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 up [...]

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 interesting [...]

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 music you uploaded with [...]

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 to the [...]

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 40 [...]

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 hype and [...]

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 numbers. [...]

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 these [...]

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 [...]

In so many (though not all) of my past work experiences there was always this weird dividing line between the people that made the product and the people that told the world about the product. I never understood it. To me the customer’s experience with our company and our software always started at seeing the [...]

Before our start here at Jackson Fish Market, we all worked together across the lake. And the team that Walter and I were on has gone on to work on some cool stuff. We’re clearly incapable of fairness in describing their new offering because frankly, the people on the team are rock stars, and great [...]

I like checking out new startups and their offerings. It’s fun. One in particular that looked interesting was LongJump. Their promise is that they let you build web apps without coding. Neat. I’m always on the lookout to see what company will bring the ease of FileMaker to the next level in the form of [...]

We’ve been playing with different subscription music services in the office. Jenny has a Napster account and Walter has accounts with both Napster and Rhapsody. They’re relatively cheap and they have a reasonably good selection of music. After losing our “Guilty Pleasures” playlist (of which Jenny will post the contents at some point if we’re [...]

So many product offerings (in any category) fall down because there’s a mismatch between what the manufacturer/producer says about their product and the actual product experience. A simple example…

Near our office in Pioneer Square is a soap store. I walked by it a couple of times when I finally noticed a cool retro package of [...]

Last night the entire Jackson Fish Market staff went to the Police concert here in Seattle.
The concert made us feel old. The opening act with Sting’s son on vocals was craptastic. The concert was in a basketball arena making it sub-optimal in terms of sound. Stewart Copeland looks like Christopher Llloyd from Back to [...]

Rohit writes the following:
“If you put the rising number of sites going through redesigns together with the fact that older users will always have adapted to your old interface - you have the New Coke vs. Coke Classic conundrum. For most of these sites, the new version sticks around (unlike Coke), however the necessity [...]

When we first moved into this space down in Pioneer Square in Seattle, one of the first important tasks was determining the nearest best spot for coffee. Not being a coffee person this wasn’t really a priority for me personally, but Jenny and Walter needed their fix. (They’d be blogging this themsleves, but they’re busy [...]

Get On Board is the latest branded software experience to come across our screens. (See our index of branded interactive experiences). Built to support the new movie Evan Almighty (sequel to Bruce Almighty) the site is much closer to our definition of Branded Software than some of the other sites coming out these days. It’s [...]