS feed (hint guys, I’m using RSS because I don’t want to visit your site) and this gives me the option of getting the full post and still getting Lifehacker a little scratch from ads, or avoiding ads in my RSS but having to visit the site to get the full info of the stories I’m interested in.
Really useful as well to see the “top stories only” option which, on a busy site like Lifehacker, is probably a godsend to many people and also, for the masochistic, a feed with full comments.
Other sites could take a hint from Lifehacker and provide people with a choice in how to receive their RSS.
Talking to Politicians – Part 6: Ruari O'Kane, SDLP
Chat number fivewas with Ruari O’Kane from SDLP. Many thanks, as usual, for giving up his time when they are clearly so busy.
Talking to Politicians – Part 5: Alex Kane, Ulster Conservatives and Unionists
Chat number four was with Alex Kane from Ulster Conservatives and Unionists. Thanks to Alex for his time and the tea. This interview was at Weavers Court and is a little noisy as we were outside. Hopefully you can still hear what’s going on.
Talking to Politicians – Part 4: Niall Ó Donnghaile, Sinn Féin
Chat number three was with Niall Ó Donnghaile from the Sinn Féin press office, also in Stormont. Thanks to Niall for finding some time in his day.
- www.ardfheis.com
- @sinnfeinireland (Don’t have a Twitter for Niall himself, but will update if I get one)
Talking to Politicians – Part 3: Clive McFarland, DUP
Chat number two was with Clive McFarland, the DUP policy officer which took place in the beautiful parliamnet building at Stormont. Once again, many thanks to Clive for taking the time out of his day.
Talking to Politicians – Part 2: Steven Agnew, Green Party
First chat done and dusted. I should make it clear that these are most definitely not “political interviews” because I am, frankly, clueless. Instead, think of them as how the politicians would try to convince said clueless person they are worth voting for.
Many thanks to Steven Agnew for taking over an hour out of May Day to talk with me, it is much appreciated.
Talking to politicians – Pt1
To be honest, I’ve never paid much attention to the political process in our country, never convinced it really made much difference in my life. Terrible as it is, I’ve usually asked my parents who they are voting for and gone that route, assuming they were paying more attention than I. However, with the upcoming European election, I decided to see if the poltical parties would be interested in sitting down with the apathetic voter and try to convince them why they deserve their vote. The plan is to spend fifteen minutes or so with someone from the office of each of the people standing for election to the European parliament, record the conversation and make it available online, with the assumption that it may be of interest to those who, like me, don’t really have a clue. Step one was the sending of this email to the addresses provided to the party websites:
I am an early 30s voter who has never been convinced that voting really makes a difference.
I would be interested in sitting down with someone from the party and giving them fifteen minute to convince me why they should get my vote. I would like to record this and make it available online for the many like me who are, shall we say, politically apathetic.
Please let me know if this is a possibility.
Stuart Gibson
I shall update if/as I get responses. For reference, the people standing for election are as follows (taken from http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/guide/northern-ireland-european)
- Diane Dodds (DUP) – Response from Clive McFarland (2nd)
- Bairbre de Brun (Sinn Fein) – Reponse from Brian Keane then Niall Ó Donnghaile with offer to meet in Stormont (5th)
- Jim Nicholson (Conservative/Ulster Unionist) – Response from Alex Kane to organise a meeting
- Alban Maguinness (SDLP)
- Ian Parsley (Alliance) – Phoned to say they were hectic this weekend, but would sort someone out next week, most likely Ian Parsley (3rd)
- Steven Agnew (Green) – Responded in person (1st)
- Jim Allister (Traditional Unionist Voice) – Response from Sammy Morrison with campaign literature. Sent reply pushing for 1to1 time (4th) UPDATE: No, they won’t talk to me.
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Central authentication – good for users, bad for usability
As most of you know, I have a fun little project called Twitlonger that talks to Twitter, including the ability to post to users’ accounts. Until recently, I had to ask for user passwords to enable posting, something I’m not keen on doing because it raises an expectation of trust that, to be frank, I haven’t earned from most people (this goes for all the Twitter apps).
Now, Twitter have enabled support for OAuth for granting applications API access to your account, without the need to give up your password. It’s nice and simple, you click an authorise button, get sent to Twitter which allows you to allow or deny access and get returned to the initial site. All well and good, solves the password problem, gives users control.
At the minute, I control access to Twitlonger by getting users to sign in with their Twitter username and password. This is validated against Twitter and things like password changes etc are pretty much seamless. Users will automatically be logged out if their details have changed since they were last at the site and logging in with the new details automatically updates the details in Twitlonger. Overall, I’m pretty proud of the login experience for Twitlonger.
