NSF Award
Stephanie Teasley, Erik Johnston, and I teamed up this spring to propose a study of post-docs joining virtual science teams. NSF awarded us funding at the full amount this week. Our project kicks off this September and runs through (at least) August 2010. I'm very excited about this project. To read more about it, visit NSF's site.
A Productive Summer
Andrew Begel and I had a very productive summer. We conducted 95 interviews with 26 people, and spent 7 days onsite observing new remote employees. We'll be presenting a poster titled, "How will you see my greatness if you can't see me?" at CSCW in November. The poster session is Monday night, Nov. 11. Come by to hear more about our study, especially our findings about how excellent work is and is not observable from a distance. Stay tuned; we're submitting longer papers to two other conferences, and I'll post here when they get accepted.
Related links:
Human Interactions in Programming Group at Microsoft Research
ACM's Computer Supported Cooperative Work Conference (CSCW08)
Google Makes My Life Harder
I like my new iPhone a great deal. I especially like good apps. For instance, the Yelp app rocks; it uses the "current location" feature of the iPhone to show me stuff nearby (such as restaurants). And it's Yelp, which I already use a lot, so it includes user-contributed reviews and info. The Yelp app takes something I love and use from the Web and makes it available and awesome on the iPhone. Easy, specialized, familiar, fast, localized, all things I like in a mobile application. Why can't Google do the same?
Google's iPhone versions of Gmail and Google Calendar are awful. I used both on my Blackberry, and I have new issues. First, they are not standalone applications. I have to go through Safari to get to them. That means I don't have a little "new Gmail" icon. I have to manually check my mail to see if there's anything there (or use the built in Mail app which I already mentioned I don't like). Gmail on the iPhone doesn't have a way for me to label messages. Sure, I can archive them to get them out of my inbox, but then they're lost in the "All Mail" ether. I couldn't label them through the Blackberry Gmail app either, so this isn't new, but it's still annoying.
Google Calendar for the iPhone lacks a rather important feature as well - Edit. Seriously? Google, you didn't think I'd want to edit calendar entries on my phone? It's not clear how I can view the "Standard" versions of either Gmail or Google Calendar. Google checks, finds that I'm on an iPhone, and serves up these "apps" that make my life harder. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe they just fail to make my life easier. I want to use my mobile device for mobile email and mobile calendar, and Google is making it hard for me to do that.
I'm hoping that there are features of Gmail and Google Calendar for the iPhone that I just haven't found or enabled properly. I don't want to go through iCal and syncing to get my calendar or through the very un-Gmail-like Mail app. Please help!
Technology I could use
Here are two things I want that I don't have the time (or probably the skills) the code:
1. A flight search engine that searches flights from multiple destinations to one. I want to use this when planning trips with my family and friends. We don't all live in the same place. We'd like to get together. This seems like a pretty common task (e.g. national holidays, girls' weekend, bachelor parties, etc.). I shouldn't have to search each person's flight independently and then hope that the one around the time of everyone else's doesn't sell out or go up in price before I find flights for everyone. I'm pretty sure Kayak's API could do this, but I don't have time to figure it out.
2. Movies starting near me in the next couple of hours with the added bonus of web ticket sales. This seems like an iPhone app that should already exist. I can't even find this on the web though. Does movietickets.com or some other site let me search by zip code and time?
Anybody know where I can find these or want to build them for me for free? Sweet.
My new iPhone
I had a great week at the poker tables last week and spent some of my winnings on a 16GB iPhone. I've railed against Cingular for years over a fight we had about an alleged many hour phone call from Canada to the U.S. (I didn't make the call, they billed me, drama). I said I'd never go back. Ever. Then came the iPhone 3G. Well, and Cingular returned to AT&T. So I'm back. I'm not sure I'm ready to part with my BlackBerry Pearl, and I haven't ported my number yet just in case. First, I'll get them to unlock my BlackBerry so it can be a backup phone anyway. But that's not the point. My new iPhone is the point. Here are my favorite parts, my least favorite parts, and the things I need to think about some more.
+ overall awesomeness
+ giant screen
+ really good typo correction
+ free apps, especially Pandora and Yelp
+ GPS
+ MobileMe
- can't cut and paste from a text message
- gets hot when in use
- built in Mail app is U-G-L-Y
- AT&T sends me cryptic emails with abbreviations like "CTN" and "CSS" that make no sense
Needs more thought:
Should I fork over the $9.99 for a tethering app so that I can use it as a wifi modem with my laptop? (sigh, another $10 spent, most likely)
Should I buy new V-moda headphones or stick with my Shures? (probably Shures)
Should I keep my Seattle number as a reminder of my summer here? (doubtful)
New and (Potentially) Useful: Cuil
Have you seen Cuil? It's another new search engine. It shows results in a grid kinda like the front page of my blog. The results skew toward social media in use, at least when I search for "libby hemphill". I got Intermedia and wiki research results. That's cool, 'cause I publish and study wikis, but my blog didn't show up on the first page of results. A search for "microsoft research" showed another new feature - categories of search results. It offered to show me "Microsoft Employees," "ACM magazines," and ".NET Progamming Languages," for example. No other search engine has been able to help me find a bar in Redmond that has the MLB package. Can Cuil find me a place to watch the Cubs? Let's see...
Cuil says, "No results were found for: mlb package bar redmond"
Bummer. Yes, I tried other keyword combinations on this and other search engines. Yes, I asked the social mailing list at Microsoft. Yes, I asked every person I could find who might care about baseball. No, I still haven't found a place to watch the Cubs.
Thanks, Natalie Hanson, for the Cuil link. She and I are on the anthrodesign Yahoo! Group mailing list. Sometimes it's good to click through signature links.