Versions Subversion GUI Hits 1.0

I should start reviewing the daily apps I use, this is one of them. The others CSSedit and Textmate.

(via Versions Subversion GUI Hits 1.0)

Versions, the GUI-based Subversion client for the Mac, is now out of beta. It must have been at least a year ago, that I remember seeing some screenshots for Versions, and the development community drooled. But we had to wait. And waiting was hard.

Fast-forward to this summer when the first public-beta of Versions became available for download. You should have seen Twitter. Web and softare developers were giddy. Since then we’ve seen several updates to an already very nice beta, culminating with the 1.0 version, available today.

Versions offers the ability to visually browse repositories, see changes in your working copies, and easily set up new projects. There’s also a nice timeline view, letting you go back and see all the old edits on files and folers. Versions even gives you an easy way to set up a free remote repository using Beanstalk.

The GUI-based Subversion client idea isn’t new. There are a few applications, like svnX, that have been around for quite awhile. However, if you compare the screenshots and features between Versions and svnX, you can see why Versions is getting the buzz that it is.

Another application to keep an eye on is Cornerstone, which is looking very good. Cornerstone just debuted this summer and seems to be giving Versions a run for its money. This is a fantastic situation, much like VMWare Fusion and Parallels, where we get to see two excellent applications in competition against each other to make the best program.

Versions is a joint venture by Pico and Sofa. It requires Mac OS X 10.4.9 or higher (10.5.2 is recommended). You can download and try Versions for free for 21 days. After that it will set you back around $50.

Apple Taking Orders for the 24″ Cinema Display

I really wish $900 landed on my lap, this display is awesome.

(via Apple Taking Orders for the 24″ Cinema Display)

Apple has today started to take orders for their new 24″ LED Cinema Display. Shipping is stated to start sometime in November, and the screen is priced at $899. We have previously covered the announcement of the new displays and detailed their features.

This new device is the first display designed to make use of the new Mini DisplayPort currently only present in Apple’s notebook line. It sports Mini DisplayPort, USB and MagSafe connectors to really expand the experience of using a notebook. There’s also a built-in iSight camera, microphone, and speaker system that provide a “true desktop experience” — something not present on previous cinema displays. The addition of a notebook charging cable has been well received, and in-built DisplayPort may go some way to alleviate the problem with a shortage of converters.
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When The Browser Doesn’t Cut it: Basecamp’s Lack of Mobility

A bunch of opinionated excuses not to make a mobile interface…

(via When The Browser Doesn’t Cut it: Basecamp’s Lack of Mobility)

We at ReadWriteWeb are huge Basecamp fans. It raises the productivity of small, physically dispersed teams (like ours) to a level that enables new virtual companies to be be viable. Basecamp changes the traditional answer to the question: “can we operate virtually from around the world, or do we all need to live in the same place?” ReadWriteWeb, for example, lives on Basecamp; it is our office.

But there is one problem. Basecamp is browser native. I want mobile native. And ReadWriteWeb’s VP of Content Dev Marshall Kirkpatrick tweeted today that he wants a Basecamp AIR app. Either way, it’s clear that browser-only doesn’t cut it anymore for Basecamp.

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Why Lack of Mobile Version is Such a Pain

Let’s focus on the mobile issue in this post. Like many people, I don’t live at my desk. I am up and about, meeting people. I like it that way. So I rely on my Blackberry to stay in touch. But here is the problem. I get an email notification of a post within Basecamp. I can read it fine, no problem. But when I want to reply, I have to use the Blackberry browser to log into Basecamp. That is kludgy to say the least. So I open an email thread, annoying everybody else on the team.

Sure I could switch to an iPhone with a better browser. But that still relies on good connectivity all the time and I don’t want to be forced to make that switch. I want something like Twitterberry, a native Blackberry interface to Basecamp.

But when you look at the world through mobile eyes, you see that this is not an incremental change. It is as fundamental as moving from Client Server to browser-native. Browsers on small mobile screens are talking heads on early TV.

This Is a Hard Problem to Solve

Some problems are totally easy to define, such as a cure for cancer, longer lasting batteries or really cheap solar energy - but much, much, much harder to implement. So I am going to do the easy bit - define the problem - and hope that somebody comes up with the solution.

The needs are in 3 “buckets”:

1. Mobile Native user interface
2. User centric, not project centric
3. Collaborative list building

Start With Mobile

My short-hand description is “like Basecamp but mobile native”. That is easy to say, but tough to implement for 4 reasons:

1. Mobile native user interface. Ideally 90% of my actions are on a mobile device with a tiny screen and keyboard. I will do the more complex configuration and housekeeping type work on a browser in the 10% of my time when I am working on a fully fledged laptop/desktop. Most developers spend 90% of their time creating on a laptop/desktop and only 10% communicating in the “real world”. For most of us, that ratio is different.

