Ideas and Form

Lately, I’ve felt that Twitter and Tumblr are a lot more engaging, and generally a lot cooler, than Facebook. In this case, I’m talking more about the content than the product. While I’m sure this has to do with the relative “insider” nature of the younger services, there’s a fundamental difference in the experiences.

While they’re all “social,” Twitter and Tumblr are personalized consumption environments, whereas Facebook feels more like a public space for everyone you know. You choose what you want on the former, and the latter is a smattering of the thousand people who reach that increasingly-low threshold that is Facebook Friend Status. Of course Tumblr’s cooler, to me: it’s only about things Ilike. 

The beauty of asymmetric following is that you only follow who/what you’re interested in. As obvious as that sounds, it’s not true of the largest of social networks. 

It’s actually an interesting idea: the most engaging social networks may be those that aren’t necessarily the most “social.” Social, in the same way a party is social. What proves to be key is the personal, even private, experience of navigating a social network. 

I recently replaced my no-brand contact lens case with one from Bausch and Lomb. When I used it I noticed that its wells were significantly deeper than those of my old one. I don’t know for sure, but it seems like B&L makes them larger so that people use more solution; chances are, it’s solution that they make. 

While it’s slightly annoying, it’s certainly clever. I got over it quickly, but it got me thinking about the differences between corporate America — the P&Gs of the world — and the tech economy. 

Large, publicly traded corporations in the US are all about optimizing. Every little bit. Even the $2.99 contact case. But the most successful tech companies have the exact opposite mantra: give the product away for free, monetize later, lavish employees, perfect the user experience at all costs. 

It makes sense. We’re still in the early days of the internet and we simply haven’t reached the point of market saturation where squeezing every cent out matters. More important is building huge networks and keeping them engaged. The costs — no matter how expensive they seem – are nominal compared to how they scale. 

Apple’s latest desktop operating system is a big deal. When the company announced Lion, I thought the iPad-inspired enhancements were gimmicky and underwhelming. But after using it for a week, I’ve realized that this latest OS is truly the start of a profound shift from the classic desktop OS to the world of gesture based computing. 

Swiping between full screen apps. Zooming with your fingers on the trackpad. Double tapping the mouse for Mission Control. These things make the experience better. It’s quicker to use, more pleasant, and most importantly, it’s more intuitive. 

We know that iOS represents the most natural computing platform in history. Instead of directing a small black triangle on a screen that’s 12 inches away from your hand, you just tap whatever you want. 

The challenge has always been: how does this control mechanism translate to desktop computing? We know that touchscreen desktops won’t work because our arms will tire from holding them up throughout the day. What Lion shows us is that there can be an intuitive, natural way of using a computer by gesturing – even if you’re not touching the content itself. 

They reversed the direction of mouse scrolling! Crazy! But really, they needed to. With Lion, Apple is trying to change the user experience metaphor that has governed OS design since the 80s. It was a symbolic move, but one, to me, that ties together the new interaction paradigm – you interact with the content, not the OS. 

Lion - at $29 - seems like an incremental upgrade. But I guarantee that it will prove to be one of Apple’s boldest moves in defining how we interact with computers of the future. 

When Apple announced that Twitter would be heavily integrated into the upcoming iOS release, it got me thinking of the future of the company, its network, its platform. 

Twitter is like the telephone system because any person is accessible just by knowing his/her ID. It’s different in that:

• Twitter controls the whole platform
• Twitter uses usernames instead of numbers, which are usually easier to remember
• Tweets are public, even after they’ve been broadcasted to a user’s followers
• A tweet can be sent to an unlimited number of followers
• It’s asynchronous and not a zero-latency conversation

There are clearly other reasons. But, fundamentally, what’s interesting about Twitter is that anyone can follow anyone else (besides for private accounts of course). That’s its magic: Anthony Weiner can send a picture of his crotch to tens of thousands of people from his Blackberry. 

It’s also amazing because it, as a medium, is made for the lowest common denominator of technology. It’s just text – and just 140 characters of it. It was originally designed that way to work via SMS. Which to me is a huge part of why the platform is so powerful. Someone in rural China can have millions of followers but no PC. 

I think the reason why this is so interesting to me is because of how this compares to Facebook’s network and the futures of both companies. Facebook is a closed network. Relationships require consent from both people. One can only friend a person, not a brand or company. To see any person’s photo you must be logged in, even if the photo is public. 

As a result, Facebook is a more intimate network. People post a lot more of their lives on it, and it’s therefore more rich. You can post a photo, video, or link, and they’re formatted as such. Facebook can only be truly consumed on Facebook.com and the company’s apps. 

Apple added Twitter to iOS to be a communication option on the order of email. You tap the arrow button on a photo and you can email it, or tweet it.  

