Great piece by Ken Norton of Google Ventures on feature importance isn’t just linear, but is often order-of-magnitude different: Babe Ruth and Feature Lists. Ken provides a clear example of how the most important feature may be way, way more important than the second or third one. Also, though, one thing bothered me a bit […]

Continue Reading: How important is that feature?

Solid piece by Nick Bilton in the New York Times about the trend of flat UI: The Flattening of Design Several thoughts: 1) I’m not convinced that flat UI is a good thing…in my experience it does make UIs seem simpler but often at the expense of visual priority and affordances. Many flat UIs suffer […]

Continue Reading: To flat or not to flat?

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer: (via)

““There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure,”

Robert Scoble, in Steve Ballmer still doesn’t understand social networking:

“When I worked at Microsoft I heard this over and over and over again from various engineers and program managers who STILL haven’t competed effectively with WordPress, Flickr, Skype, YouTube, or any of the other things over the years I’ve heard this “we can build that in a few weeks” kind of arrogant attitude attached to.”

Continue Reading: Ballmer on Facebook: Bunch of Features

The Microsoft Zune and the web site that promotes it are an excellent example of not following The Del.icio.us Lesson as they put social value above personal value. We just don’t get an answer to the question “What’s in it for me?”, and as a result the Zune will most likely continue to fail.

Here is a snippet from the Zune site:

Mama always said to share. Now you have an opportunity to do it with music and photos. With wireless Zune to Zune sharing you can send your favorite tracks and photos to friends.

Picture this: You’re walking down the street. Or you’re in a room with a bunch of friends. Or at a concert. Or at the airport. Or on the bus (you get the picture) and then you whip out your Zune and see all these other Zune devices around that you can choose from. Zap! You’re connected to your best friend and send the new song your band recorded in the garage last weekend. Another friend gets the hilarious podcast your kid brother made at school, plus that song you just downloaded from the Zune Marketplace and can’t get out of your head. And hey, lookee here, your friend wants to send you something that you might like and buy, too.

Best of all, the song you sent isn’t just a 30-second preview­—it’s the whole song! Your friend can sample the song up to three times in three days, flag it on their device and then, if they like it, they can buy it later from Zune Marketplace. It’s all connected.

It’s all connected! Wahoo! Doesn’t it sound like my friends are having more fun than me? Their happiness sounds much more important than mine here.

Continue Reading: Why the Microsoft Zune is Set up to Fail

Last Wednesday I announced my XBox 360 Wireless Controller giveaway. It ends TOMORROW. You have one day left to enter to win! To win, all you have to do is to comment on a blog post. I’ll choose one commenter randomly to send the controller to. Go here for details… (I’m doing this to get […]

Continue Reading: One Day Left

Top-of-mind was just sold for $1.65 Billion dollars. That’s the amount Google paid for the social video site YouTube, which owns the top-of-mind space for the word “video” in the minds of the populace.

When I think of the word “video”, I immediately think of Youtube. When people want to upload “video”, they immediately think of YouTube. When people talk about where they saw the latest episode of the Daily Show, they talk about YouTube. When advertisers think of “video”, it’s all YouTube.

YouTube is what people think about when they think of the word “video”…

Continue Reading: YouTube and the Importance of Top-of-Mind

Luke’s got part 2 of our conversation on design lifecycles up: The Lifecycle of Design: Part 2

In case you missed it, here’s part 1: The Lifecycle of Design: Part 1

Continue Reading: The Lifecycle of Design: Part 2

Alan Foreman, after what was undoubtedly a serious scientific inquiry into the matter, has researched and catalogued the time spent doing modern web design. If you are a designer unsure of where or how to spend your time, this is for you.

Marc Canter

“the integrated DLA platform wars have begun!”

Brady Forrest, organizer of Microsoft Search Champs, the event I just returned from where Microsoft asked a bunch of bloggers/technologists (including quite a few Mac users like me) what we thought of future MS products:

“We don’t want to waste our time getting pats on the back.”