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Posted by Richard Ziade on December 30, 2006, 03:12PMDrop Dead Gorgeous Photos
Photographer Daniel Edburg breathes new life (or, um...death) into famous scenes with this series of photos. It's hard to really explain. Just click thru.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 26, 2006, 11:24AMThe Purpose Of Bottlenecks
In my first year of law school, there was a massive amount of reading to digest. It was nearly impossible to get through it all. Freshman year in law school is notorious for overloading you with work. It's some sort of "weeding out of the weak" thing.
The only way I felt better, or had some sense of security, was when I photocopied what I thought to be "relevant research" for my work. I'd spend all this time and money copying everything - as if the act of making photocopies somehow transmitted the information directly into my brain. Alas, I only managed to read a fraction of what I copied. These piles would lay around and I was never able to get to them. It's the same thing with RSS feeds. My "Tech News" folder in FeedDemon has 2987 unread entries. 2987! And that's just one folder! Scary.
With the Internet and the proliferation of information on the Internet the bandwidth around the "data channel" that connects the world's information to us has increased exponentially. Articles. Music. Video. It's way more than we can handle. This isn't about whether these feeds matter to me or not. They all do - otherwise I wouldn't have subscribed to them. I want them all.
There's just one problem: I have a finite amount of time per day to digest them. While I continue to subscribe to new feeds (as I continued to make photocopies in law school) I refused to come to terms with the fact that I simply can't digest them all. And so, I consciously (or sub-consciously) impose a filter. I go to certain feeds first. I selectively ignore certain others. I rely on social mechanisms implemented in sites like Digg and Techmeme. Finally, I have friends who point me to links that I may have missed.
The above shouldn't be construed as deeming RSS or feed reader technology as a failure. It isn't. Whereas without RSS my ability to digest capped at around 10-20 news sources a day, with a feed reader, it goes up to between 70-100 in my case. 300-400 feeds? Don't kid yourself. Unless it's your job to sift through them, things are going to fall through the cracks.
So now people are asking how we can go to the next level. How do we increase our bandwidth so we can take in more stuff? Well, before tackling that question, I'd ask if we we really need to take in more stuff at all. Much of the information out there isn't all that great. The stuff that is great naturally bubbles up through viral communication. Sites like Digg & Techmeme cover that end of things.
So do we really need to be tapped into that many information sources? I think a dialog around that question is worthwhile. All these channels may well condition us to only tolerate small bits of information and put a small amount of thought behind them. "Narrow and deep" is giving way to "broad and shallow." Come to think of it - everything is small bites these days. Single paragraph blog entries. Two minute videos. $.99 songs on iTunes. All this extra data doesn't isn't really extra. While there's more out there, our capacities to take it in really haven't changed. It just feels like more because we keep dicing it all into smaller and smaller pieces.
So to start the new year, I'm going to try to read more entire books. Listen to entire albums. Watch full-length films. While everyone else tries to figure out how to add more lanes to the RSS highway, I'm going to take the city streets and enjoy the drive...for now. ;)
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 20, 2006, 02:11PMMerry Christmas...Sorta
"You should have seen the look on her face"
"His expression alone was priceless."
"Her eyes just lit up."
It's a pretty awesome thing to watch someone you care about open a gift - a gift they really wanted badly. The younger they are, the better. With age comes the sobering ability to mute our emotions with "refined judgment" and a dash of cynicism. When we're kids, that filter isn't really in place yet.
Even for grownups like ourselves, it's always fun to see the kid in us come out when we open a gift. It's fun to experience - whether you're opening a gift yourself or watching someone else.
As the Internet continues to seep into our lives, we're watching a transformation of sorts that is compromising the experiences we have with one another. Things that we give each other are no longer really "things" anymore. We're digitizing everything. Google is indexing everything. Movies. Music. Writings (like magazines and books). The physical artifacts - the things we carry, and cherish, and wrap, and give one another - are disappearing.
Gift cards. Spending credits. "Points" of some sort or another. It really takes something away from the entire experience. With the digitization of things comes an inability to really appreciate the things themselves. There's so much stuff out there we're overloaded. I'm as guilty as anyone else for wanting a 60GB mp3 player.
