Opera Mini for iPhone Intro screen

Upon opening it the first time, you get a helpful intro screen that tells you the key features such as form fill, faster browsing and tabs. I have to admit the last thing was the one that had my interest most. Safari’s multi-window works but can be a little clunky.

So I opened it up and decided to try it out on a few sites. First up, a Google search. Like Safari, there’s the ability to search from a field right in the header. The search results appeared as expected, but I ran into some problems while trying to modify my search. When I edited the text in the search field (in the page) and hit go, it merely repeated the original search. I had to retype the new terms and click the SEARCH button in the page to get the new search to register. And later, even that wasn’t working – I had to refresh the page and do it again for it to work.

Next, I reviewed one of the pages from my results. I was looking up info on the new features in Abode CS5, and found that much of the content was hidden behind messages telling me I needed Flash to view the content. Frustrating, but at least the site created nice backup messages with a link to get Flash player. So no – Opera Mini does NOT miraculously give you Flash.

Then I went to one of the websites I’ve been evaluating for mobile use. The site appeared initially similar to the way it shows up in Safari, but then I noticed some subtle differences. The most noticeable of these was that the box model seemed off, resulting in some jagged presentations of borders around the content; the spacing of text also seemed skewed somewhat. However, that was just the ‘preview’ version – it resolved when I zoomed in…

Opera Mini for iPhone screenshot

…and the zoom function represents a large difference between the two browsers. I double-tapped like I do in Safari, but instead of zooming that content to the width of the screen, Opera Mini does a straight percentage zoom that doesn’t isn’t content aware. And THAT means you end up scrolling horizontally to read content – which isn’t the best experience. What’s more, the only way to zoom out is to use the back button – which becomes the “UNZOOM/Back” button (meaning you have to click twice from a zoomed state to get to the previous page). For all I know, Apple may have locked down the code for context-sensitive zoom but it’s a problem for me.

Zoomed in content on Opera Mini for iPhone

Zoom also represents an issue in that you have to zoom in to click on certain links. Buttons seem to have less of a problem with this, but regular text links were nearly impossible to get to work without zooming in first. I ran into a similar problem with the Blackberry phones I was testing, and it’s a bit of a nuisance.

Then I tried out the new ‘tabs’ implementation – which is only tabs in a sense. In reality, as opposed to what the help screen showed, tabs are really pages similar to Safari’s implementation. The big difference is that in Opera Mini, you can see all of the pages (at least up to 4) at one time instead of the carousel model.

Opera Mini's "Tabs"

One really nice feature that Opera Mini has over Safari is that new pages start with a Speed Dial screen that has 9 spaces for commonly opened sites. A great feature if you have a small set of sites you visit often, and much more convenient than simple bookmarks.

The Speed Dial feather for Opera Mini for iPhone

Overall, it’s nice to have an alternative to Safari, but I’m not sure that this does anything really better. It seems to be about the same speed from what I can tell, and with the exception of the Speed Dial feature doesn’t add anything new. And the zoom feature – for me – is less useful than the context-aware zoom that Safari features. But seeing as how it’s free, it’s not a bad idea to at least pick it up and check it out. Now if we can just get that Flash thing worked out…

Others had some nice ideas – one of our tech guys did what looked like a system output (matrix font, syscode look and feel) but added his Facebook ID, softball batting average and other fun stuff. Our designers of course came up with some great designs, but a lot of people got into the act.

Me? Well, I went overboard of course and did FOUR different designs. I had 2 or 3 others I thought of but didn’t have the time to actually put together. Below are my four – the first is just an update of my previous one, updated to include my new position and the required ‘location number’. So, what do you think?

iBird Explorer Basics

When I bought this, it was only for the Apple iPhone, downloadable directly from the iTunes store. There is a Windows Mobile version (“Winged Explorer”), but obviously, having an iPhone, I can’t tell you a lot about that version and so my review is of the iPhone version only. If you visit the iBird Explorer website, you’ll see that there are 6 variants of the program with a variety of specs and costs. Essentially, there are 3 main programs: iBird Backyard ($4.99), iBird Regional ($9.99) and iBird Plus ($19.99).

• iBird Backyard covers about 150 species of common backyard birds found throughout the country.
• iBird Regional is actually 5 separate versions related to geographic areas: iBird North (the northeast U.S.), iBird South, iBird Midwest, iBird West and iBird Canada
• iBird Explorer Plus- this is the biggie, which covers all species which can be found in the U.S. including references for some extinct species (you never know when that Eskimo Curlew will show up again!).

