Works great!

Big buzz today about Cuil, a new competitor to Google.

It’s supposed to index up to three times as many web pages as Google does. From the pic below, you can see how well it works.

iPhone App Review: Myspace

For the last week, I’ve been busily trying out all sorts of applications from the new the new App Store for the iPhone/iPod Touch (I currently have an iPod Touch). I’ve decided to post some of my impressions of these apps and, where applicable, if they are better or worse than their desktop and web equivalents.

I, unfortunately, have a Myspace account. I am not a big fan of Myspace, but practically every friend I care about keeping in touch with has one, and, let’s face it, Facebook isn’t exactly the holy grail of social networking either. What I hate most about Myspace revolves around all the fluff you have to deal with to just check on very simple things. I hate the advertising, and I hate the page customizations with ten Flash files running at once. I prefer a simple interface to see what my friends are up to, communicate via comments and e-mail, and view some pictures.

For me, Myspace for iPhone / iPod Touch is a Godsend.

First of all, the interface is extremely clean and easy to understand. After a quick login (which, I might add, can save your username/password for automatic logins in the future), I am placed at a home page that has all the functionality of the web version but without all the adds and Flash banners making my browser run like Jared before he found Subway.

Myspace Home Screen

From there, navigation to your home page is as simple as touching the home button at the bottom of the app. It’s extremely easy and (surprisingly) quick to check comments, view your photos, and see your friends list.

Myspace Main Profile

The friends list itself is much easier to navigate than the web version. The tabs at the top are organized fairly logically into a listing of your top friends, all friends, online friends, new friends (which is awesome), and even has a birthday tab (I’m not sure if I’m just missing it or if it doesn’t exist in the web version, but I have a hard time finding the birthday section when the notice is not on the home page itself).

Myspace Friends List

Checking photos is a great experience in the app as well, albeit some (understandable) delay for load times. After choosing the photos tab and an album, you get a grid of all the pictures for that album. From there, you can tap a picture and then swipe(!) to see the next photo. You can also easily check photo comments, delete images, and set the default image right from the photo in question’s screen. The whole experience is surprisingly smooth and “iPhone like” and, I can’t stress enough, add / app / Flash free!

Myspace Photo Grid

Myspace Photos

Checking bulletins (something I like to do fairly often) is just as simple as photos. From the home screen, selecting bulletins brings up a scrollable list of recent bulletins. Even checking mail is simple and intuitive, and it makes me believe that not everyone at Myspace believes their app has to be a bulky and all-around confusing experience to use.

Myspace Bulletins

All in all, this app is a much better experience by far than the browser. The price is right (free!) and it makes Myspace incredibly bearable and (shockingly) fun … so much so that I don’t even use the web portal anymore. It is a surprisingly good first implementation (better than Facebook’s, in my opinion), and I’d recommend anyone with a Myspace account and an iPhone/iPod Touch to get to the App Store and try it out!

Make it Stop!

http://www.marcliron.com/adobe-acrobat-9-and-flash-video.html.

So Adobe is allowing embedded Flash content (and video content at that) in PDFs.

This is terrible. Does Adobe remind anyone else of a baby Microsoft? It seems lately that any opportunity they have to bloat their code they gleeful take like a fat kid clumsily skipping over to the closest ice cream truck.

A word to the wise on any platform: Stay the hell away from Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. Use FoxIt, or the built in Preview.app in OS X, or whatever else you can find … Adobe’s version is fast becoming the new Windows Vista of the portable-document world.