Thought i’d just share this…..

Ran the OSX Lion Boot Camp Assistant today and was scared stiff a few seconds after I rebooted the iMac the first time.

With the Boot Camp Assistant I only partitioned the boot camp disk because i wanted to wait and see if there was any possibility of moving my newly installed VMware Windows 7 image. When i booted the mac it took a while and all I could see was a white screen – then it turned black and a happy message said “No bootable device – insert boot disk and press any key”

I didn’t have any key or a boot disk so I sort of freaked out for a second. I tried to restart the machine with same result, I also tried to press the option key to load the boot disk manager that you do “normally” but nothing happened there either….

The solution luckily was to reset the PRAM. To do that you press 4 keys, option+cmd+P+R while starting the mac. that way you reset the PRAM settings and the computer boots again to your Mac partition.

Thanks to Google and this blog post I found this solution.

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On May 24th the second AppWorks conference takes place at Latter on Aker brygge in Oslo. The “02″ conference program looks promising and is in my opinion better than the “01″ conference that took place in October 2010.  In retrospect it was funny (for all of us that already knew) to see the conference speakers, at least the developer part so heavily influenced by Nokia and Symbian with the “mantra” that if you want to succeed with mobile apps, develop for Symbian :) The highlight of last year was the live video session by Peter Vesterbacka, the creator of Angry Birds where he talked about their way to success, and that ended with an interesting Q&A session.

This year the program is not so much about OS platforms, it’s more about services – Location, billing and frameworks on the main stage. On the “club” stage the program is put together for start-up companies and early stage software ideas.

At the moment i find that AppWorks is the most interesting of the conferences in Oslo that speak to the mobile app/web industry in Norway. Possibly being the only one.

See the complete conference program here, and buy tickets here. They also have a fan page on Facebook you can “like” to possibly win conference tickets. If you use the promo code “AW02FACEBOOK” you can save 20% off the ticket price.

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If you are a CMO or work with marketing/brand building and mobile technology for clients in a digital agency, or is a brand owner that want to learn more about how mobile app/web technology can help you maximize your reach, the Mobile App World 2011 conference in London is the place to be.

The conference takes place on 7 – 8. June 2011 in London and is both a conference and an award show. At the conference they’ll try  to shed som lights on how do you make money from your app, how do mApps fit in the retail environment, how mobile apps can give direct routes to market, challenges and opportunities facing apps. How do you create the ultimate sticky-app? How do you make sure your app provides the next-generation consumer experience? Selecting the right app store for you, how to recoup development investment. Tips on how to take advantage of app market growth, the strategies and options available for today’s content provider and what’s the future of apps, where do we go next. It’s an interesting program they’ve put together.

Mobile App World is also a networking conference where you can expect to meet media directors, brand managers, platform owners, mobile operators, advertising agencies and app developers to mention some.

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I’ve been using my iPad (1.gen) for about 9 months and I’ve come to rely completely on it for my day-to-day work needs. I’m still using a laptop at my desk, but could probably switched to a stationary computer since I never have any need to bring it with me.

I thought I’d share with you some of the tools I use to help me.

iThoughtsHD by CMS/Craig Scott ($9,99)
This is one of my main productivity tools. It’s an excellent mind mapping productivity tool that I use primarily as a note taking tool while in meetings. mapping meeting notes and managing concept ideas for clients.  Typical usage would be when you need to create task lists, do project planning, or create concept mapping, From the app you can import and export your maps to many of the most popular desktop mind-mapping solutions like Freemind/Freeplane, NovaMind, Mindmanager, iMindmap, XMind and more. All mindmaps can be synchronized with Dropbox, Box.net, MobileMe and other cloud WebDAV services. You can also exchange files through iTunes.

iMockups for iPad by endloop systems Inc ($6,99)
I like to sketch ideas for apps and web. iMockups makes that really easy and it’s the perfect prototyping and wire-framing tool that can be used in presentation mode when you show off  your ideas in a meeting through a projector, or as a tool to visualize concept ideas while in idea meetings. Sketches designed can easily be emailed as editable projects to a colleague or client’s iPad or be exported as PNG images. You also have an option to export files for use with Balsamiq Mockups, a really good desktop tool for wireframing. Only thing i miss with iMockups is the ability to save files to – and open files from Dropbox.

