Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category

Mahalo is live

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

mahalo
Jason’s new human powered search engine, Mahalo, is live. Last week the engineers were trying to figure out a weird load spike around 3PM every day. At least today they know what it is: people clamoring to access the site. I’ve been in LA recently to hang out with CK since he’s been working on this project since leaving Netscape. (If you want an appropriate ringtone for Jason or CK I suggest this one that I grabbed from Pimp My Ride.)

There’s no shortage of press coverage:
Webware
Wired
TechCrunch
Battelle
Search Engine Land
WSJ
Fox
Winer
D5 AllThingsD
ZDNet
CK
Jason

the Uncanny Valley of user interface design

Friday, May 18th, 2007

Bill Higgin’s “the Uncanny Valley of user interface design” discusses why Windows apps should look like Windows and web apps should look like the web. Unfortunately he shuffles the fact that the web app Zimbra intends to replace Outlook into a footnote. He is right that it makes an odd looking web app and I do find our company’s SAP jarring because it’s web based and used to look like a crappy Windows app. I think it’s interesting that the new Netscape browser’s Netstripe theme pulls it in line with current web apps even though it is a web browser. It gives a much stronger mental connection with the content than Firefox’s random bits of color. As a long time Linux user I grew used to inconsistent interface. It didn’t matter to me what it looked like as long as it worked.

Another aspect of the robotic ‘uncanny valley‘ that we’ve already run into is the chrome not matching the intelligence; manufacturers of real looking human skin for robots have found a lack of acceptance because the robots appear to be mentally challenged humans (sorry, I couldn’t find reference for this). In software, this is Microsoft Bob.

Contextual comedy

Saturday, May 5th, 2007

I take it all back...I found this little treat while looking at CK’s Spider-man 3 experience. Conrad pointed out posts on both Buzzmachine and Ryan Block’s blog featuring other funny ad juxtapositions.

Cutting torch tech

Saturday, April 28th, 2007

Cutting torch
Dad got out the cutting torch yesterday to modify some grader blades. I had always assumed it was just heat melting metal, but he told me about the process and it’s actually a chemical reaction. (more…)

Twittering to doom?

Friday, April 20th, 2007

Annalee recently posted relating Twitter to an article on how “life pace” increases exponentially with population growth. Most articles on Twitter fail because they attempt to cram it into a known space. Twitter became a roaring success because of its amorphous nature. Even Evan didn’t know what it was in the beginning with most of his posts sounding like “we built this thing, we don’t know what to do with it”.

The big punch was SXSW where it became the Dodgeball replacement (not that DB was being used outside of the bay). Twitter kept its ground through its ease of use; you could post via web, IM, or TXT. It didn’t define itself as a service solely for broadcasting location either. As people left SXSW, they switched to using Twitter for microblogging. Some people embraced Twitter because it lacked the permanence of actual blogging. Annalee’s article is crippled by its geographical awareness. Twitter doesn’t care whether you’re in a city or rural, whether you have internet access or cellphone access, or even if you’re posting your current task or your location. As the world flattens, relating online movements to physical world problems is just going to become even more ridiculous. I don’t think Twitter is taking us to some singularity pace that will eventually cause our demise (i.e. burnout). It’s created a new disposable outlet of expression that will hopefully reduce the number of “I got up and had a piece of toast” entries on regular blogs while increasing the number of people talking in our industry.

Find the content

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007

content
Just an example of some of the rampant ugly design out there. I’ve marked the actual content in red. How could anyone think a paragraph in the shape of a backwards L is readable.

MySpace conditioning

Thursday, January 25th, 2007

myspace reward
This is for the people that don’t use MySpace: Every time you send a site mail message on MySpace you’re rewarded with a giant 430×600 True ad featuring a sexy model. I can’t think of a better way to encourage people to send more messages and view more ads.

Apple iPhone

Tuesday, January 9th, 2007

iphoneYes, I’m posting about the Apple iPhone just like everyone else today. Engadget has more pictures like the one above. I am excited, but there is at least one thing I want cleared up: They say it runs OSX, but I want to know if it truly is running their BSD based system on an x86 or if it’s just using similar looking applications. Killer app for me would be sharing the EDGE connection over WiFi and other fun *nix stuff like SSH.

I’m on 25 peeps

Friday, December 22nd, 2006

Not really sure what that means but I enjoy stripped down sites like this: 25peeps.com.

Domains OMG!

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006

null
I was pitching an IM related web service idea to CK today. The nice thing about web services is that instead of brainstorming and fleshing out details you can jump directly to the stupid entertainment that is picking out a domain name. Since it’s IM, CK jokingly suggested LOLOMGWTF.com. That domain is in use and made me wonder how many other iterations were in use.

  • OMGWTFLOL.com blog or something
  • LOLOMGWTF.com open directory
  • LOLWTFOMG.com Tom Seizmore sex tape
  • WTFOMGLOL.com domain ad page
  • OMGLOLWTF.com points to real sites
  • OMGWTF.com domain ad page
  • OMGLOL.com blog
  • WTFLOL.com server not found
  • WTFOMG.com domain ad page
  • LOLWTF.com domain ad page
  • LOLOMG.com domain ad page

WTFLOLOMG.com wasn’t registered; well it wasn’t before I bought it. (get the order right: first you swear, then you laugh, then you sin) For completeness sake: OMGWTFBBQ.com.