August 2010
1 post
Flipboard - a Personalized Magazine →
Quite possibly the coolest iPad app I’ve used so far, mainly because it hints at the future of publishing more than any other app or device has. I was never blown away by the Kindle or iPad as eReaders per se, but when you see an interactive magazine personalized to your interests take shape, it just kind of boggles the mind.
July 2010
1 post
3 tags
Google Gaming and Leveling Up Your Life
Looks like Google is jumping hard into the gaming fray, and they apparently covertly invested $100+ million in Zynga, a social gaming company:
The investment was made by Google itself, not Google Ventures, say our sources, and it’s a highly strategic deal. Zynga will be the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year, say multiple sources. Not only will Zynga’s games give...
June 2010
3 posts
Google's Mobile User Experience Strategy
For folks designing on mobile devices, Kottke links to Google’s mobile user experience strategy. The way Google categorizes users is interesting:
Repetitive now - Folks who can’t stop checking their phone every minute in case the world explodes and they might miss it in their Inbox.
Bored now - Folks who are killing time on a train or a plane.
Urgent now - Folks who need to find the...
Is Apple taking over the tube? →
I get as bored with mindless tech punditry revolving around Apple as much as the next person (I read John Gruber because he routinely has novel insights), but I am still a sucker for a well-written piece that speculates on drastic paradigm shifts lying just ahead. Adam Lisagor’s piece on Apple TV and the iPad possibly coalescing into some coups de grace of television as we know it sparked my...
Jobs versus Ballmer →
Nice video juxtaposition of recent Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer interviews at D8.
Also, David H, of 37signals fame, argues that Ballmer is not as worthy of an adversary to Jobs as Gates would have been. Normally I’d argue that the stagnant Microsoft stock price after 2000 has more to do with the dot com bubble busting and subsequent recessions than it does the man at the helm, but hard to...
May 2010
6 posts
4 tags
Lost, Metroid, and Twin Peaks
I have no idea what this recently concluded TV show (Lost), this classic video game series (Metroid), and that bizarre 80s TV show (Twin Peaks) have in common except that they’re a) mind-bending, b) unique, and c) have at least strong traces of sci-fi elements. I don’t even typically like sci-fi stuff, but that genre’s influence arguably makes the aforementioned shows/games. Oh,...
New Social Networking Site Changing The Way... →
The Onion nails another one.
“Although it recently hit the million-user mark, Foursquare has yet to approach the vast subscriber base of Facebook and Twitter. But that all could change as people become increasingly reliant on the…okay, here, here, let me sum up this whole “news” story for you: Aging, scared newspapermen throw themselves at the latest mobile technology...
What we know about Christopher Nolan's Inception →
Christopher Nolan refuses to make bad films, and somehow they improve even as they get larger in scope and gain widespread appeal.
“We get to make a movie that’s expansive, I suppose you’d say, in four dimensions. … We’re trying to tell a story on a massive scale, a true blockbuster scale — the biggest I’ve ever been involved with. We tried to make a very...
The National released a new album →
This month, The National released a new album. 2010 has been a pretty dry year for music so far. MGMT’s recent release disappointed me. But this — this High Violet album — could be something special. I’ve listened to the first two songs on the soon-to-be-defunct Lala music service (thanks, Apple!) and I’m finding it hard to move on to the next tracks.
I haven’t...
Jacob Nielson on iPad Usability →
iPad UIs suffer under a triple threat that causes significant user confusion:
Low discoverability: The UI is mostly hidden within the etched-glass aesthetic without perceived affordances.
Low memorability: Gestures are inherently ephemeral and difficult to learn when they’re not employed consistently across apps; wider reliance on generic commands would help.
Accidental activation:...
New blog
I’m trying something that Cameron Moll did recently — switching to tumblr. While it can be incredibly fun to create a blog from scratch using a CMS such as Wordpress, Textdrive, Expression Engine, and so forth, there’s a certain amount of responsibility one bears in doing so. I got tired of installing updates and wondering if my site was going to be hacked. Plus, even though a...