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The Future is Here According to AT&T (video)

By Matthew Guay on July 25, 2011 in Techinch

Predicting the future is difficult at best, and while many predictions have ended up being correct, others sadly never came to pass (jetpacks, anyone?). That’s why this set of commercials from AT&T are amazing. They were run during the ’90′s, and essentially predict a number of things we have today: iPads, video calls, GPS, online meetings and ticket purchase, and more. Checking out a book from hundreds of miles away? I’ve bought Kindle books from the back of a taxi whizzing through Bangkok before. The future is here, folks!

The graphics show these current tech with ’90′s tech style, but otherwise, they’re spot-on for what you could find at your regular tech store today. Incredibly, everything mentioned is really a part of the tech scene today. And the commercials were run in ’92-’93, years before Windows 95 was considered cutting-edge. Fascinating.

Via TechCrunch

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First Thoughts on Mac OS X Lion

By Matthew Guay on July 21, 2011 in Techinch

The past few years have brought tons of change to the world of computers. The iPhone showed us how great touch screen computing could be, and the iPad showed that sometimes, new interfaces can make apps much nicer. Today, Apple has released the latest version of their flagship product, Mac OS X Lion. It’s the first major OS that shows how much mobile computing has affected the computer industry, and brings many of the things Apple has learned from touch screens and iOS to the Mac.

So what’s in Lion? Beyond the already popular features in OS X, Lion has added a number of new enhancements that bring the best of iOS style to the desktop. I personally have only ever had limited exposure to OS X, but am looking forward to using Lion much more extensively. Here’s my quick thoughts on it so far.

First, the Mac App Store and its Launchpad sidekick are a brilliant move for Apple. I’ve bemoaned for some time the increasing lack of new, innovative apps on Windows. There’s just so little new stuff to be found. Apple is making it so much easier for new developers to target Mac users with apps, that there’s simply an explosion of interesting and high quality apps on OS X today. Plus, Apple has brought it’s own iWork apps to the App Store, which effectively gives you a high quality Office suite with most of Office’s features for $60. Better still, you can run all App Store apps you purchase on all of your computers. Suddenly, just with the cost of Office and a couple more apps, PCs start sounding more expensive.

Second, the pervasive use of multitouch gestures is a great way to let normal users get more power out of their computers. Most people find keyboard shortcuts very confusing, but multitouch gestures are, for the most part, very natural. One thing I’m less sure about is the new reversed iOS-style scrolling, but you can always change that if you want. One thing about it: if you get Lion, make sure to get a Magic Trackpad as well to take advantage of the new touch gestures.

Third, the bundled apps are again setting the bar way above Windows. Mail, for example, supports Exchange by default. In Windows, you have to purchase Outlook just to receive mail from an Exchange account. There’s another way Macs are seeming cheaper. Then, the new full screen apps look beautiful, and it’ll be interesting to see how developers use these going forward to make new immersive app interfaces.

So, that’s a quick breeze through my thoughts on the new features. I can’t wait to get my hands on it, and will definitely write more about it then.

Getting Lion

Apple has been working for years to get us to quit using CDs and DVDs. The iTunes store lets you get your music and movies without disks, and then the App Store brought program installs without disks. OS X Lion now brings your new operating system without a disk, too.

This is actually not the newest thing. I personally installed Windows 7 and Ubuntu on my PC with a USB flash drive, and hardly ever use the DVD drive on it. I’ve installed Office, Photoshop Elements, and almost everything else from downloads instead of disks. It’s been slightly more difficult for some things, but it just feels better to install software without using a DVD. Plus, it takes one step out of the process.

So Apple is now making this mainstream with Lion. If you have a Mac running Snow Leopard, you can purchase a Lion upgrade in the App Store for $29, and upgrade today. Then, all new Macs now come with Lion preinstalled, and the newest Minis and Airs also include a new feature Internet Recovery feature that can let you download and install Lion if you replace your hard drive or have some other critical problem. That is a very, very neat feature in my opinion. Finally, later this year, you’ll be able to purchase Lion on a USB drive if you want a physical copy. One thing missing: optical disks.

Reviews

The tech community has outdone itself this time with OS X Lion reviews, so if you’d like to dig deeper and see more of what’s new in Lion, here’s the best articles so far for your reading pleasure:

Cody Fink at MacStories: A New Cat to Tame: Mac OS X Lion Review
Shawn Blanc: + OS X Lion
Ben Brooks at TBR: Time for the Big Cat
Jason Snell at Macworld: Apple Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Review
And, if you’d like to really dig deep into OS X Lion, you can’t miss John Siracusa’s 19 page in-depth review of Lion at Ars Technica. It’s an impressive article that digs into the most geeky parts of OS X, and shows why they matter. It also included perhaps the best ending, that summerizes what Lion is all about:

“Over the past decade, better technology has simply reduced the number of things that we need to care about. Lion is better technology. It marks the point where Mac OS X releases stop being defined by what’s been added. From now on, Mac OS X should be judged by what’s been removed.”

