Apple gave Inkist a big banner feature! Thank you, App Store!
Tiny link: http://taii.cc/5Z

A bit over 2 years ago I wrote Filterstorm to be the photo editing app I wanted to use on iPad. I wrote Inkist for similar reasons. I own Photoshop, Painter, and SketchBookPro, have used all of them with my drawing tablet (a Wacom Cintiq 12WX), and to some extent I like each of them, but each also has its annoyances, and they aren’t cheap. Since fixing them isn’t something in my power, I of course went out to create my own app to satisfy my needs.


My top priority with Inkist was brushing. Brushes had to be responsive, easily configurable, and respond well to pen pressure. I spent a lot of time going back and forth between Inkist and SketchBookPro to make sure brushing compared favorably as the whole endeavor would have been useless if it didn’t. Since the back end of Inkist is shared with Filterstorm, this was the majority of the work outside of the interface.



I hate it when apps have too many floating windows. I don’t mind having one, it can often be very useful, but I tend to like most tools to stay within the primary window. All of Inkist's tools are contained on the left side of the window, grouped into four palettes. Colors, Brushes, Other Tools, and Layers. Any of the palettes can be popped out into a HUD style panel, I tend to pop out either the color palette or the layers (or sometimes neither if I’m working on a flat image like the tiger image above).

I spent some time experimenting with different sizes for the buttons within the palettes trying to find the right balance between a button large enough to be easily clickable using a pen (it’s easier to hit small targets with a mouse), yet small enough so that the palettes don’t get too big when they hold lots buttons. I ended up settling on 30x30 buttons, which I believe is slightly larger than Photoshop uses, but similar to Pixelmator.


Like Photoshop but unlike SketchBookPro, the four brushing modes (brush, erase, blend, line) all share the same set of brushes to choose from, though each may have a different brush selected at any given time. I chose a different route with the blend tool than SketchBookPro, too. I believe SketchBookPro creates a blurred copy of the entire layer, then uses masking to reveal the blurring, similar to how Filterstorm works. Inkist's blend tool calculates the average color under the the brush and sets that to the brush color. The advantage of this is that if you go over something many times with the blend tool, it’ll get more blended each time, it’s also possible to use it to create less smooth blending when stylistically appropriate. That’s what I did to create the fur of the tiger in the picture above. Smooth blending can still be accomplished by using a brush with low opacity/flow.


The color palette was actually the catalyst that got me to start writing Inkist . I used to have a tendency to put several shades of the same color into my color palette, switching between them in order to do shading. One day I thought “Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just keep the mid-tone in the palette and use a slider to get different shades?” A few days later I started programming. The brightness and temperature sliders will change the brightness/temp of every color in the palette including the currently selected one, and it does so non-destructively so you can just hit the reset button on the side to get back to normal. It was a simple feature, but one I find fantastically useful.

Inkist was submitted to the Mac App Store on Saturday, May 5, and will sell for $9.99. It’s a 1.0 release—there are certainly areas that need improvement, and features that need to be added—but I think anyone who enjoys digital art will enjoy it.
Tiny link: http://taii.cc/5X

The Enterprise just passed by my apartment on its journey to the USS Intrepid, though it was only visible to me for a few seconds, I was sure to get some pictures. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to head out to get a better view.


Tiny link: http://taii.cc/5W

Today was a perfect day for a trip to the New York Botanical Garden, and since I felt I needed a new iPad background, I decided to shoot with that in mind. All images were taken on a Nikon D7000 using the fantastic Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/4 AIS and edited on my favorite photo editing software, Filterstorm Pro. I cropped/scaled to 2048x2048 for retina display iPad goodness.































Tiny link: http://taii.cc/5U

Note: this review is a work in progress and will be updated over the next few days with more images and details.

Battle lines have been drawn across the camera industry. Micro 4/3 cameras have been resounding successes, Sony is betting on tiny bodies with big sensors (and equally big lenses), and Pentax has its miniature Q. Canon and Fuji still have surprises in store, but with the J1 and V1, Nikon has finally shown its hand.

Nikon J1 with 10mm pancake and iPhone 4S

The J1 is tiny. By itself, the body is close in size to an iPhone 4/4S, but 3 times thicker. It feels significantly smaller than the Micro 4/3s cameras I’ve used, especially when taking the size of lenses into account. Even the Canon G12 is bigger than the J1 despite the Canon’s much smaller sensor. Nikon found a hole in the market, planted a flag, and claimed this newfound territory in their own name.