Naturally, I now want to implement OAuth support, which means I have two choices – get the user to grantTwitlonger access every time the session expires (irritating) or store the keys necessary to authenticate with Twitter and give Twitlonger its own registration system. Not one for duplication of functionality, I was thinking about having OpenID support, so users don’t need to create *another* username/password combination.
Then I thought about the process for the user to be able to use Twitlonger (for the first time, anyway).
- Login with OpenID
- Get sent to external site to authenticate OpenID
- Return to Twitlonger
- Authorise with Twitter
- Get sent to Twitter to authenticate API access
- Return to Twitlonger
- Actually get on with the desired task.
OK, so this should only need to happen the first time the user comes to Twitlonger, but it also means their first experience of the service involves visiting three different sites just to start the task in hand.
On one hand, they will be having a much more secure experience, but from the user-friendly standpoint it will be horrible. I don’t plan to find out how many people would lose interest before the end of the process.
I will be implementing OAuth because it will make me feel a lot better about everything, but I’m afraid OpenID as well would be a step too far.
This is Why Retail is Failing
Nothing surprising will be revealed here, but it is just another example of why physical retail is going the way of the dodo and why it’s their own fault.
On Thursday I bought the new Mac Mini and had my usual wonderful experience in the Apple Store. This machine was to replace an aging (and recently dead) Windows box to take over media server and bedroom duties. As part of the process I was moving all my media files onto the new 1Tb drive. The only missing piece of the puzzle was a drive caddy to throw the old hard drives into.
Normally, I buy stuff like this online but, since I wanted the job done over the weekend, I decided to check if PC World had what I needed without too much price gouging. A quick search revealed they had what I wanted, in a reasonable brand and only about a fiver premium over online prices once delivery was factored in. Stock check showed none in my local Bangor branch but available in Sprucefield. This meant around a 50 mile round trip but I had podcasts and the time.
It’s important to note that the online reservation service asks for a contact number and also says to allow for an hour before collection. So, 2.5 hours later I arrive at Sprucefield and (eventually) get someone to take my reference number. Unsurprisingly, as has been typical of my experience with their reservations, it wasn’t ready, nor had someone gone to look for it yet. Ten minutes later the staff member returns and manages to grunt they don’t have any and then stares at me. No apology, no explanation, nothing.
I pointed out, in no uncertain terms, that I had made a 25 mile journey to get here and he wandered off to get someone who presumably did have some ability to deviate from merely stating useless information.
A manager returned and, to his credit, at least apologised before letting me know they had one in the Bangor store he could get held for me. I sort of lost it at this stage, pointing out that if the staff had been doing their job properly and had bothered going to look for the item in the hour following my reservation they could have saved me the journey. I then asked what he was going to do for me and, after some humming and ahhing he offered a £5 reduction if I paid for it there and collected in Bangor. On the basis I had been happy to travel to Lisburn to pay full price I was reasonably happy with this offer. I questioned the manager on how they were showing stock and Bangor wasn’t and, alledgedly, the online system doesn’t show available stock if the system reports three units or less (though apparently PC World has terrible stock control and huge stock shrinkage).
So, back I went to Bangor and collected my drive enclosure, a fiver better off (technically) but with two hours wasted unnecessarily.
Ok, I’ve worked retail, this sort of stock thing can happen and, had I turned up 20 minutes after reserving and it hadn’t been available, I would have been pissed at their online reservation system but at least couldn’t have faulted the store staff. Instead, lazy staff who couldn’t be bothered to check for stock when the reservation arrived (or in the 2.5 hours after) wasted my time, their time, cost them money because of the compensatory discount, created bad feeling making me even less likely to return and generated the small amount of bad publicity this post will produce.
It’s as if retail doesn’t realise that treating customers poorly only serves to push them deeper into online purchasing and to recommend to friends and family that they do the same. This is how the situation should have gone. Reservation made. Within 30 minutes the store staff go to pull the item so it’s ready for collection (they had plenty of staff, three of them were standing chatting when I went in). Staff discover item is not available, double check to confirm. Staff check availability in other stores. Staff phone me, apologise, let me know there is a stock error so don’t bother coming up. Offer either alternative product they do have or tell me other stores that have the item I want. I say “great, Bangor store is two miles away”, they transfer the collection order to Bangor and I go home a happy punter They don’t lose £5 and I might even write “PC World in awesome customer service shock” blog post.
DSG has been losing money hand over fist even before the current financial woes, they should be focussing on how to retain customers instead of driving more of them away. I will pay more for the convenience of buying locally, not having to wait on deliveries and getting to look at things in advance, but only if the experience is pleasant. The Apple Store makes retail a pleasure, many other places make retail a pleasure but the majority of retail is notable for sullen staff and difficulty in actually buying what you want. In a difficult market the ones who do it right will succeed, but those who have been coasting on the buoyant economy will be following Woolworths into the dead pool.