Canon Cat keyboard repair

I spent the better part of six years searching for a Canon Cat. When I finally had the opportunity to purchase one in '07, I didn't quibble over price or condition, I was simply elated to have an actual working model.

While the computer itself is in superb working condition, the one problem is with the keyboard. Unfortunately, the Canon Cat was even more impenetrable and monolithic than the original Macintosh, so swapping the keyboard was not an option. The rarity of the Cat meant that neither spare parts nor repair services existed, so I decided to be content with the possession of my machine, if not the actual use of it for the time being.

For the past few months, however, I have been working on a reference design for a new UI, called Lightful, and I have been looking at the best thinking in OS and interface design from the past, going back to Douglas Engelbart's demo that included the mouse and hypertext in 1968, through the Xerox PARC invention of WIMP interfaces, to the Apple Lisa, and of course Jef Raskin's creation of the Canon Cat, so well documented and rationalized in his book The Humane Interface.

I don't have a Xerox Alto or an Apple Lisa (though an emulator was a lot of help), but I do have a Canon Cat. If I'm really going to understand Raskin's work, I realized, I have to use the Cat for daily work for a while. I have to get past the theory and see how it really is to live with it.

That means I have to get the keyboard working. Thankfully, there is a superb group of Canon Cat enthusiasts who provided me with the encouragement to crack it open myself and see if I can't get the keyboard in working condition.

As of today, I've gotten the Cat disassembled, and the keyboard removed for inspection and cleaning. A quick pass at removing the keycaps and trying the switches directly has revealed that I have some level of repair needed, although as of today, I can't say how optimistic the situation is looking.

One user, Hannu Aronsson, has suggested that I begin with some contact cleaner spray, so I will start there, and see how far it takes me.

Hopefully it won't get to the point of desoldering key switches and removing them for cleaning, or worse, but we'll just have to see. I seriously doubt I'm going to find a replacement keyboard anytime soon.

Here is the process so far:

Step 1 - Remove the plastic assembly on the back of the machine. So far, so good.

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Will the iPhone replace the Wii?

Gaming on the iPhone has been the breakaway surprise of the App Store so far. Titles like Hero of Sparta, Warfare Incorporated, and Ferrari GT Evolution have shown that the iPhone is less of a casual gaming platform, and more of a threat to the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP.

The latest news is that an undocumented feature in the SDK allows apps to output to the iPhone's video out port. This means that literally any game can be written with the big screen in mind.

For the current models of iPhone and iPod touch, this already has some exciting implications. With a $50 cable from Apple, any TV-enabled app can be sent to your living room screen. Right now, that is mostly supported by the iPhone's video player and photo app, but there are far greater possibilities.

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Really not the ugliest computers ever

A site on an easily defeated server, PointlessBanter, published a list of what they consider to be the ugliest computers ever made. Since their site is down, I decided to look up the machines myself (thanks to Google caching their text, if not their images).

Here is the list for you to judge for yourself. I think some of them are actually very beautiful. I guess there's no pleasing everyone.

The H316 Kitchen Computer

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Timely search results - they just don't exist

Unless there's a search engine I'm not aware of, no one is addressing one of the major failings of web search today: timeliness.

There must be a corollary to Moore's Law that addresses the increasing speed of change everywhere. "Web time" was the accelerated pace that drove offline media into tardy obsolescence, and now the reigning champion of web search, Google, is facing its own temporal bugbear. As product cycles shorten, web sites shift from static repositories to active conversations, the uselessness of stale results gets worser and worser.

As an example, consider a search for an iPhone app, in this case, a password manager. There are several available from various companies, but how to find up to date reviews in one place? A Google search seems like a good start, but search iphone password managers, and here's what you'll get:

Only one result even refers to an actual app that's in the App Store, as the other top results all point to dates prior to Apple's opening of the iPhone to third-party apps.

The same problem occurs in reverse, meaning that a search for information on an early version of anything, whether it's a version of Visio from 1999, information specific to the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons from the late '70s, or about a musician during a specific time in their career, will be nearly impossible to specify in regards to time.

The problem lies primarily in the fact that there is no standard for identifying the time and date that information on a web page was last fresh. The slightest irrelevant change might cause a server to report a page as "fresh," even if the actual content is months or even years old.

One day, this problem will be solved, as semantic web technologies proliferate, and a truly machine readable web replaces the chaos that exists today.

For now, though, there's a huge opportunity in the search space. Find a way to pin down the actual timeliness of information on the web.

Sketchy sketches

Wireframes are notoriously problematic for clients to avoid taking literally, so when one of my IAs brought in a "sketchy" stencil set, I loved it. I suppose I could have just asked where he got it, but a little help from Google brought me to one of my favorite sites, The Interaction Designer's Coffee Break.

Here, nestled in the also excellent posting of the GUUUI Web Prototyping Tool, was the stencil:

http://www.guuui.com/issues/02_07.php

Add in your favorite handwriting font, and you've got a nice non-threatening wireframe. Good times.