Nikon J1 with 10mm f/2.8 pancake

Specifications

Nikon's official specs can be found here. I've highlighted a subset below.

Sensor Size	13.2 x 8.8mm 0.52 x 0.35"
Sensor Diagonal	15.9mm / 0.624"
Crop Ratio	2.7
Resolution	3872x2592, 10.1MP
RAW File	12-bit NEF
Shutter Speed	1/16,000–30s
Frame Advance Rate	5fps (manual exposure), up to 60fps (auto)
ISO Sensitivity	100–3200 (6400 extended)
Autofocus	Phase Detect and Contrast Detect
Built-in Flash	YES
Hot Shoe	NO
1 System Multi Accessory Port	NO
Battery	EN-EL15, rated 230 shots
Tripod Mount	1/4" Aligned to lens center
Dimensions	106 x 61 x 30mm 4.2 x 2.4 x 1.2"
Weight	383g / 13.5oz with battery/memory card

Sensor size comparison.

Nikon J1 with 30–110mm f/3.8-5.6

Design

While Fuji looked to classic rangefinders when designing the X100, Nikon seems to have been eyeing the iPhone with envy when designing the J1. The J1 can’t hope to match the pure functional simplicity Jony Ive et al. have created, but cameras are a different beast than phones. The best iPhone camera interface couldn’t hope to compete with an array of buttons and knobs for controlling a camera, just as no amount of buttons and knobs could match a touchscreen for creating masks in Filterstorm.

Nikon J1 with iPhone 4S


The white (it also comes in silver, red, pink, and black) part of the camera is metal, whereas the black on the back is plastic. The metal has a higher quality feeling to it than does the plastic, but in overall it doesn’t feel at all cheap.

The front of the J1 is simplicity itself, with just a single button to release the lens. The front also contains other necessary bits, the lens mount, an autofocus assist lamp, remote trigger IR receiver, and two microphones. The top has three buttons: power, shutter, and a video record button — which oddly only works if you’re in video mode (more on that later). The tripod mount on the bottom is properly aligned with the lens, but the battery cover is a bit flimsy. On one side, you’ll find HDMI and a USB port. I think audio-in as the V1 has would be more useful than HDMI.

The rear buttons in general are comfortably placed for my small hands, so long as the camera is being supported on the bottom by the left hand (which you should be doing anyway). If you hold it with only the right hand, you can shoot fine, but probably won’t be able to change settings.

Nikon J1 with Fuji X100

Performance and Controls

The J1 feels eager to please. It starts up quickly, in approximately the time it takes to move your finger from the power button to the shutter. If you’re using a zoom lens, unlocking and extending the lens will automatically turn the camera on, a nice touch. Unfortunately, locking the lens will not turn the camera back off. It shoots at a fast 5 fps under manual settings and can go up to an amazing 60fps in auto exposure, though the buffer will understandably run out very quickly at that speed. There’s no appreciable shutter lag, everything feels very snappy with one caveat. You cannot turn off image review, which means when you’re not shooting continuously, there’s approximately a 2 second shot-to-shot delay. I hope that will be fixed in a firmware update.

Nikon J1 with 10–30mm f/3.5–5.6
RAW file

Autofocus is fantastic. In decent light when using phase detect, it’s as fast as a good SLR. Things slow down when it has to fall back to contrast detection, but it’s still best in class in terms of speed and accuracy.

Manual focus is okay. It’s controlled by a rotating dial on the back of the camera. It’s probably the best manual focus I’ve used that’s not a focus ring on a lens, but it’s still not as good as having a the real thing. Hopefully Nikon will release some lenses with focus rings, but I’m not holding my breath.

Nikon J1 Back

The back of the camera has a nearly useless mode switch with 4 options: video, still image, best shot selector, and the baffling motion snapshot. For some inexplicable reason, Nikon’s marketing department seems to be in love with the motion snapshot, but it just seems bizarre to me. The video mode option on the dial seems odd to me, too. There is a dedicated video recording button on the top of the camera, but it only works in video mode. It seems to me that the video button on top should simply take a movie with the current still image settings so that no special video mode is necessary. Please write in the comments if you can think of a good reason for Nikon to have done this. You can also take full resolution still images while recording a movie, which unlike the dedicated motion snapshot feature, I could see being useful.

