While on a recent trip to San Francisco, I took about 400 photos with my digital camera. A few of these were adjacent shots intented to be stitched together with panoramic photo software.

All kinds of software packages are available to stitch photos together into panoramas. My friend Nathan recomended a package called Panorama Factory, and it is impressive. My camera (nothing high-end, it’s a 2MP Canon Digital Elph S330) includes a feature to help line up multiple shots for a panorama, but Panorama Factory is good enough that you don’t even need to use the camera aids (though I still did for the photos below).

These aren’t meant to be particularly good photos. As you can see by my photo gallery, I’m no photographer. However, I do manage to luck out and catch a few nice ones now and then (getting up at sun-rise always helps, as with this set from the North shore of Prince Edward Island). I thought I would post a few photos to show how easy it is to put together panoramas, to encourage others to try it out, and to point out the great software package I’ve been using (Panorama Factory).

Each of the files below are simple partial panoramas, but Panorama Factory is just as good with complete 360° panoramas. As I show below, it can export to flat images (JPEGs) or create QuickTime panoramas (it also exports to a few other proprietary panoramic formats).

A pitstop on the way from San Francisco to Monterey.

• Larger Version (151Kb, 1378px wide, 400px tall)
• Full Size Version (1.1MB, 3852px wide, 1118px tall)
• QuickTime Panorama (1.1MB, QuickTime required)

One of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen (not really captured well here) – taken from the hills outside of San Francisco looking towards the Pacific ocean. As an added bonus, that’s the president of the internet on the right.

• Larger Version (224Kb, 1746px wide, 400px tall)
• Full Size Version (1.6MB, 4862px wide, 1114px tall)
• QuickTime Panorama (1.3MB, QuickTime required)

A view of silicon valley from the hills – I’m not actually sure where we are at this point. That’s Stephen DesRoches on the right who was all about gettin’ the shots.

• Larger Version (222Kb, 2038px wide, 400px tall)
• Full Size Version (1.6MB, 5458px wide, 1071px tall)
• QuickTime Panorama (1.4MB, QuickTime required)

Another shot from the same vantage point as the photo above. This one was with 3-times zoom.

• Larger Version (350Kb, 3407px wide, 400px tall)
• Full Size Version (1.9MB, 9608px wide, 1128px tall)
• QuickTime Panorama (2.4MB, QuickTime required)

Here’s a prediction for you: At some point in the next few years Apple will return to the original colored-stripe Apple logo. It will be heralded as a great return to their “roots”.

Remember, you heard it here first.

I just came back from a grand tour of all establishments (that I know of) here in Charlottetown that sell car CD players. My sigfinicant other recently bought a used Toyota with a dud CD player. We like the factory default — it’s simple, it has a volume knob, it doesn’t light up live a rave/disco/acid-flashback.

As it turns out, factory default car CD players seem to be the only ones available that aren’t totally X-treme®!

I’m having a similar problem with replacing my cell phone. It seems that color screens on cell phones do two things (and only two things, as far as I can tell): 1) suck up the battery faster, and 2) obscure system icons with crappy photo-realistic but unintelligible icons.

Anyone who has tried to buy sneakers in the last few years knows that unless you are a go-go dancer from Mars, a mountain climber, or some kind of space athelete, there are no shoes for you.

I can understand that “dudes” want to buy wacky stereos for their dude-mobiles. I also understand that flashy lights might help sell products when they are sitting next to a bunch of others on a store shelf. However, is there not a market for simple and elegant user interfaces? I am not asking for much — from the last I’ve seen, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Subaru, etc, all have relatively simple factory default stereos. Why can’t we buy these after-market?

Are substance, value, and usability — factors that come into play after the purchase, not during or before — always going to be drowned out by flash and featuritis — which make their impression at the time of purchase, but let you down afterwards? Of course, I dont’t mind that these wacky products are out there — I just wish I could still get something simpler.

I don’t need more flashing lights in my life right now.

(by the way, if anyone knows where you can buy a used factory default toyota CD player in Charlottetown, please let me know)

Much has been said of Apple’s use of the brushed-metal application/window theme (and their inconsistent use of it). However, they’ve really outdone themselves now. The new application, oddly named GarageBand (putting two words together to make a new word – it has so been done), has a faux woodgrain (as if you could have any other kind of woodgrain on a computer screen).

Woodgrain!?

I generally enjoy the simplicity of the window controls in Mac OS X — especially with the subtle visual simplifications in version 10.3.

