My Dream App

This is how things looked from my point of view:

Tuesday, towards the end, I had realized the possibility that Portal was the Purple bar in the voting results page. That meant, at the time, that I was in second. That alone made me have doubts. Then Kevin (Hijack) figured out he was Red and went into overdrive promoting the idea. I didn’t feel too bad, after all I considered Hijack one of my favorites.

Then, towards the last two hours, the Red bar began to make serious progress. Purple had slipped to third and every time I refreshed my browser, Red was that much closer. Then it happened. Purple fell to fourth. Red then passed Blue and claimed second place all to itself. I was now 40+ votes back.

After frantic calls to everyone I knew, plus cross-continental iChat sessions with college buddies, I thought I had secured about 10-15 more votes. Not enough, and I knew it. Going into the final minutes I had all my friends scared I had blown a fuse or something. I was a mess, so I went for a walk.

When I got back, everyone was in a holding pattern in the “Final Round Voting Closed” forum. 425 posts in under three hours or so. It was chaos. So I went and watched LOST. Chaos was still there when I got back.

I can’t remember exactly when I saw that the results where in, but I do know I was suspicious right away because it looked like Portal had made it through. “That’s impossible”, I thought. I was wrong. Voting irregularities had propelled me from the brink of elimination into second place. I still can’t believe it. Portal placed higher than Cookbook AND contributed to Hijack being pushed out of the top three.

To say I’m surprised would be an understatement. I’m in shock. I’m not a designer. I’m certainly not a programmer. I don’t even own a copy of Photoshop. Cookbook looks almost perfect. The GUI is clean and refined. Hijack had full-screen animated mockups for crying out loud!

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This brings me to my next point. I love Portal, it was always been my favorite app in this contest. I know I’m biased since its my idea, but what else do you honestly expect me to say? Still, there have been three other ideas I really liked: Ground Control, Hijack, and Cookbook. Cookbook is safe, so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. GC and Hijack are in a different category: They still need developers to sign on! GC had a website going for it for a while and now Russell has added in a Blog to keep people on top of any progress. Hijack always had a following and now they seem to be self-organizing , even as Kevin gets some well deserved sleep. If either of these two ideas has any need for my modest skills, I’d gladly offer them, and I encourage the same from any diehard Portal supporters out there. Portal is in the loving, caring hands of MDA now, so attention can be turned to these other great app ideas.

That said, I’ll be taking some time off from this contest. Probably about a week. I’m on empty right now, and really, really need a vacation so I’m off to join Kevin on his secluded island of solitude in the Pacific. I’ll drop you a postcard. Thanks again!

I’m out of time, so I might as well push the DIGG

Please Digg Portal, Vote for Portal, and lets get Portal back in the top three.

Recently I have posted two parts in a series of essays on Using Portal (Part 1, Part 2). What follows here is the third and final part in this series. It also happens to be the longest of the three.

I have tried to define the problems that Portal will solve, and the audience that will find Portal most useful. Now I will do my best to define how Portal will go about solving these problems, and how it will all look from the user’s point of view.

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When Portal launches, you are presented with a single window containing a large “drop box” and a single button to initiate a Sync.

Dropping any file or application into this box will bring up a list of available Macs that you can sync that item with. This list includes any Macs Portal has previously synced with, even if they are not connected or available at that very moment.

If this is your first time running Portal, a special Welcome window will be displayed, giving the user simple checkbox options to add some of the more popular items to the sync queue. This includes your Mailboxes, Address Book, Calendars, Bookmarks, iTunes library, iPhoto library, etc.

Adding files, folders, and applications in this way will build up a detailed queue for each Mac you want to sync with. Once a file is added, any changes you make to the file, no matter which Mac you make them on, will be synced with all the other Macs. Your files will always be up to date! Changes are transferred from one system to the next over local Bonjour connections, so whenever you bring one Mac close to another, all the changed files stream from one system to the other without any trouble. When these syncs occur, the user is treated to an amazing display of animation, watching as the files from one system are sucked into a twisting, warping wormhole right on their desktop!

These are all the steps that are necessary to get your Macs to sync perfectly: Pick your files and choose where to sync them. All the default settings for when to sync, and how to deal with file conflicts will keep things running as smoothly, and as efficiently as possible. User hassle will be kept to a minimum!

