Del.icio.us brings an end to the silliness of playing linked/streamed MP3’s on the web by including an ultra-slick “play” icon to MP3 audio links. Very, very cool. To this day I couldn’t tell you why Quicktime hijacks MP3 links on the web and plays them on that dumb white screen in my browser (and don’t even try to undo it, it requires a Ph.D.).
And how are they pulling off this magic? You guessed it: Flash. It isn’t immediately obvious, but they’re using Javascript to construct the Flash calls. Very cool. As illustrated in the use of Flash for video (on Google Video and other sites), Flash is a great way to seamlessly deliver rich media into a user’s experience. There is simply no need for all sorts of stuff to launch on your desktop just to hear some music or see some video. Good stuff.
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 28, 2005, 04:44PM
So the blogosphere is all up in arms today about a Forbes magazine article that likens the blog community to a rabid, bloodthirsty mob (or something). It's definitely the hot topic today.
Stepping back a bit, I get the sense that the blogging world can't take some of it's own medicine. Forbes magazine essentially...blogged. It presented a highly subjective, almost personal perspective on a topic. It's an opinion piece. And love it or hate it, some of it's points are valid.
Implicit in bloggers railing on Forbes is the notion that Forbes and other "traditional" publications are to be held to a higher standard. This of course puts blogs at a lower standard, relatively speaking. If that's the case, then the last voice I want to hear about the validity of the Forbes article is us.
Maybe Forbes was just feeling left out. Maybe they wanted in on this party. What better way to do it than to dangle some bait. It looks like we bit.
A colleague made an excellent observation about yesterday's post (User 2.0). He noticed a parallel between what I was getting at and the theories of the economist and philosopher Adam Smith. From Wealth of Nations:
By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
So there you have it, Adam Smith chimes in on the Web 2.0 silliness. It's too bad he's not around to blog about all this.
P.S. This is the last time (seriously) that I will put "2.0" into the headline of a blog. Ever.
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 27, 2005, 04:04PM
Before I get into the point of this posting, I'd first like to apologize for the blatant abuse of the whole "2.0" label. I think I've subconsciously translated "2.0" to "new perspective."
Now that we've gotten the disclaimers out of the way, I wanted to share some thoughts on technology today and how it reflects on our perception of users, and people in general.
One of the often heard tenets of Web 2.0 is that it brings a whole new social aspect to applications. Folksonomies (or social classifications) and wikis are two great examples of how we can leverage all that extra collective Good that we have laying around. In short, this stuff is good and doesn't break down because most people are, well...good.
Why isn't Wikipedia filled with junk and graffiti? Why aren't tags misleading and useless? It's because we're all mostly good people who mean well.
To this I say: bullshit.
Ok. I don't really mean "bullshit" per se. I'm not trying to insinuate that we are all in fact bad or selfish or anything of the sort. The counter-sentiment I'd like to put forth is the following:
The cumulative social benefits of Web 2.0 applications are simply a byproduct of useful software that meets their own selfish needs.
We tag sites on delicious because it's a useful way to keep bookmarks centralized and easily organized. We use Flickr for similar reasons. It stores our photos and allows us to tag them for quick and easy retrieval. Wikis are sort of a different beast. I think we just like to be heard and feel important (not a bad thing by the way).
What's so curiously cool about these applications is they piggyback our own selfish needs to create this larger collective consciousness - sort of.
For the product managers and interaction designers, the real trick is to build stuff that is wortwhile for users personally, but somehow creates something greater than the sum for everyone else. The bigger the personal payoff, the more we're willing to give to get it. The more we give, the more these systems can learn. The more they learn, the richer the body of knowledge for all to benefit from. All we, the technologists, need to do is keep the valuable software coming and, more importantly, pay closer attention to what users are doing.
If we were to believe the idealists, you'd think users wouldn't mind spending their valuable time contributing metadata to the Greater Knowledgebase of Mankind. Not so. Only within the confines of immediate and personal gratification lies the greater good.
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 26, 2005, 12:40PM
Love'em or hate'em, you have to admit Google has our eyes and ears these days. Maybe this is a new way to create buzz: tempt & titilate the masses by putting a product out for five lousy minutes. Let the Flick flash bulbs go off in a momentary frenzy and then...poof. It's gone. Oh the mystique. Base.google.com made a quick cameo appearance some time yesterday and the resulting buzz has been deafening.
