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Category: interaction design

Amazon’s MP3 Store Rocks

Published September 26, 2007 by cgerrish

I’m an iPod and iTunes user. While I know how to drag files to a player and manually manage them. I find it easier to let iTunes do the work. The great part about Amazon’s MP3 store is that it integrates seamlessly with iTunes. It does require the download and installation of an application, and for some people that will be a bridge too far. But for those able to overcome that hurdle, if you’re already an Amazon customer, that’s about it.

Find a song or album and download it. It shows up in iTunes. Make a playlist and sync it with your iPhone or just sync it to your iPod. Nice. It’s the beginning of competition in the digital download market. It’s the first serious competition because it works well with Apples products. Some think this is a big problem for Apple, personally I think it’s exactly what Apple needs. They’ve had no competition. Competition will be good for both Amazon and Apple. Perhaps they can show the rest of the industry what the user experience needs to look like.

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Multi-touch Gestures: Copy & Paste

Published September 22, 2007 by cgerrish

The demo is fake, but the proposal for a multi-touch gesture for copy and paste is real. Will users take the time to learn these new gestures? Doug Engelbart thought so, as does Bill Buxton. A little time invested results in a life time of value. It’s the problem of single stroke short hand— or writing with a stylus on a PDA all over again. Graffiti never really caught on, although I kind of liked it. How do we get beyond the keyboard? There are some general functions like “copy and paste” that we need to bring along with us. Ray Ozzie’s Web copy and paste idea seemed very promising, and then it just disappeared. But the key here is “copy and paste” without a mouse or keyboard.

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A Platform for Broadcast Internet

Published September 17, 2007 by cgerrish

Old_Televison

Marc Andreessen writes about the three kinds of internet platform. It’s great to see this conversation in the open, it’s a fundamental change to where applications live.To me the interesting thing about ideas like Web OS and applications that live on the network is the assumption of the network. Today the network isn’t everywhere in any broad sense. There are hotspots, some folks have EVDO, but the network doesn’t follow you around. Of course, depending on who wins the new wireless spectrum auction, this could change radically. Broadcast television goes away possibly to be replaced by broadcast internet with a whole new set of applications.

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NBC Chooses More Strings, iTunes Needs To Become iSafe

Published September 5, 2007 by cgerrish

They’ve ditched Apple and moved to Amazon’s Unbox. Higher prices, more DRM strings on usage— so NBC got what it wanted.

What Amazon doesn’t have is a simple system for online purchase and usage. That’s why iTunes and the iPod are dominant. They make it easy to purchase and use. Amazon makes it easy to buy stuff in boxes, it’s download service has never caught on. One reason is that most people can’t figure out how to get digital files on to their MP3/Video player. Jon Udell explores this theme in his writings on unexplored software idioms. Something that seems very straightforward to long time computer users can be unfathomable to the average user.

Electronic safe

Jason Calacanis’s Mahalo tries bridge that gap to the user in Search. Apple was able to make synching painless for the average user, and that’s what made digital entertainment through the network possible. Dave Winer thinks that synching sucks, but not because it’s hard. He just doesn’t think things need to be in more than one place. So where’s that online safe where I can keep copies of all the digital media that I’ve purchased? It contains all the music, audio books, podcasts, TV shows & movies, software, online art and photos that I legally own. It’s automatically backed up and I can reach it from all kinds of devices wirelessly through a ubiquitous network. My home stereo, car stereo and iPod all access the same music. A connection is established once, and then you’re all set. iTunes could become this.

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