The applications are remarkably similar with the main difference being the obvious scope of the birds being covered. I went with the $19.99 Plus version simply because we were already planning a trip to Arizona, so I knew that it would come in handy. It’s the most expensive app I’ve ever bought there, but so far has been worth every penny.

Main Controls

Browse

The first time I used this app, I was immediately impressed. The diversity of options and tools is very impressive. When you first start it you are on the BROWSE section, presented as a list of birds sorted alphabetically, each with a thumbnail drawing of the species. You can them sort by ‘first’ name (red-breasted…) or ‘last’ name (merganser) or family (which includes silhouettes odd the birds to help).

Search

If you prefer to search instead of browsing, you can use the application’s great filter system. It allows you to create any number of filters to get a shorter list of choices, displayed as a list of birds in a similar fashion as the browse section. The filters that you can choose from:

• Location (state or territory)
• Shape (duck like, owl like, etc.)
• Size (extra- small to extra large)
• Habitat (ocean, prairie, etc.)
• Color Primary
• Color Secondary
• Backyard Feeder (uncommon or frequent)
• Family (same as the main page)
• Bill Shape (all purpose, cone, hooked, etc.)
• Bill Length (same, longer or shorter than head)
• Head Pattern (capped, eyeline, masked, etc.)
• Crown Color
• Wing Shape (broad-wings, pointed-wings, etc.)
• Flight Pattern (direct, flap and glide, mothlike, etc.)

Bird Entry

Selecting a bird gives you the mother lode of information – in fact, it’s pretty amazing how much info they can pack into this application.

Bird

The initial tab is the basic info on the bird. Of course you see the common name, the scientific name, the family and the order, add well as a nice illustration of the bird. Below the illustration comes a basic description that summarizes information found on other tabs in a singel spot. On some birds, there is a number on the tab, which indicates additional illustrations, usually for gender and alternate plumages – breeding and non-breeding plumage, eclipse plumage, etc.

Range

Thus shows the birds range on the map, showing summer, winter and year round ranges, limited to the half of the country its more likely to be seen (ie western or eastern US). A brief summary of the migration habits of the bird are also included.

Identify

This is the section that has the meat of the information for the application. It has a wide variety of data and info to help a birder know about the species, each in it’s own ‘box’ of content. The rundown of data:

Body - length, weigh, size, color, feather patterns, etc.
Head – eye color, head pattern, crown color, throat color, etc.
Flight – pattern, wingspan, wing and tail shapes, colors to look for, etc.
General – a general description of the bird, including both male and female key field marks.
Range & Habitat – brief description.
Breeding & Nesting – description of the nest, including a summary of the items marked (*) below.
Foraging & Feeding, Readily Eats – both of these sections talk about the feeding habits of the bird.
Vocalization – phonetic description of the songs
Similar Species – a short list of similar species (although no description of differentiating factors).
Breeding Location – habitat for breeding and nesting
Breeding Type – monogamy or polygamy, nesting in groups or solitarily, etc.
Egg Color*, Number of Eggs*, Incubation Days*, Egg Incubator* (male, female or shared), Nest Material* – these sections seem a little redundant to the Breeding & Nesting section above, to be honest.
Migration – migratory or not.

Photos

Many species include a number of photographs, noted on the tab by a number. The photos I’ve looked at seem to be of very good quality, and since they offer a chance to submit your own photographs to the site, I’m sure that the quality will continue to impress.

Sound

One of the top aspects of this software its the inclusion of the songs of most birds, playable right on the iPhone. Opening the ‘Sound’ tab (indicated by a speaker icon) immediately starts playing the song of that bird. Many times, the bird selected is one of several ‘Similar Species’ that is included so that you can compare songs of similar birds. Below the actual songs is the phonetic description of the songs. So far, I’ve really enjoyed the songs, which range from 5s to about 30s in length. The only disadvantage is for birds with more extensive repertoires, which can’t be fully included on this application. And you can’t get to particular sections of songs – you can only start at the beginning of the song, although you can stop it at any time.

Similar

This tab is particularly helpful, since it lists all of the similar species in a list, allowing you a quick method to bring up THEIR information.

