Electrostatic Haptic Feedback?  →

Matthew Panzarino:

Haptics is a tactile feedback technology which uses forces — normally vibrations in mobile devices — to provide feedback through your sense of touch. Most Android phones have some sort of haptic feedback at play and you can feel them at work when you touch the keyboard and get that bzt of a vibration in return. Apple has even filed patents for advanced forms of vibrating haptics. The only problem is that vibrating haptic systems, for the most part, kind of suck.

Something that I simultaneously do and don’t like about Android phones is the vibrate-on-touch haptic feedback — the way the phone will vibrate when you tap on a button. In does help with typing, but at the same time it can be a bit overwhelming to have the entire phone buzz in your hand every time you tap a letter.

This rumor that Matthew Panzarino brings up about an electrostatic-based haptic feedback technology has been circulating for at least a week or more, and I’ve been thinking about it a bit. I am having a hard time imagining just how great or not-great it would be in real life, but, what struck me today is that if anything, I bet this new type of feedback could greatly improve the ability to type on the iPad.

Here’s a CNET video with Dave Rice demoing the technology, and Panzarino’s article has an embedded video as well demoing the tech.

With this electrostatic-based haptic feedback, the whole device doesn’t buzz when you touch a feedback area, only the tip of your finger senses the “friction” that’s transmitted through the screen:

It has a system that uses varying electrostatic fields that can be pushed right through a pane of glass to give a user the feeling of various levels of friction, simulating surfaces. You can see the technology demonstrated back in 2010 on an iPhone here.

I have no personal experience trying this type of technology and so it’s hard to imagine what it’s like. If this does get announced in an hour from now it would make a lot of sense as to why the “And touch.” was part of the invite.

You can only understand the pizazz of a Retina display by looking at one in real life. And it’s likely that you can only truly understand the pizazz of this new touch-feedback technology by touching it in real life.

Electrostatic Haptic Feedback?

Sponsor: Denso  →

My thanks to Denso for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.

Denso is a video app for people who don’t know what to watch.

Create personalized video channels by connecting your Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Google Reader accounts.

Connect your Instapaper, Readability and Evernote accounts to Denso so you can bookmark videos from around the web to Watch Later.

Browse from our carefully curated list of channels which have an eclectic mix of interesting videos.

See what all the fuss is about. It’s Free on the App Store and the Android Market.

Sponsor: Denso

Membership Drive and Giveaway

Welcome to the 2012, PBS-Style Membership Drive and Giveaway for shawnblanc.net.

Yesterday I kicked off this years Membership Drive by introducing a new members-only perk (The Members Journal) and a new subscription level (the Executive Membership), and recording a new video.

For all the new members who signed up in the past 24 hours: thank you. To all the current members who have kept their membership going or who have upgraded to an Executive Membership: thank you. And to those who are about to join: thank you, too.

Members contribute nearly 50-percent of this site’s income. Needless to say there is no way I could be writing here as my full-time gig without the generous support of the members. It means the world to me that readers are directly supporting the work I do here.

Ideally, you are signing up to become a member because the value and enjoyment you get from shawnblanc.net is worth it to you, and the members-only perks are a nice bonus of course. But my job is to try and sweeten the deal as much as possible. And so, I’ve arranged for some things to be won if you sign up to become a member.

For those of you who have not yet signed up to be a member, there is, as they say, no time like the present.

The 2012 Membership Drive and Giveaway

Anyone who signs up for a membership before midnight CST on March 25 will be entered to win one of the prizes listed below. Current members who have signed up over the past year are also entered to win, so long as their membership is active.

There are a metric ton of top-notch prizes, all donated by friends of the site, with an aggregate value in excess of $4,200.

The List of Prizes

How to Win, Etc.

  • Anyone who signs up for a membership before midnight CST on Sunday, March 25 will automatically be in the runnings to win something.

  • If you are already a member with a current membership, you are eligible to win.

  • You do not have to live in the United States to win — international members are most welcome and most eligible (though some prizes are not available outside the US).

  • The drive ends at midnight CST on March 25, and the drawing will be held sometime around last week in March. It will be random and I will email the winners at their PayPal email address.

  • If there is a certain prize in particular that you’d like to win over another, please fill out this form. I will check it once the winners are drawn to try and get people a prize they prefer. You do not have to fill out the form to win, only to request a particular prize.

Membership Drive and Giveaway

Version Distribution: iOS vs. Android  →

Chris Sauve:

iOS devices have, on average, reached 10% version share 300 times faster than Android versions, 30% share 19 times faster, and 50% share 7 times faster.