What the hell am I going to do with 60 gigs? It's an incomprehensible amount of music. I find myself never letting songs finish. Flipping around aimlessly. There's simply too much stuff and it's everywhere and easily attainable. Yet, we seem to have less to really enjoy. Will Sheff, lead singer of Okkervil River and an eloquent writer, sums it up nicely:
The internet – with its glut not only of information but of misinformation, and of information that is only slightly correct, or only slightly incorrect – fills me with this same weird mixture of happiness and depression. I sometimes feel drowned in information, deadened by it. How many hundreds of bored hours have you spent mechanically poring through web pages not knowing what you’re looking for, or knowing what you’re looking for but not feeling satisfied when you find it? You hunger but you’re not filled. Everything is freely available on the internet, and is accordingly made inestimably valuable and utterly value-less...These days, with all the choice in the world, it’s hard for me find the attention span for a single album. I put my iPod on shuffle and skip impatiently to the next song before each one’s over. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.
I don't think we realize it just yet because we're still adjusting to all this change. But something has changed. Even though there is this wealth of digital "stuff" out there, there is somehow less to enjoy. Less to focus on and dive into. Less to truly savor and appreciate. Less to give one another.
In software, it's oddly ironic that we seem to be reproducing how the real world works and feels. Apple's latest iteration of iTunes has a great little feature where we can flip through virtual CD cases in our collection. It's a convincing reproduction of the real life experience - except it's not the real life experience. We can't throw that CD in a bag. More importantly, we can't wrap it in gift wrap and give it to someone to borrow.
Today, retailers are enjoying record-breaking gift card sales, and the funny thing is...many people don't even bother using them.
So get out there. Shop! Buy someone something they can rip open and get all giddy about. That's half (if not more) of the fun...
Feed Rivers Have Run Dry?
I was hitting the NY Times River that Dave Winer had put up and stumbled on this:
Over the years I've tried out lots of ideas, some work, others work a little, and some -- not at all. The ones that work are worth keeping, the ones that don't, they take care of themselves. But the ones in the middle can linger for years, not doing much for anyone, and costing both dollars and hassles to keep going.Recently I've decided to start turning off the ones that sort-of work, the goal being to reduce the monetary and karmic cost of maintaining an online presence. This is one of the sites I've decided to retire.
A little philosophy. In order to get somewhere, you have to try lots of ideas, and most of them aren't huge successes. But, imho, it's good to try -- it's also good to know when it didn't work.
That kinda sucks. I really enjoyed the NY Times and BBC rivers on my Treo 650 and PSP (yes, they worked great on PSP). It's odd that Dave hasn't directly addressed the end of the rivers on his site (the BBC river is gone too).
I really liked the concept behind rivers and there are other sites that are buying into it. There's a Digg river and a Techmeme river.
I'm sort of bought into rivers as a great way to catch up on feeds - especially on portable devices that don't have the luxury of a full screen and keyboard. At Arc90, we even took a stab at creating a generic feed-to-river tool that can turn any RSS feed into a river view (replete with mobile-friendly links to full articles).
RSS continues to be a bastard child out there. I'm a big fan but have resigned to the fact that it just hasn't found that application to bring it to the masses. HTML was a truly game-changing invention, but it needed Mosaic browser to show its power to the world. RSS hasn't found that killer app yet.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 18, 2006, 01:32PMDigg Gets Refreshed
The formidable Digg has been updated with some nice interface tweaks among a slew of other features (mmm...liquid display). The official blog has the details.
It's good to see design enhancements getting proper billing as these popular sites evolve. There really aren't many new features this time around. The last major Digg upgrade introduced new categories and such. Nevertheless, it's these often times subtle interface tweaks that really help elevate a site and broaden its audience. It also shows that Digg is paying attention to feedback - not just feature requests, but how to make the whole experience easier to use. Good stuff.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 14, 2006, 10:43AMNick Bradbury & Simplicity
Nick Bradbury is the man. He's the man behind Homesite, Topstyle and now FeedDemon. What's amazing about Nick is his knowledge of building software (he's a one man machine) and his appreciation of good usability and design. He's written an excellent series of articles called Simplicity Ain't So Simple. Don't miss them:
- Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part I: Decide What to Hide
- Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part II: Stop Showing Off
- Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part III: Don't Add Features You Can't Support
- Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part IV: The Blessed Curse of Power Users
- Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part V: Combine Features
- Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part VI: Simple = Secure
New Firebug Rocks
If you're any sort of web developer - CSS, Ajax, Javascript, XHTML - you need Firebug. The new version renders itself indisposable.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 8, 2006, 01:36PMNose Hair-Plucking E-Card
Want to send a nose hair-plucking e-Card? It's hard to really explain. Just click on the link.
