Google, it’s not too late to save Latitude
October 7, 2011 § Leave a comment
This week Apple announced a feature available in iOS 5 that you won’t find on their iPhone site:Find My Friends.
It’s Google’s Latitude designed for normal people.
It’s pretty clear Apple’s making a play for platform lock-in with built-in apps such as FMF and iMessage. It’s all functionality you can get elsewhere, but nothing will be as elegant as Apple’s integrated versions.
What’s Google to do?
Well, they haven’t lost yet, but they sure are trying. People love Gmail. And they love Google Calendar. But they don’t love Latitude. But they could. And they could love them all together.
Here, for your benefit, are some ideas I wish I’d committed to writing months ago.
- Tie Calendar to Latitude by allowing meeting organizers to request Latitude access for 1 hour prior to the appointment and throughout it.
- Positioning Latitude as a vague expansion of the social web hasn’t worked. Position it instead as a tool that bridges maps and scheduling — the 2 key features that distinguish a smartphone from what we had before we had smartphones. Latitude should be about sharing location when it matters with who it matters to.
- Request Latitude access by default from meeting invitees. Apple’s going to make location sharing mainstream anyway: now is not the time to be shy. Get Latitude installed on every smartphone in every pocket as fast as possible.
- I trained my mom to book family get-togethers in Google Calendar years ago: I just gave her access to my Latitude location and she loves it. No more calling to ask where we are or if we got home safe. If she could install it on her work-issued nannified BB, she would so she could share her location with my stepdad.
- Create a dashboard for the meeting organizer to see everybody’s ETA.
- Green: accepted the meeting and ETA has them on-time.
- Yellow: accepted the meeting and ETA has them arriving late.
- Red: ETA has them missing the event entirely, or they’ve declined.
- And every invitee’s name has a clock next to it: this is when they turn invisible again.
- Kill Google Talk (yes, it’s still hanging on, and you never visit anymore) and replace it with the Messenger component of Google+. Better yet, with GTalk dead, merge Messenger and Hangouts to create a Skype-killing masterpiece of group communication.
- Enable chatting parties to view one another’s locations.
- Make it so that I can enable location-sharing-while-chatting with only the Circles I choose. This way I can freely enter a hangout without risk of unintended location exposure.
- Oddly enough, on Android phones it seems that engaging someone on Google Talk tends to refresh their position on Latitude. So it would seem that someone in Google is already thinking about this. Please push on and be bold.
A university education working overtime (cc @UofTMagazine)
October 4, 2011 § 1 Comment
Just hung up after this conversation. The time is 9:30.
Guy calling from U of T: “Hello, my name is Mohamed. May I please speak to [unrecognizable mispronunciation of what I *think* was my wife’s name]?”
Me: “No, I’m afraid she’s indisposed.”
Mo: “Oh, she’s passed away?”
Me: “…”
Mo: “…”
Me: “No, she’s not at liberty to take this call.”
Mo: “Oh she’s busy.”
Me: “That’s right.”
Mo: “Can you say when would be a good time to call to update her on the university’s latest news and initiatives?”
Me: “Try before 9:30.”
Mo: “Before 9:30?”
Me: “Yeah it’s a little late. Goodnight.”
New rule for Sunday morning running in downtown Toronto #RunTO
September 18, 2011 § Leave a comment
No turning back home until you've cleared 10k or helped a tourist.
Twenty-Five Pieces of Basic Sartorial Knowledge So You Don’t Look Dumb (via @putthison)
September 13, 2011 § Leave a comment
When I’m interviewed about men’s style and Put This On, I’m almost invariably asked “what are the fashion mistakes you see men make every day?” or “what is the most basic style knowledge men often don’t have?”
That’s the kind of stuff I usually leave off this blog. After all: you’re discerning and tasteful! But every time I see some incredibly basic principle violated, I cringe. So: for the benefit of your slovenly coworker our your teenage cousin or your uncle who’s never had a job, I wrote this. Forward it to them. Anonymously, if you must.
Below are twenty-five pieces of vital information that every man over 14 in the Western world should know. Every man. No excuses. Seriously. Seriously.
- Unbutton the bottom button of your jacket. It’s not intended to be buttoned.
- Same goes for your vest.
- Remove the tags on the sleeves of your jacket before you wear it.
- Jackets sometimes come with white basting thread on their shoulders or holding closed their vents. Remove this thread before wearing the jacket.
- Jacket pockets are intended to be opened. Use a small scissor or seam ripper.
- More than three jacket buttons is never appropriate for anything.
- On a three-button coat, buttoning the top button is optional, and some lapels are rolled so as to make the top button ornamental. In other words: if buttoning the top button seems wrong, it is.