Did it work? How about mainstream press coverage and serious buzz in the blogosphere. Maybe this is the way to deploy product. Dangle it for a second then make it disappear. What's left is a weird, Loch Ness-sighting vibe that generates its own energy.
Contrast this with the ho-hum release of Google Reader two weeks ago. It came. It wasn't all that good. And now it just sort of sits there. A quick comparison. As of 12:41PM EST. Search results for each on Google's own Blog Search:
They're neck and neck, despite the fact that Google Reader has been out for a couple of weeks now and Google Base doesn't even actually exist yet.
Marketing 2.0 anyone?
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 25, 2005, 03:34PM
Is Google about to index everything in sight? Should Ebay and every other merchant and middleman on the Web be worried? Happy? And of course, the proverbial question: what is Google scheming?
Someone snapped a quick screenshot of base.google.com before it was taken down. Lock your doors. Pull down your blinds. Hide the children. Google is coming.
Their plan? To index anything that sits still long enough. The result? A big, awful, frightening cached representation of each thing in existence and it's relative place to all other things. The semantic web is coming folks, and Google wants to build it and own it. August 2009 is nearing.
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 22, 2005, 12:29PMSo Flock was unleashed to the masses a couple of days ago in the form of a pre-release of sorts. For the unfamiliar, Flock is built atop the popular Firefox browser engine. It adds a slew of new “Web 2.0” features to the typical set of browser features we’ve become accustomed to. You can find out about it’s features here.
Flock is arguably the darling of the whole Web 2.0 trend. If I’m not mistaken, they’ve gotten $2MM in funding already and are creating a fair amount of buzz out there.
After installing it yesterday and playing around for a bit, the first impression I got was that this thing was just one big patch job of feature add-ons that have little to do with one another. It integrates with delicious and Flickr (sort of). It has a feed reader (sort of). It has a clipping tool where you can cut & paste images and text snippets. In the end, it felt more like an disparate collection of Firefox plug-ins stitched together along with a new chrome skin (which looks real cool actually). Stepping back a bit, what was this thing trying to achieve? After a couple of hours, I uninstalled it.
I think what’s even more interesting than the Flock product itself is all the noise around it. I’m just not seeing how all this stuff really amounts to much value for the rest of the world – i.e. beyond the community that is enraptured in all things 2.0 these days. Even more fascinating is the fact that Flock garnered serious venture money. I’m no business guy, but how exactly does this thing end up making money (other than a buyout)?
Generally speaking, I don’t get it. If someone can help me see the light here, I’m all ears.
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 19, 2005, 01:34PMAbout a year ago, I was involved in a pretty exhaustive contextual design effort for a client. For the uninitiated, contextual design is similar to user-centered design in that it focuses on the users of a given product and breaks down and studies how they work. Habits, patterns, work environments are all carefully tracked and digested so that we can gather information to help us make informed decisions about their needs, their goals and the things they contend with on a typical work day.
Any interaction designer would agree that this information is invaluable. It reveals insights into some of the most subtle and nuanced aspects of users' experiences and provides a great foundation for designer better products.
Most frame user-centered design as a comprehensive methodology that takes you from discovering the users and their goals to synthesizing that knowledge into an effective response: a new design. I don't think it does this at all.
Users are critical sources of data for the environments, habits, tasks and motions they go through. A lot can be learned from them. But ask a user how to solve a hairy interaction problem, and they'll often deliver a pretty convoluted response. This is understandable. People become very good at bad habits and their opinions on what they need will be colored by their own patterns. In other words, they're top-heavy. They optimize their thinking to do what they need to do with the tools at hand. Ask them to "invent" a way to do things better, and you won't get very much.
There comes a point in the design process where we actually have to design. I think user-centered design drops you off at the bus stop once you reach that point. Good designers take this background and sit down and design, often using their own intuition and experience to architect information and interaction. Good designers have good intuition. Great designers have great intuition. And so it goes.
Beyond just responding with a better design, I got to thinking: where does innovation come out of any of this, if at all? For example, in the project described above, a major part of the application was email alerts. Creating, managing, getting email alerts was critical for many users. Today, RSS is a technology that challenges email as a superior way to send alerts to people. No user (except for the extreme technophile) would've suggested RSS as a solution, or even wished they'd had it. Instead, they'll ask you to rejig the pieces they already know of, and not much else.
