GBKS

I found the icon on the Noun project, I'm attributing it a bit further down on the site.

Accuracy is super tricky here. Some people speculate that the numbers coming out of China are manipulated (I have no proof or opinion on that) and there's also some concern that deaths from other causes are also counted towards Coronavirus. But that's just what we have right now... an estimation of reality.

I'd also like regions, maybe that data is available somewhere, or could be scraped from national or local news sources, and then aggregated somewhere.

Are you planing to add more features, graphs, or other information?

Thanks for sharing. I also started messing with a dashboard here: https://www.germanysbestkeptsecret.com/corona

Data I used is also from John Hopkins, turned into a JSON file via: https://github.com/pomber/covid19 .

There are also some good data-related resources here: http://open-source-covid-19.weileizeng.com

It's both disturbing and fascinating to work with this data. I would love to see these datasets go beyond the basics and also include things like timelines, population size, etc, to better understand how our actions influence the spread.

The app runs in the background, you don't have to have it open/active.

Wow, that's a great analysis. In addition to being less efficient, there's definitely more overhead with the extra layer of JS underneath. Just of the top of my head, this might be a bigger issue with apps that constantly refresh the screen or have real-time interactions (e.g. games or Slack), and not so much apps that are essentially a series of forms (code only runs when you interact). With our app, what affects battery usage most is the location analysis that happens in the background. It's one of the areas the development team spends a lot of time testing and optimizing.

As one of the designers of this app, I was skeptical initially if there would be restrictions on customizing common UI components, the smoothness of animations/interactions, usability, performance, etc. You definitely have to put in a bit of extra work (isn't that always the case with making things nice though), but you can get very nice results (and battery usage) with RN for sure on both Android and iOS. Personally, I think it does benefit customers to be able to quickly roll out iterations across operating systems at a high quality. YMMV though, what works for one team, industry and customer base naturally doesn't automatically work for everyone. Do you maybe have experience or data points on RN vs. native in terms of battery usage and performance? Would love to hear any insights you can share. Thanks.

I also set up a tool to export your Ffffound account to http://www.wookmark.com . Note that a paid account ($20/year) is required, so I can keep the lights on. If you want to do this, create a Wookmark account and message me the usernames from both sites. While I'm writing this, my import scripts are working through a Ffffound account with 6000 images. It's a fairly straightforward process. Happy Thursday.

The other side of this is that it helps usability when things look and feel familiar. It's interesting how it's accepted that desktop applications generally look the same, but mobile apps are supposed to be more unique. Maybe just the nature of mobile being generally more consumer oriented?

But that's a matter of priority then, isn't it? If portability is important then you have to sacrifice some power.

I'm curious, what do you run on your computer to max out a brand-new MBP with 16GB of Ram?

I currently do design and dev work on a 3 year old MBP with 8GB Ram. This includes running VMs for I.E. and back-ends for various projects, using Xcode to build apps, editing Sketch files with 50+ screens, photo editing in Photoshop and motion graphics in AfterEffects. Naturally I don't everything at once, but even with a combo of some of them, everything runs just fine. So this makes me genuinely curious what people do that these brand-new machines can't handle. And are those demands really the majority use case? If not, then there is an argument for having different machines for the demanding work loads and maybe a smaller laptop or even iPad for meetings.

What are your thoughts?

Really don't understand this. Why can't those demanding Pro people just get iMacs. It's cheaper and supports 32GB of RAM. Of course, it's stationary, but pretty sure those specific professionals are mostly stationary anyways because they use multiple monitors. This while freak-out about the MBPs ist just silly.

Here's a quick illustration I put together recently to show the cruft of mobile news sites: https://dribbble.com/shots/2118552-DBC-News-Concept/attachme...

I hope this whole discussion is a bit of a wake-up call for news sites to get their priorities and tech straightened out.

I like the proactive approach. Just yesterday, I went to an IXDA breakfast event and some recruiters showed up. Some people were just annoyed by their presence, but I thought it was a good opportunity to talk. They were pretty new to the industry, so I gave them pointers about how supporting the community by sponsoring events, organizing talks at companies they are hiring for, telling better stories about the companies they are hiring for, etc could get them better results than the usual cold-emailing.

I just think that if you don't like how they are doing things, give them pointers. Won't work everywhere, but sometimes it will, and that will be worth it.

Shameless self promotion - I just did a talk about protoyping last week that touches on many of the points Paul makes, and also explores some of the tools available. Hope some find it useful here: http://bit.ly/gbks-prototyping

I really wish Google could come up with a good overarching strategy for their products and stick with it for a long time. I'm losing track of how all the different services relate to each other.

Still not sure how this would work for anybody with a family and kids and/or living outside of urban areas (the majority of people). Has this been touched on in previous discussions? Would love to hear some thoughts.

Reminiscent of the Amazon Fire Phone promo video. Woman holds up phone to a book cover and says "Fire Phone can instantly identify this book, tell me the title and where to buy it." Information previously unknown...

I think Android is shooting itself in the foot here by making things look more complicated than they might be. Take a look at the documentation for screen support (http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support...).

They split phone sizes (2-10") into four generalized sizes (small, normal, large, xlarge). Then they split screen density into generalized densities (ldpi, mdpi, hdpi, xhdpi) based on 3:4:6:8 ratios. The example on the page lists 5 different layout XML files (the 4 previously mentioned + extra large landscape orientation) for different sizes, and three folders for image assets in different densities.