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Nevertheless, there will come a time when the user is inclined to make some changes to the system. Perhaps a new Mac needs to be added to the available “Sync To” list, or maybe you no longer want your personal calendars to sync with your work computer. All these options and many more are easily within reach; all one needs to do is flip the window (just like if it where a widget). First click the “toggle toolbar” button in the top right of the window to reveal the status bar at the bottom of the window (this bar contains an Options drop-down menu, and a search bar). The Options menu can be used to flip the window over to the “Macs”, “Files”, “Apps”, or “Graphics” Options views.

Macs View

Files View

Apps View

Graphics View

Within each of these views, the user can see the basic information about the selected Mac or Item, and make simple adjustments to the setups for each. You can add a Mac to the sync list for a file, disable bookmark syncing for Firefox, or simply change the style of the graphics for when you sync with your work computer.

If the options shown by default are not enough to get Portal to do what you want it to, click the “toggle toolbar” button again. When in any of the Options views, clicking this button will expand the window and reveal the PRO mode. This makes all the sync rules and adjustments you could want available at your fingertips.

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Adding files through the above interface is a two step process, which is about as simple as it can get. To streamline this process even further, Portal also places a “Sync with Portal” command in the contextual drop-down menu in the Finder (when you right-click on a file). Simply find the file you want to sync, right-click on it, find the Mac or Macs you want to sync with, and select them. It can all be done in a matter of seconds, even if Portal doesn’t have an open window.

There is also a Portal widget for those who would rather use the Dashboard to add files or applications to the sync queue.

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What is described above would constitute a fully featured 1.0 release of Portal. Additional features such as Sync to Server, Sync over Internet, and Sync to Disc/Thumbdrive will all come in later releases. For a full list of features, please refer to my post Portal: The Feature Roadmap, and the ensuing forum discussion. If you have any technical concerns, browse through these two following forums to see if your question was raised before: here and here.

If you have any comments or advice or just some words of encouragement, please post them in the Forums. I’m thankful for any helpful criticism you might have.
And remember: Vote for Portal!

In my last post, Using Portal, Part 1, I posed five questions that any potential syncing application might answer. I did so to help define the problems I see in the current market, and how I see Portal fitting in with the current competition. I’ve done that, but I haven’t defined the market itself, I haven’t said explicitly who the target audience is for this application.

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Certainly, as a file/app sync application, Portal will appeal to individuals who own two Macs (individuals like me). I have a PowerBook I take to school every day, plus an iMac at home. Portal would help me keep the two in harmony, making it easier to move back and forth between the two while working on a single project.

While this was the audience that motivated me to submit this idea, in hindsight, there are many other possible uses for Portal:

- College students in groups, working on collaborative projects.
- Small offices that use lots of Macs (small presses, newspapers, design firms, research labs, etc.)
- Classrooms with Macs at each station (some grade schools, high schools, and colleges use Macs in their “computing” classes, and Portal would make managing them a lot easier).
- Families with more than one Mac in the house (so if Mom and Dad have an iMac and the kids have iBooks/MacBooks, everyone can stay in sync).

I’ve noticed that a lot of smaller web design firms or creative design groups have lots of Macs in their offices. For a small company like that, keeping files in sync between the designers might be a necessary hassle, one that Portal could overcome. I’m not proposing that Portal can merge Photoshop files, but it could make sure everyone starts the day with the latest copies of all the important stuff: calendars, address books, To Do lists, company memos, customer files, etc.

Even if all the user’s needs are met by built in syncing features in iCal, Mail, and the rest of Apple’s products, Portal could put a friendly face on all the hassle of setting everything up just right. Just take a look at how Disco is taking the simple idea of disc burning (something OS X already does, to some degree) and making it really full featured (and even fun to use, from the looks of it). I want Portal to look and feel as good as Disco, I want it to be that sort of application: something that makes your life easier, that has a wonderful (and small) interface, something that can take a dull (or even slightly painful) task and make it fun!

First off, I’d like to say that I’m incredibly pleased and surprised that Portal has made it this far. Back in August when I submitted my idea, I just did it because I thought it would be cool to get to go back and forth with other people about the concept, and possibly to get professional advice from Wil Shipley, Leo Laporte, and Steve Wozniak! Only later did it sink in that these dignitaries would only be commenting on the Top 24 ideas out of the thousands submitted. Only later still did I realize that they were saving the big names like Laporte and Wozniak for the Top 9 and Top 6! Chances didn’t look good, way back when, but it was going to be a fun ride nonetheless.

And now here I sit, with Portal in the Top 6, already having been judged by Shipley, Laporte, Watanabe, Mueller, Sarner, Ott (three times), Harris (three times as well) plus many others, and “Woz” is still to come. It somehow doesn’t seem entirely real.

