SkratchBoard

Like pictures? Like Craigslist and Kijiji? Try Shopcaste.

About a week ago, I put up a small pet project online that lets you easily search across Craigslist, Kijiji (in Canada only), eBay and other online stores. It's more of a simple, small and fun project while I played with Ruby and JQuery, but I created it also out of personal frustration from using those sites.

While I love having free local classified sites that let me buy and sell stuff (mostly geek toys), I find a typical "shopping workflow" on Craigslist/Kijiji to be less than optimal. Here is a typical one:

1. Go to Craigslist, search for "foo".

2. Scan each item text, and then click on the ones that look interesting to see the pictures.

RANT: I think Craigslist is one of the wonders of Internet. The UI has hardly changed over the past 10 years, yet it is still the most successful and widely used classified ads site. That speaks to early mover's advantage in a big way.

3. Open a new browser tab. Go to Kijiji (I do this only when I am in Toronto)

4. Do the same search again. Kijiji is a bit better because it shows pictures in the search results, but they are a bit small, so I usually still have to click on the link to see the larger pictures.

5. Open another new browser tab. Go to http://shopping.google.com/ (I do this when I am in the US), to see how much online stores sell the same item for if it's new.

6. Repeat step 5 with Amazon.com. 

I don't know if I am the only person who does this, but I basically just got sick of doing that each time I want to buy something used.

So now, with a single search, you can easily search across Craigslist, Kijiji (Canada only), eBay and other online stores (US only) visually (yes, you can see photos even for Craigslist items). I also have the code to search on Amazon already, but I haven't incorporated it into the site yet.

Since I don't make any money out of the site, I have just hosted it on Heroku with a single Web Dyno. So the site might be a bit slow, but it should work ok.

You can try it out at http://www.shopcaste.com.

Siri's Best Feature Might Be Its Humor

Conversation snippet from the folks at iFixit.com with Siri:

iFixit: "Siri, may we disassemble you for all to see?"

iPhone 4S (Siri): "42"

iFixit: "I didn't ask for the meaning of life, Siri..."

iPhone 4S (Siri): "42 is the number of seconds you have left until I initiate the self-destruct sequence..."

iFixit: "Message received."

Source: iFixit

No iPhone 5 this Year? Suck it Up!

Tim Cook & Co. unveiled iPhone 4S yesterday along with a slew of product announcements. Fanboys were disappointed because they didn't get their form factor redesigned iPhone 5 yesterday. 

I am getting tired of hearing my friends on Facebook and a lot media blabbing about how Apple disappointed fans, and how iPhone 4S is a stop gap solution. One of my friends on Facebook even claimed that Apple is running out of innovation (well, he works for Samsung).

I would just like to voice my opinion because I think these comments are very unfair.

First of all, nobody says that the iPhone needs to have a form factor redesign every year. In fact, if you look at successful products across industries, the opposite is true. Look at the BMW 3 series, which is commonly seen as the gold standard of sports sedan. BMW takes great care to only have a redesign every 3-5 years, and when such redesign happens, they are evolutionary. Let's even look at other Apple products. Macbook Pro is another great example. The current unibody design has been already around since 2008, and I will say this very loud. Macbook Pros are stil the best laptops out there. So if these very successful product lines don't get form factor changes every year, why are people expecting Apple to come out with a new iPhone form factor every year?

Industrial design takes a lot of time and effort. Industrial design for phone is a even more complicated matter as you need to take into componenet sizes, battery life, cost of manufacturering, ergonomics, durability, and many other factors. It's simply unrealistic to expect Apple to launch a new form factor every year.

Now, the iPhone is hardly "the same iPhone". Apple has been innovating under the hood with the breakthrough voice assistant, Siri (which they acquired earlier). The improved 8MP camera, 1080p video and world phone capability are enough to get anyone still using iPhone 3GS to upgrade. And if you are on iPhone 4 and you are not upgrading, that's ok. Chances are, you are not out of your carrier contract yet anyway.

I won't lie and say that, as a consumer, I wasn't disappointed that a large screen iPhone was not announced. But as someone who works in this industry, I think what Apple is doing completely makes sense. We just need to tame the fanboy rumor mills next time.