I guess what I'm trying to get across here is that user-centered design eventually breaks down and stops becoming valuable when we're staring at that whiteboard or Illustrator canvas and trying to formulate a solution. More importantly, I think it has boxed us in as interface designers such that we almost fear bringing something radical, but potentially groundbreaking, to the mix.
In short, it's a reactive mindset that does a great job of calibrating us to absorb and digest user-centric data, but isn't much help when the time comes to synthesize that data into something tangible. The problem is that there is nothing to synthesize that data with. There is no widely-adopted concrete approach to building interfaces today. Instead, we mostly feel our way around until it "feels" right.
In a future post, I'll talk about an attempt to codify into a methodology some of the patterns that interaction designers do instinctively. Stay tuned!
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 14, 2005, 11:20AM
Apple recently unveiled their new line of iPods and this time around, they've included video in the mix - sort of. It isn't really the official video iPod. It's an evolutionary step of sorts. You can't rewind or fast forward. It isn't a "PVP" (Personal Video Player). It's just an iPod that happens to play video.
They also unveiled a beautifully simple Apple remote control that can be used to control other Apple products - like iPods that happen to play video and Mac Mini's.
After thinking about these announcements a bit, you'd wonder why Apple would make such a half-hearted attempt at video and release, of all things, a remote control. Is Apple slipping? If not, then what are they up to?
Well, I think one of the lessons designers can learn from Apple - whether we're talking about interaction design or product design - is that products don't mean a hell of a lot to people when thought about in isolation. The press tends to focus on products A, B & C that Apple releases, but Apple doesn't seem to think that way.
Instead, they are more interested in augmenting and enhancing broader user experiences. Their products are part of larger holistic picture. iPod conquered portable music because Apple didn't think about the hardware alone but rather the entire experience: search for music, gather music, organize music, listen to music (on your iPod or your computer). Sure, iTunes and iPod are the pieces of the puzzle, but the real value Apple delivered was the end-to-end experience.
This week, Apple began to unveil the pieces that will eventually fall into place for managing, mobilizing and enjoying video - anywhere. Dock your video-capable iPod. Flip on your monitor. Sit back on the couch with your iPod remote and enjoy. Want to finish watching something at your friends? Just unplug and go. Your content goes with you - whether for mobile use or viewing elsewhere.
A couple of days ago, I blogged about how the adoption of RSS was lagging because the initial step, subscribing to a feed, is broken. If we think about RSS in the context of the entire experience: finding channels, subscribing to them easily, getting content wherever we are, there's a lot of work to do.
So let's all learn a bit from Apple: the technology pieces don't mean a hell of a lot on their own. We've got all sorts of neat technology in our hands these days. All we need to do now is design worthwhile experiences and think about how to leverage them.
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 12, 2005, 01:16PM
Searchenginewatch confirms what many of us have suspected: the awareness of RSS is still quite low among the general population of Internet users. While the article confirms that usage among the technically savvy is obviously higher, the rest of the world either doesn’t know what RSS is, or is using it without even knowing it (i.e. adding channels to their portal pages).
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Despite it’s inherent power, the RSS experience is badly broken. The first baby step towards the power of feed syndication is subscribing to a feed – and for the majority of Internet users, it leads to nowhere.
Before we even consider the problem with subscribing to feeds today, it’s worth noting that even the visual indicator of a feed being available is confusing. Dave Winer has tirelessly defended the consistent use of that orange XML box. Dave is hoping that by sticking to an agreed-upon standard, people will eventually “get it.” Not so. There are two problems with that button. First, how in the world is a layman supposed to connect “XML” with feed syndication? It’s a bit silly that Dave has decided to commit to a button that, strictly interpreted, is itself misleading.
The second problem, and it’s a far bigger one, is that the XML button, like most buttons that look actionable, should do something. Ideally, it should do something useful, or at the very least help the user along towards something useful. Today, in the great majority of cases, it just leads to a blob of junk in the user’s browser. If we step back and consider RSS in the context of a use case, the very first interaction step is badly broken.
In all fairness, this isn’t the fault of RSS. Most up-and-coming technologies are introduced to the masses by a tangible product that is quickly usable. Netscape’s Navigator simplified the web for millions years ago. RSS today doesn’t have that product to “carry” users through to a point where they can more easily realize the value of RSS.
And so, we’re left with a collection of web-based readers, client-side installable readers, and some other stuff in between (e.g. Outlook-integrated feed readers & browser plug-ins). The steps necessary are simply too difficult and cumbersome for most to even bother.