But, there are tablet layouts for Android 3.2+, which use a completely different system based on size qualifiers where you can provide minimum/maximum pixel sizes for layouts.

The logic for iOS seems super simple in comparison.

With a few Android projects under your belt, you have probably internalized how everything works, and which parts are fringe cases you can ignore. But if you're new to this (or a journalist/analyst with limited technical depth), it seems like an absolute mess. Simply rewriting this documentation and providing better tutorials and resources could go very far to clarify the situation.

Wanelo has a great conversational tone in it's copywriting. Check out the iPhone app update descriptions: http://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/app/wanelo-shopping/

I believe I've read somewhere that Deena writes those descriptions herself. She doesn't talk about it, but I think this personality goes a long way with her audience.

Same here. The idea of Inbox Zero is like a physical mailbox that requires you to empty it. The idea of Inbox infinity is like a Twitter/Facebook stream, where things go by and you pick out the ones to take action on.

The Critical Path discusses really well in the latest episode. http://5by5.tv/criticalpath/112

And yet app revenues keep increasing every quarter (http://www.asymco.com/2014/02/10/fortune-130/).

First, I'm not sure poor marketing practices can be blamed on the App Store itself. It is up to those companies/sites to decide how to promote themselves. I'm also not sure it is the App Stores responsibility to provide many marketing channels.

Second, websites are free, that's why most people probably expect apps to be free, too. I think people like to pay for experiences. A coffee is an experience. And you get a friendly barista, a nice store with wi-fi, a whole table with extras to mix in, etc. Software in comparison is really abstract. Out bodies tell us they are hungry or sleepy, and pressure us to do something about it. Our bodies do not pressure us to try out a new calendar app.

You can always just do a screencast where you narrate the use case. That way you can give a nice introduction, explain things along the way, and provide a wrap-up.

As you said, having a quick 3-5 minute video along with a boring PDF can go a long way to getting people to actually look, understand and care about what you're working on. Videos can easily be sent around and re-watched, plus even executed have time for them (unlike long PDFs).

I don't think it's a fundamental flaw. Reporters can always pull in experts (historians, scientists, etc). Reporters should probably also specialize in specific areas (local, weather, finance, sports, etc).

Your local restaurant can serve you crappy food if they want to, it's up to them. Reporters can do crappy reporting, it's up to them. Ideally, there would be standards everybody is expected to live up to, but the bar is pretty low.

We'll just have to vote with your attention, praise people who do a good job, and help people who do a bad job improve.

I always got the impression that Branch had a very talented team, but that the products were very over-engineered. By that, I mean that the interface was very polished, but also very confusing. So I'm sure it's a good deal for Facebook to add this very focused talent to their stable.

Personally, I found that I get bored/frustrated with work when the job is not aligned with my long-term ambitions. Might be similar for you if you are working for other people, which does not bring you closer to your vision of running your own shop. So might be good to think about where you see yourself in 3, 5, and 10 years (both professionally and with your family) and see if your current direction aligns with that.

Why do you grades necessarily get lower due to your side projects? Is it not possible to keep both up?

This is a good exercise in learning to communicate and to manage your image. Present things in way they can relate. For example, you can present open-source like getting involved in your local community or a local business organization. You do things for free (in real world organizations you have member events, volunteering, etc) and you gain valuable business connections and expertise.

The 'construction worker' analogy can be put aside if you can present them a career plan. Research the jobs you want to get, get information on salary and benefits, and explain to your family that this holds a good future for you.

I understand that customization is a big part of Android, but I have a hard time believing that 80% of people care about that. Only recently 82% of people still couldn't tell you what a browser is (http://www.cxacademy.org/only-8-of-internet-user-know-what-a...), so I can't see them customizing their OS, or even caring/understanding the details of OS customization.

Personally I hope both platforms stay strong, so we get lots of innovation.

I'm curious, is it possible to upgrade/customize the Android OS in the way you described if you don't have a computer?

Funny, I was thinking a lot about this recently for an iPhone app I've been working on. It's essentially a simple photo collage & caption creator (Capcam - http://www.germanysbestkeptsecret.com/capcam), but what I realized when using it was that it was a great way to compress and communicate a whole experience. It might sound trivial, but rephrasing things that way (stories over features) resonates a lot more with people.

Here's another very lively quote about this idea of telling stories: http://chri.sto.ph/tell-a-story

Interesting how both Instagram and Pinterest are starting this transition at pretty much the same time with a very similar approach (http://blog.pinterest.com/post/61688351103/planning-for-the-...). Tumblr is already down the exact same path of inserting native-looking content with a small "sponsored" label.

I'm sure big, sexy brands will have no problem creating some nice-looking visuals that will fit right in. Questions is for me whether this will ever work for the long tail of advertising that is currently tweaking their keywords on AdWords. Anybody have any insight or experience with this?

I'm very curious if this will lead to companies opening offices in other parts of the country - after all you might get two engineers for the same price you'd get one in SF.

I agree that Dropbox is not very good at sharing photos. The solution really has to start much earlier in the tool chain, ideally with the camera itself, or the tool that downloads them. Smart phones are great with this, since you see share options right after snapping a photo. iPhoto also has fairly decent sharing options (resizes images, creates web albums, etc). But once you're outside of the realm of camera and photo apps and working with general purpose tools like Dropbox, it gets a lot more difficult.