Nikon J1 with 10–30mm f/3.5–5.6

If you want to switch between PSAM modes, you must do so through the fast and well laid out menu system. It’s still not as good as having the dedicated knob, but not terrible, either. The PSAM controls are analogous to those on Nikon’s DSLRs. Instead of having a primary and secondary rotating ring for changing shutter speed and aperture, the two-way switch on the top right acts as the primary control, and the spinning ring on the back acts as the secondary. In Aperture priority, you can press the switch on the top up to increase aperture/down to decrease, while in shutter priority and manual it works to control shutter speed, with the aperture controlled by the rotating ring in manual mode. Exposure compensation is easy to access as well. Since the exposure compensation button is part of a 4-way dial under the ring, you can press it and rotate the ring to change exposure compensation in one quick motion.

My one complaint with is with ISO controls; you have to go through the cameras menus in order to change ISO. The exposure compensation button does nothing in manual mode, and could have potentially been mapped to bring up the ISO menu. It would be a huge help and even makes logical sense as the use can be analogous. The function button on the top currently currently brings up continuous/single shutter controls, an option in the menu to change it to control ISO would also be fantastic. I doubt Nikon will change any of this in a firmware update, but they could.

Image Quality

Image quality reminds me of the D60, but with more noise at low ISOs. It’s an impressive feat for a camera with a sensor a bit under 1/3 the area, even if it does come a generation or two later. Color reproduction and dynamic range are both good. The lenses remind me of Nikon’s DSLR kit lenses, but perhaps a bit better. They’re plenty sharp, but are slow and with a decent amount of distortion. They also focus faster than cheap DSLR kit lenses. I will have more information in coming lens reviews. If you have a program that can read the J1 RAW files, you should look at the difference between some of the RAWs and JPEGs posted. You can get some more detail out of the RAW files than the out of camera JPEGs are producing.

30–110mm @f/5.6, 110mm, 1/80s, ISO560
RAW file

Low light performance is worlds better than point and shoots, probably close to micro 4/3 despite the difference in sensor size, and bad compared to modern DSLRs, as is to be expected. Fast primes would be nice.

30–110mm @f/8, 66.4mm, 1/60s, ISO360
RAW file

Things I Love

• Size — It's really tiny, especially when taking lenses into consideration
• Performance — It starts up quickly, focuses quickly, has little shutter lag, and has high frame rates with a decent buffer.
• Autofocus — Much better than anything I've seen in the class.
• Display responsiveness — The LCD has very little lag.
• Video — Very little rolling shutter, and video looks good.
• Build — It's a great looking and feeling camera.
• Unlocking Lens Turns on Camera — As soon as a zoom lens is extended, you're ready to shoot. Nice.
• Image Quality — Similar to DSLRs of just a few years ago. Images are a bit noisy at low ISO, but there's a lot of detail and dynamic range captured.
• Sound — Or more accurately, lack of sound. It's very quiet once the beeps are disabled through a simple menu setting

Things I Think are Just Okay

• Manual Focus — It's much better than I expected it to be without focus rings on the lenses, but focus rings on the lenses would be still be better. Thankfully, I don't think there's anything design flaw preventing Nikon from releasing lenses with focus rings in the future.
• Price — It sets you back about the same as an entry level DSLR. You pay for the size.
• Display Quality — It's not bad, the V1's is better.

Things I Hate

• Mode Selector Dial — It could have been useful, it is not. PSAM should be there.
• No dedicated control for ISO — Aperture and Shutter Speed both get dedicated controls in Manual, but ISO must be handled through the menus.
• Locking lens does not turn off camera — Not a huge problem, but it would be nice. The camera can detect when the lens has been locked, so this could be fixed in a firmware update.
• No Bracketing — I don't bracket too often, but it's good to have. This could potentially be fixed in a firmware update.

Who It's For

• Photographer's Camera — If you want a small but capable camera to always have by your side, The J1 can fill that niche well. Thom Hogan and Rob Galbraith both prefer the V1 which I haven't used. It certainly has its advantages but is bigger and lacks built-in flash.
• Parents — Lots of parents buy entry level DSLRs because they want high quality pictures of their kids. The J1 is a great camera for that market, likely better than a DSLR in most cases.
• For Anyone Else — Similar to above. It's probably a great camera for a member of the point & shoot crowd who wants something nicer, but doesn't necessarily want to get into photography as a serious hobby.
• Mountain Unicycling from Canada to Mexico to Fight Human Trafficking — If you want to minimize size and weight and maximize quality, it's about the best out there.