2. Offline syncing. Much of the time my mobile device is “off air”. Those are opportunities to catch up on To Do Lists, Objectives, Milestones and the other planning type activities. You can do these sitting on an airplane, train or waiting in line at Starbucks. Syncing your personal planning to your group communication tool (Basecamp or whatever) is an annoying extra step that is a time sink.

3. Any mobile device. I use a Blackberry. I like it, but I may get seduced by the iPhone or may have something totally different in the future. More to the point, I cannot possibly predict what devices my collaborators will have and the vast majority of mobile devices are neither Blackberry nor iPhone. Communication has to work at the lowest common denominator but the user interface has to be native. As a Blackberry user, I don’t care a hoot about the compromises the developer faces having to design for Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia, etc. The same is true for people with other devices, iPhone users being the most vehement about native user interfaces.

The SMS Lowest Common Denominator?

SMS without the interrupt or cost issues. “Lowest common denominator for communication” makes one think of SMS. But SMS has major costs - both time and money. Services that generate lots of email messages are bad enough, but lots of SMS messages are way worse.

Individual Centric, Not Project Centric

This may be even hard to solve than mobile native, but the issues are linked.

Like many people I multi-task across multiple projects, working with different teams in different companies. This is an increasingly common experience for many people, even if multiple projects/teams within one company is still more common. “Dipping in and out of” multiple Basecamp projects is a pain. My To Do List may be tagged by Project, but I want only one To Do List, that syncs with individual Projects To Do Lists.

Collaborative List Building

Many people use Excel for building lists - marketing lists, to do lists, feature lists and so on. It may be a hammer to crack a nut, not what it was designed for, but people do this. As list building requires collaboration we start using “web office” type spreadsheets such as Google Apps or Zoho. This is classic “hammer to crack a nut”. Excel is still better than any web office competitor for heavy duty spreadsheet work, such as building a financial model for a venture, but relatively weak on collaboration. List building needs very simple features but needs to be very collaboration intensive. A slightly more sophisticated version of Tasks on a Blackberry that is collaborative might be close.

The Solution: a User Interface Maestro!

This may come as an extension to Basecamp or a totally different service that can use services such as Basecamp. Or even an alternative to Basecamp, much as I love them.

These problems cannot be solved at the technical level only. I am sure the architecture issues are important, but this is primarily a user interface challenge. This requires inspiration, a real user interface maestro.

Using Twitterberry shows some of the issues. It is a lot better than using SMS and the browser directly, but it is still sorely lacking (as 4 days of TweetPorting from Web 2.0 Expo made very clear). And Twittering is one simple task/feature. Doing this for the richness of tasks in Basecamp is an order of magnitude harder.

A short term fix for me could be a native Blackberry interface to Basecamp. If 37 Signals offered this I would be happier and if they also did iPhone and Symbian for Nokia and others they could crack the “mobile native” issue. but I suspect it would not solve my “individual centric, not project centric” issue.

Also Basecamp was “born on” the browser. I suspect that something “born on” the mobile phone could be the next generation.

Does this need resonate with you and have you seen anything like this in the wild? Or in Beta? Finally, is Basecamp really the best project management solution now in this increasingly mobile-based work world? We’d love to hear your suggestions for alternatives.

Discuss

Google’s iPhone app gets a voice: Yours

Matt Cutts was talking about this the other day. It looks like it’ll be awesome. Can’t wait to try it.

(via Google’s iPhone app gets a voice: Yours)

Google on Friday is expected to release version two of its mobile search application for the iPhone. The new version works much like the old one, letting users query Google outside of the mobile Safari Web browser, as well as search through contacts and narrow down results by their current location. The big change is the addition of search-by-voice, which lets you skip the keyboard entirely.

Google has found a really neat way to distinguish between voice and keyboard input. Using the phone’s accelerometer and proximity sensors, it can tell when you’re lifting the phone up to your face. Once you do, all that’s left to do is speak, and your voice will get processed then turned into a query similar to what’s been done with Google’s GOOG-411 service–including suggestions of what it thought you said. This works for both Web searches and contacts, which makes the application double as a voice-powered contact search. You cannot, however, dial a result without clicking on it.

It’s worth noting a few companies have already beat Google to the punch with voice-activated search tools. Excuse Me Services has two applications: Say Who and Say Where, which let you dial contacts and search for local Web services using nothing more than your voice. Say Where in particular is the more interesting of the two since it can use voice queries to find directions, gas stations, restaurants and traffic maps.

