Design and Interface

Coming from an iPad the first thing that stuck me was that the Fire is considerably smaller. Somehow I thought the 7 inch screen would be closer in size to the iPad’s 9.7 inch screen.

Kindle Fire on an iPad 1

Part of the difference is the aspect ratio (the Fire is narrower) but part is just the math of area relative to diagonal size. In the flesh, it’s pretty close to half the size of the iPad.

Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to the design in the marketing. I was expecting something a bit slick, and light – based on the ultralight and ultrasleek e-Ink Kindles. But, that was not the case here. I would sum up the entire design as “black rounded rectangle”. It could have been designed in PowerPoint in about 10 minutes.

Kindle Fire - Designed with PowerPoint?

It also seems a bit heavy to me. You can check the exact numbers, but it seems as “dense” as my original iPad. It is not terribly heavy, but I was expecting it to be a bit lighter.

One striking non-feature of the Fire is the lack of any buttons. I am not sure whether this was done to cut corners on production or whether it’s simplification to the point of complexity, but so far I’m not a fan. The only physical button is the power button on the bottom – and as far as I can tell that is all it does. Everything else is done by pulling up or down for menus. That even includes changing the volume, which is really annoying. That’s especially true when playing certain games, like Fruit Ninja. In going for my multi-fruit combos I kept popping up the menus, interrupting the game. A final gripe is that the one and only button is placed such that I kept accidentally mashing it while holding the fire in landscape mode, which leads to a prompt asking me if I want to shut down (no thank you.)

Amazon has installed it’s own unique user interface on the Fire. Rather than the “icons on a desktop” paradigm it is more like a bookshelf. Apple’s iBooks has a similar interface for books, but Amazon has extended it to include all the content and apps. It is organized around media types, and lets you browse your content both on the device and in the Amazon cloud. Major groups look like books on a shelf, and the “home” screen lets you navigate recent items by swiping through a 3D stack of covers and icons. It is intuitive and works well for navigating a moderately-sized library of content, which I am sure was the design goal.

Kindle Fire Keyboard vs iPad

One thing Amazon did not improve on is the Android keyboard. This could be my bias as an iPad user, but I had similar problems with my first-generation Droid. For whatever reason, I make more typos with the Android keyboard. Another gripe is that the horizontal keyboard not very useful. Unlike the iPad’s large keyboard, which is surprisingly “typable”, the Fire’s is just the wrong size. It is too big for thumbs (unless you have Tony Robbins’ hands) and it is well too small for touch typing. However, the spacing for the vertical keyboard is pretty good for thumb use if you have larger hands.

Your idea here...

You’ll see that I decided to do a lot of up front work before hiring my programmers. In my consulting work I’ve managed a lot of large technology projects, most of them involving outsourced technical work. Some of those projects went well, and some were a struggle. One of the main difference-makers was the amount and quality of planning before technical work began. In short, the more the better. So I tried to apply that insight to my own app projects to be sure I got the most out of my investment on Elance.

The Apps

I won’t spend too much time talking about the details of the apps themselves, but if you’re interested they are the ones you see advertised on my site – Quick Rhythm and Asanamix Yoga. But, I will point out a few things that had an impact on the cost and effort involved in creating them.

• Neither is a live-action game. Games, particularly ones with 3D graphics, are a lot more complex (read time-consuming and expensive) to develop.
• I created almost all the graphics and audio for the apps myself. That meant I was only hiring out the programming work – not design or creative work. I did have to hire out the music for Quick Rhythm, and did that as a separate Elance project.
• I made the apps for iOS only. Although you can reuse content across versions, the coding for Android, Blackberry, or other devices would have to be done from the ground up for each. So, adding Android would have probably doubled the cost and any additional devices would have stacked on another 100% or so.

The Approach

I used an industry standard framework for application development as the base for my planning. It breaks up the work in to phases which should mostly be carried out separately and in sequence. It’s simple, but when it is properly applied it really works. The standard sequence looks like this:

These are the standard development phases I used as a base for my app projects.

For my project, I tweaked the definitions a bit to fit my bootstrap and outsourced approach to mobile apps:

• Discover – Deciding what the apps would and would not do, and their target markets
• Design – Detailed write-up and illustration of how I wanted the apps to look and work
• Build – finding a developer and managing the programming work
• Testing – Making sure the apps work on all the devices they should support
• Publishing – Submitting the apps to the appropriate app stores

I mentioned that I’m convinced a thorough effort in the Discovery and Design phases pays off when it comes time to start writing code. Explicitly documenting and illustrating the idea provides two big benefits. First, it forces you to really think through your design and iron out the details before the programming work begins. Second, a really good design document will help your programmer know exactly what you want, so there are fewer questions and surprises along the way. That second point is particularly important when you’re outsourcing to a programmer in a faraway land who you’ll never meet face-to-face.

