Android Disappointments: Good Bye, Locale

With great regrets, retired Locale today. Most regrettable because this is something I thought about as well, something that showed great promise, and something that can be greatly improved.

Doesn't seem that is destined to happen, though. At least not yet.

What makes projects great is transparency. Here, there is none.

Feedback, other than 915 ratings to date on Android Market, is hidden. Directions of further development are unknown. The only way to "get involved" is to send a mail (yeah, sure, let me whip out my spam filter). It is not known whether the project team is planning to make this an open source project, or make it a commercial application. It is not known and not clear whether the application is being actively developed, or maybe the team has reaped the benefits and moved on, releasing minor bugfixes once in a while.

Given the fact that the application is quirky and there is a lot of space for improvements (which I'm not even going to talk about until they put the cards on the table), I just call it quits.

This application is uncertain. Uncertainty is risk. Risk is threat.

The impact of this application on one's life can be a blessing or a curse - and curse much more often than a blessing, people usually notice things that go wrong and take what goes right for granted. Just imagine an alarm that's been missed because it fell into the "silent" zone, and you not making the once in a lifetime interview because of that.

*IF* Locale becomes a commercial application, I might think of buying it. But probably won't - you know, if the range top microwave falls and severs my SO's arm, I don't care much if if the installer had insurance to cover it.

But, if they decide to open it up... I just might be tempted enough to chip in my $0.02.

Too bad I don't have time to write it better from scratch, being busy doing other things...

Locale + Calendar Integration, Take 2

Carter from Locale team made a correction to the original post.

First of all, my apologies - I've had a tunnel vision attack and didn't see the calendar icon on the screenshot.

On the other hand, that might serve as a message that screenshots are insufficient, and they're not searchable. And that the documentation is an important part of your product - even if it is free. For now. And the front page of the project is still talking about Android release in the future tense.

But enough bickering, let me address the original point.

I guess I was thinking about Calendar integration for too long and didn't realize that what I implied too much in a cryptic message, so let me spell it out.

Let's see, yes, you can integrate a Calendar event into Locale. However, in order to do that, you need to:

1. Get the phone in your hands;
2. Open Locale;
3. Fiddle with it for a sufficiently long period of time in order to create a situation;
4. Go through the user interface that duplicates Calendar (I didn't look into technicalities, hope Calendar UI is a standard Android gadget);
5. Select the event;
6. Finish the situation.

That's a lot of work.

Now, what I actually meant was:

1. Start creating your event (in the Calendar);
2. Add a Calendar gadget that specifies notification preferences to your event;
3. Have Locale (or suchlike application) analyze the events in background and apply settings that are already specified in the events.
   

And that's all.

The point is, don't do the job you don't have to. Lazy design is a good design.

Note, it doesn't matter whether the event is being created via Web interface on your computer, or your phone. Don't know about you, but I hate the small keyboards on smartphones, no matter how good they are - maybe it's all cool and peachy while you still have all your life ahead of you, but well, I have better things to do than explore the limits of G1's mechanical excellence (more about that in a different post) in my not-so-spare time.

Having said all that, let me repeat once more that yes, I realize that per-event calendar gadget may not even exist yet (last time I checked, it didn't), but that can be addressed, and I'm sure it's either there already, or is coming soon.

More about lazy design - ahem... Give me one good reason why do you have to have a separate "manage" tab, whereas you can do the same thing in the same tab by simply using a long press?

But again, I'm nitpicking. All in all, Locale is a very useful application, and if the design team plays along with Google's way of doing things (release early, release often, improve evolutionarily) - I'm sure it'll keep being one of Android's crown jevels.

Good job, guys, and good luck.

Android Wishlist: Locale + Calendar Integration

Apparently, other people have exactly the same pet peeves that I do.

Can't blame them for not doing the job exactly the same way I would've done - they've already done much more than I cared and/or had time to, but can't resist (being the <censored>-retentive nitpicker that I am) from an observation: why do I have to create timed conditions via Locale specific UI and storage, when there's a tool perfected to do just that: the calendar.

The calendar is available through its API.

Calendar gadgets, last time I checked, were on per-day granularity, but still, one can use the API to create events that external tools (like Locale) can work with. Or, push the Calendar guys to create per-event gadgets - Google is known to be flexible in admitting their shortcomings. This may already exist on be in the works, for all I know.

Locale project does advertise "3rd party developer platform", so doing it may be a straightforward task, but the promise is yet to materialize - Locale doesn't look like an Open Source project. There's something funny about it - for example, I wouldn't imagine the Top Ten project team to allow the site to talk about Android release in the future tense a week after it's actually happened...

Mobile Integration: Turn Off The Damn Phone!!!

There are few among as that can say that they always mute the phone before entering a meeting, a movie, or the library, or any other place where the hysterical hollering of the ring tone is at least unwelcome, and at most, sometimes, dangerous to your life (imagine the screeching brakes ring tone that your driver is exposed to - not good).

There are even fewer that actually do.

So I thought, wouldn't it be nice if your calendar had a "change ringer settings" feature that would help you to remember and actually put the phone on mute or vibrate or whatever is appropriate for the occasion...

Of course, it opens the usual can of worms - you don't want everybody and their uncle arbitrarily changing your phone settings due to a vulnerability or simple lack of diligence in the implementation, and of course, the protocol must use strong cryptography supporting trust relationship between your cloud applications and your mobile devices - but I hope that mobile API providers either already have this available, or are working on publishing it anytime soon...

Update: Not a complete solution (in particular, it's not integrated with the calendar), but definitely a step in the right direction: Android Locale.