Nikon J1 with 10mm f/2.8 pancake
RAW file

Conclusion

I’ve quite enjoyed shooting with the J1 so far, and will be sad to give it up. Alas, it was purchased for my brother to take with him on his aforementioned unicycling trip. He needs something light with good image (and video) quality for the trail, and I can’t think of a better option, though the Fuji X10 and X100 might both be decent choices, too. Most of my complaints are about the fact that I’m not the target consumer for the J1—I want easier access to manual options and the J1 wasn’t built for that. However, the V1 was supposed to be, and all my complaints about controls are identical for that camera.

Despite the complaints given, the J1 is a fantastic camera. The general responsiveness, especially of autofocus makes it feel closer to a DSLR than other mirrorless cameras. I don’t believe there is anything of comparable size that can match the image quality and performance. Certainly Micro 4/3 cameras can match or best the IQ, but when lenses are taken into account they’re not too different from a small DSLR in size. It has rough edges, but is a great little camera.

Arbitrary Numerical Rating: 4.5 of 5

More Photos

CX Lenses vs. 50mm (FX), 18–200mm (DX), & 80–200mm (FX)


Butterfly, 10–30mm f/3.5–5.6 @f/5.6, 30mm, 2/333s, ISO400
RAW file

Nikon J1 iPhone 4S


Nikon J1 with 10mm f/2.8 pancake


Nikon J1 iPhone 4S


Nikon J1 with 10mm f/2.8 pancake
RAW file


30–110mm @f/5.6, 110mm, 1/30s, ISO2000
RAW file

Hayden Planetarium 10mm f/2.8 pancake, @f/2.8, iso 100, 1/160s
RAW file

30–110mm @f/5.6, 110mm, 1/60s, ISO1600
RAW file

30–110mm @f/6.3, 110mm, 1/250s, ISO125
RAW file

Tiny link: http://taii.cc/5I

Update: My J1 review is available here

It’s been a long time since I’ve reviewed anything on my blog, but I’ve been playing with a Nikon J1 and am going to try to get reviews up for the J1 and 3 lenses: the 1 Nikkor 10mm f/2.8 pancake, the 10–30mm f/3.5–5.6 VR, and the 30–110mm f/3.8–5.6 VR.

Nikon J1 with 10mm pancake and iPhone 4S

The J1 is a tiny camera, perfect for when you need to save space while mountain unicycling from Canada to Mexico. By itself, the body is close in size to an iPhone 4/4S, but 3 times thicker. It feels significantly smaller than the Micro 4/3s cameras I’ve used, especially when taking the size of lenses into account. Even the Canon G12 is bigger than the J1 despite the Canon’s much smaller sensor.

Nikon J1 with 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6

What I’m trying to get at here, is that Nikon found a hole in the market, planted a flag, and claimed this newfound territory in their own name. There has been a large gap in sensor size between the very high end point and shoots, and the existing mirrorless market which has quickly become incredibly competitive. Excepting Canon, most of the industry has weighed in, from Micro 4/3, Sony NEX, and Pentax’s tiny Q, to Fuji’s runaway success with the X100 foreshadowing their future interchangeable lens system. Unlike the X100 and some Micro 4/3 cameras, though, Nikon has gone with a very modern design, eschewing classic styling. It looks sleek, is extremely responsive, and has one of the best menu systems I’ve seen on a camera, but some old-style dials would certainly help.

Nikon J1 Back

The mode selection dial on the back is basically useless. All it’s good for is changing from still images to video, and that could have been done by using the video button on top. To me, it seems like engineering wanted to put PSAM there, but marketing wouldn’t have it as it might displace the prominence of their baffling motion snapshot mode.

It isn’t as bad as that sounds, though. The menus make changing PSAM modes only slightly more annoying than if they were on that dial, and manual is surprisingly easy to control. The switch on top controls shutter speed, and the spinning dial on the back controls aperture. A third control for ISO would make me incredibly happy.

Hayden Planetarium 10mm f/2.8 pancake, @f/2.8, iso 100, 1/160s
RAW file

I think Nikon has a winner in the 1 system, especially if future versions put more focus on manual control. I’ll have more details on controls and image quality in my J1 review, so stay tuned!