It will be fascinating to see how these numbers change now that iOS features wireless updating.

Also:

In a way, I think that iOS buyers are paying to be on the cutting edge of software. Android OEMs have been one-upping each other on the hardware front (the Android spec race has reached almost ridiculous proportions), but this is a shallow, easily-duplicated strategy. An ecosystem that has been developed instead with a software focus affords many advantages that are not easily mimicked: ease of development, users being able to learn about apps and the OS from friends without the frustration of fragmented device capabilities, and more.

Version Distribution: iOS vs. Android

A Couple Things Apple Could Do Better  →

Mark Willis pitches some interesting solutions to common problems. The hiccup in signal continuity for when the iPhone decides to transition from a dwindling wi-fi signal to 3G drives me nuts as well. I don’t think Apple would ever go with Mark’s idea of having a setting pane that allowed the user to tell the iPhone that if wi-fi signal is less than, say, 75% strong to drop it and switch to 3G instead. But I do like the concept.

A Couple Things Apple Could Do Better

Lightroom 4  →

A certain recent addition to the Blanc household has given me a heightened interest in photography. I’ve been playing with the beta of Lightroom 4 and as a non-photography guru I found it much easier to use than I expected — and the preset filters and settings are great.

I’ll keep using it for the full length of my 30-day trial before I decide to buy it, but so far it sure seems like a killer upgrade from iPhoto for editing.

Lightroom 4

Membership Drive 2012

This time last year I was sitting at my desk with MarsEdit open and my mouse pointer hovering over the “Send to Blog” button. I remember my palms were clammy, like when you lean over a ledge, and I just sat there, hesitating, for what seemed like the entire morning.

The article was my announcement that I was taking shawnblanc.net full time. So long as that article stayed in my Drafts Folder, then things could continue on as they always had. But once I hit publish, I knew that I was committed.

Publishing that article was like announcing that I was jumping off a cliff and hoping to make it to the other side. And my only hope to make it was to humbly ask that you guys — the readers — be willing to support the site directly by becoming members.

I have been shocked and humbled by the incredible response to the membership — thanks to the direct support from the readers, I’ve been able to write this site day in and day out for the past year. It has been fantastic. And I’d very much like to keep writing.

Current Members

For those of you who have signed up for a membership in the past year: thank you. With no exaggeration, I mean it when I say I am honored and humbled by your support. As your membership renews I hope you will continue to stay on as a direct supporter of this site.

Two points of note for current members:

  • Current members who want to subscribe to The Members Journal: it is an opt-in list. If you’d like to sign up you can do so on the members info page. Your password for that page can be found in the information email you received from me after signing up for your membership.

  • Regarding the Executive Membership: I’m introducing a new subscription level that gets you all the same benefits as the $3 membership but for $12/month. This is for those who have offered to or who are glad to pay more for their membership.

If you want to switch to the Executive Membership you’ll have to cancel your current subscription and sign up for the new one.

New Members

Excluding last year’s membership drive, I have done little to promote the membership over the past year. Primarily because, in my opinion, storing up all the attention of the membership for a big annual membership drive is more fun.

And so, for those of you who are new to the site, or who perhaps are long-time readers, but have not signed up for a membership, this is the time of year where I humbly ask that you consider signing up for a membership.

The direct support that comes in from readers makes up for nearly half of this site’s income. I literally could not continue to write here full time without the support of subscribing members.

Membership Perks

The primary membership benefit is that you’re allowing me to spend my full attention working on this site.

There are of course, some additional, members-only perks:

  • Shawn Today: The member’s only broadcast. It’s short, uncut, fun, and often involves coffee. It’s intended to be a daily show, but it averages out to about every-other day (in the past 12 months since starting Shawn Today, I’ve recorded over 175 episodes).

  • The Members Journal: This is a new-in-2012 perk that I’ve just launched. The Members Journal is an email sent out on occasion. It’s not a regular email (as in every week or every month) because I don’t expect to regularly have content for it. But, when it does go out it will contain things such as:

  • Giveaways and promo codes for apps (developers often send me these to give away to the members).
  • Links to apps, articles, videos, and other things which never made it onto the home page of shawnblanc.net for one reason or another. This is affectionately known as The Cut List.

* * *
If the value and enjoyment you get from shawnblanc.net is worth that to you, then I would love to have your support as a subscribing member.

A membership is just $3 a month — like a good cup of coffee — and you can sign up here.

Membership Drive 2012