All posts by Alistair Lattimore

About Alistair Lattimore

My name is Alistair Lattimore, I'm in my very early 30's and live on the sunny Gold Coast in Australia. I married my high school sweet heart & we've been together for longer than I can remember. Claire and I started our family in September 2008 when Hugo was born and added a gorgeous little girl named Evie in May 2010. You can find me online in the typical hangouts, Google+, Twitter & facebook. .

Using WordPress via iPhone

Blogging, Hardware, Software

I wanted to install the WordPress iPhone application, however since I couldn’t get my Apple iTunes Store Account to verify and work correctly – I’ve resorted to using WordPress via Safari.

While I have viewed plenty of blogs using a mobile device and was surprised how functional they were, I’d never attempted to use the WordPress administration area. When visiting the WordPress admin with an iPhone or another internet enabled mobile device, you are served the exact same version of the administration interface that you’d receive if you viewed it using a desktop computer. That might surprise a lot of people, however WordPress isn’t mobile device ready by default – you require a plugin such as WordPress Mobile Edition by Alex King. Even with that plugin enabled, it generates a mobile friendly reader experience and doesn’t provide a mobile friendly administration interface.

To my surprise however, it was quite a simple task to navigation around the WordPress administration area using Safari on the iPhone. Thanks to the convenient zooming functionality that the iPhone provides, it makes working with busier sections of the interface straight forward. While functional, it certainly isn’t the kind of user experience that you’d want to use daily – as a good amount of screen real estate is wasted and when you’re using a small screen device – every pixel counts.

As I tested out different sections of the interface, about the only thing that I noticed didn’t work ‘as expected’ was the text area used to write a blog post. By default, I enable the visual or rich editor in WordPress. Normally when you give focus to any form element that you can type into, the iPhone automatically pops up the keyboard. However, because the visual editor is a JavaScript implementation – nothing triggers the keyboard to show up. Of course, selecting the ‘HTML’ tab on the blog posting page fixes that immediately.

All and all, very impressed with how the iPhone handles complex interfaces – it certainly gives me a lot of confidence that there’d be a limited number of sites that I’d have problems with using Safari on the iPhone.

Apple iTunes Account Verification Has Poor Usability & User Experience

Software

Earlier in the week and got frustrated by the poor usability and user experience of the signup process for an Applie iTunes Store Account. Apparently the I had not climbed over enough hurdles just yet and needed a little more practise before I could enter the iTunes Store.

After completing the creation aspect of my Apple iTunes Account on my iPhone, I was sent a verification email to finalise and activate the account. The normal procedure followed is straight forward, an email is sent with a specific link within which when clicked verifies the newly created account. No messing around with needing to have software installed or any strangeness, just click the link and you’re done.

In the case of Apple, they provided the verification email with a simple link within.  However, after clicking it on the iPhone the website informs me that it cannot verify it – but it is just a link, why not! I click the link from the desktop computer and after fumbling around for a while, click the ‘Done’ button thinking that’d do the trick but I was wrong.

As it turns out, the verification URL that is provided is a secure link (HTTPS) and not a standard link (HTTP). That is completely acceptable, in fact I’d go as far to say that I’m pleased they were using HTTPS to verify my new account. What Apple have completely failed to do, is make sure all of the different resources within that web page are all on HTTPS.

As most internet users are well aware now, if you’re viewing a secure web site over HTTPS and there are images, CSS or any other assets on the page that aren’t secured – the browser will throw up a security warning asking the user if they want to download the unsecured items.

Being a generally security conscious kind of guy, I clicked the option to only show me secured content. It turns out, that was a big mistake as there was an asset on the web page that was going to make iTunes perform the final stages of the account verification process.

I find it incredible, nearly unbelieveable that Apple would or could have such a completely crap signup process. They are one of the largest businesses in the world with a market capitalisation of some USD$40 billion and the can’t manage a smoother verification process.

All of the above rigmoral could have been avoided if they’d followed the route of virtually every other service that uses two phase signup processes and simplly verified my account when I clicked on the link instead of requiring iTunes to be involved.