Anyway, here’s the first in a series of blogs I’ve written to help explain my idea one last time before the Final round of voting. Its a bit long, so bear with me.

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One of the best ways to define an application is by looking at the problems it solves. To that end, I have come up with a list of 5 questions and their current answers, all to try to expand upon the world of Mac syncing, the world within which Portal must make its home.

(Q1) If you have two Macs sitting next to each other, how do you make sure that they always have the same versions of your documents?
(A) You could use iChat Bonjour to drag and drop the files from one Mac to another, and repeat every time the file is changed on either system. OR you could put the larger files onto USB flash drives (or a CD or DVD) and physically carry the files from one system to another. OR you could use DropCopy to drag and drop files from one system to another, every time there’s a change. OR you could use Synk (which does backups as well, $45 for Pro, $35 for Standard). OR you could try ChronoSync (also does backups, $30).

(Q2) If you have two Macs, how do you keep their bookmarks, address books, and mailboxes in sync?
(A) You could pay $99 a year to get Apple’s .Mac service and use the Sync feature. OR you could try MySync (now part of the Missing Sync family).

(Q3) How would you keep the iTunes, iPhoto, and iWeb libraries in sync between systems of Macs?
(A) iTunes has built in library sharing over Bonjour, but it won’t transfer files between systems (unless you sync one Mac to your iPod, then sync the iPod to the other Mac). iPhoto can “photocast” albums over the web, but requires .Mac to do so (and then takes up part of your 1GB storage). iWeb can use the .Mac storage, or you could export to a folder and then use an FTP app like Transmit to upload it to your server. But there’s no easy way to share the original libraries so they can be edited and then re-synced.

(Q4) If you have two Macs, that aren’t near each other (so there is no local Bonjour connection), how do you keep them in sync in either of the above ways (by file or application specific)?
(A) Apple’s .Mac Sync is web-enabled, so all your personal information is stored on a remote server (you get 1GB for $99/year), therefore remote sync is possible. OR you could email each of the Macs the files you need to update, and do so every time there is a change. OR you could set up an iFolder Server to remotely store your files, then use their client software to sync local changes to the network list.

(Q5) How would you sync your files or personal settings between a Windows/Linux box and your Mac(s)?
(A) Apple’s .Mac Sync makes your personal information available on their website, so you can access it via any web browser, on any platform. ChronoSync claims sync to PC as well, but limited to files and folders just like for Mac-to-Mac. IFolder Client software is available for Linux as well as Windows (but again, limited to file sharing).

Notice that although each of these questions seems similar on the surface, they each currently have entirely different solutions. The ideal solution would be to have one application that can answer all of these questions, and Portal is that application. Even so, it will not be able to do all things for all people right from Version 1.0. For instance, as far as I can tell none of the above solutions has a way to merge arbitrary file types, so expecting this as a feature in Portal is being a bit over zealous.

The most basic features of Portal are there to address Question #1: to keep your files and folders in sync between any number of Macs (assuming they appear on the local Bonjour networks every now and then). Simply bring the two Macs close together and they sync right up (I’m thinking here of a laptop user syncing with a Mac at home or in the office).

Portal can also sync applications, so for Question #2. First, all of the associated files fora a given application are found using an AppZapper style search. Syncing these selected files should keep the application itself in sync on the different systems. The beauty of this approach is that Portal should be able to sync any application you would want, all without the various developers having to rewrite their code. This is particularly useful for Question #3, since these are all Apple products. We as consumers should realize that If even Apple doesn’t use its own Sync Services technologies in all of its products, how are we to expect anybody else to do so in their products? Successful syncing must be achieved in the absence of any recoding by developers, and I consider the AppZapper-style approach one method worth considering. Remember that from the user’s perspective, all they have to do is drag and drop an application into the Portal window and select a destination Mac. For the more generic settings, like bookmarks, calendars, and keychains, there will be a set of checkboxes in the Portal preference window for easy access. Just check off everything you want to sync, and it is all taken care of in the background.

Beyond these three core features, I don’t want to promise much else for an initial 1.0 release. By using Wide Area Bonjour, Portal could address (Q4) using 90% of the same technologies it would already have. As for (Q5), that’s a different problem. Application syncing would have to go for the most part. Certain standardized file types, such as vCards, and iCal calendars might be easy to exchange with a non-Mac system. The real trick is getting the two systems to talk with each other in the first place, which would mean a PC or Linux version of Portal. That’s beyond the score of this contest as it stands, so it will have to wait. If Portal is one of the three ideas to be developed, and there is a strong enough user base, then maybe it will happen!