Facts

This section is more fun than truly functional, giving a number of facts and additional pieces of information about the species.

Birdapedia

Birdapedia brings up a Wikipedia-like description of the species which includes links to further resources on the web.

Favorites

New in version 1.5 (the latest update), this section allows you to save a favorite set of birds for quick access. This list can then be sorted, updated, etc. [note: this needs to be enabled from the iPhone's 'Settings' button].

Flickr

Also, new in version 1.5, this allows you to access pictures of the species on Flickr. [note: this needs to be enabled from the iPhone's 'Settings' button].

With all of these controls, you can move forward and backward through the list from your current bird using the arrow controls at the top fo the application.

Help

General help with the application, including tools, FAQs and even a tutorial movie.

Glossary

A pretty extensive glossary of bird anatomical terms.

More…

A short description from the writer, and a Twitter feed.

What’s Missing?

There are only a couple of things missing from this application. One is that I wish the songs were a little more extensive — perhaps include different songs for a single species instead of a single, longer sequence of songs (for example, a breeding call vs. a call note). But the other great addition – which is supposedly in the works – is the ability to have a sighting checklist so that you can track while out in the field. They are talking about having it connect directly to eBird, which wold be very cool, but I would be satisfied with it simply being able to tick off species or better yet, allow you to tabulate numbers (such as having a “+” symbol to add to the number of a particular species).

Other than that, I have to say that this is a pretty great application.

All images in this review borrowed from AppBeacon (http://appbeacon.com/apps/010702/ibird-explorer-plus).

When I went in this morning and tried to at least turn the software back on, I found that my only choice was to buy a new subscription or buy their new software via their site – at about a 40% premium versus what I had already paid when ordering it from Amazon (which, unfortunately, will not be arriving until Friday).

To put it mildly, I was pissed. I’ve never had software of any sort with a subscription service — other than music services, that is — that turned off my software simply because I wasn’t paying a monthly fee. In fact, that is precisely why I don’t use those music services – I don’t want to rent my music. So, I didn’t want to RENT the software either – except that I didn’t know that I was until it was gone. Yes, I had seen the prompts that it was expiring, but those prompts never said that my protection would disappear the instant that it did. Instead, I thought it would work like every other software out there – including every version of Trend Micro before this one – and continue to function but deny me any future updates until I purchased a new subscription.

When I went to their customer service, the self-help was useless, so I used their live chat function. I have to admit that it was pretty convenient with a couple of small caveats: 1) the rep sounded like one of those voice-prompt systems (“I think you said that you are having a problem with your subscription. Is that right?”); and 2) you had to put in your serial number – which I couldn’t get because I couldn’t get into the software. Luckily, I was able to find the disc hidden deep in the closet, otherwise I would have been S.O.L.

To be honest, this really pisses me off. I really DON’T like the idea of renting my software and then losing it when I don’t pay for an extension of the subscription – I think that’s a model that has been shown to fail in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. But worse is that without warning, this software left me completely exposed and unprotected like a small nerdy freshman walking naked into his first day of high school. I think that’s a really shitty thing for a company to do, and I really am having a hard time justifying staying with them. If it weren’t for the well-known problems with switching internet security suites and the fact that I am completely unprotected and the fact that I detest Norton even more than this, I would switch from this software. As it is, I might still do it just because I’m so peeved.

So peeved, in fact, that I actually searched out the email addresses of 3 of the executives of the company and sent them the letter below. We’ll see if it has any effect, or if I’ll be asking for recommendations of what to buy next when Trend Micro goes back to the store.

Dear Ms. Chen, Mr. Negi and Mr. Chang,

I am writing because a recent experience with you product has severely affected my opinion of your product.  I discovered Trend Micro many years ago while fleeing the well-known anti-virus/Internet safety applications.  I was immediately impressed with your product and have been a loyal user since – my wife and I have ordered at least 8 editions of your software for our computers and the computers of relatives, as well as recommending it to numerous other people.  You can find several reviews I wrote of your product on Epinions.com under the username “martytdx” – including one that had over 5,000 views (http://www0.epinions.com/content_162006208132).  In fact, I had just ordered my copy of Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2009 and was waiting for it to arrive when my current subscription expired.

