Author Archives: Jeff Porten

  • Rob Pegoraro:
    The mob scene as attendees rush the bathrooms afterwards may get ugly. SF emergency responders, please be ready.

after hearing about the features in Google Plus, the prospect of a future Google catheter is frightening.

  • Darby Lines:
    Google Maps “See inside” Make sure the bar isn’t populated by uglies before going there.

That’s what Blendr is for. If they’re using Blendr, avoid that bar.

  • Jon Seff:
    Does Google?s new photo enhancement feature have an option to remove ?evil? from your pictures?

Skin softening was tested on scales.

  • Jason Snell:
    Google has spent like five minutes talking about a photo auto-enhance feature. Waaaaay too much.

And glossed over the “awesome” that probably would have been centerpiece of Apple presentation.

  • Rob Pegoraro:
    Auto Enhance features uses automated algorithms to tweak photos, sort of like what iPhoto , Picasa, and Windows Photo Gallery already do.

I’m no expert, but this looks a hell of a lot better than the auto-enhances I already have on desktop.

  • Andy Ihnatko:
    I wonder if savvy Google I/O attendees board their flight with no electronics, counting on getting a laptop, tablet & phone on Day 1?

I can’t imagine that anyone at I/O could possibly go four hours without something electronic.

  • Rob Pegoraro:
    And looks like this year’s I/O freebie, or one of them (note: for journos, loaner) is a $1,500 Chromebook Pixel.

How quickly can you sign up for a Dev account? :-)

  • Andy Ihnatko:
    Pushing message hard: Chrome is an app environment that lets a developer write one app that runs on anything from any maker/OS.

So… um, they’re pushing HTML5 programming in a less buggy environment?

  • Rich Mogull:
    Working on my Mac in a coffee shop in Boulder. Let the record show I was doing this long before the birth of the modern hipster.

Only gains you street cred if you did it with a Macintosh Portable.

  • Rich Mogull:
    I lied a little. Couldn?t afford a Mac laptop back then.

My first was a 1993 Duo 210. My first color laptop a few years later made me understand why my parents were thrilled by color TV.

  • Rich Mogull:
    I started at CU with my Commodore 128. Was sort of a laptop if the coffee shop had a TV and I brought the RF adapter.

My Dad ran an adult bookstore. High point of my life: discovering the “quarter for 3 minutes” video booths run by banks of C64s.

  • Daniel Jalkut:
    I just RSVP?d for a party at WWDC, said “Add to Passbook” on my Mac, looked at my phone, and there it is. Bravi, everybody involved!
  • Dan Moren:
    Yeah, that?s pretty cool. (Had to force quit Passbook to get it to show up, though.)

No offense, but “force-quit” does seem to mitigate “pretty cool”.

  • Daniel Jalkut:
    In my tests it “just” takes a little while longer if you don?t force-quit, or launch from scratch.

I was being snarky. But notable that 99% have no idea how or why to force-quit an iOS app.

Google News from Twitter #2: lots of chatter saying Apple should copy Google dev svcs, but I don’t see that Apple feels the need to compete.

Google News from Twitter #1: Google launches streaming music service just as all major US carriers clamp down harder on data caps.

  • David Chartier:
    Android?s tablet problem is fascinating. Tablets are selling now, yet Google still needs to say ?design your apps for tablets.?

I’m sitting here with a 4.7″ 1920×1080 Android. Can’t imagine how a dev decides what the hell size to design for.

  • Geoff Duncan:
    That’s the same lsregister trick. I’m having to do it like twice a day now. :(
  • Chuq Von Rospach:
    yeah, I need to do it occasionally. I?m not seeing it corrupt that badly.
  • Geoff Duncan:
    Maybe I need to look at how to force Spotlight to rebuild. Been noticing lots of indexing there too.
  • Chuq Von Rospach:
    it couldn?t hurt. I rebuild spotlight by disabling it and renaming the data dir, then restarting it.
  • Geoff Duncan:
    I’ll give that a whirl. I’ve spent most of my OS X “career” ignoring Spotlight because it was so slow and so wrong for so long?

There’s a Darwin command that says “delete everything and start over,” IIRC. And I don’t mean rm -rf *