35mm Equivalencies for Lens Focal Lengths

The CX sensor format used by the 1 system has a 2.7x crop ratio. Below are some conversions to 35mm focal lengths:
10mm -> 27mm
30mm -> 81mm
110mm -> 297mm

I’ve updated my Focal Length Calculator to show the Nikon 1 crop.
Tiny link: http://taii.cc/5D

Among my earliest memories is buying a Mac Plus with my parents, which served faithfully along with the many Macs I’ve owned and relied upon throughout my life. It may or may not be that my Macs were responsible for my choice to pursue an education in Computer Science, I cannot say; regardless, the state of the entire computer industry at the time of my education was largely of his influence.

Not long after college, the radical shift in software distribution created by iPhone and the App Store allowed me to become independent—to start a life writing software for myself, to be successful.

His impact has been immeasurable, and he will be missed.

Tai Shimizu
Tiny link: http://taii.cc/5r

EDIT: A public beta build is now available here.

Goodbye to an Old Friend

For years I used The Omni Group’s venerable OmniWeb as my primary browser. OmniWeb had a number of features I love: thumbnail tabs, address bar text shortcuts, and integration with OS X services. Unfortunately, few people are willing to pay for a browser and The Omni Group made the very understandable decision to halt active development in 2009. I kept using it for a year or so after that but sooner or later I had to leave it behind and find a replacement.

Out with the Old…

Opera, Firefox, and Chrome all have a lot to offer, but none feel like Mac apps. All use the ugly legacy style scrollbar in Lion, and you cannot use OS X’s define word popover on website text. Safari has been the browser I’ve been using most recently. I love the back/forward scrolling in Lion and I’ve remedied the lack text shortcuts by using Alfred, but I still miss thumbnail tabs and don’t like the address bar.

…And in with the New

My browser project was initially made as a proof of concept. A week ago I tweeted a video of what I had made that day. I did it for fun — to give an idea of how I wanted a browser to look and feel so that were I to complain about the lack of a browser catering to my desires, I could point to something concrete. With WebKit handling the difficult part about writing a browser, it wasn't long before I had something usable. I originally planned to stop the project after that day, but continued working each night after concluding work on Filterstorm. I even gave it a name. Torii.

Torii are Japanese gates that mark the entrance to shrines — the boundary between the profane regular world, and the holy. Like it’s eponym, Torii is the gateway between our world and that of the internet.

Scrolling to the previous page in Torii

The Interface

While you can hide the address bar in any browser, the interface for doing so is usually implemented as an afterthought. There may be an ugly sheet, or popup window that comes up when you access it, and it feels worse than keeping it locked to the top of the window. Really, though, there’s no good reason to keep it visible all the time.


The information it presents isn’t very useful, and since you have to click or use a keyboard command to edit it anyway, why not simply keep it off the screen until you want it? Torii does exactly that. You can use ⌘L to access it like in any other browser, or click on the tab to bring it up.

The address bar searches your history and favorites as you type, and tells you the resulting action if you hit return. Typing an address works as usual, you can type a word or phrase to search for it as in other browsers, or use a shortcut “w torii” to go directly to the wikipedia page for torii. You can use the up and down keys to scroll through the history search results, or you can use the tab button to go directly to the first history search result, saving you a precious key stroke. Back/forward controls, as well as the close button all appear when the mouse hovers over the tab, both giving them a stronger visual connection to the content they are affecting, and allowing you to use the back/forward controls on tabs in the background.

Hovering over tab shows back/forward controls

Anyone who regularly uses side thumbnail tabs knows they hold a lot of advantages over the regular sort. Even when the thumbnail is small, seeing a webs it’s color scheme can let you very quickly identify the tab you want. Scrolling with many tabs works better, as you get a list that scrolls downwards like a webpage, rather than either the rather ugly horizontal tab scrolling or list of tabs that won’t fit. Closing many tabs at once using the mouse works better, as the tabs are of uniform size and the close button for the next tab will always fall in the same place as where it was for the tab you just closed. Firefox has fixed this for horizontal tabs by making them not resize until you move the mouse away. It’s a clever solution, but not as elegant.

Tabs display loading progress
Something I haven’t before seen in a tabbing interface is using the background of the tab as a progress bar. Combined with thumbnails which update during the loading process, it gives you a very strong visual indication of the loading progress of all your tabs.

Future Plans

At this point I’m not sure where I’ll go with the project. I’m already using Torii regularly for browsing, but there are a ton of tiny details that need to get done. The download manager is barely functional, there’s no form completion, and no extension system. The Omni Group stopped developing OmniWeb for a reason. There’s a plethora of good, free browsers on the market, so why pay? The one thing that’s changed since then is the App Store, perhaps there is a market there.

