apps
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.
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.
Twitlonger
It’s no secret that I love Twitter. I get withdrawal symptoms when it goes down and it is one of my primary methods of communication. I also love how it forces you to be concise, to reduce thoughts to the minimum required to convey information.
Sometimes though, just sometimes, 140 characters really isn’t enough. Anyone who has found themselves in a theological or technical discussion knows that it is difficult to convey information in 140 characters. Sure you can email, but you then lose the social network advantages of having the discussion on Twitter in the first place. You can also spread your thoughts across several Tweets, but this is both disjointed and slightly spammy to anyone not involved in the conversation.
So, I’ve made Twitlonger. Think of it as Twitpic for text. You can jot down those longer thoughts and it will generate a truncated Tweet, with a link to the full message. You get the advantages of staying (relatively) within the Twitterverse, but also get to explain things properly, where necessary.
Isn’t this open to abuse? Yeah, that is a worry. People could just use it to be very lazy and not be succinct, but hopefully it will be used sparingly and when appropriate. More information on the how and why is at www.twitlonger.com/about.php.
Currently, I’m running Twitlonger in closed beta, hopefully to catch any glaring problems, but if you want an invite code, tweet me: @stuartgibson.
Eyecandy 1 – In the Wild
Download Eyecandy 1 – Masked Marshal
Download from the iTunes App Store
First off, congrats to @pauljholden, @philiporr and @cimota for getting this through the app store, they deserve it for what they’ve had to deal with so far. But what of the app itself?
It’s pretty much completely awesome. I let Sakura play with it this morning on the way to school and she has declared it to be “really fun”. She was immediately at home with the interface and was soon happily flicking back and forth and looking “under” the artwork. I have a feeling she will be using the pencils to copy the art this afternoon. Of course, once I showed her how she could paint it herself, she didn’t want to go into school anymore. The whinnying pony was just the icing on the cake.
Without doubt, her reaction to Eyecandy completely validates the principles behind it and I have no doubt that, even if I wasn’t wanting to support the guys at Infurious/Blue Pilot, this would be a monthly/weekly purchase. If you have a kid, you need to buy this. If you like awesome interfaces, you need to buy this. If you just want to support some local talent… you get the idea.
Any complaints? Couple of minor things. In the colouring pallette I would really like to see a “fill” option, as any sort of accuracy is difficult, though this is a limitation of the finger touch interface rather than the app itself (and I still want black to colour with). Also, the colours are possibly a little too “pastel” instead of the rich and vibrant colours in the comic itself. What I feel is the biggest issue is indirectly an interface one. Although it is a perfect interface and completely natural to use, the very fact that it introduces functionality that is completely impossible to implement in its real world counterpart means that there is no expectation of revealing the lines. Without knowing in advance that you can push down to see the ink and pencil versions, the only way to discover it is if a swipe accidentally uncovers the functionality. This is a minor thing and most people are likely to stumble upon it just from using the app, but it could be easily fixed with an initial “how to use” screen, with the option to “Do not show this again”. I would hate for anyone not to see what is a fundamental part of the experience.
But, to be honest, these are nitpicks. For the first version of comic reader (at least in the wild) it is a triumph and hopefully it will catalyse some disenfranchised artists to come to the team with ideas of content they want to distribute.
When Sakura gets home from school I’ll try and get a quick video of her playing with the app and giving her impressions.