Robot Loves Kitten

To be fair, I haven’t downloaded the app yet. But this video shows the dangers about too much UI in an iPad app. This is what I was warning against when I introduced the idea of using Lazy UI in regards to a comfortable, magazine-like experience of one-handed interaction on the iPad. The Daily seems almost too interactive, frankly.

What media companies can’t seem to wrap their heads around is the single-serve nature of apps. Instapaper makes reading articles great — and that’s it. Marco would never add sudoku puzzles!

It pains me that I have yet to see a news app that really deep dives into the news — the stories behind the stories, the facts and figures, the personalities, the history. Granted, this is a challenge that requires linking up a lot of structured data, but if there isn’t a great app in that, then maybe it’s time to get out of the news business.

IMO, the NYTimes will build this app first and potentially own the space. To everyone else, good luck with those sudoku puzzles.

That’s a mouthful of a title! I have been trying to create new posts on a WordPress blog via XML-RPC and CodeIgniter, but couldn’t get the categories applied properly. Here’s how I got it working (no guarantees this will work in every situation, or that it will work in an hour).

I am using CodeIgniter’s XMLRPC library and the metaWeblog API. To get categories inserted with a post, you first need to know the names of the categories — you can do this via metaWeblog’s getCategories method — in this case, I hard-coded the values into my request for easier testing.

Put the category names into an array, and pass the categories array into the post data, appending ‘struct’ after the array (the ‘struct’ is the important part).

$categories = array("Uncategorized", "Blogroll", "Reviews");
$blogpass = $blogpass;
$blogid = 1;
$publishImmediately = TRUE;
$thePost = array(
array(
'title' => array($post['title'],'string'),
'description' => array($post['text'],'string'),
'categories' => array($categories,'struct'),
'post_type' => array('post','string'),
), 'struct');
$this->xmlrpc->server($blogurl, 80);
$this->xmlrpc->method('metaWeblog.newPost');
$request = array($blogid, $bloguser, $blogpass, $thePost, $publishImmediately);
$this->xmlrpc->request($request);
$result = $this->xmlrpc->send_request();

One of the dangers of moving from the small canvas of a mobile device to a larger tablet is the explosion of UI elements and controls one can expose in their application. We’re starting to see some backlash as some apps push the boundaries of usability, and will probably see much more as developers begin to add advertising and other common web site elements to their apps, confusing and cluttering the interface.

Taking a strong cue from spare, effective mobile apps would seem critical now that it’s easy to add this or that widget to please whomever is politicking for presence. Tablets are a new platform, and need to be treated carefully, lest users lose their way.

To help calm the seas, I’ve been thinking about the concept of “lazy UI”, in which UI elements are grouped by function and modes, creating the least user friction. For example, while reading, a user could page up/down and browse articles (right/left) using controls grouped together in one corner of the interface. The idea is not to spread reading controls across the screen (a common approach), but to keep them close to the active finger or thumb as possible, allowing the user to stay in a relaxed “reading” mode, and not have to struggle been the more passive experience of reading and the active experience of navigation.

There are a lot of good examples of this approach out in the wild, and I’ll try and collect a few to display here.