- Brown shoes, brown belt. Black shoes, black belt.
- Belt or suspenders. Never belt and suspenders.
- Your jacket sleeve should be short enough to show some shirt cuff – about half an inch.
- Your pants should end at your shoes without puddling. A slight or half break means that there is one modest inflection point in the front crease. If your pants break both front and back or if they break on the sides, they’re too long.
- Your coat should follow and flatter the lines of your upper body, not pool around them. You should be able to slip a hand in to get to your inside breast pocket, but if the jacket’s closed and you can pound your heart with your fist, it’s too big.
- When you buy a suit or sportcoat, it should be altered to fit by a tailor. This will cost between $25 and $100.
- Your tie should reach your belt line – it shouldn’t end above your belt or below it.
- Your tie knot should have a dimple.
- Only wear a tie if you’re also wearing a suit or sportcoat (or, very casually, a sweater). Shirt, tie and no jacket is the wedding uniform of a nine-year-old.
- The only men who should wear black suits during the day are priests, undertakers, secret agents, funerals attendees and yokels.
- Cell phone holsters are horrible.
- So are square-toed shoes.
- Never wear visible socks with shorts.
- Or any socks with sandals.
- If your shirt is tucked in, you should be wearing a belt (or suspenders, if you’re wearing a jacket as well, or your trousers should have side adjusters and no belt loops).
- Flip flops are great for the pool and the beach and not great for anything else. (Some say this is a matter of taste. We agree. If you have any taste, you will only wear flip-flops at the beach or pool.)
- Long ties are not appropriate with a tuxedo.
- Never wear polyester outside of the gym or theme parties.
If you see someone violating one of these basic principles, feel free to send them our way. We’ll straighten them out.
If every man knew 1 through 5, the world would be a noticeably more stylish place.
The first step to enjoying the fiction of J M Coetzee is saying his name right.
September 7, 2011 § Leave a comment
Of bubbles and tumors and the power of an apt metaphor
September 1, 2011 § Leave a comment
Mad about Blatchford?
August 23, 2011 § Leave a comment
Instapaper the column and read it again in a month.
You gotta serve somebody, part 1 in a series of meditations on being an asshole
August 20, 2011 § Leave a comment
I've been composing this blog post in my head for months. I'm never going to get it right in one go. So here's a start.
Yeah, it kind of fixed every mental problem that I had within an hour. So I highly recommend it if anybody out there is thinking of having children, you should really, I mean, it's the only reason we're here, and if you have any doubts in your mind about yourself or where your life is going, it'll be answered easily and almost instantaneously. It's a clich'e to say, but it also immediately sets you aside from yourself and you're no longer the star of your own mind, which is really not a very good state of mind to be in. Unfortunately, in my country it is one that seems to be encouraged until about the age of 60 or something, now.
When David fell back into his seat after extricating his right arm from the tiger’s mouth he became aware of two tigers at the driver’s window
July 27, 2011 § Leave a comment
COURT FILE NO.: 97-CU-135410
DATE: 20050127
ONTARIO
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE
B E T W E E N:
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JENNIFER-ANNE COWLES, JESSE COWLES, a minor by his Litigation Guardian, Jennifer-Anne Cowles, QUINTON COWLES, a minor by his Litigation Guardian, Jennifer-Anne Cowles and ANNE KELLY
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DAVID BALAC, RANKO BALAC and THE AFRICAN LION SAFARI & GAME FARM LTD.
Defendants
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L. Craig Brown, for the Cowles Family Members as Plaintiffs
J.A. Soule, for David Balac and Ranko Balac, as Defendants
Douglas Wright and Martin Smith, for The African Lion Safari & Game Farm Ltd.
COURT FILE NO.: 98-CV-139448
BETWEEN:
DAVID BALAC, RANKO BALAC, SLAVKA BALAC and SANDRA BALAC
Plaintiffs
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AFRICAN LION SAFARI & GAME FARM LTD. and LIBERTY MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY
Defendants
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Bruce Haines, Q.C., D. Christie and O. Jasen, for the Balac Family Members as Plaintiffs
BETWEEN:
DAVID BALAC, RANKO BALAC, SLAVKA BALAC and SANDRA BALAC
Plaintiffs
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AFRICAN LION SAFARI & GAME FARM LTD. and LIBERTY MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY
Defendants
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JENNIFER-ANNE COWLES
Third Party
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COURT FILE NO.: 98-CV-139448A
Lynne Carson, for Jennifer-Anne Cowles as Defendant-by-Counterclaim and Third
Party
HEARD: November 1, 2, 8-10, 12, 15-19, 22-26, 29, 30, December 1-3, 6-8, 13, 14, 2004
Fascinating.
Nathan's blog 