Imagine my surprise when I sat at my computer and discovered that not only had my subscription expired, but that the software had stopped working!!  When I went to discover what the problem was, I found that I was cut off from all functionality of the software – and was also suddenly left open to all manner of attacks, as it had expired overnight, turning off both my firewall AND my anti-virus while I slept.  When I tried to open the software to find out my options, I unfortunately found that they were extremely limited – I couldn’t do anything other than CANCEL or go to your site to renew my subscription.  However, I didn’t want to renew through your site, as the cost was about 40% higher than the retail cost – AND I ALREADY HAD A COPY EN ROUTE.  I hadn’t ordered the product until recently because a) I hadn’t known the new edition was out; and b) I thought that I still had some time — I hadn’t expected this.  So, for the delay of a few days in purchasing, your programming practices had left my system suddenly and completely unprotected until I turned on Windows’ mediocre firewall protection.

I was surprised and rather disappointed to find out that the expiration of my subscription did NOT do what most similar applications do – that is, suspend any further updates but allow the user to continue using the product … at least for a period of time.  I have never used another product – yours included, which took an action to prevent the user from even continuing even a minimum of protection upon expiration.  Worse, I looked at the documentation and to my knowledge received no notification at all that this would be the case.  Worse was that the software had unexpectedly left my entire system completely vulnerable to any number of attacks, all without my knowing that it would happen – in fact, expecting the very opposite.  To have my legs cut out from out of me, in a sense, was both unexpected and unwelcome – suddenly, my computer is unprotected by the software I trusted, and I find that deplorable.

Contacting your customer support rep, Paula Torres, via online chat was helpful but not satisfying.  He was of limited help, mostly because there was little he could do but apologize and offer platitudes about my situation.  He did recommend that I download and install your trial edition of the 2009 software.  While this gives a practical solution, it does little to assuage my apprehension about continuing my use of your products.  I find myself disinclined in renting your software for another year, forced into a subscription service to merely use the product that I have already purchased.  Ironically, I was already willing to buy the full-install of your new product – I had already done so, in fact, based on the positive reviews I had found on your latest version.  Now, I really doubt that I will keep this latest product and will instead look at your competitors who will give me more flexibility in the use of the license I buy – not holding me hostage like the pay-music services to maintain a subscription to use a rightfully-purchased program.  And I will be sure that I inform those who I have directed toward Trend Micro to likewise reconsider their options as well.

I will obviously have 30 days to make my decision – based on your trial software – and I hope that your response to this letter can change my mind about your products.  I sincerely hope to resolve this matter to everyone’s satisfaction.

Sincerely,
Marty DeAngelo
Haddonfield, NJ

You can learn more from the video below, but basically if you’re on a web page, you can select text and then use CTRL+Spacebar to activate a command structure to analyze/manipulate the data you selected. Type “map” and it will map the selected address in Google maps. Select a term or phrase and type “wiki” to get a wikipedia entry, or “ask-search“/”google“/”msn-search” to search on that particular engine. Type “flickr” to search the term on Flickr. Even better, it starts to predict what you want to do.

But it does more than that – you can also run commands such as calculator (“calculate“), switch tabs (“tab“), create a TinyURL (“tinyurl“) and more. Check out the video below, and then go download the prototype. Unless you have IE, that is. Then you can just suck it.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

I quickly sent a couple of emails to my host, and waited an agonizing 2.5 hours for a response (which is odd, because they usually respond within an hour). The implications of this were going through my head, resulting in more than a couple choice words in several languages. All of my links gone, the fact that I couldn’t get to my blog to backup the recent content (I could get to the database, but I’ve had less than stellar success going straight from mySQL). Then it hit me that my parent’s beachhouse site is also hosted on my domain – well, that sucks. Another reason to get them their own domain. And then the biggie hit – my email address. Not like I would have a quick and easy time giving people notice to change – it would just be GONE. I was … perturbed.

Axishost to the rescue

While I was waiting, I researched what happened so that I would know all of the details of the situation. I was still listed on WHOIS and at Register.com, but other registration sites had the owner as Enom.com, which pissed me off pretty badly. What was worse was the little ‘want this domain? submit a bid!’ which would have cost me a MINIMUM of $200. Bullshit.

