I was just thinking about this while driving: What if Apple designed cars?

Take a look at the interior of this Jaguar S-type:


Plush, yes. But look at all the controls and options. What if Apple designed that like they design their iPods and software?

So what would happen if Apple designed cars?

Would they be able to save Ford or GM? Would the inside be as clutter-free and easy to use as an iPod? Would the exterior be as sexy and inspiring?

Just a thought.

Just FYI: We know there's a problem with large file uploads. We're working on resolving this issue now and should have a solution in the next couple of days. More than likely, that solution will be implementing a different file upload library.

On the plus side, the new library should give us the ability to see how far along we are in the upload, and therefore give you a status bar so you're not left in the dark while uploading a large file.

Sorry about this... If you have any questions or comments, feel free! Thanks.

I'm a huge fan of both Lifehacker and Merlin Mann's 43 Folders. They're both blogs about tricks and tips to be as productive as possible using simple tools or ideas.

My favorite life hack ever has to be the (10+2)*5 life hack from 43 Folders. Having a major addiction to the web and my feed aggregator both often kill my productivity. This is especially true when I'm coding. I'm already at the computer, so a quick switch from my editor to my web browser seems so easy and painless. But then I notice a new Paul Graham essay, or as is the case these days, a new Google product, and all of a sudden I've lost 10 minutes and have forgotten what I was doing. As Joel Spolsky writes:

The other trouble is that it's so easy to get knocked out of the zone. Noise, phone calls, going out for lunch, having to drive 5 minutes to Starbucks for coffee, and interruptions by coworkers -- ESPECIALLY interruptions by coworkers -- all knock you out of the zone.

However, with the (10+2)*5 hack, you work hard for 10 minutes, knowing that at the end of that time, you must take a 2 minute break. That's when you read the short blog posts, queue up the longer essays for later, get coffee, or check your email. But you make sure this break is exactly 2 minutes long. Then you go back to work for another 10 minutes. The 2 minute break is short enough that you remember what you were working on, but long enough that you feel refreshed and like you're still up on the latest news. So, repeating this 5 times, you have worked for 50 out of the 60 minutes in the hour. That's really impressive.

The key is to adhere strictly to your alarms knowing that it won't be long until you're able to go back to working or reading (depending on which part of the cycle you're in).

I thought it would be a good idea to recap what we've learned and experienced now that it's been a week.

After being open only a week and without publicly announcing the launch to anyone except the few beta testers via email and by writing on this blog, we think we've made some great progress. We're in the thousands by any of the major statistics (users, files, tags, hits/day, etc).

We spent much of Monday on the del.icio.us/popular page, which contributed to over 15,000 hits that day. That also spawned quite a bit of blog posting.

One thing that's particularly amazing is the internationalization of our users. We saw blog postings in Japanese, Spanish, Hindi (I think? -- can anyone translate?), Russian, Chinese, and Portuguese. Pretty awesome for just 7 days.

Another thing that's really amazing is the amount of help and support we've received. Maurice and I have each received numerous emails about bug reports, feature requests, or simply "you're doing X, I thought you'd do Y." Some people, such as Bin, have even been helping to develop tools (like the Openomy Ruby bindings) -- that's great!

But, with all these successes, we've also had a few mistakes. The server has died twice now -- only for a few hours, but that's still not good enough. We won't even begin to think about charging for premium services until all issues like that are worked out.

We've also learned a lot about writing really thorough and easy to read documentation. Some people have written us asking questions that should have been answered by the API documentation. We think it's getting better now though.

So, all in all, things are going great. It seems as though people really enjoy Openomy and think the future looks very bright. Heck, even Paul Graham seems to think so in his latest essay on Web 2.0.

I'm really excited to announce the launch of Openomy.

I've been working really hard to get the site up and Maurice has joined on and has been working really hard on the new, awesome, example API app: Openomy/RSS.

The service has turned out to be a really positive experience for those who have been using it so far. If you signed up for the beta, but I didn't get you in, I'm really sorry -- I hope you join now though.

I guess this is the time to explain a few things about the site and then go on to explain Openomy/RSS.

First, the site is still really rough. I've spent the last few weeks adding just a few small features and squashing a lot of bugs. Still, I'm sure there are plenty of bugs left. Also, I've worked on usability a bit, but there's still a lot to do on that front.

Second, we've increased the storage per user to 1GB. Hopefully we'll get to increase this again soon, but for now, I think 1GB for free is pretty fair. On that note, use of the APIs is completely free as well.

Third, we're working on premium services now (increased storage, building applications on the APIs which will be extra to use, etc) and we think we're beginning to come up with a strategy that is fair and positive for all parties involved. If, at any time, you think you have a way to make these relationships better, please contact me!

Lastly, I want to talk briefly about Openomy/RSS. Maurice has joined the team, working specifically on building new applications on top of the APIs. This is really great because a lot of what he'll do will be open-sourced -- including Openomy/RSS -- giving you the chance to see how easy it is to develop applications using Openomy. Openomy/RSS essentially takes your tags and creates RSS feeds of the files on those tags. So, in near real-time, you can upload files to Openomy and have people throughout the world see those files. The most amazing thing: it took about 2 full days worth of work from concept to launch. Maurice talks in further depth about Openomy/RSS on his blog. Also contact Maurice if you need help with creating applications (his email is on his blog).

I really hope you enjoy the site and the service, and I look forward to seeing all sorts of interesting uses of the APIs. If you have any questions or feedback, please do not hesitate to contact me at iseff@iseff.com (place the word Openomy in the subject line!).

Openomy is launching soon. Last few days to sign up and be notified when the doors are officially opened.

I think Yahoo! Maps beta answered my question, Is Flash back? with a pretty large yes!

Even if you don't particularly like some of the implementation of the new Yahoo! Maps, you gotta admit that it's a pretty slick app. I'd be really interested to see what developing a large-scale Flash app like this took. Any Yahoo! employees out there willing to share a little insight?