Jul
21
I’m not quite sure how I came to cross paths with the thoughts of Larry Tesler lately, except to say that in the cacaphony of our wired lives, the Spartan designer deserves to be heard, understood and followed. I especially like the economic parallel which hides beneath it - how we trade, value, exchange and often disregard the scarcest resource (and currency) of all: time.
Tesler’s Law of Conservation of Complexity states that:
Every application must have an inherent amount of irreducible complexity. The only question is who will have to deal with it.
In an interview, Tesler further enumerates on his law:
If a million users each waste a minute a day dealing with complexity that an engineer could have eliminated in a week by making the software a little more complex, you are penalizing the user to make the engineer’s job easier.
Whose time is more important to the success of your business? For mass market software, unless you have a sustainable monopoly position, the customer’s time has to be more important to you than your own.
Whether you fancy yourself as a experience designer, an insurance salesman, a roadie, an entrepreneur, or just an everyday human trying not to suck: there is a priceless lesson here for life and business.
[via ProgrammersParadox]
Jun
23
Okay, I’ve finally had enough — after an unexpected and completely dibilitating hard drive crash (aren’t they all?) this weekend, I have, like all victims overcoming tragedy, decided to pickup the pieces and move on. I am therefore officially making it my goal for 2009 to shift more than two-thirds of my digital existence to the greener pastures of “The Cloud”.
- Goodbye Microsoft Office, hello Google Docs
- Goodbye Quicken, hello Mint
- Goodbye bookmarks, hello Delicious [again]
- Goodbye folders, hello Flickr [exclusively]
- Goodbye iTunes… oh wait :(
IT fanboys may scoff at how quickly I shake off my longheld ties to physical disks and pricey programs, which they will claim to be “more secure”… to which I say:
Anyone willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both. — Benjamin Franklin
Freedom, in this case, is our inalienable right to have our information (and media) at any time, in any place, and displayed on any acceptable device with complete integrity and usefulness; to own this information despite that we do not physically possess it; and to decide one day, on a whim just as impetuous as this one, to move our lives and information from one cloud to another.
“We the people” need a Thomas Payne for the Information Age.
Mar
31
via catbird:
Apparently, Web 3.0 is shaping up to consist of young people regurgitating old Web 1.0 ideas but using Web 2.0 technologies.
At least this helps to explain why there hasn’t been much to get excited about lately, and why I can lose an entire week listening to people talk in circles about last year’s news… like a former high school quarterback recounting a touchdown pass he threw 12 years ago. Thus:
- Human Years = 1:1
- Dog Years = 7:1
- Web Years = 12:1
Sep
3
Anyone working (or investing) in technology would be wise to maintain their friendships beyond the echo chamber — that welcoming false market which demands tomorrow’s today, and can all too easily skew any perspective of the mainstream. The same is true of Hollywood and Washington, of course, but that’s another topic altogether.
A few weeks ago, Union Square’s Brad Burnham noted that “some of the giddy enthusiasm” surrounding the web has waned lately. Along the coastlines, perhaps — there hasn’t been much “hypesteria” lately, outside of X buying Y and, of course, today’s Chrome launch — but I’ve had many conversations with people who are just now catching on to 2006, at best.
The next generation of services will need to have an impact on the real world and the real economy, not just an attention economy driven by self expression and discovery online. These new services will also need to reach real people, many of who use few if any web services today.
— Brad Burnham
So where are we, then? Or, rather, where is everyone else? According to a July 2008 study by Gartner Research, we still have a long way to go before today’s hype gains even a semblance of meaningful mainstream adoption…
I suppose we all just need a bit of patience, and (since I’m not especially patient) a renewed focus on practical innovation that employs technology to serve the “real world”, rather than always looking at it the other way around.
[via TechCrunch]
Aug
20
While Hulu works to bring TV to the web, Yahoo and Intel are hoping to bring the web into to the living room. The “Widget Channel”, announced at the Intel Developer Forum today, will provide a framework for developing applications:
“designed to complement and enhance the traditional TV watching experience and bring content, information and community features available on the Internet within easy reach of the remote control. […] Watch web videos, track your favorite teams or stocks, interact with friends and family, and stay current on news and information by clicking on the compact, interactive apps that sit on top of your normal TV picture.”
In other words: Yahoo’s grand vision for the future of connected devices is accessing Flickr from a different screen? Hmmm…
Sounds lovely; but simply “bringing the internet to TV” is not the answer, anymore than it works the other way around. The difference between them has little to do with the screen canvas at all — and everything to do with the way we choose to experience, interact, and socialize around content. There are merits to be drawn from each, but the “Cinematic Internet” doesn’t appear to be doing anything to live up to its name.
Hopefully this is just a logical entry point to spur developers and manufacturers alike, and upon which bigger, truly visionary ideas can soon be borne… ideas that leverage (in real-time) the best of each medium to augment the overall experience, or perhaps create entirely new forms of entertainment.
Aug
10
More debate on the difference between Hollywood and Silicon Valley in this rant by Kieth Boesky, who articulates the critical difference in each’s perspective of “community”:
Hollywood views engagement as watching a video and community as the people who watch the show coming out at the other end of a pipe, or group of pipes – one to many. They only hear from them when a small percentage decides to write letters, or start an on-line petition.
The Valley views engagement as interaction with the audience via web based tools and forums and community as a network built by its members – many to many community members not only see the content, but interact with it, share it with a friend, impact it and through a social network, build a distribution channel around the content. Their interaction establishes the distribution channel, or “value.”
Boesky further notes that Hollywood is errantly insisting upon “viewing the online world through the lens of traditional media” and becoming fixed on porting linear concepts to smaller screens, without recognizing and addressing the unique opportunities of web/mobile as a medium for storytelling.
You can read the whole piece here: Why Hollywood Agents Just Don’t Get It
