iToldYouSo
Posted on September 13th, 2006
Apple has pre-announced their TV-integration product, tentatively named iTV.
This is exactly what I’ve predicted the long-rumored “Asteroid” product to be. Since Apple embraced video on the iPod it’s been a simple conclusion that Airport Express and Front Row would end up in a targeted device. Lately I wondered if they were going to simply produce a Mac Mini HD, but I’m glad to see they understand that living room media presentation is a very specialized (yet common) need.
An important part of this announcement seems to be overlooked: this is not a Mac OS X computer. Unlike Microsoft, Apple is not a software company and is more than happy to build a future of personal media management based on a collection of specialized devices. AAPL shareholders should rejoice that the calls for a split between the hardware and software divisions of Apple were ignored, and that the company clearly understands that they need to be more than a PC manufacturer.
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Good UI sighting
Posted on May 22nd, 2006
Technorati has a wonderful solution for shielding users from accidental destructive action: offer an undo link along with the response message:
This is much less disruptive than an “are you sure?” dialog, which are often ignored by confirmation fatigued users. It may seem too subtle, but designers are already tasked with tastefully drawing attention to response messages, and a user that’s just made a mistake will be willing to invest a few seconds of attention.
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OpenID has it right
Posted on April 6th, 2006
There has been much ado over the last year about identity. Most of the early plays were centralized thinly-veiled attempts to own your identity. Even many of the 2.0 systems depend on the solvency of a managing organization. SAML is a big heavy beast as you might expect from a committee.
So, I was very excited in January of 2005 to see LID. I set out to make my site compliant. I started by writing a server, as I needed a LID URL for testing. It quickly became apparent, though, that reusing an already-dynamic URL would require I modify existing request-handling code. At that time, I was using SnipSnap and the project was dormant and not very extensible, so sharing my work would require forking the codebase.
It is ridiculous, I concluded, that I should even have such a dilemma, why can’t I just reference the LID server URL from my published, friendly one? So I queried Johannes Ernst:
I find it a bit unwieldy to have the LID server acting as a filter for a URL otherwise served by other applications. I would like to understand why the spec doesn’t either postfix the URL (e.g. “http://www.example.com/~me/lid/”) or always begin the querystring with a parameter that can be used for filtering (e.g. ?lid&help=help”). (I don’t want to simply use http://phobia.com/lid/, as I think the re-use of web URLs is an appealing attribute of LID.)
He responded by pointing me to a rationalization of using your “real” URL which didn’t really answer my question, ignored my acknowledgement of same, and made it clear he just didn’t see why I might be annoyed that his spec basically asserts “we hereby claim a set of querystring parameters in the name of NetMesh!”
So, I just lost interest and decided to give the market more time to find a solution. A year later, and along comes OpenID, which has this to say about LID:
Assumes that identity URLs are dynamic documents that can handle fancy URL parameters. Not true in real life, which is key for adoption.
Amen, brother. The tremendous interest a decoupled approach has garnered has even convinced Johannes that even OpenID isn’t abstract enough, and we really need more redirection so everyone can still have their favorite spec. Whatever. I’ll be looking to comply with OpenID soon.
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Push, schmush
Posted on March 31st, 2006
It seems a foregone conclusion that RSS marketing is poised to take off. I remain a bit skeptical about the uptake rate of Joe User to a brand new “not browsing, not email” medium.
Nonetheless, I believe it’s inevitable. Some fun approaches are surfacing, but perhaps more important are the more mundane applications that will introduce feeds to new audiences.
So, as the current email-dominated marketing industry gives up trying to elbow spammers aside and embraces “pull” marketing, FeedBurner is uniquely positioned to grow by leaps and bounds. They only need to recognize the value they can provide to marketers-as-publishers rather than by selling space within other publishers’ feeds before the email push vendors get there and add feed management to their portfolios.
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Billiken hauntings
Posted on March 27th, 2006
I’ve spent most of my academic life surrounded by Billikens, at University and high school. It’s easy to consider the fellow a Saint Louis phenomenon, but then he pops up in underground Seattle.
Researching a new digital camera, I was quite surprised to find him (even labeled) the centerpiece of a demonstration picture in Japan. Wikipedia is kind enough to explain: naturally Billiken is enshrined throughout Japan. Of course, the best summary of Billiken’s life is found at a toy museum in Arkansas.
Sometimes the whole planet seems too small.
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