Moved my blog

This is just a heads up that I have moved my blog to this location.

Twitter released it's iPad app, when will Facebook?

Twitter officially released it's iPad app a couple of days ago. Since I downloaded it, my experience of Twitter on iPad has completely changed. Prior to using the official app, I used TweetDeck on iPad, which, essentially, is a blown down version of the desktop app to fit the screen size of the iPad. It does not contain any features that take advantage of the iPad's multitouch capabilities. And I was OK with that because, IMHO, it was the best twitter app on the iPad.

Then the official Twitter app was released. The new app is choke full of innovative features. Touch a tweet and a context menu appears to it's right showing relevant information such as a preview of webpages referenced in the tweet, the profile of the tweeter, the last tweet of Twitter users referenced in the tweet, tweets that contain the same hashtag, etc.

All this information is displayed in a series of panes that you can slide off and on screen to move among the wealth of information relevant to the tweet. Other, less intuitive, features include multitouch gestures that allow you to get more information about tweets; pinch a tweet and you get information about the tweeter, drag down a tweet using two fingers and you get the entire history of tweets and replies if the tweet queried is part of a thread, etc.Overall, it's an amazing experience.

While I have been happily playing with these features (I will admit spending the good part of half an hour playing with the sliding panes in the app:D), the app left me a bit disappointed. My disappointment was not with the Twitter app, but with the lack of an official app for the other social network I frequent, Facebook, for iPad.

I enjoy using the official Facebook app on the iPhone and installed it on my iPad as soon as I got it. But running the app in 2x mode results in a very pixelated interface. I actually bought a number of unofficial Facebook apps, including Friendly before the back to school sale currently ongoing, for the iPad to see if I could improve my experience.

None of them provided the experience I desired. Of course, you will probably be asking why not just go to the Facebook website using Safari? The problem with this is that some features just don't work on the iPad browser. Among these features is the ability to scroll through a friend list. Despite these limitations, I decided that I would just go ahead and use the website until Facebook releases its official app.

My intial expectation was that a high definition version of the iPhone app would be good enough. However, Twitter has now upped the ante. I now expect to see similar innovations in any official Facebook app released for the iPad. At the very least, I expect some multi-touch gesture features that enrich the Facebook experience.

This is going to require some creative thinking on the part of Facebook, but with the growing number of iPad owners, it may be in the best interest of the company to design an app that is as innovative as the official Twitter app. Hopefully, the latest animosity between Apple and Facebook over Ping integration will not sour the app acceptance process once Facebook comes up with an official version for the iPad. I will be keeping my fingers crossed :D

PC vs Mobile web access

I don't know if this is the general case or if this is just a personal idiosyncrasy, but I have discovered that my mobile web accessing pattern is different from my normal PC based web browsing. On the PC, it feels normal to access a certain web-page and spend a lot of time on that page consuming content --- I find that this access pattern is the same regardless of the type of website I visit. Whether it is a social media site like twitter or facebook, or a more traditional website, I find that I typically spend a lot of time on a single site when I am on my PC.

When I access the web from my phone, however, I find that my viewing patterns change significantly. Maybe it is the small screen, or maybe its all those push notifications arriving, but I find myself spending less time on one particular site, but visiting many more pages (either through the built-in browser or through dedicated apps) than I do on my PC.

This peekaboo consumption pattern seems more natural on mobile devices. Has anybody else seen this discrepancy between fixed and mobile web browsing? Also, if this is true for a lot of people, what does it mean for online advertising? Interesting, will see if Google has anything to say about this.

I think, therefore I am --- but I might be dreaming

I watched the movie Inception a couple of weeks or so ago and, ever since, have been immersed, albeit passively, in the online debate about whether or not the last scene was a dream. Some of my Facebook acquaintances are rather passionately convinced that the last scene is a dream (yes, I mean you Abdallah :) ). 

Oh yes, if you haven't watched the movie yet, please be advised that there are going to be some spoilers in the rest of this blog. 

---------------------------------------------------Spoiler Alert-----------------------------------------------------------


The most compelling reason to believe that the last scene is a dream, apart from the fact that we did not see that totem topple, is that the children are seen wearing the same clothes in the last scene as they are wearing in Cobb's memory of them. At least, that has been the reasoning until the costume designer revealed that they are in fact wearing difference clothes.


What now? Does this prove that the last scene is in fact real? Not really. Even if we accept that the clothes are different, there is nothing to stop us from believing that Cobb dreamed up new clothing for his children. The only way we could be sure that that last scene was real is if we had seen the top topple, right?