I do hope to release a free public beta at some point in the near future.
Tiny link: http://taii.cc/5f

Thoughts on the Development of Filterstorm 3

When the last major update of Filterstorm went live, I still had a day job and Filterstorm Pro was nothing more than a concept. Indeed, it was that update — version 2.5 — which prompted me to quit and allowed me the financial stability to write FSPro . Of course, this means iPhone users who have been the majority of sales since 2.5 have not seen any major update, nor any update at all since last November.

Filterstorm Pro was never meant to be standalone. From day one It was considered the foundation of Filterstorm 3; a new, better project built with the lessons learned from the original two versions. When I started writing Filterstorm less than a year and a half ago, I had no experience with iOS. My initial naïveté would have caused problems had I continued expanding upon that initial code base.

FS3 Launch Screen

Interface Introspection

With the release of FSPro two months ago, all my time since has been spent doing two things: eliminating the launch bugs FSPro, and working on FS3. Much of this work has already found its way into FSPro. Real-time previews, blend modes, split previews, and the color overlay mask view were all part of this process. Most of the work, however, has been on the iPhone interface.

New Sliders on iPad (overlay blended blur)

Both iPad and iPhone get an entirely new interface with this release. The difference is that most of the work for iPad was already done for FSPro. Furthermore, iPhone’s interface was never nearly as good as that of iPad. The big problem was that iPad’s interface had basically been crammed in to fit on iPhone’s screen. It needed to instead be its own separate entity; it was finicky. Where the tab drawer was redesigned on iPad to be more space efficient, it needed to be eliminated entirely on iPhone. Where FSPro had kept something almost identical to FS2’s floating palette, it needed to be redesigned entirely on iPhone. In fact, I liked the new iPhone sliders so much that made a very late change (3 days ago) to the iPad interface and am now using a modified version of the new sliders there, too.

Popovers on iPhone

I decided to make my own popovers for use in FSPro rather than using the ones provided by Apple for two reasons. You can’t customize the appearance of the built-in popovers, and they can’t be used on iPhone. It was a great decision; popovers are fantastic on iPhone. They’re quicker than using modal sheets (the things that slide up from the bottom), and are perfect for displaying smaller bits of quickly-dismissed information and buttons.

Making the Grade

In my blog post for the release of FSPro, I stated several design goals which I’ll repost here:

1. Reduce the number of taps and complexity of gestures required to do anything.
2. Devote as much space to the image as possible
3. Eliminate any unnecessary color from the interface as it may distort the perception of white balance
4. All features should be easily discoverable
5. Discoverable features may have less obvious gesture-based shortcuts for power users

So did I succeed with the new interface on iPhone? Mostly. The main navigation does take slightly fewer taps to get places in FS3 than FS2. Also buttons are larger/easier to press in general, and everything looks much nicer.

B&W sliders no longer cover half the image on iPhone

When applying filters, however, extra taps can be required to switch between slider settings. This was a tradeoff in order to accomplish goal number 2, to devote more space to the image, and the image remains big and beautiful when doing things like B&W where much of the image used to be covered. Other tools, like curves, take up the same amount of space as before, but the curve control itself is larger without covering more of the picture.

The last two points were less successful. I think things are a bit more discoverable than in FS2, the home screen labels I have added should help with that, along with better visibility of features. However, the learning curve is probably still higher than I would like it. I am always surprised when people don’t simply tap on buttons to find out what they do, and instead avoid them as they are unsure. Text documentation and videos should help with this, but there remains room for improvement.

Final Thoughts

Refinement is something I’m constantly striving for and missing. I always reach a point where the new version is much nicer than the old, and will therefore be of great value to existing users. However, this point is always well before things have truly been done right.

Apple’s behavior in this regard makes them both great and bemoaned. They famously wait to add features like copy/paste on iPhone, but (usually) get it right when they finally do. People complain that feature X doesn’t exist yet, but when it comes, feature X ends up better for the wait. I have been acting like most companies, releasing feature X when it is of benefit to the user, not when it is perfect. Filterstorm 3 has been a long time coming, but the wait has brought it towards my goal of refinement — at least a little bit.

Tiny link: http://taii.cc/59

Photos from NECSS 2011

Phil Plait's Keynote


Eugenie Scott


Carl Zimmer


Todd Robbins




Tiny link: http://taii.cc/50