I’ve always thought of Facebook as the future digital identity for everyone on earth. But maybe Twitter can be it. I think we’ve always thought that because Tweets are just 140 characters of text, it can never be as robust a network. After all, “Twitter is just one feature of Facebook.” But the complexity of a platform’s core product may not dictate ubiquity, and value. Telephony isn’t complex, nor is email. 

This is all just food for thought. Facebook is widely considered ten times as valueable as Twitter right now. It has a much better grasp of who my friends are and who I like to talk to. So right now, the valuations make sense. But I don’t think it’s crazy to think about how it can be a huge, telephone-like network.

If anything, Twitter teaches us so much about the design of social products. That’s why I find it so fascinating. 

Three months ago, I walked into a denim shop and a saleswoman explained how every pair in the store — from pale sky blue to deep navy — came from the same indigo-dyed denim. “It’s one of the wonders of the world,” she said. I then bought a pair of raw Levi’s, and have worn them almost everyday since. 

She’s wasn’t exaggerating. Denim is a miraculous material. In the past three months, my jeans have been to business meetings and nightclubs, worn with sneakers and with loafers, as I live and travel and work and play.

They now tell a story. I bought them without a wrinkle, but now they’ve got personality. The back left pocket outlines the dimensions of my wallet. The “honeycombs” (the areas behind my knees) and the “whiskers” (the wrinkles under the front pockets) perfectly articulate the shape of my legs. 

My jeans are, in a sense, a second skin.

If you appreciate timeless design and lasting products, I encourage you to pick up a pair of quality raw denim. Wear them day in and day out. It’s a rewarding, fun experience.

I’ve been taking the train from Philadelphia to New York a lot recently. There are little parts of the experience that feel dated. I’m not talking about old trains or run-down stations, the obvious parts. It’s things like swiping a credit card at the ticket kiosk, having your printed ticket then collected by a guy walking through the train cars, and the idea that customer service people in Penn station are the easiest way to get help with re-bookings and train information. 

It’s clear that the next step for all of this stuff is bringing it to the mobile phone. Walk into the station with the ticket “on your phone,” and then just board the train. RFID gives you access. If you need to rebook or change things about your trip, it’s clear that people won’t be doing this for much longer. A solid app can do most of the work. 

The mobile phone is quickly becoming the absolute digital identity for individuals. It’s going to be the center of your world. But I think the idea of having a personal little widget is a very 20th century idea. I see a world where hardware’s obsolete (at least today’s sense of hardware). I don’t know what that means, but for some reason, holding a piece of metal and glass — one that can be lost, can crash, and can lose battery — feels so 1970s. 

I’ve been looking for the perfect iPhone/Mac to-do solution for years, and I think I’ve finally put something together that works pretty well. I’ve tried Things — it’s perfectly designed but no cloud-sync makes it a no-go for me. Wunderlist has the syncing down, but it’s a poorly made product. I want simple, fast, always-in-sync.

A friend of mine sent over TeuxDeux. I’ve seen it before but didn’t know they have a mobile app. It’s perfect (almost). The iPhone app is simple and quick. The site is too. Really nicely designed. There is no Mac app, but I think I’ve got a usable workaround. 

I have it so that my to-do list (teuxdeux.com/list) opens in my new browser tab. Chrome doesn’t let you set a new-tab URL, but this extension does. It’s working pretty well (yes, that’s a pun) — give it a try. 

If you want to listen to a song on the iPod, or Spotify, you hit it and it plays. If you want to listen to a song on Sonos, or Rhapsody, you hit it and it prompts you with “Play Now” and “Add to Queue.” 

What Apple did here was pretty marvelous (I don’t actually know who invented this navigation scheme, but Apple clearly made it popular). Rather than taking the traditional idea of a jukebox and making it digital, it re-thought this notion of a “queue.” The iPod has no front-facing queue. You click a song and it plays through the current list — whether that’s an album or a playlist. 

On other systems, it’s like “we have to play something, so we’re going to make a play-list, or a queue. When someone wants to listen to something, they can add it to the bottom of this list, or move it to the top.” Sounds fine. But in truth it’s annoying for two reasons.

First, the user has to keep track of this queue in her head. She’s not sure what’s next and she’s constantly thinking about it implicitly. Second, if I want to hear an album, but I want to have it start from the second song, I’d run into trouble. If I hit that song and press “Play Now” it’ll add it to the top of my queue, but the next song is going to be the last thing that was on the top of my queue. And something on a queue from yesterday, or the last time I used the app, is rarely ever relevant today. 

I may prefer this no-queue way of doing things because Apple trained me to do so, but it seems to make so much sense: you don’t have to think about what’s coming next — the app just plays down the current list. Plus, if Apple trained me, it’s trained millions of others, so all new apps should follow that same language. 