Creative Gift Ideas
Need some great gift ideas? Tired of sending gift certificates and those awful Russell Stover pre-wrapped boxes from your local drug store? Wanna really impress your friends, colleagues, girl/boyfriend, wife/husband?
A great place to start are Core77's (for gifts under $77) and Inhabitat's (for gifts under $30) gift guides.
There are also some great blogs out there that somehow always find the cool stuff that you're not going to stumble on at your local Target. Dig through these ultra-cool, design-inspired sites:
If you're looking for some nice geek gifts (and if you're reading this blog, you probably are), check out Thinkgeek and Firebox.
So get out there and help fuel our relentlessly disposable economy by buying more stuff for the people you love (and like).
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 6, 2006, 11:07AMWPF/E & Flash - Playing Nice
Ok, this is freaking me out. Who says Flash & WPF/E can't play nice? "I'll meet you at Javascript junction." I'm fully convinced that the man behind the WPF Blog is the only guy on earth who can do this at this point in time.
Youki
Want another example of why Ajax doesn't creatively scale? Check out Youki. It's a service that allows you to display your galleries of photos in a booklet-style interface. It's Flash-based and it's pretty darn awesome.
Posted by Richard Ziade on December 5, 2006, 10:41AMYet Another Microsoft Bet
Imagine you're lounging around at a Las Vegas roulette table and a Fat Cat walks up to the table and drops $30,000 worth of chips in front of you. You meekly gaze at your paltry pile of $5 and $10 chips. Soon after settling at the table, Mr. Fat Cat proceeds to put a few hundred bucks on every number and then throws down some more on black, red, odd and even. His goal? He doesn't want to lose. So he bets on everything.
This is Microsoft. They're one of the few companies in the world that doesn't have to carefully mull over their strategic direction. They can simply take all routes. Microsoft has survived and thrived all these years because (a) they're smart (b) they're aggressive and (c) they're in the unique position of being able to bet on everything without putting the entire (or even parts) of the enterprise at risk.
There's one other characteristic worth mentioning: Microsoft rarely gets it right the first time. In fact, they often screw it up. They usually arrive late to the party with their own "Edition" of the latest thing just to make sure their hat is in the ring. And they usually fall short in the first go-round. But they are relentless. And they eventually get it right. And they've learned to stomach the early losses.
Yesterday, Microsoft showed a few of its bets by releasing WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere) and the latest flavor of their Expression series of design tools. In short WPF/E is "is the Microsoft solution for delivering rich, cross-platform, interactive experiences including animation, graphics, audio, and video for the Web and beyond." In short, it's Microsoft's early version of a Flash player. It'll eventually run in Firefox and Mac platforms. It'll leverage a subset of XAML and Javascript. This shouldn't be confused with good'ol WPF - which runs on the Vista desktop (and IE7 I believe) but is built via full blown XAML and C#/.Net.
For the designers out there (interaction designers and otherwise) there's Microsoft Expression Blend (the "blend" I guess meaning the blend between design and development). It's the graphical/visual/markup-editing tool that (sort of) brings this stuff together. It's their version of Flash Professional (sort of) or Flex Builder. Depending on how you look at it. There's a lot flying around here. These pieces somehow play with Visual Studio and Asp.Net and Atlas (their Ajax implementation).
You can't help but draw a parallel between Adobe and Microsoft. A two-way highway with both cars going in opposite directions. Adobe heading to the desktop. Microsoft heading towards the world of quote-unquote "cross-platform." Flash/Flex/Apollo in one corner. WPF/XAML in the other.
There's just one question begging to be asked though: how far would Microsoft go towards truly cross-platform? Would they go as far as delivering a runtime that effectively marginalizes the value of their desktop? Code written for WPF/E won't work on WPF. Microsoft has effectively delivered a platform that is incompatible with itself. I'm sure there are arguments for why this is the case. I'd be interested in hearing them. It'll also be really tough to pierce the loyalty of designers and their tools.
In any case, this is clearly a new arena where the Web, richer experiences and the desktop come together. Adobe and Microsoft seem to be leading the pack with establishing the platforms and tools to light up this new world. From where we're sitting at Arc90, it'll be fun to watch...and play along.