Download Squad

For a while now the top contender in iPhone finance apps was Bloomberg Mobile. Enter DailyFinance's iPhone app [iTunes link], featuring real-time quotes, portfolios and watchlists and some rather impressive charting tools. Mike Rose has a nice write-up over on TUAW, and the DailyFinance site has a good summary of features and a demo video. It's a free download, so try it and let us know what you think in the comments.

Editor's Note: DownloadSquad's parent company Weblogs, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL.

In some ways the olfactory (aka "smellable") web began 10 years ago. In other, more real ways, not so much. How many of you are able to smell your favorite websites today? Of course, among all the protocols and basic hardware required of modern computers, the ability to produce smell never quite earned a spot in the spec sheet. Too bad, maybe, as smells are powerful triggers in our brains.

I remember way back in 1999 when I worked for a now-defunct dot-com startup, as we suffered endless PowerPoint pitch sessions with folks looking to do business with us. One company was DigiScents, makers of the iSmell. Yes, it was seriously called the iSmell. Perhaps that is why DigiScents' website is now a blog, and not a very updated one at that. It could also be that only a few people wanted to smell the web. PC World Magazine (whose karmic retribution may be going completely virtual) called iSmell one of the 25 worst tech devices of all time way back in 2006, and since then the technology has fallen into obscurity. Sad, as in 2001 they seemed to be making all the right moves. Unfortunately I don't think people wanted to pay $200 for a USB device that made smells, no matter how "rich" the web experience could become. That's probably still true.

Or has it? I may be one of the small percentage of people actually wanting this technology, but I find it strange that we demand better graphics for games, louder and more realistic sounds, even exploring force feedback systems to immerse ourselves in online worlds, but we leave the powerful sense of smell alone. It could be that most games would smell pretty terrible (gunpowder and guts don't mix well with Cheetos and Red Bull), or it could be that people just haven't thought about it that much. NTT appears to be the only company thinking about this now, and all I've seen commercially available are some phones that stink.

And now, for your Moment of Zen: the Olfactory Transmission Protocol page from 1997.

I find it a little funny that TealPoint, makers of some truly awesome software for Palm's now-decrepit Operating Systems of days gone by, whipped out a launcher called TealOS that pretty much apes the WebOS that will supposedly "save" the bacon of the beleaguered handheld company. You know, Palm, the people who, after Apple dropped the ball, ran the PDA into the end zone back in the 90's?

See, if you out-innovate a company like Palm, you're going to get smacked with a cute "stop it" from someone's legal department. In this case, TealPoint has been told in no uncertain terms to stop distributing copies of TealOS (you can see it in action in the video above -- until Palm lawyers tell YouTube to pull it). Lucky for you lovers of fine software, you can get this rare vintage until Monday, March 30, 2009. My condolences to the families of the engineers who are going to burn some midnight oil "to try to get as many bug fixes and requested improvements in as we can" before Monday.

According to Engadget, a Palm rep had TealOS on a Pre at one point and seemed pretty stoked about it. Chalk that up to ignorant bliss, I suppose, as someone at Palm wasn't quite cool enough to grok how awesome this tool is -- especially if you are NOT rocking a Pre. Yeah, the Pre, the phone we don't know exactly when it will appear or what it will cost (but we do know it'll be a Sprint-tastic exclusive). Maybe this isn't funny. Maybe it is sad that Palm feels so threatened by such a tool (which only mimics the app launching portions of WebOS and doesn't provide a framework for creating applications) that they have to crush it. It's sadder still, as TealPoint's outgoing message on their tealtalk forum says "the program's success came at a badly needed time." Sound like the crashing economy and plummeting Palm marketshare has been unkind to them. Good thing they've got a friend like Palm in their corner, right? Yeah.

The thing about technology is that it isn't inherently good or bad, it's how we choose to use it that makes it so. This has been true since the first humans picked up a bone and fashioned a hammer. Some used it to build, and others to kill. So it is with the web -- except the killing part, maybe. We've seen some great stuff like Google's search engine, Delicious bookmarks and Pandora's music engine. But then there's the low barrier to making web pages, spawning the sort of nightmares you'll find at Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease.

Now look, I'm not trashing Alek's work with Christmas lights (personally I love web-controlled lights and the hobbyists who do these light shows are really dedicated) and I'm certainly not saying Celiac disease is a cause unworthy of attention. I only wish Alek hadn't chosen the following things for his site:

• Autoplay MIDI music
• Cutesy javascript cursor follow
• Dense text everywhere
• Wacky fonts from 1996

These are the web equivalents of polyester suits. Cute when worn as a joke, not so cute when used at a serious job interview. Same here: a redesign might bring more awareness to Celiac disease, a tough condition which requires a gluten-free diet.

Ultimately the question becomes one of content vs. presentation. Does poor presentation trump content, or does great content rise above bad presentation? I found a nice summary of this notion from 2006 at LukeW's site:

Many sites with a poor visual presentation remain popular on the merits of their content alone. But does their audience enjoy bumping through the site's awkward graphics and hard to read labels? No, but the personality of the content (it could be high quality, funny, worthwhile, and more) makes the rest bearable. Would their audience be happier if the personality of the presentation matched the personality of the content? Of course.

Perhaps a designer could donate some time to making Alek's site visibly more manageable? Alek's site is already pretty famous, so I can't help but think that a facelift would help his cause.

My primary phone is a BlackBerry, but I also own an iPhone with no service contract. Several weeks ago I had the lucky gig of compiling a few fart apps for TUAW, and I was less than impressed with the overall situation. In other words: most fart apps stink.

But let's face it, fart apps made a lot of noise for the iPhone, in no small part because Apple initially refused to "pull the finger," effectively blocking them from the App Store. Now the fart app floodgates are open, and the App Store is flush with flatulence. It was only a matter of time before other platforms took the bait and improved upon the iPhone apps in ways the iPhone simply won't allow. Sort of.

You can see a long, boring, detailed breakdown of features for BSFartApp ($1.99) by clicking the read more link, but here's the basic deal: BSFartApp is a complicated and powerful fart app for Windows Mobile. I have nothing against novelty apps. In fact, BSFartApp is superior to many iPhone fart apps in features, but it really falls down in terms of actual usability. Maybe WinMo users are conditioned to doing things in 3 clicks instead of one, but I am not.

As one example of terrible UI, in order to navigate down a menu, you must click AND swipe. Do what now? Why not just swipe? Or just click? The buttons have little arrows that would seem to indicate such functionality, so why not do as the user expects? Also, while there are plenty of use cases for timed or triggered farts (yes, the office clown, we love him, but will he make it to the corner office?), what about just letting one rip? Yeah, you're gonna be about 3 or 4 menus down to just let one go. Thank goodness our own bodily functions are less complicated. Things are bad when you start referring to generic soundboard apps on the iPhone as "elegant by comparison."

BSFartApp's real advantage over iPhone is the ability to send a fart via MMS. Plus, there's a pretty nifty "eavesdrop" feature that should have you getting sued and/or grounded in no time (there's a similar feature that returns the GPS coordinates for supported phones). I'm less impressed with the phone-as-web-server, since the iPhone will do that as well, but WinMo still has an advantage by allowing background processes to run. OK, so I guess it's good that WinMo is getting a little fart app action. Now if only it wasn't such a PITA to use them...

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