April 2010
42 posts
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“In fact [Apple], if you want to break down someone’s door, why don’t...”
– Jon Stewart
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Tumblog: Songs From 'Treme' →
soupsoup:
popculturebrain:
Treme is the best new show and if you’re not watching you’re missing out. Fitting into my current obsession with said show is this lovely new tumblog that posts the songs from the show and “nothing else.” I’ve said before how Treme is like a more serious Glee, in the way that it incorporates music performance, let this be a message for the HBO higher ups - release a...
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Hulu to go freemium?
The L.A. Times reports that Hulu is planning to move to a freemium model as soon as May 24th. Newer content would be free with episode archives available as a premium offering. I for one would pay for Hulu access under the right conditions. That said, I have at least two issues with the proposed model (with the understanding that the L.A. Times report isn’t official and could in fact be...
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File Under: You Have Got To Be Kidding Me
jared:
When a member of the Supreme Court asks, “What’s the difference between email and a pager?” then maybe it’s time to reevaluate things.
I’m in Park City (Mt. Rushmore tomorrow!) and in need of sleep, but this issue is important to me. The problem with the Supreme Court re: technology is the court moves at a linear snail’s pace. By the time a case reaches SCOTUS, it’s...
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Wild America
Roadtrip time! Updates are going to be light (read: nonexistent) for the next few days while I drive from SF to NY. A few weeks ago, after a ton of thought and discussion, I decided to leave a job I’d worked in for only a very short time to move back to NY and go after something that thrills me. The fact that I’m getting married in July to a beautiful, funny and klutzy NY-based...
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How valuable is a new product 'scoop?'
This is a screencap of Gizmodo’s big scoop taken around midnight PT. The post’s been up about 15 hours. Two things strike me about this picture. (1) Giz pulled in 4M visitors to this one page in about 15 hours, and (2) there’s only a single ad on the whole page, and it blends right in.
I don’t know what to make of that. On one hand, Gawker is pushing to become a more...
I remember rocking out to this song at hebrew...
“The good thing about benchmarks is that you can to optimize for them. The bad...”
– The Process Police - 52 Weeks of UX
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Boxee venturing out of the living room and onto... →
go:
In the next few months, you’ll be able to take Boxee, the software designed to marry television with online video, to the bathroom, the bedroom and the park. Boxee is working on versions of its application for the iPhone and iPad, with one for Google’s Android also on the schedule.
Awesome move, Boxee. I’d recommend the ability to shift from watching videos on the iPad to watching...
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Marco.org: New MacBook Pr. . .OH LOOK, AN IPAD! →
This morning, Apple updated the MacBook Pro line with new internal components, including new processors, new graphics chips, a higher-resolution screen option on the 15” (finally), and bigger batteries.
This is usually significant news worthy of a homepage takeover for a week. But today, as …
—-
Disruptive innovation. Pretty damn exciting.
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Choosing an upgrade behavior is strategic
This is the set of share curves for Chrome browsers. Beautifully ordered, right? Pretty much the idealized portrait of release early, release often. So how does Google do it?
From Royal Pingdom (awesome analytics, btw):
Google Chrome handles its upgrades in a completely automated fashion, even for a completely new version of the browser. While other browsers will ask the user for approval...
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“Just as any literary metaphor, a visual metaphor confuses if it doesn’t clarify;...”
– Information Architects (via ignorethecode.net)
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Kate Nash - I’m Not Gonna Teach Your...
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“The iPad is so much more enjoyable than my MacBook. The only reason I’m...”
– My future wife, looking at wedding dress makers, a set of websites that Steve Jobs probably didn’t think about when he decided to pick a fight with Adobe
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Net Neutrality is the new Common Carrier →
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Tagxedo!
Tagxedo is a next-generation word cloud generator that’s simply incredible. I’ve been playing with it for the better part of two hours so far and man, it’s fun. Here are my two favorite creations:
Obama Hope poster - words drawn from his inaugural address
Boxee logo - words drawn from Avner Ronen’s chat on gdgt.com
I’m turning on photo replies in case anyone...
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“This phobia is sometimes associated with other disorders such as the fear of...”
– Richard Thaler defends Libertarian Paternalism
Many of my favorite thoughts around UI/UX derive from Nudge…and the book barely mentions computers!
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Mobile apps need a laptop marketplace
Two observations and a hypothesis:
1) People use mobile apps on mobile devices
2) People discover mobile apps on their computers (it’s just a significantly better medium for exploration - pick your reason: screen size, ease of input, connection speed, etc.)
Therefore, to create a strong app ecosystem, you’d better have a strong online marketplace
So now a question: why...
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“We Sell Yak Fur”
– SparkFun Electronics
Great title. Great pitch.
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Dealing with Unexpected Barriers
When purchasing decisions involve heterodox interests, sales difficulties increase exponentially. A perfect example is enterprise Gmail. Gmail is undeniably a better-designed email product than most companies use, but Google butted up against unanticipated resistance when selling Gmail to enterprises. It turns out that enterprise purchasing decisions are far more complex than a single users.
The...
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Random Thoughts
Here are some random thoughts/questions I’ve been kicking around lately. They’re mostly half-baked. Thoughts welcome.
Why doesn’t Amazon sell mobile apps through its storefront? Why doesn’t Palm partner with Amazon for this purpose? How about Google?
Is patenting software equivalent to patenting language (or grammar)? Put another way, when it comes to software,...
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“There are no absolutes on the web. The reality is that like a lot of science -...”
– 52 Weeks of UX: UX Insights: an interview with Andy Budd
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The power of a relevant story
When you say “group buying,” the average person will probably have no clue what you’re talking about, and the average businessman will think you mean group purchasing on the enterprise scale. And yet, most of us have participated in group buying behavior for years, we just don’t realize it.
Couples, fraternities, and softball leagues all buy things as a group (meals, beer,...
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iPad Springboard Breaks Spatiality →
Great analysis of how the iPad’s home screen might unnecessarily confuse users.