I consider Digg Reader a perfect web app. It's simple, free, featureful and has a stark beauty to it
Like everyone else, I had to find a replacement for Google Reader, so I tried a lot of them (even paid ones). Digg Reader was the only one that exactly matched how I used Google Reader — and in fact, I like it even better now.
Yes. People might balk at your Vox link, but I'd advise anyone to look into it themselves. There's little good research about flossing: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/9611
My personal belief is that flossing does something since you can clearly see food bits or whatever on used floss, but that's different from believing those food bits wouldn't be removed by normal brushing anyway or that they even cause harm.
“It’s still in private ownership but the easement ensures it can never be developed,” Sweeney said. “It’s not open to anyone in the public at any time, but people can email and get a permission card and go and enjoy it.”
ATMs have the same problem with viewing angles. It's funny with those too because that interface will always be used at extreme angles: From above (potentially) when a person is standing at an ATM, from straight on if they happen to match the ATM's screen height, and from below if someone is sitting in their car.
A good case for touch screens, where the label is the interaction point.
Never seen an ATM to be used from a car, but as for touch screens, many of those have severe alignment problems that would get even worse due to parallax when used from wildly different viewing angles. Requires you to have even larger buttons to counteract that or frustration sets in where people constantly get the impression their touches don't register (just because they manage to hit slightly below the button).
ATMs I tend to use have the following design: https://www.sparkasse-einbeck.de/module/aktion_if/wunsch-pin... with a row of four large physical buttons to the left and right of the screen. It's impossible to get a viewing angle extreme enough that this gets ambiguous.
Around here (Washington, DC area) drive-up ATMs are fairly common at banks which have drive-through service.
Having used both types of ATMs, I find the touch-screen ones less error prone. The touch targets are always gigantic. They pretty much have to be anyway to ensure that everybody can read the labels. I just touch what I want and it works. For ATMs with physical buttons on the side, I always have to crouch down to get the right angle so I can figure out which button does what. With the ones I've used, it's quite easy to get a viewing angle where it's ambiguous.
Some filling stations also use the arrangement of four buttons on either side of a large dot matrix screen, for a total of eight buttons. But even this has alignment problems -- ones I've experienced personally despite images being difficult to find. But these [1][2] show the problem: the options listed on the in-set screen come out of alignment with the buttons at extreme angles. That, coupled with other design decisions [3] makes some filling stations frustrating to use.
I will miss this one. Used it for at least 4 years.
Other than wanting a highlighting feature, I've been completely satisfied with this abandoned product (last update at least 2 years ago?). They nailed it for me, especially with design aesthetics.
And it had the absolute best send-to-Kindle parser: It sent an actual personal document, not a Kindle magazine, and they even managed to include article images most of the time (which other services struggle with).
> They nailed it for me, especially with design aesthetics.
#1 reason I stopped using Readability was their "designs".
The web app had constant bugs, especially right after their big redesign and the Android mobile version was terrible. It would pop up a notification every 5 minutes to tell you it's checking for articles, and there was no way to turn that off.
Didn't change for a year, so I dumped them and said "guess this is an abandoned product".
The Android app has been similarly insanely buggy, and seems to want to completely re-download the article database every few uses. That was actually a big part of what pushed me to Pocket.
The whole pricing/platform debate seems like a red herring.
> Brent took a job at the excellent Omni Group in September 2014, and from that point onward the writing was on the wall. We could have, and probably should have, shut Vesper down a year ago. But we loved it too much. Or at least I did.
> I even cheat, personally, and run Vesper on my Mac in the iOS Simulator
1. There was only one developer in the company.
2. That developer got a day job (quit).
3. Gruber and the musician partner are stranded with an app they can't update and a Mac app they can't finish on their own.
Gruber clearly loves Vesper. He runs it in the freaking simulator. I really doubt he needed to see huge financial returns to keep at it.
It sounds like the real lesson is: It sucks when your technical cofounder quits.
For a guy who opines all day about Apple, the fact that he can't maintain a pretty simple iOS app is telling. If you really care about the app and your users, you read the damn docs and get to work. I taught myself in less than six months, and my app is free. Although I don't have much time, I still keep it running out of respect for my 50 thousand or so users.
This especially annoys me after their enfillade of blog posts about best practices for UI and pricing of Vesper.
This is what drove me to abandon Ux in favor of a life-long dream of programming via a mid-life career shift. I was simply tired of relying on programmers to realize my visions AND being beholden to them if decided, for whatever reason, to jump ship. Luckily, I've been a lifelong programmer, but never professionally. The result is that I'm much happier and only have myself to blame if a product doesn't come to fruition.
I feel like nobody's really obliged to do anything. Maintenance is work, after all. Though I think it's cool when things exist for the community.
If you're abandoning a project, releasing the source seems like a Good Thing To Do. But people should be allowed to walk away from things if they do not enjoy it as much anymore (modulo service contracts).
I've not followed the Apple scene for a while, but working for Omni seems like a great gig for an Apple-centric developer, so it's not necessarily about money.
I can confirm that; as a long time Mac dev, Omni has for over a decade been at the top of the list of companies I would want to work for, if location wasn't an issue. (It is, though, because I live in Tokyo and that's important to me, too; Omni, last I talked to them at least, doesn't do remote.)
But still, one of the awesome things about working at Omni is that they pay you.
A minimalist note-taking app that only runs on iOS — even if tastefully designed by famous-in-the-niche and well-liked programmer, and publicized by the most widely-read Apple blogger — not so much.
They say flat out that it didn't make enough money; I don't see any reason to second-guess them and develop alternate theories...
Yes! I did notice there wasn't a "This app will have access to…" screen when I signed up (I've never seen that before), but that just made me assume they were asking for like the absolute minimal permissions possible or something.
"[random game on a whim] has Full Access to your Google Account" is scary
Good point. Ok, I think I have an idea for fixing this: make the display of flagged and deleted comments look just like ordinary comments, with only the text body replaced.
Like everyone else, I had to find a replacement for Google Reader, so I tried a lot of them (even paid ones). Digg Reader was the only one that exactly matched how I used Google Reader — and in fact, I like it even better now.
Not looking forward to finding a replacement.