If you’re just starting out, or if you’re planning a niche business that will never have a high level of sales, you will probably want to consider an all-in-one online payment service like PayPal, Google Checkout, or Checkout by Amazon . These services have a simpler setup and fee structure in exchange for higher per-transaction fees. Unlike “regular” merchant accounts, you don’t necessarily need to have a legal business entity to set up an account – you can set them up as an individual. Also, you will only need to set up one account. These payment services not only provide a complete ability to take credit cards via your site, they also include features like shopping carts, shipping and tax calculations, and incoming order management tools. If you have a limited number of items to sell, pairing one of these accounts with a site based on WordPress or some other basic site management tool may be all you need.

Comparing the “Big 3″ Payment Services

The rest of this article will mostly focus on a comparison of the big three services currently in this space. I have built multiple websites that use PayPal and Google Checkout to sell both physical and digital goods. I have not yet built a site based on Checkout by Amazon, so my information there is based on their online material and a bit of light experimentation. But, they are an option worth considering so I wanted to make sure they were represented.

The first was that I was among a significant group of techies who had been waiting for something like the iPad for a long time. As part of my work, I read a lot of websites. So, the ability to read them more like a book and without the need to lug my laptop was in itself appealing. I also read a lot of PDF files, so the ability to free those from my computer without having to kill trees was valuable. Finally, the idea of an e-mail device that was bigger and better than a smartphone but lighter than a laptop sounded great. Before the iPad was announced there were a few other devices that caught my interest for those tasks, but Apple beat them to market by a year for most, and a few never made it at all.

So, the day the Apple started taking orders, I placed mine for the 64GB wi-fi version plus the Apple case. (The 3G version would not be available for another month, but I have a mobile hotspot so had no reason to wait.) I justified the advance purchase of my iPad by pledging that if I bought one, I would produce an app for it over the next year. I needed to polish up my skills in the mobile space, and at time iOS devices were dominant in terms of app sales and use. (I did accomplish that goal, and put together an iPhone/iTouch only app to boot – but those are topics for another article.)

Now I’ve had a year of living and working with the iPad. I have used it to some degree almost every day. I think the only exceptions were a few vacations and outings where I was taking a complete “tech break”. I’ve used it about equally for business and pleasure, and I also got “under the hood” a bit to create the apps. What follows are my impressions from that experience.

When it comes to getting content online quickly and easily, WordPress has always been my preference. The problem was that WordPress was more limited in terms of customization and eCommerce capabilities. At the time, I had plans to sell some products directly from the Bair.com site. Now I’ve decided to focus the Bair.com site on content related to my consulting work and perhaps some related interests as well. So, my change in strategy for the site was a key motivator for the migration. But Drupal is not so bad at managing content, and it was already up and running – so why did I put in the effort to make the change? The answer is that the WordPress advantages in ease of use and ease of site management have become even greater with recent versions. (As of this writing, Bair.com is on WordPress 3.1.)

Automatic update reminder (Drupal has these too)

Specifically, WordPress has the ability to update almost anything via its web management interface (really via FTP from the WordPress.org site, but all you need to do is enter the credentials in the management tool.) This is very different than the current release of Drupal which requires a significant amount of work to deal with updates to the core CMS or modules. For someone that manages a number of sites part-time, the quick and easy updates are a big deal.

WordPress auto-update - Drupal does not have this (yet)

In addition to keeping the site up-to-date and loaded with the latest features, updates are critical to maintain security. Drupal is a bit high-maintenance when it comes to keeping up with the latest releases.

As a bonus (for me, at least) WordPress now offers some slick mobile apps to manage content. There are versions for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Using the app, site managers can log in and moderate comments, post to blogs, and even create pages. The mobile management tools can’t do visual text formatting like the web-based admin tool. You are stuck with basic paragraph text, so they are not a great tool for creating and editing complex pages. But, they do include a very slick feature for blogging – you can instantly upload pictures from your mobile phone to your blog. This is great for up-to-the minute posts when you spot something relevant and snap a quick photo. For now, this is another significant WordPress advantage – there are a few Drupal mobile management apps, but at this time none are as well integrated and easy to use as the WordPress app (although I’d expect that to change shortly.)

Now, having said all that I want to make clear that I’m not down on Drupal at all. I still believe it’s one of the best CMS systems out there, and it is the right solution for more complex websites. It takes more effort to build and maintain, but in exchange for that effort Drupal delivers a powerhouse solution. I still use it for some of the sites I manage, and I will continue to recommend it to my clients when their needs are beyond what WordPress can reasonably deliver.

If you’re reading this and trying to decide between a WordPress or Drupal implementation for a site, let me share a few of the key factors I would review if I were to advise you in person…