One computer to rule them all: why the iPad will be big.

The iPad is seen by lots of computer-savy people as too slow, limited, etc. However, after spending a few hours getting the PC of my mom up to speed, a few things became clear to me. Especially that her needs from a computer are way different from mine. She doesn’t need a filesystem,right clicking, context menu’s, and doesn’t want virus scanners and backups (but then I guess nobody wants those).

This article rang quite true for me: Why are computers for power users the same boxes as computers for experts? When you think about it, it’s quite crazy my mom has a computer (actually: an OS, it’s not a hardware thing) that can run a compiler. She’ll never compile anything, and doesn’t want to. She probably doesn’t need tabs in her browser (I usually have 100+ open), or even run the browser and the email client at the same time.
Currently, the only difference between a computer for a power user, and a novice is specs and price. Both will (in most cases, linux excluded) run the same OS, with the same options. The software might be different, but even there I run the same mail client, browser, and picture management software as my mom (although on a different OS). That’s strange, as I spend about 20 times as much time behind the screen as her.

Abstractions like directories are quite a hard system to understand, and I’m more and more convinced that the iPhone OS list of pictures (and, a similar list of docs) would be a way easier mechanism. Maybe less powerful, and not workable for the code of a website, but good enough for my mom.

Current computers are incarnation of the old typewriter: Even the form factor has only changed slightly (A box on a desk, with a keyboard). But the way we use computers has changed a lot: The first users were mostly producing content (letters, spreadsheets, etc). Today a lot of computing is the consumption of content (Youtube videos, browsing social networks, etc). Still we use a device with the same form-factor. Maybe we need a different device to consume media, which will suffice for 90% of the population?

I’m starting to feel the iPad is just that computer. Sure, it’s limited, but the things it does it probably does well. And it won’t have viruses, different browsers, or even right clicks. I have the idea that’s the right model(and it will make my life better as well!). I don’t know if the current version or form-factor will be perfect, but I can definately see computing as a whole split: An iPhone like OS for simple tasks, and a powerfull OS for the geeks, who need to run compilers, photoshop, etc. And maybe I like to use such a simplified system as well…

(Actually, the above is the same gripes I have with my MCE PVR: I hate to reinstall my VCR every few months, but I guess that’s a similar but different blogpost).

Strangest thing is that, while these people work for us, I have never met them (and I probably can’t even get in touch). It’s a too large group to have a beer with, or even talk to. They might be on the other end of the world, yet they are clicking away on our project.

Without this world wide web thingy, this worldwide collaboration of thousands of people would never have been possible.

The last few months I have been quite busy working on the recently launched OneFrameOfFame.com. In this blogpost I’ll explain the architecture that runs the site.

The site OneFrameOfFame.com might look simple, from the front. It’s basically 2 different pages, and even those are really similar. However, the backend is quite complex: Each frame is handled by at least 10 different machines, likely on 3 continents, of different services, before it ends up in the clip.

When a user starts his webcam to contribute a frame, a request is sent to our server. That takes the next queued frame number at Amazon’s Simple Queue services (SQS), and sends it to the user. When he completes the frame, the resulting image is sent back. It’s then scaled to 3 different resolutions, and stored at Amazon’s S3, and removed from the SQS queue. The image is added to the recent frames at our homepage. It’s also sent to Crowdflower, who creates a new job at Amazon Mechanical Turk. At least 3 different workers rate the image, check for nudity, and tell us how well the user did in mimicking the original frame.

Once enough workers have rated the image, a signal is sent back to our server (via a webhook). Every hour our server collects all judgements. Then the the render server checks if there are new, moderated images. If that’s the case it pulls them from S3 (and ads them to a local cache, so they will only be downloaded to the render server once). It then generates a new clip, which it sends to Blip.TV, which is embedded on our frontpage. Blip was the only video service we found, where it’s possible to replace a video via the API.

The main webpage is hosted at Mediatemple, which (is supposed to) run on grid hosting, enabling a lot of traffic without breaking down.

Without all these scaling services (especially the ones provided by Amazon), this whole project probably wouldn’t have been feasible with our limited budget. So go shoot your One Frame Of Fame!

Update:
I’ve considered using Cloudfront to distribute the images. Since they’r already stored in S3, using it would only be adding a setting (and a DNS entry). However, since the frames shown are highly dynamic (by default we only show the last 10 frames), caching isn’t that useful, as the requested images will change often.
Also, because we have a lot of files, on average not being requested too often, the origin fetches would be significant (both in terms of costs, and in speed). So we stayed with S3, which is fast enough (we use S3 Europe, since most of our target audience is in Europe).

I have been so busy working on new projects, that there is a bit of a backlog of things I worked on, and that are live now. One of them is the DWDD iPhone app I built for the Vara. DWDD is a popular daily dutch TV show. The iPhone app shows the short (5 minutes) version of the last 10 shows, as well as the full version of the latest broadcast.

You can get the app for free in the Itunes Appstore.

Last week the NOS launched the Jeugdjournaal iPhone app I built for them:

Besides showing the latest news broadcast, it also allows users to vote on the latest daily poll, which is synced with the polls on their website.

While not many children will have an iPhone, the app also works on the iPod touch, and can offcourse also be installed on the iPhone’s of parents.

The app is available in the Itunes Appstore. More about it can be found at the iPhoneclub or at the Weblog Nieuwe Media by NOS.

Since the iPhone sends it’s OS version in every web request it does, I decided to have a look at my own logfiles (in the hope that bigger apps will follow ).

I do realise this isn’t a scientific valid result: It’s just the distribution of one, quite recent, app. However, it does say something. So, without further ado, I present the results:

From this small sample, 4% didn’t already run 3.xx (it might help that this is an iPhone only app: iPod Touches apparently are updated less).

Since this is only taken from a small sample, I hope bigger apps will release their stats. Here is the small PHP code I used:

<?
define("LOGFILE","/home/panman/logs/prod.panman.nl_access_log");
$lines=file(LOGFILE);
foreach ($lines as $line){
if (!eregi("stufidates",$line)) {continue;}
//if ($i==0) {echo $line;}
    $parts=explode(" ",$line);
    if ($parts[12]!="(iPhone;"){
    $detects["noip"]++;
    } else {
        $os=$parts["17"];
        $detects[$os]++;
    }
    $i++;
}

echo "<table width=500>";
foreach ($detects as $key=>$hits){
echo "<tr><td>OS:</td><td>".$key."</td><td>".number_format(($hits/$i)*100)."%</td></tr>";
}
echo "</table>";
echo "Total:".$i;
?>

If you have an iphone app that does requests to your webserver, please run this code (or something similar, it’s just a first version) on your logs, and let me know the results.

De NOS Journaal iPhone app die gisteren is gelanceerd is vandaag aangekondigd in het NOS 8 uur journaal. Ook staat de applicatie momenteel op Nr 1 als populairste download in de nederlandse appstore. Yay!

The followers of my twitter account might have noticed that I spend some time at the NOS (the Dutch public broadcasters) the last few weeks. Now I can announce the result of my work: The official NOS Journaal app is live! It shows the last news broadcast, as well as the last 8′o clock broadcast.  It can now be downloaded in the Appstore!

It runs on iPhone and iPod Touch, both over 3G (if fast enough, depending on coverage and subscription) and WiFi.

More about the app can be read at the NOS nieuwe media blog (dutch) and the website of iPhoneClub (also dutch) who was first to notice the app.

Tweakers also wrote about it, and right now it’s #2 on the dutch appstore. Yay!