This post over at 41latitude has been circulating around the internet. It’s on the readability of Google’s Maps. It’s very interesting, and it really represents the stuff I like to highlight on this blog: clever, thoughtfully created products and services. 

Why is Google’s Maps product easier to read than Yahoo’s or Bing’s?

O’Beirne breaks it down to three elements: a) White outlines surrounding map labels - that block out whatever’s behind them b) “A Greater Number/Diversity of Label Classes” - in other words, there Google has a four-size hiearchy of labels, while the other guys use a three-size one. c) Different label shading - opacity by priority. 

I liked the analysis. You should read it — the included graphics make his case stronger. 

I personally think Bing’s maps are nicer — they aren’t as readable but they’re definitely more aesthetically pleasing. 

But let’s take a step back. This all comes down to simple thinking in designing products. You don’t need to be a PHD in human-computer interaction to add a white outline to map text. Plus — Bing’s product came out way later than Google’s. Knock it off! It just frustrates me that the majority of people who create what we use don’t think like that. Look at Yahoo maps. Pathetic. 

41latitude:

Why Do Google Maps’s City Labels Seem Much More “Readable” Than Those of Its Competitors?

For months, I’ve been trying to figure out why Google Maps’s city labels seem so much more readable than the labels on other mapping sites.

To me, Google’s labels seem to “pop” much more than the other sites’ labels. Major cities also seem to stand out much more. [1] And whenever you’re quickly scanning the maps, the label you’re searching for seems to stand out just a little sooner on Google’s maps.

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(via 41latitude-deactivated20110624)

There’s one reason why some people still prefer Blackberries to iPhones: BBM. Blackberry Messenger, the RIM-exclusive instant messaging platform, is the addictive, amazingly convenient social phenomenon. It’s even changed the way people behave in communicating. Because it shows when a message has been read, it’s hard to ignore people without seeming like a total jerk.

People literally don’t buy the iPhone because they can’t be part of the “exclusive” network. And so there’ve been numerous attempts at creating clones for Apple’s phone. None of them have replaced text messaging nor made a dent in king BBM. But there’s this new app called Kik. It’s made by one of the guys behind RIM’s product. It’s awesome. 

I don’t know why, actually. It’s just really pleasant to use. Slick as could be. Fast.

With a product like this, though, it really comes down to its network. No one’s going to sign up for a messaging service that no one’s using. But the app was released a week ago and it’s exploding. Why? 

I think it’s for two reasons: a) It’s out-of-the-box cross platform. No matter the smartphone you’re on — iPhone, Berry, Android — you can get the client. b) It’s really easy to share the app with friends. Send a mobile-formatted link to friends via SMS, email, Twitter, Facebook. People have a personal incentive to share it, too. If I want to use Kik to instantly talk to my friends, they need to be on it. 

There are a few things that need to be worked out. First off - it’s got no frills, which is good, but I’d like to send attachments. Also, groups are missing.

More important to be addressed, though, is the weird way of adding friends. It does this genius little thing where it scans your phonebook to see who of your friends is using the app, which was actually stolen from competitor WhatsApp. When they join, it messages you. But there’s no way to add them to your contact list without messaging them after. There just seems to be a mix up between the list of current conversations and the user’s contact list. 

Beyond that, I’m just really excited to see BBMers embracing this thing. I think they’re getting sick of their pocket antiques.

Oh, and Kik me - josephcohen.

Earlier in the year, Apple launched iAds, it’s own advertisement platform for the iPhone. This is how Steve Jobs announced it, via TechCrunch:

Developers [of free apps] need to find a way to start making their money. A lot of developers turn to advertising – and we think these current advertisements really suck.

If you look at advertisements on a phone, it’s not like on a desktop. On a desktop, its about search. On mobile, search hasnt happened. People aren’t searching on their phones. People are spending their time in apps

And so they went out and built an ad product. This is one of those things that Apple’s masterfully designed. The ads have been trickling through some apps. I was reading through the NY Times app yesterday and I saw an iAd for the new BMW X3. It wasn’t obtrusive, but just looked really cool.

It was by far the most engaging, entertaining, influential, thought-out ad I’ve ever encountered. You click it and it brings up an intro video. Everything looks gorgeous and crisp — the car, the text, the photos. 

You can then build a car. This is something that’s been done on auto sites for ages now, but it’s so, so much better with touch. Look at the above photos. Instantly, change the color of the interior, the rims, the wood trim. 

Browse photos and videos. Build your dream car. Find a dealer. What more could you want in a mobile app? It’s like a mini app for each advertised product.

First off, I didn’t even know about the new X3 before the ad. I’m now thoroughly familiar with it.  I even know that it’s delivered in two weeks and that it comes with a video of the actual vehicle’s production. It’s also made in America (which apparently is a good thing because this was a key ad point).

Some more photos after the break. Check out the Times app to see some ads. This is the future of advertising, my friends. 

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