Check out Anita Hart’s awesome sketchnotes from my Web 2.0 Expo talk on aesthetics in software. Thanks for taking such “expressive” notes Anita!

We love making software with incredible attention to detail. I’m not saying we always succeed, but we certainly try. And there’s nothing we love better than using software made by people with the same values. When we needed an e-mail service awhile ago we ended up with some white label piece of crap whose name [...]

There is a simple lesson that all conferences should learn from TED. It’s not to charge thousands of dollars. It’s not to bring celebrities to your conference. And it’s not to only have one speaker at a time. Those may or may not be good things to emulate, but they’re not the most important lesson [...]

Hi Dell folks: I have a monitor I purchased from you awhile ago. The power button is busted. All my other Dell products perform admirably, so while this is irritating, I wasn’t too upset. However, after dealing with your customer service organization for the last hour I am on the verge of killing myself. A [...]

One of the designers of Magic the card game recently got married. He blogs about it in awesome detail. Wouldn’t you know that he and his bride decided to have a super detailed themed wedding. Their theme? Games and puzzles. Whether their theme resonates with you or not you can’t help but love the amount [...]

I admit it. This weekend I attended the 2008 BrickCon conference targeted at Adult Lego Hobbyists (ALHs). The conference lasted for essentially three full days from Friday to Sunday. I even took off work on Friday. Super nerdy? Yes. But before you judge… hear my story. I always loved Lego as a kid. What’s not [...]

Yesterday I posted a link to my “review” of a really crappy website for the folks at imediaconnection. My original writeup lauded an app I use all the time. While they were looking for criticism, I think my original post is worth publishing as the folks at Less Accounting are doing a great job. Here [...]

The folks at imediaconection were nice enough to ask me for a writeup of my impressions of a financial site. After first writing up a positive post, they sent some choices that had a lot more “potential” for criticism. And by “potential” I mean, they sucked. Here’s the opening paragraph: “The mortgage crisis has affected [...]

Which is more complicated — using a personal computer or driving a car? For driving, we give you lessons and make you take a test to confirm you know how not to get yourself (or others) in trouble. While the repercussions of using a personal computer improperly are not as dire, we dump you in, [...]

Last year, when we finished building They’re Beautiful! we started thinking about what to build next. I don’t know how many software projects are started out of anger, but Invitastic was definitely one of them. We all shared a deep dislike for eVite. And the focusing moment for us was the e-mail reminder eVite sends [...]

My first reaction to this situation is that most folks who make software for a living will have steady employment for a long long time. Here’s the situation. I am looking for a website to use to share my photos with my family. I have the following preferences: I want to background sync my files [...]

This game is called Crayon Physics Deluxe. I can’t describe it better than Austin Grossman did on (excellent new Gawker site) i09. It’s essentially a “magic book”. Watch all the way through. Every new scenario continues to amaze. With stuff like this still being invented we haven’t even scratched the surface of what kind of [...]

I attended the first Java One conference back in 1995. Anyone who was in the industry at the time will remember the excited throngs (at the conference and in the industry) getting all lathered up over all things Java. (They gave out super cool mini Leatherman knives with the Java logo. The TSA now owns [...]

I don’t know what it is that stopped me from getting a Nabaztag cause despite it’s non-obvious usefulness I could use an internet connected customizable plastic rabbit that can “sniff” RFID tags. (Note to readers, be careful searching for “rabbit internet device”. The first Google ad is not a nabaztag.) In fact, I’m psyched for [...]

Awhile ago I wrote about the music service I would love (but doesn’t exist). It still doesn’t but I was reading about lala.com and realized it might just do the trick. Lala claims to: let you upload your whole catalog of mp3s let you listen to your music anywhere there’s a web browser sync the [...]

I know that everyone’s a critic. And I also know that it’s very hard for successful pieces of software to fundamentally change their user interface. That said, I can’t help but feel that Amazon’s new homepage and main navigation user interface is a step backwards. I have no doubt they’ve tested it endlessly, and triple [...]

A common feature on every blog you see is a pair of links at the bottom of the page that let you move forward and backward in the stream of posts. Typically on the first page it’s just one link to previous entries. But on the second page there is a link for previous entries [...]

I’m a pretty regular user of both Firefox and IE on Vista. It helps to run both so I can test the results produced my meager CSS skills. I’ve noticed that there’s a few things I’d really like each browser to steal from the other. Firefox please copy the fact that IE: creates new tabs [...]

I love to learn about all the little things that go into creative pieces that you may not realize are there. When it comes to high quality creative expression I have found that there’s always more that goes into it than most people realize. Fans and connoisseurs are usually the folks who take the time [...]

Check out the Spy Museum — a privately owned museum in DC. The museum is cool because, well, it’s filled with spy stuff. What’s interesting about it is that it’s privately owned. “The Malrite Company, developer of the International Spy Museum, is the successor to Malrite Communications Group Inc. founded in 1956. For more than [...]

I recently got the following mail from the folks at starwarsshop.com: Dear Hillel, As you have likely heard, the title to the highly anticipated Indiana Jones IV movie has been unveiled: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As with Indiana Jones movie titles in the past, this one has generated a lot [...]

How many ways do I need to navigate through an article on the Boston Globe’s website? Apparently at least three according to the folks at Boston.com. Never mind the point that these artificial page breaks serve no purpose other than to generate more page views which don’t really benefit advertisers, and just pad the Globe’s [...]

Photo by Randy Stewart. You may think this is a horrible reinforcement of gender-specific stereotypes. You may think this is a horrible waste of money. You may think it’s great. I’m not saying that we’re flying our four-year-old princess-crazed daughter across the country to do this stuff, but I am fascinated by the entire enterprise. [...]

My friend Steve pointed me this morning to a site brought to you by the nice folks at Perrier called Show Me Sexier. You get to the site and there’s this cute animated cartoon about a guy choosing an aftershave (I thought people stopped doing that in the 70′s) and sprinkling himself with Perrier and [...]

Just saw the third installment of the Bourne series. Aside from some nauseating camerawork early on, and some moments where the lead character walks away unhurt from crashes that invite disbelief even from an eager action movie audience, the movie was good. What was lacking though was the user interfaces presented in the movie. Usually [...]

As with most parents I have a strong sense of responsibility for making sure my kids are exposed to as many cool things as possible so as they get older the world is their oyster and not overwhelming, scary, and unknown. Giving them music lessons (my six-year-old son plays the drums, and my four-year-old daughter [...]

We’re happy to see Tafiti getting such a nice reception across the net. In general there are lots of good comments as well as excellent suggestions on how to make it even better. One thing in particular that we noticed was people commenting on the tree view. The comments have ranged from the “wow” variety [...]

In addition to working on our own offerings, periodically we work with key partners to help them deliver new software experiences. When we work with partners we look for opportunities where we can inject some of our particular brand of user experience value as well as our technical expertise. We’re kind of picky and ultimately [...]

Unfortunately, there are some products we use that have holes in them that their maker simply can’t fill (for business or technological reasons). Right now the music subscription services are in that situation. In comparing them recently I found that Rhapsody and Napster both claim over 3 million songs in their libraries but both have [...]