Wrong. Apparently, and I will admit to being too lazy (optimistic?) to think of this on my own, it is possible that the entire movie was a dream. What if the entire movie occurs in Cobb's dreams? The totem means nothing if its properties were constructed within a dream --- specifically, it is possible that Cobb dreamed of the totem and constructed its properties within a dream and that we never see reality in the movie.


I find this idea fascinating. Several years ago, I read René Descartes' Discourse on the Method . Nolan's film brought back the ideas in that book to my mind. Descartes tried to determine the nature of reality. He did this by trying to determine what could be considered real using objective criteria. He came to the conclusion that it is impossible to objectively determine the reality of anything, except his own existence.


He starts by postulating the existence of a "deceiving god" who tricks humans into believing that things exist when they don't (note that we can substitute dreaming for this "deceiving god"). He then tries to prove whether or not things that are perceived by the human mind are real or imaginary; he comes to the conclusion that there is no way to objectively determine whether the physical environment we perceive is real or not. 


One truth that he could objectively determine was his existence. Even if all of the world as he perceived was not real and invented by this deceiving god, the fact that he was there to be deceived implies that he exists. He is able to think, even if this though process consists of dreaming up the imaginary world around him, this implies that he does in fact exit. Hence the famous "cogito ergo sum".


Now back to Inception. How can we determine what is real and what is not? We are told we can do this using the totems. But if the totem are themselves dreamed up in a dream, there is no way of determining what is real and what is dream.


From a philosophical point of view, the last scene of the movie was the perfect ending to the film. After all, since it is impossible to determine what is real and what is dream, even if that top stopped spinning, we would still be questioning the reality of that scene.


So, I will sum up my understanding of Inception in one phrase :-


"Cogito ergo sum, tamen ego vires exsisto somnium"


Or am I taking this movie too seriously?

My First Blog

This is my first blog. I never really caught on to the blogging wave when it first started, this is my attempt to remedy that --- if I can :) In my first attempt to join the zeitgeist, I will talk about smartphones, a topic I am passionate about.

Like my belated entry to the world of blogging, I am a relative new-comer to the world of smartphones. For years, I subscribed to this opinion  :) A couple of months ago, or thereabouts, I decided to see what all the hype was about and bought my first iPhone -- I have never looked back.

The iPhone is amazing, I have always been a heavy Internet user, but getting the iPhone has probably pushed me into the realm of Internet addiction :) It is just an amazing tool to own. In addition to being my cell phone, it also allows me to read books (I am an avid reader), listen to music, match movies, get cinema viewing tips, browse the net, check my email  --- and so much more.

I have always been a fan of the Unix culture, and I was very happy to know that iOS is based on Apple's variant of Unix. Although I really love my iPhone, I do have a couple of issues with the Apple ecosystem. I understand the need for a curated App store, but sometimes Apple's censorship seems too excessive.

I am also baffled by the geographical restrictions placed on some products in the App store and on iTunes. I live in Egypt, and I feel a bit resentful that I am not allowed to buy music or books from iTunes. Recently, I discovered a new band through twitter and wanted to download their EP -- no luck. iTunes will not allow me to buy this product from Egypt.

To be completely honest, this is not solely an iTunes issue -- I cannot download the music from Amazon either. Its a bit frustrating and could drive some customers (for the record, not me:)) who want to buy these products legitimately into the arms of illegal P2P downloaders.

There are some restrictions that are purely Apple though. For example, the selective restrictions on adult material in the App store is very weird -- as far as I recall, Swimsuit Illustrated and Playboy still have apps in the store while less graphic content has been allegedly removed. Apple should be a bit more consistent, either ban all such apps or leave them all in the store -- my personal preference would be to remove all such content from the store (there are too many minors with access to iPhones). Alternatively, they could have a category with adult rated material (ala the MPAA rating system) and allow parental control on all devices that access the App store in order to restrict access to age inappropriate material.

Apple even, infamously, banned a Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist before reconsidering its decision. Even this level of censorship did not prevent malicious apps from entering the store. It gives the impression that Apple does not respect its customers enough to allow them to make their own decisions about what they can or cannot do with their iPhones (and other Apple products that use the app store).

That being said, I still love my iPhone. I have looked into Blackberrys and Android phones, but I did not find one that fits my needs and tastes to the extent that the iPhone does. I just hope that the latest flap over the Blackberry does not put a damper on the smartphone market in the Middle East.