04.11.12 |
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Looking through this list late one night over the weekend, I’m first struck by both the number of repeat directors, and how some of the most repeated and talented in the bunch end up directing both some of the best and worst episodes of the series. Exhibit A: Jennifer Getzinger. She’s directed what I felt was a crazy weak episode, “My Old Kentucky Home” from Season 3. Yet she also directed Season 3 highlight “The Gypsy and the Hobo” and Season 4’s “The Suitcase”, the latter of which has one of my favorite scenes in TV history.
04.11.12 |
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This is a nice win for Spotify, and a huge improvement over their previous embed pages. As a Spotify Premium member myself, I’ll appreciate being able to play tracks and playlists on several music blogs I follow. However, in practice the Play button is more a triumph of marketing over real technological progress; with the full desktop still being the player’s audio source is a disappointment. Furthermore, it could easily frustrate those use to clicking on self contained flash music widgets.
A great solution would grant limited access, like playing one song via embed, followed by a prompt to log in and hook up via the standard app. That’s a potentially tricky technical implementation, but a simple IP check could just register number of plays before presenting the paywall.
04.11.12 |
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I admittedly don’t listen to the Write for Your Life podcast often, but this was an excellent episode. Topic at hand: the best blogging platform for starting out (Tumblr vs. WordPress vs. Blogger) and good blogging philosophies.
04.11.12 |
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Yannick Lejacq, writing for Kill Screen:
Each of these games operates less from a real sense of story than a suggestion of a narrative. Temple Run is little more than an endlessly long expansion of that scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where Harrison Ford runs away from the boulder (except instead of a boulder it’s a bunch of angry spirit-chimps that are chasing after you). Canabalt, by contrast, sort of feels like the early scenes of The Matrix or The War of the Worlds. Something bad is happening and it involves giant evil robots. You’re not sure why you’re running, or where you’re supposed to go. In both, you just keep going. Instead of words, there are only frantic footsteps and the occasional grunt of effort.
Well written, fairly thought provoking essay on the simplicity of both popular iOS games. Yannick also makes a case for the addictive qualities of running, both in game and in real life.
04.11.12 |
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Jean-Louis Gassée:
How long before customers look left, look right, see everyone with the same phone or tablet and start itching for something different? My friend Peter Yared contends that the trend has already started in the UK where the “18-25 class” now favors the smorgasbord of Samsung devices as a relief from the iPhone uniform.
I appreciate what Jean-Louis Gassée is after here but the argument doesn't quite stand up.
Apple's strength derives from its focus, iterating on a few core products endlessly. Multiple iPhone sizes don't mesh with that philosophy.
Besides, the iPhone gets a cosmetic refresh almost every year to keep things interesting. If demand gets high enough, Apple could always crank out a few iPod like color variations alongside the requisite white and black.
04.10.12 |
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Christina Warren, Mashable:
To be clear, I could not be happier for the Instagram team. They earned their success. The service is worth every penny. I’m genuinely glad that the team will get to reap the benefits of its hard work.
And buying Instagram was a great business decision from Facebook’s perspective. As I remarked on Twitter, why try to build a competing photo app when you can just buy the best and most viral?
Still, as a user, I can’t help but wonder: how long before Instagram becomes just another Facebook app? How much time until everything that made the service so special disappears into the ether?
As an early adopter, I’ve watched far too many of my favorite apps and services suffer. They have shut down or evolved into something completely different after being acquired by a bigger company.
04.10.12 |
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Clever, streamlined note taking app from Agile Tortoise. Its speed is really slick; I’m able to write a quick note almost as fast as I tap the icon, and it’s exportability to Markdown really comes in handy for WordPress on the go. With a single action I can easily fire off a message as a tweet in Tweetbot, a nice touch.