Best of all, if you’re an Ars Technica subscriber, you can download it as a PDF or ePub eBook. Alternately, you can purchase it a copy of the full review from the Kindle Store for $4.99.

I can’t wait to try it out, and let you know my own thoughts on it. For now, though, there’s more than enough written about it to know Lion inside and out before you upgrade or buy a new Mac. Apple is really on a roll, and they’re not stopping yet. Best of all, they’re actively working to make computers simpler for anyone to use, and that’s a policy I can easily get behind. Bravo.

Microsoft, Windows 8 had better be really good.

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SupportPress: Customer Support, WordPress Style

By Matthew Guay on July 8, 2011 in Techinch

If there’s one type of software that is hard to get perfect, it’s support software. There are dozens of popular customer support web apps, but it’s often hard to find one that fits exactly your needs. Some keep everything private, others keep all of your support public. Some work great with email, others work great for creating beautifully formatted documentation for your own app. But with hosted services, you’ve got to take what’s included, and often you’re not going to be perfectly satisfied with the feature set.

That’s why I’m excited that WooThemes has created a brand new support system out of WordPress: SupportPress. WordPress may have started out as a blogging system, but it can be used for far more than just that today. WooThemes is pushing the boundaries again by creating an advanced theme that uses custom post types and taxonomies to turn WordPress into a full features support center. You can manage support tickets, create beautifully formatted documentation, and update users on your site’s status, all from one simple WordPress install.

By default, support tickets in SupportPress are private, but you can turn them into public knowledge base articles anytime you want. Your customers will get customized emails when you update their support tickets, and the theme is designed to work great on any size browser, even a smartphone. And you can manage profiles, respond to tickets, send internal messages to other team members, and more, without ever opening the WordPress dashboard. It does so much, it’s easy to forget that you’re still using WordPress.

So, now with a free WordPress setup on your server and a $100 copy of SupportPress, you can have a fully customized support system for your whole team. No restrictions on the number of users or customers, no extra fees or even ongoing costs for updates. Want to customize the design, or change how something works? The whole theme is built on HTML5 and CSS3, so you can tweak it to your heart’s content.

I’ve been using it today on a test install at support.techinch.com, and have been really impressed with it. I’ll be writing up a full review of it on Web.AppStorm.net soon, but for now, feel free to check it out there and read more about it on WooThemes’ site. If you’ve been wanting a more customizable way to support your customers, or have wanted a cheaper alternative to the increasingly expensive support web apps, this might be just what you’ve been looking for. I’m personally very excited about the potential of app themes like this, and the new ways we can take self-hosted web apps farther than ever before!

Check out WooThemes new SupportPress app theme

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Doing More With Simplenote

By Matthew Guay on June 27, 2011 in Techinch

Over the past few months, I’ve switched to using Simplenote as my primary app for taking notes. With its beautiful web app and companion app such as ResophNotes on Windows, Notational Velocity or nvALT on OS X, or the official Simplenote apps on iOS, it’s always easy to jot down plain text notes and find anything I’ve saved. For almost all purposes, I find plain text much better for writing notes, but when I need more, Simplenote’s Markdown support works great.

Markdown Formatting in Simplenote

I recently wrote up an article about some of the more advanced features in Simplenote, including To-do lists in the iOS app, Markdown formatting, restoring previous versions of notes, advanced search, tweaking the web app, sharing notes, and more. These are the features that take Simplenote from just a way to store plain text into a great collaboration and simple publishing tool, and are some of the reasons I use it all the time.

Check out the full article: Simplenote: The Power of Plain Text

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LucidChart Proves iPad Web Apps Can Be Awesome

By Matthew Guay on June 21, 2011 in Techinch

Today on Web.AppStorm.net, I wrote up an overview of the newest features of LucidChart, the best Visio substitute I’ve ever found. It’s been an awesome app for quite some time, but the most recent updates make it one of the more advanced web apps I’ve ever tried. It now supports offline mode, so you can edit your charts when the internet is down. It can also import Visio files, so you can get rid of it for good.

Best of all, it now has amazing integration with Safari on iPad, allowing you to sketch out drawings and turn them into precice diagrams quickly. Most web apps feel out of place on the iPad, but not LucidChart. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my article was the first to mention the new iPad features. Click the link to read my full review, or check out the video below to see LucidChart in action on the iPad.