09-16-2009
Today I saw a link for a site claiming to have the Top 100 Sneakers of 2000, and I was excited but in the end I was treated to the worst user experience I have had in a while..
Each shoe was presented on its own page, with no way of navigating to the other 99 aside from an arrow forward or back. What?!1
No thumbnail previews of the next one.
No listing of shoes by name.
No visual way to browse.
No nothing. Just blind clicking on the arrows, or randomly clicking on numbers.
If this was a top 10 list I might let it slide, but for 100 pages? No thank you. I made it through 3 pages before getting frustrating and leaving.. and I really like nice kicks.
Lesson for today, make your links meaningful and thinking about your users.
Offending site, right here
08-27-2009
A tweet earlier today sparked an interesting dialogue today about technology and behaviors around them. When I initially got involved in the conversation it had already moved a bit away from the original statement, but i wanted to take a moment and add my two pennies around the tweet that kicked things off.
Original tweet from @mikegermano
If you don’t understand the technology you realistically can’t see the future of social media. I am just saying. [link]
Parts of this comment feel right, but parts also feel wrong. Understanding the elements in play are always key to being able to do things in that space, or to plan a next step. But when it comes to ‘seeing the future’ of something you need to be able to step away from it, at which point i think the technology plays a much smaller role. Guy Kawasaki tells a wonderful story about the ice industry that well illustrate that point, retype with no ones permissions. ( email me if its a problem 
)
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in life is to accept
the known and resist the unknown. You should, in fact, do exactly the
opposite: challenge the known and embrace the unknown.
Let me tell you a short story about ice. In the late 1800s
there was a thriving ice industry in the Northeast. Companies would cut
blocks of ice from frozen lakes and ponds and sell them around the world.
The largest single shipment was 200 tons that was shipped to India. 100
tons got there unmelted, but this was enough to make a profit.
These ice harvesters, however, were put out of business by
companies that invented mechanical ice makers. It was no longer
necessary to cut and ship ice because companies could make it in any
city during any season.
These ice makers, however, were put out of business by
refrigerator companies. If it was convenient to make ice at a
manufacturing plant, imagine how much better it was to make ice and
create cold storage in everyone’s home.
You would think that the ice harvesters would see the
advantages of ice making and adopt this technology. However, all they
could think about was the known: better saws, better storage, better
transportation.
Then you would think that the ice makers would see the
advantages of refrigerators and adopt this technology. The truth is
that the ice harvesters couldn’t embrace the unknown and jump their curve
to the next curve.
Challenge the known and embrace the unknown, or you’ll be
like the ice harvester and ice makers.
My conclusion? Very difficult to use the technology of today.. and the current ‘way of doing things’ in social media to dictate what the future is going to look like if we are talking more then a couple months out.
04-14-2009
Have you recently purchased a laptop or home appliance?
Did the internet play a role prior to your purchase?
If you did I would love to talk to you and ask you a couple of questions regarding that experience.
The entire interview should only take about 40 minutes. I will be making a video recording of the interview, but this video is not something that is going to ever be public, so you don’t have to worry about it appearing on youtube.
If you are interested, please email me.
In your email make sure to include what it was that you purchased as well as your phone number so I can give you a call.
Interview location is Downtown SW Portland.
Compensation for your time is $50.
Date of interviews – April 15th
Thanks.
04-02-2009
Just released with select TOPPS 2009 baseball cards — augmented reality trading cards that literally bring players to life right on top of the card.
The last time I cared about Baseball cards I was a pre-teen, but that has just changed as these new augmented reality cards are pretty amazing. Hold one of them these seemingly normal cards up in front of your webcam and the character comes to life. Place the card on your desk and you can play a game with him.
The technology driving this is developed by Total Immersion and has already been put to use in some commercial applications, but this is the first time I have seen it integrated at the consumer level. Very exciting.
What I want to see next is some interaction between two or more ‘players’ on the screen at the same time.
See the new Baseball cards in action
Update I was going to save this for a later post, but due to some conversations with @aDogNamedPants here is a future AR game, which is awesome.
03-31-2009
“You know what? I think we are in a viral! “
You that something has really run its course, and possibly matured a bit, when it can make fun of itself.
This video is the first ‘viral’ that I have seen to both poke fun at itself for trying to be ‘viral’ as well as exhibiting a touch of self-awareness.
See it for yourself : Overlay.TV – Mini – Everything is Fake.
03-30-2009
BumpTop is a fresh and engaging new way to interact with your computer desktop. You can pile and toss documents like on a real desk. Break free from the rigid and mechanical style of standard point-and-click desktops.
The ability to throw my documents around, and stack them up is pretty cool, in concept. Do I want this as my main interface with my computer? No thank you.
Worth looking at? You bet. Check out the video of it in action.
See for yourself : BumpTop.
A really quick and easy way to create your own interfaces for the iPhone. Tons of different parts to play with from text fields to keyboards and buttons, with drag and drop functionality, all drawn in a playful ‘scribble’ style. Minimal security so don’t do anything to confidential, but a great place to brainstorm. Here is my quick App Sketch, try your own.
Note that your mockups are not protected in any way other than by a non-obvious URL, so don’t use this service for “secret” mockups. Only create mockups you would show in public.Note that your mockups are not protected in any way other than by a non-obvious URL, so don’t use this service for “secret” mockups. Only create mockups you would show in public.
See it for yourself : http://iphonemockup.lkmc.ch
03-25-2009
With the addition of email client reports for all our customers, we took a step back and analyzed 6 months of data covering more than 250 million opens. The result – a birds eye view of email client popularity and usage trends over time.
Campaign Monitor has put together a comprehensive of email client numbers, and trends. If part of your business revolves around sending rich emails out to subscribers then this information is vitial. Oh and they are going to update it monthly to stay relevant.
See the full analysis : http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/
This past week Avner Ronen, founder of Boxee, had a healthy heated debate over the future of TV with media mongol Mark Cuban.
Boxee is being marketed as a ‘Social Media Center’, enabling users to view, rate, recommend their own media in addition to a variety of internet sources. From Flickr to Twitter to your DVD collection Boxee can handle it all.
From Mark Cuban
The concept of “users always want choice” really really sounds nice. It makes for a great panel argument. But the reality is that its not true. Ultimate choice requires work. Consumers like to think they have choice, but their consumption habits say they prefer easy.
From Avner Ronen
Innovation in the living room will not come from the set-top makers or the networks. if you would like to see the wild creativity of the Internet come to the TV screen, well you need to let the Internet come to the TV screen.
An enlightening read.
For anyone who is curious to see where TV is going, and what some of the hurdles that lay ahead I highly recommend reading the full conversation.
Read the debate : http://blog.boxee.tv/2009/03/21/a-lively-debate-with-mark-cuban/
Review of what Boxee is : http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/theres-something-about-boxee/
03-23-2009
In the land of 140 characters, space is at a premium.
Thus creating a user-name that is also concise is of value. It can be easier for people to remember. It takes up less space when people are ‘retweeting’ things that you have said. It takes up less characters when someone is going to send you a message.
If only there was a way to see what small Twitter names were still available. Enter Little-Twit.
Little-Twit.com keeps a list of all the available one, two, three and four letter user-names. All of the one letter names are gone and most of the 2 letter names are gone as well, just 21 left. Plenty of three and four letter ones left though!
Give a check before they are all gone.
See for yourself : http://www.little-twit.com/