Also, early Monday rival Yahoo launched voice support for its OneSearch product, however instead of using internally-built technology it uses Vlingo for the the voice recognition and processing.

The updated, voice-ready version of Google’s application will be available on Android and Blackberry devices in the coming months. iPhone users with the application already installed will find the updated version in the updates tab of the app store.

YouTube - Toshiba Timesculpture Advert

Pretty sweet video. I’m sure JasonB has already shared this one.

(via YouTube - Toshiba Timesculpture Advert)

Google Adds Voice And Video Chat to Gmail

Wow, I didn’t notice the integration in docs. That’s a killer if you ask me.

I just hope Adium start supporting video and audio. Or…some other app like [hate to say it] iChat, I’m just not ready to use a browser for Video and audio.

(via Google Adds Voice And Video Chat to Gmail)

Watch out Skype (and Meebo and TokBox), Google is adding voice and video chat to Gmail today, all in one fell swoop. When you are having an instant message conversation with someone over Gtalk, a video and voice option will appear (after you download this plugin).

From the Google Blog:

Just click on the new “Video & more” menu in a Gmail chat window and select “Start video chat” or “Start voice chat.” You can switch to a full screen view or pop out the chat window and change the size and positioning as you wish. Of course, not everyone has a webcam, but even if you don’t, you can still have voice conversations alongside your email and regular chat

Bringing video chat into the Gmail page, just as it does with regular IM, is in step with Google’s efforts to connect its disparate services together in a more seamless fashion. It is also a better experience. If you use Gmail as your primary email, you always have it open. That means you don’t have to open up a separate application just to conduct an impromptu text, voice, or video chat (as you do with other IM clients). These are all just different modes of communication, available to you as appropriate. Life just got a lot harder for startups pushing point solutions around video chat.

The new feature was developed out of Google’s engineering group in Sweden, where it acquired e-meeting startup Marratech in April, 2007. Serge Lachapelle, the Swedish Google product manager in the video below, used to be the VP of product management at Marratech.

So maybe in another 18 months we’ll see the Marratech’s cool whiteboarding feature incorporated into Gmail as well (see the old Marratech product shot below):

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Browser-based voice and video chat available in Gmail

It took them long enough, can’t believe it.
This is going to be a real joy when my first clients want to Video chat with me - not.

(via Browser-based voice and video chat available in Gmail)

You can now have voice and video chats with your contacts for free within your browser’s Gmail window.

Editions impacted:
Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions

Languages impacted:
US English

How to access what’s new:
From Gmail, open a chat session with a contact, click on the ‘Video & more’ menu at the bottom of the chat window, then select ‘Start video chat’ or ‘Start voice chat’. The first time you use this feature, you’ll be prompted to download and install a small plugin.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2008/11/gmail-voice-and-video-chat.html

VMware Fusion 2 vs. Parallels Desktop 4: Let’s Dance

Glad to read this article after spending money on VMware Fusion 2. I had been a big parallels fan until I started using snapshots for IE testing.

(via VMware Fusion 2 vs. Parallels Desktop 4: Let’s Dance)

When it comes to OS virtualization on a Mac, there are two major contenders for the title of virtualizer to end all virtualizers.

Likely Parallels and VMware Fusion need no introduction for TAB readers, but you might not be aware of what the latest incarnations that both programs bring to the table. VMware Fusion 2, released in September, and Parallels Desktop 4.0, just released today, have a few new tricks up their sleeves.

Setup

Setting up both machines on my aluminum iMac was incredibly easy. I used Windows XP Media Center Edition from a physical disc for both, although the programs also offer the choice of using an image instead. For both installations I used the default settings. In Parallels 4.0, this consists of a 32 GB hard drive with 512 MB of RAM and 128 MB of video RAM. VMware’s quickstart configurations sets you up with 40 GB of disk space, 512MB of RAM, and although it doesn’t have a video memory slider like Parallels, 3D acceleration is enabled.
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Just a test for now, let’s see if Twitter picks this up. Hopefully it does and then all I have to do is wait for IM to work. (via FriendFeed)

via FriendFeed posted a message “Just a test for now, let’s see if Twitter picks this up. Hopefully it does and then all I have to do is wait for IM to work.” 16 hours ago - Comment - Like

Instant FriendFeed - Notifications and Posting over IM

Okay those does it. Please someone shove a stake through Twitter’s heart, end it now, and everyone move to Twitter. I’m thinking how awesome Twitter rooms are going to be now-especially as a development group. Also, how can I completly get rid of Twitter without losing those friends/followers.

(via Instant FriendFeed - Notifications and Posting over IM)

The great thing about IM is that it’s instant. You know right away when someone wants to reach you. To give users the option of having that same immediacy when it comes to Fri…