GoodReader for iPad by Good.iWare Ltd. ($4,99)
Having dedicated software for each and every file format you might receive via e-mail or have saved, is more or less impossible. GoodReader is the super-robust PDF reader for iPad – it’s a “Swiss Army knife” or documents. You can read virtually anything, anywhere: books, movies, maps, pictures. Use it once and you’ll be hooked. Soon you’ll be wondering how you ever managed to use your iPad without it. You can sync files and folders with an auto sync feature that work with MobileMe iDisk, Dropbox, SugarSync, box.net, and any other WebDAV, FTP or SFTP server. One of my favorite features is the ability to annotate PDF files. From the GoodReader interface you can also open files in it’s “original” software if you have dedicated apps for the file type on your iPad. i.e Keynote or Powerpoint presentations.

OmniGraffle by The Omni Group ($49,99)
One of the most expensive productivity apps i have, but it’s well worth it. Need to create a quick diagram, process chart, page layout, website wire frame, or graphic design? With OmniGraffle, your iPad touch screen is your canvas, or graph paper, or whiteboard, or cocktail napkin. Using simple multi-touch gestures, draw shapes, drag in objects, and style everything until it’s just right. Automatic layout gives you a powerful shortcut to the perfect diagram layout. When you’re done, share it via PDF export, or open them in OmniGraffle for Mac. As with iMockups I really miss the ability save files to services like Dropbox. OmniGraffle lets you import documents from iDisk and WebDAV services, but you cannot save files or have files synchronized, downloaded files are copied versions and could lead to a messy versioning problem. But for features and ability to create drawings and graphs its excellent and a natural tool on the iPad.

Projector by adnX SARL ($29,99)
I also has the responsibility as project manager from time to time, to keep up with the project schedule, tasks and progress is use Projector on both my Mac and iPad. Projector delivers beautiful Gantt charts that are sure to impress customers and colleagues.  A good feature of Projector is that documents created on the iPad version of Projector are fully compatible with Projector for Mac and vice versa. Projector gives you what you need to track the important bits of your projects. With Projector you cannot save or load files from Dropbox or other cloud services, file transfer is done via iTunes. Dropbox sync would have been a really nice feature making It a lot easier to view, change and maintain one version of a project file. All in all a great app for project management.

My toolbox
These are the productivity tools I use in daily work on the iPad. Besides these I also have and use Keynote for presentations, use Pages for writing larger documents and Numbers for spreadsheets. To tie my laptop and iPad together with common storage I use Dropbox. i.m.o Dropbox type services should have been implemented as a standard in all productivity software, Projector & iMockups it’s created to help you get better workflow and worrying about if you have the latest version or not, should not be something you needed to think about. Evernote is also a really nice app to have both on your laptop, phone and iPad.

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On Tuesday April 26th it became even easier to be a Objective-C developer looking to port applications to the Windows Phone platform.

With The iOS API mapping tool, iPhone developers can grab their apps, pick out the iOS API calls, and quickly look up the equal classes, methods and notification events in WP7. A developer can search a given iOS API call and find the equivalent WP7 along with C# sample codes and API documentation for both platforms.

The code samples allow developers to quickly migrate short blobs of iOS code to the equivalent C# code. All WP7 API documentation are pulled in from the Silverlight, C# and XNA sources on MSDN.

From the navigation menu you can map features from the iOS 4.2 AddressBookUI, iAd, MessageUI, AssetLibrary, UIKit, CoreFoundation, CoreLocation, Foundation, CoreMotion, CFNetwork, GameKit and StoreKit. Check it out here.

Microsoft is also open for suggestions on how to make this an even better developer resource and  you can suggest your own, vote on suggestions and follow the feature roadmap here.

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Since the browser on the iPad doesn’t support the WYSIWYG editor that comes default with a wordpress installation and the to many other really anoying issues that makes iPad and Safari unusable on WordPress I’ve now trying out the BlogPress app for iPad.

The First glimpse looks ok. Setting it up, connecting to my blog and download the existing content is easy. Writing – damn, again, cursed with no WYSIWYG. We’re back to semi-WYSIWYG with linebraks and paragraphs. For everything else I need to dig up my old HTML knowledge. in 2011. Why?