I’d venture to say that the only companies positioned to really turn RSS into a fluid experience that travels from the Internet and onto your desktop are the operating system folks, namely Apple & Microsoft. From alerts, to pings, to rolling headlines in a sidebar and whatnot, they are in the best position to create a more seamless, clicking/dragging experience for RSS.
I’ll be posting again about some of the other challenges for RSS (Steps 2 and 3 anyone?), but for now, I think Step 1 is a doosie. Until we make life a bit easier for the rest of the world, RSS will remain a tech toy and not much more.
Google Blog provides some insight on Google.org, its non-profit arm.
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 11, 2005, 08:38AM
The feed readers just keep on coming. There are two worth mentioning. Orangoo is a new, web-based feed-reader that shows a fair amount of that AJAX goodness. It’s actually pretty good, though you can’t import by OPML (not yet at least).
On the client side, there’s Curio Studio’s GreatNews for the Windows platform. This looks like the younger brother of FeedDemon, with newspapers, Bloglines syncing, and such. It’s not as feature-rich as FeedDemon, but it looks like a competent start.
Yahoo just keeps on churning. They’ve added blog entries as a sidebar alongside mainstream news article results in Yahoo News. Very, very cool. The Yahoo Search Blog talks about it.
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 10, 2005, 09:42PM
Google quietly added tagging to it’s bookmark/search history feature. Inside Google has the scoop.
Yahoo! pulls no punches with its answer to podcasting. Yahoo! Podcasts Beta debuts today.
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 8, 2005, 06:54PM
Particle Tree released Treehouse, an electronic magazine published in PDF. It’s very nicely designed. But I wonder, if there’s no print edition, why PDF? You can’t send links, bookmark, etc.
I’ve go to say, it is absolutely fascinating to watch the Web 2.0 hype accelerate and build. I was personally involved in the initial Internet bubble of the late 90s and it’s great to see people getting excited about technology again.
With that in mind, I’d like to just share some of my thoughts and observations about “Web 2.0”:
Hopefully people won’t misread this post as contrarian. I think it’s important for us to learn the lessons of Web 1.0. There isn’t a sea of small, successful 1.0 companies doing wonderful work and making money today.
Instead, a sort of cleansing occurred at the tail end of the 90’s. Assets (either tangible or intellectual) either disintegrated or were sold as scraps to the big fish that survived. When the smoke cleared, all that remained were traditional businesses – the banks, the publishers, the media companies – standing there with a collective smirk.
For now, I think it’s important to take this stuff for what it’s worth: a neat set of tools that, if used intelligently, can result in some compelling product. No matter how giddy these toys make us tech heads, they’re of little value to the rest of the world until we create products and experiences that they can connect with.
In closing, I’ll share a conversation I recently had with a friend who is not in technology. I was attempting to explain this new “Web 2.0 trend” to him, only to be interrupted with: “There was a Web 1.0?”
I don’t own an iPod but a lot of people do. iPod + Yahoo Directions = iWay.
News.com lists out the top 100 blogs at Blog 100.
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 7, 2005, 07:15PM
Google Reader was released to public beta today. It’s their answer to web-based feed readers.
My experience so far has not been very good. I’m not sure I’m an edge case (I don’t think I am) but it threw up all over my FeedDemon exported OPML file. Not fun.
Generally, it looks ok. The interface has some nice elements to it, but overall I’m not very impressed. I wish someone would break out of the email-style left-side item list, right-side content paradigm for displaying feeds. You can’t digest that much very quickly. I also don’t like how it mapped all my feed groups to labels. I’ll be sticking with FeedDemon for now.
On a more subjective note, I have to say I’m getting tired of Google’s Fisher Price candy colors style. You’ve got to wonder if they can maintain that style forever as they keep adding applications and destinations.
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 2, 2005, 08:03PM
Why do all the other bloggers get to walk through pie-in-the-sky buy out scenarios?
With the world changing such that platforms and applications and data and services are getting all jumbled up, Microsoft should dip into it’s sock drawer and buy Adobe. Here’s why:
So there you have it. Hopefully someone at Microsoft gets wind of this, gathers the loose change from the glove compartment and goes to town before it’s too late.
Or maybe Google should…
Posted by Richard Ziade on October 1, 2005, 10:27AMGreat mash-up: NYsee, Google Maps overlayed with real-time New York City traffic information.