Nevertheless, a lack of Dropbox integration is pretty much a deal breaker for me at this point. I can manually copy clipboard contents over to Notesy, but it’s cumbersome and it largely defeats the speed benefit this app has over others. I really liked Ben Brooks’ suggestion on an integration path:
I want Drafts to have a button that I can send the .txt file for the Draft to a folder in my Dropbox. Not every note needs to go there, but I want to be able to send one if needed.
If Drafts gains Dropbox functionality in a later version, I’d probably give it another shot. Then again, my workflow is far more Dropbox centric than probably most. It’s well worth a look for almost anyone else, especially at its very reasonable $0.99 price.
04.10.12 |
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Tech writer Garnett Murray:
[Facebook’s] design sensibilities are minimalistic, but that doesn’t make them any less excellent. The problem is that while they do an excellent job of hitting their desired goals with design and products, they don’t set their goals high enough to begin with.
Exactly. My editorial today was more positive in terms of wins for design and development. Yet Garnett nails more eloquently (and with more force) reservations I touched on near the end of my piece.
04.10.12 |
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Designer Oliver Reichenstein on the redesign of Information Architects:
In the course of simplifying the site, we connected reading time to the scrollbar.
When you scroll down, "Reading Time x Minutes" turns into "Remaining x Minutes" At the end of the page it says "Thank you" and offers the choice to go to Home or to the Blog Article Overview.In order to not disturb the continuity of reading the reading time counter stays hidden if you scroll less than 1 1/2 pages.
This is exactly the kind of obsession the web industry needs. Not for every job or every site, granted, but you need an outlier to change the game.
04.10.12 |
Technology |
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I was initially as shocked as everyone else when I heard the news of Facebook spent $1 billion to pick up Instagram. But then it came together in my mind: Instagram’s purchase is major win for great mobile design, for online products with high engagement and fast code.
None of those things make sense at first glance. Instagram is a photo sharing app without a proven business model or positive revenue. A company of thirteen (!) employees who’s majority share of 30 million plus users are already Facebook members. A social network that at its core isn’t groundbreaking; sharing photos on a wide scale has been done with Flickr since 2004.
But the deal did happen, and there’s there’s several standout lessons here for designers and developers rooted in the reason why:
If you create a product with very high levels of engagement, you can be a threat to some of the largest tech companies out there. Facebook saw people shifting their mobile time away from Facebook to apps like Instagram and wanted in. Instagram just has a certain cache, or ‘stickiness’ with their app. For now at least, when influencers want a ‘cool’ way of sharing photos, Facebook and Flickr often aren’t their first choice. Instagram is.
Why? Great engagement derives from unique, emotionally driven design. Granted, part of Instagram’s engagement comes from marketing and sheer luck. Nevertheless, Instagram’s design is standout. For example, other apps use photo filters, but not with the same range, fun naming convention or ease of use to jump between them; Instagram makes post processing fun. It’s been one and a half years since Instagram’s debut, yet how many other apps can make that same claim?
High engagement levels can be retained with simple, straightforward design. Instagram was one of the first apps to make sharing to multiple social services so damn easy. It doesn’t take many more steps than your typical iPhone shot: capture, pick a filter, pick who to share to and you’re done in three taps.
High engagement is generally maintained only from a quick, responsive app or platform. This is where blazing performance at the development level comes in. Earlier in the year an in-house engineering blog post revealed some of Instagram’s tech under the hood. It’s straightforward, well thought out and was able to scale to 14 million in a year.
Nevertheless, a lot of positives about this deal can’t stop skepticism on my part. I don’t trust Zuckerberg’s claim that sharing with non-Facebook social networks will remain unaffected. Facebook has reneged on its promises repeatedly and likes a tightly controlled ecosystem. I’m thus also worried about the app’s “independent” future long term.
Overall, for a company of Facebook’s size, 1 billion isn’t crazy, “we’re in a bubble” cash. It’s a buy with stellar engagement levels and a mobile weapon to keep away from the other big tech players: Google, Amazon, and Apple. Given the stakes in this arms race between these four companies, don’t be surprised if the numbers only ramp up in upcoming years.