Besides the editor issue I find that I really like BlogPress and It’ll stay my blog writing on IPad first-choice until something new and better presents itself. If the BlogPress dev or product team ever read this: Please att two simple features – first, let me add a featured image to my post and secondly please allow me to add an excerpt to my posts, possibly in the same view where you add tags and categories.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The above is the standard signature. I am going to leave it there in all posts to easier be able to count how many posts I actually manage to write using my iPad. Not super optimistic about iPad blogging yet because my blog theme sort of require a featured image and an excerpt to shine at it’s best, so we’ll see how long it goes

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Here’s a list of sessions available online from the MIX 2011 conference in Las Vegas from the “Dark Genesis“.  If you’re only interested in Windows Phone 7 specific sessions they can be found here.

Lot’s of exiting things and announcements for Windows Phone 7 devs.

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If you’re a Mac owner and are looking to buy a Windows Phone based device there’s now and app available through the Mac app store that will help you to sync you content.

It’s called Windows Phone 7 Connector  and is an easy-to-use application that let’s you synchronize media files your iTunes library to your phone or Zune HD device. You can also save photos and videos captures on your device  to the Mac and update the Windows Phone 7 device software (OS) through the connector. It supports English, French, German, Italian and Spanish languages and is developed by Microsoft.

With Windows Phone 7 Connector, you can:

• Sync music, movies, TV Shows and podcasts, from your existing iTunes library, to your devices*
• Sync photos and videos, from your existing iPhoto library, to your devices
• Retrieve photos and videos, taken on your Windows Phone, and automatically import them into your existing iPhoto library
• Browse and preview media items located on your devices
• Download and install operating system updates for your Windows Phone (as applicable)
• Only unprotected (non DRM) files are supported

System requirements:

• Windows Phone 7 device (any carrier)
• Zune HD
• Mac OS 10.6.6 or higher

Available through the Mac AppStore application for free or here: http://itunes.apple.com/no/app/windows-phone-7-connector/id415571499?mt=12#

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For some reason it is sometimes impossible to comprehend what the “designer” was thinking about when you see applications developed for small screens.

With iPhone virtually everyone is a frontend designer and developer. This is mostly fun and a joy, but sometimes someone creates are beyond crap. And the scary bit, it’s not just the “garage” designer, it happens to apps created by so-called professionals..

UX Magazine: So you want to build the next smash hit iPhone app? Extraordinary design is key to getting the attention of users and of Apple, so if an app exudes a stench of mediocrity, Apple won’t feature it and app shoppers probably won’t download it (even if they do, they won’t share it with others).

So, garage designer or “professional”? @jerols from UX Magazine has some useful do’s and dont’s for the aspiring iPhone GUI and UX designers out there. Read the article “10 Surefire Ways to Screw Up Your iPhone App”  by going here: http://uxmag.com/design/10-surefire-ways-to-screw-up-your-iphone-app

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Norwegian newspaper VG (Verdens Gang) have launched their new native application for iPad.

VG+ became available in the AppStore on December 9th and contains custom edited and produced news from VG. Download for your iPad in iTunes AppStore.

I quite like the interface and how they’ve done navigation and I’ll post an review when i’ve had the chance to try it out for a few days.

With VG+ you get two editions of the newspaper each day. A morning edition at 8 am and the evening edition at 6 pm. The newspaper will be subscription based, but is available as a free service from now to January 25th.

Through Creuna – my employer, I’ve been working on an ad campaign, creating interactive ads for an advertiser that will be running throughout the free trial period. The VG+ ad platform is based on HTML5 and it has been fun to work with it. The richness of HTML5 gives you great flexibility for creating cool interactive ads that can contain games, multimedia and interaction. Hopefully we will be able to do this more.

VG+ is the second official iPad application from VG Multimedia, the first one was VG TVGuide HD.

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Just found a very anonymous web page at the address http://www.apphub.co -

It’s a single page with a logo that in two lines say it’s a cross-platform, app-store ready mobile application development . Build iPhone, Google Android and Windows Phone 7 applications in HTML and JavaScript.

There’s an option to enter your email address to become a beta tester, but i’m not sure i trust it for some reason… Searching google for “App Hub HTML javascript” gives you no relevant hits or give you any clues to what this could be, neither does a search on xda-developers.

Is it a scam to harvest email addresses for developers? The domain is registered to Artur Piankevich in Belarus. I’ll send an email to the contact information and ask what it is..

Will update as soon as i get a response.

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Designer yankoa has published  a version two of his excellent icon set for Windows Phone developers!