While Windows (and the common linux GUIs, Gnome and KDE) have the common three window controls (minimize, maximize/restore, and close), they also have another menu on the top-right of the window. This includes these same window controls again, with some additions (I’ve debated removing this extra menu in Gnome).

Mac OS X dispenses with this second title bar control, simplifying the typical window to great effect. To be fair, though, it does get to hide some of that functionality in the common application menu at the top of the screen.

However, there are two things that do bother me about the OS X window controls. The first is somewhat trivial and subjective. I don’t think the “show/hide toolbar” control warrants such a prominent position on the title bar. It is handy, on occasion, but shouldn’t a control to hide/show a toolbar be somehow connected to the toolbar? Is this even something that needs an always-visible control?

My second peeve is one that dates way back to the days of the Classic Mac OS. Perhaps some sage Mac users can clear this up for us. What’s the deal with that zoom control?!

The little green orb (it includes a plus symbol + when the mouse hovers over it) has always confounded me as to what it will do each time I click on it. It has become known around my office as the “green random window size changing button”. Apple calls it the “zoom button” (they always have been good at naming things).

According to Apple, the zoom button toggles the window between the “user state” and the “standard state”:

The user state is the window size and location established by the user. If your application does not supply an initial user state, the user state is simply the size and location of the window when it was created, until the user resizes it.

…

The standard state is the window size and location that your application considers most convenient, considering the function of the document and the screen space available. In a word-processing application, for example, a standard-state window might show a full page, if possible, or a page of full width and as much length as fits on the screen. If the user changes the page size through Page Setup, the application might adjust the standard state to reflect the new page size. If your application does not define a standard state, the Window Manager automatically sets the standard state to the entire gray region on the main screen, minus a three-pixel border on all sides. (See Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines for a detailed description of how your application determines where to open and zoom windows.) The user cannot change a window’s standard state.

However, it seems more common that an application opens up for the first time at an appropriate and comfortable size (as recommended by the Apple Human Interface Guidelines). Then, when the “zoom button” is clicked, the window effectively “maximizes”. OS X doesn’t have the full “maximized” state that Windows uses (a reasonable simplification for which I do not fault them — and it is a nice removable of a “mode”). Rather, the windows seem to just get as large as they can. However, this seems quite inconsistent — sometimes they will take up the full width, but keep the same height — others seem to maximize both height and width.

The end result of this is that I end up not knowing what to expect when I click the zoom button. So, I usually don’t click it at all.

So, I ask of you, the sage readership:

1. What exactly does the zoom button do?
2. If there is a reasonable answer, then how can this be made more obvious, as to avoid my current state of confusion and frustration?

When those of us who live on our computers setup a new one – there is usually process of redecoration and customization. This process usually takes a few days, with a few little issues hanging around for a week or two. We install of our applications, we customize window and color settings, we set our desktop background color or image.

While I do all of these things, to varying degrees, I have a love for the default settings and strive to use them, and improve them, whenever possible. There is something to be said for keeping things are they are by default, regardless of the customization options.

First of all, it is easier – if you use the default settings, things are already setup for you! It also makes working between various computers easier.

Default settings are more important than any customization options that may live behind them. For example, the Mozilla web browser had tab-browsing functionality for years and I never touched it – when I did, I always changed the settings to open tabs in the background, and to open tabs with Ctrl+click. However, I could never remember if I had set these options since I had last installed or upgraded (something that happened quite frequently, since I was following the development of Mozilla).

Then, when the Firebird web browser came along, tab-browsing had both of these options enabled by default. All of the sudden I can’t live without tab-browsing. There were no new settings – only a seemingly subtle change in which settings were chosen by default.

I’ve been encouraged to see that open-source software developers seem to be gaining an appreciation for the importance of good defaults. While open-source developement has often been criticized for bogging applications down with too many options (and this has certainly been a problem), I’ve seen a great respect to simplicity in configuration options, and the importance of good default settings by the managers of the Gnome project, Nautilus, Gaim, and Mozilla Firebird.

Long live good defaults!

Though I’m usually glad to take most of the credit, much of my professional and personal design work is often the better for having been subject to collaboration and criticism from my co-workers.

After much teasing/coaxing/punching, my professional better half at silverorange, Daniel Burka, has finally joined the world of weblogs. His site, DeltaTangoBravo.com just went up this morning and already busting with coolness. Fans of the silverorange design aesthetic (if there is such a thing) will recognize Daniel’s signature style.

So far, he has pointed to an amazing set of Tufte-esque illustrations (beautiful) and regaled us with the sad tale of putting his new digital camera through the washer (and dryer).

Welcome to Daniel, and to those who enjoy all things smart and good, get over there and syndicate that thing.