Apple App Store Inaccessible With Verified Account

Software

Yesterday I bemoaned the poor user experience when signing up for an Apple iTunes Store account via my new iPhone. I expected that the process was going to be the path travelled by literally millions of Apple iPhone users and therefore very smooth but that wasn’t the case.

After finally managing to get my new account verified and confirming that it worked by signing into iTunes, I am still unable to access the Apple App Store via my iPhone. After providing my credentials when attempting to install an application, I’m presented with an error stating that my account isn’t yet verified – even though it works on my desktop.

Realising the error of my ways after stumbling through the account verification process already, I fired up iTunes on the iPhone and then clicked the URL within the verification email. To my surprise, the URL loaded up again and was presented with the same response, that I couldn’t perform this action on my iPhone.

What is the next course of action?

Apple iTunes Store Account Signup Process Needs Work

Software

Since getting my Apple iPhone 3GS last weekend, it seemed like as good a time as any to see what all the fuss was regarding the Apple App Store available for the iPhone.

I open up Safari on the iPhone and navigate to a site to download an application that I want to install. Following the bouncing ball to install the application, then find out that I need an iTunes Store account. At this stage, I figure this must be a very common scenario, so persist thinking it’ll be super smooth and it’ll be over with in a minute.

After gonig through the iTunes Store signup process, I then find out that they use the common two phrase signup process – signup and then verify. A little annoying as I haven’t configured any email accounts on the iPhone yet but am determined to follow the process through. After configuring the email account, I open the verification email and click the link to activate my iTunes Store account and am then told that I can’t complete this action on my iPhone.

I’ve opened my email on my desktop and clicked the link in the verification email. The web page opens but I am not presented with the normal ‘your account has now been activated’ type of message and the page isn’t thinking, strange. There is some small text on the page that says if iTunes didn’t open, open it yourself – which I subsequently did. At this point, I assumed clicking the link again was going to make iTunes do something – alas that was an incorrect assumption. I was viewing the ‘check your email to verify your account’ page within iTunes again – strange. It wasn’t until I realised that below that message there was a ‘Done’ button just sitting there with no instruction associated with it. After clicking that button, something happened and my account was verified.

What would have made this process that much smoother:

  1. If a user is creating an account for the first time on an iPhone, it’d be worth telling them that they’ll be sent an email to verify their account up front. That way they know they’ll need access to email on their iPhone to complete the process.
  2. If the Apple iTunes account signup process cannot be completed on an iPhone, either inform me that I can only complete 90% of the process on the iPhone up front or don’t let me begin it at all. By allowing me to start the process, the expectation was set that I should reasonably expect to complete the process as well which wasn’t possible.
  3. When clicking the link within the account verification email and iTunes doesn’t load, provide better instructions on what to do next. The page that loaded within iTunes wasn’t clear enough and I was left wondering what, if anything I should click on next to try and get my account verified.

These are all just small things in the grand scheme of things, however go towards making the user experience of using an Apple service that much smoother and would leave a nicer taste in the mouth of a lesser skilled user.

rediATM Follows The Crowd & Raises ATM Fees

Life

At the start of September I applauded rediATM for being, what I considered front runners, by not following the crowd and issuing a $2.00 fee to customers using their ATM network throughout Australia. You can imagine my disappointment when only a month later, I used the rediATM in front of Woolworths at the Upper Coomera City Centre and I was charged $2.00 for my time.

I have no idea what it costs rediATM to provide their ATM network throughout Australia, however I get the impression that it has absolutely no bearing on the $2.00 fee they charge. It isn’t an coincidence that nearly every ATM provider charges $2.00 for the service – it is a small amount of money that consumers hate having to pay but tolerate because it seems as though it is an inconsequential amount of money. This is the how the banks make literally hundreds of millions of dollars annually, charging lots of small fees which seem innocuous on their own, collectively annoying but still small enough that it begrudgingly dismissed.

For no other reason than I had a good feeling about rediATM until now, I would have used their ATM in front of Woolworths and ‘happily’ copped the existing $1.75 on the chin but felt good about it because they weren’t being a lemming.

Now that rediATM have increased their ATM to $2.00 like everyone else, I’ll make a point of not using it and get money out when purchasing at Woolworths.