The Language Of Attention – A Pattern Approach

Bill Scott describes Yahoo as a tribal platform, particuarly with the acquisition of various API-based services such as Flickr and del.icio.us as part of the Yahoo Developer Network. Attention needs to be driven by engaging and relevant interactions to create the loyalty neccessary for successful services. The successful interaction patterns Scott outlines include: Immediacy Directness […]

Blue Chip Products – 2006 Report Card

Joel Spolsky attempts to deconstruct the winning characteristics of of what he terms Blue Chip products (iPods, Julia Roberts etc.). Spolsky hypothesises a ‘Formula’ for good products and services – making people happy, creating an emotional connection and obsessing over aesthetics Reddit.com – the cartoon mascots and karma points creates an emotional bond with the […]

First You Google, But Then What?

Ask and you shall receive (something)…Plum’s Hans Peter Brondmo outlined his views on collecting almost anything, sharing it and then connecting it to others in order to discover. Brondmo sees this as a solution to search results that can overwhelm the user with choice. Plum appears to be a web-based clipboard, where clips can extend […]

When Do We Get The Events We Want

Brian Dear of the Events And Venues Database (EVDB) is on a mission to maximise event discovery. Announcing an event is in essence a flyer or an attempt to focus and gain attention. Initally EVDB was considering either building a portal or platform. Eventually, EVDB decided to build both: Eventful.com – let users share information […]

Rich Internet Applications & The Service-Oriented Client

Adobe/Macromedia’s Kevin Lynch began with a recap of the AJAX rich internet application paradigm and some of its limitations (sockets, cookie storage, vector graphics etc.) before leading into the announcement of a Flash+AJAX web application model – only recently adopted by the AFLAX and Dojo.storage frameworks. Interestingly, Flash is the most widely distributed client in […]

Shut Up! No, *You* Shut Up!

Clay Shirky introduced a pattern language for moderation strategies, using Slashdot as a case study: Freedom’s just another word – with increased freedom to publish, the level of annoyingness increases and mechenisms are required to mitigate increased noise. Slashdot’s defenses – members defend readers from writers by ranking comments on individual posts…around 20% of comments […]

Attention Focussing Strategies

Jon Udell‘s session on Attention Focussing Strategies was framed around four key concepts: Heads, decks and leads – drawn from print publishing metaphors, giving people the abilty to scan information at multiple levels of detail. Active context – resources that are self-updating and queryable, rather than a static list of information (wishlists, feeds, linklists, blogrolls, […]

The Future Of Interfaces Is Multi-Touch

I read about Jeff Han’s work on multi-touch screens just a few days ago, but seeing the technology demonstrated live indicates that a transformative paradigm in UI experiences may be unfolding. The multi-touch screen is essentially a touch screen that responds to simultaneous touches at multiple points on its surface, This enables users to form […]

Simple Bridge Building – Ray Ozzie

Ray Ozzie, founder of Groove Networks and creator of Lotus Notes, now one of Microsoft’s many CTOs demonstrated LiveClipboard. Coincidentally, Ian and I were just last night speculating on a network enabled clipboard that would allow users to copy and paste from other screens to their own. It seems Ozzie’s work on Windows Live has […]

The Internet of Things

Introduced of Cory Doctorow, science-fiction author Bruce Sterling, spoke on the themes of ubiquitous computation. Now based in Belgrade, Sterling continues to blog and write fiction as he observes the rehabilitation of a failed state. The Internet of Things, predicts Sterling, will take around thirty years (as did barcodes) to emerge fully…also predicting that at […]