The Design of these icons it’s based on the METRO style, with cleared, straight forms and pure typography. Most of the parts are just basic shapes – circles and rectangles, combine in the best way. There is 7 main sections, with total 209 icons*3 colours – white, blue and black (overall 627 icons). The files are 256 x 256px ico files (from 16 to 256px) and 256 x 256px png files.

Most of these icons are normal stuff for a computers or smartphones. There are included icons for web browsers, social networks, mobile operators, there are some standard software packages, system icons, and such as multimedia and navigation systems.

The MetroStation v2 icons can be downloaded from deviantART.

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Erik Solheim, new media manager at NRK and techblogger, Ida Aalen, blogger and interaction designer at NetLife Research and Tore Berntsen who is a photographer and multimedia producer have reviewed 12 iPad applications for reading newspapers and magazines on an iPad. English and Norwegian magazines, but the review is all in Norwegian.

Esquire and Wired both got 5/6 rating. I like Wired in paper format, through the iPad edition i got the same good articles, but a slight flashback to the old days of the awesome multimedia cd-roms that came with magazines a couple of tech-generations ago.

The complete review can be read here: http://www.vg.no/teknologi/artikkel.php?artid=10034471

I didn’t  agree with them about Nettavisen iPad optimized website either. I quite like it and it deserves more than 2/6, It’s a lot better to read and is more eyecandy’ish than  iPad optimized version of other newspapers, i.e Aftenposten or Vg for that matter, that doesn’t even have an optimized web site.

How do you award something 5 out of 6 on the dice? Can you give an example of a 6/6 iPad magazine? What’s missing in Esquire and Wired? And what makes Nettavisen a 2/6? Would you rate http://ipad.aftenposten.no a 1/6 for having at least the word iPad in their domain name and everyone else that haven’t done anything gets a 0/6?

Im going to relax with my newly downloaded edition of Esquire magazine for men now.

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Just been watching @lukew give a presentation on what you should think about as an UX designer for mobile/device software at Webdagene 2010 in Oslo. Great talk and I am truly sad that I couldn’t be there to see it live.

He’s written a really great reference guide that can be read and downloaded here: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1071. This is a MUST READ for anyone developing mobility web or app solutions.

Luke Wroblewski has since the publication of his book “Web form design” in 2008 been considered THE authority on web forms and is an internationally renowned interaction designer. He’s currently chief design architect at Yahoo! Inc working with UX on web and mobile.

This should be part of the standard knowledge required by any UX designer for the mobile platform!

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On friday i got my new iPad device and it’s been a fun weekend.

At home i also have Asus EEE and a MacBook Air laptops, small computers that is light and easy to use while surfing from the couch.  The EEE is running Windows XP, and I must say that for my liking its too small. With a screen resolution of 1024 x 600 i just find it sad to browse most sites. It get marginally better when you run either Firefox or IE in fullscreen mode and set zoom level to 80% but using it has never been something I’ve considered fun. Up until now, my choice has been to use the Air. It’s thin, quite small (13,3″) and works like a charm. But it’s damn hot… For some reason the fan keeps spinning at full speed.

I’ve read a lot about iPad’s and one of the key issues seems to be that it’s got no apparent use.. What’s it for and how useful can an iPad be in your digital life.

I mostly read news sources from around the world, use Facebook and Twitter mostly, and for this the iPad just makes it easy.

The first application I installed on it was Flipboard for iPad. This is the BEST news aggregation software I’ve ever used. Flipboard makes my Facebook wall fun to read, It makes my Twitter timeline fun to read and it makes news RSS feeds fun to read. What it does is that it transforms everything  to  look like a digital magazine. Flipboard reads the content of your twitter timeline, or facebook wall and then lay it out in a design with headlines of status updates, it fetches content of links shared and display photos shared and you flip through the pages backward in twitter/facebook time.

Flipboard also has a predefined sett of news sources besides facebook and twitter. My favorites here is Engadget, Wired, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch and you get the same redesign and nice UI on all news sources.

Flipboard is out in version 1.0.1 and it’s quite a new release so here is some bugs and features that could be added that would have made this the only news aggregator you’ll ever need. The most annoying bug i’ve found is that you cannot play shared youtube videos. The just don’t play. Not in “magazine” mode or when you choose “view on web” and use a web controller inside the application… it works when you (in the  web controller) choose to open the url in Safari.

A feature I am hoping they’ll add later is the possibility to add my own custom RSS feeds, but all in all, this is well worth a download and hopefully they’ll update and fix the Youtube bug pretty soon.

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