When they got back to me after what seemed like hours (umm, it was, I guess), I got the skinny on the situation. They weren’t sure why enom.com was showing up as a listing, and they apologized that I never got the customary 1-month, 2-week, 1-week and 48-hour notices. But they took it upon themselves to automatically renew the domain name and invoice me the $12.95 for the 1-year registration. Of course, I’m going to go back and re-register it for the maximum time, and set that reminder in my system so I won’t miss the next time.

no worries, actually

I hadn’t realized it at the time, and the problem with enom.com still worries me, but I was actually fairly well-protected. I still had my hosting account up-to-date (meaning my files, including blog, were still there). And I later learned that new rules put in place after the ridiculous domain-stealing practices of the 80′s and 90′s would have given me ample time to fix the problem. Because of people losing their domains within hours after they expired, ICANN – the governing body for domain names – changed the rules to give a user 45 days after the expiration in which their domain name is put into an Auto-Renew Grace Period, where the user can renew for the same price they could have before it expired. Even after that 45-day period, there is a further 30-day period in which your domain name may still be protected, although you will have to pay the standard rates that the registrar charges to ‘re-register’ the domain name. This process can be $10 to over $200 – whatever that registrar wants to charge. However, it will usually be less than you’ll pay some company who grabs expired domains for the soul purpose of turning them into cheap search pages or porn portals.

If you want more information on the rules, check out these articles:

ICANN – Auto-Renew Grace Period
ICANN FAQs
How to Snatch an Expiring Domain – it actually has good material you can turn around to protect yourself.

1. My hard drive is about to fail… but at least I know it and I’m able to get my stuff off of it before it does so – and I’ve been needing to redo my OS drive anyway.
2. I came home with a real humdinger of a headache which I thought was another sinus headache.  It turned out to be a migraine, but my wife suggested taking a Zomig, which I took soon enough to turn it into a barely tolerable amount of pain instead of an ungodly amount.
3. I’m almost completely caught up with all my projects at work … but I struggled today because all 6 of my projects are waiting for others to figure out what they need/want to do … but that gave me time to do some ‘housekeeping’ stuff and work on some best practices documents.
4. I got a haircut today, about 2 weeks after I needed one … but I had to wait 45 minutes with that burgeoning headache … but my wife told me that it was a sexy cut when she got home.
5. With my computer down and the laptop with my wife, I figured I would sit and watch TV – but the FiOS was recording two things and the only recorded shows were shows we like to watch together or stuff that only she watches.  But it gave me time to complete my first New York Times Sunday crossword of the year.
6. The dogs were really glad to see me this evening when I finally got home since they needed to go out badly … but so did the cat, who scampered out twice and had to be retrieved.  But at least Oakley worked on his ‘herding skills’.
7. One of my best friends and his wife had their first baby on Monday (Julia) … but we didn’t get the message until a day later because they had the wrong email address.  But hey – Jim (well, Rosemary, obviously) had a baby.  There’s really no downside to that.
8. When I got home, the power was out on the one part of the house (bad circuit), meaning that the front porch light, living room lights and kitchen were dark … but the fridge being off for hours meant that my ice cream was nice and soft and easy to scoop (when life gives you soft ice cream, make milkshakes).

I’ve found that while things are going fairly well, I’ve been finding myself getting negative and stressed out way too often.  I’m really going to take a page from Van’s book and try a more positive, forward-thinking and productive approach to life.  I mean, considering what I’m seeing happen around me to some of the people I know, work with and talk to, my life is going pretty well.  I like my job, I’m getting paid well and my commute is a 1500% better than it was, I have a loving wife and 4 (insane and) enjoyable pets, we’re mostly healthy, my family is mostly healthy, global warming hasn’t melted the shingles on our house yet and if my computer really does die, I just might be able to convince the wife that I should just get a new Mac Pro instead of a new hard drive.  Okay, I didn’t say I would be successful…

All in all, I have a lot of things to be thankful for and should really shut the hell up when I feel like complaining.  Everyone has time issues, but at least I’m getting to spend most of my down time doing good things instead of working a second job at WienerMart or suffering through a debilitating case of Ebola-induced acne.  Plus, I do have some real Oreos up in the pantry…

If, however, you are using a modern browser such as say, Firefox, your experience is somewhat … shall we say, different?

Notice anything wrong? Obviously, no one mentioned that over 10% of the country uses Firefox, including what might be a disproportionate number of the users who might use a download service like this. Of course, we are talking about Wal-Mart customers…

I sure hope that someone loses their job over this – this is sloppy and a REALLY poor example of what happens when you don’t do proper QA (or use qualified designers). I could go to town on the code itself, but could I really do worse than what they already show here?