Designing Interactive Products

Aurora

This week Adaptive Path released the first of four concept videos for Aurora, a next-generation browser experience, as part of the Mozilla Labs Concept Series.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Jesse James Garrett and Dan Harrelson of Adaptive Path have been blogging about the creation of Aurora and really giving great insight into the design process. Their posts are definitely worth a read.

That's not Cuil

There's been lots of buzz about Cuil, which is a new search engine that's looking to cut into Google's pie. Unfortunately, my first interaction with the site was not a positive one. When I searched for my name (I assume it's too early to use "cuil" as a verb) the top result was my website, but the photo associated with it was of someone, a real estate agent from the look of the photo, other than me. The worst part of it though is the fact that the photo links to my website.

Why is my home phone so dumb?

We have a cordless phone at home that we don't use very often. Mostly that's because I don't have any numbers programmed into the cordless whereas and I have all my contacts on my iPhone.

So, why hasn't someone made a better cordless phone?

I want a home phone that can sync with the contacts on my Mac via wifi and a small screen with an ipod-style click wheel to navigate -- wouldn't even need a touch screen.

Nooooooooo!!!!!!

Update: A truly wonderful Genius at the downtown SF Apple Store replaced my iPhone. Hooray!

I was here with the rest of the Movable Type team at the Six Apart offices late last night for the release of MT4 (I'll post about that separately). I was walking back into the conference room where we had our 'war room' set up and I bumped into the table. I didn't think much about it until I realized my iPhone was in my pocket. I took it out and -- horror of horrors -- the glass was cracked. I let out an expletive that can't be repeated here. It was a tough way to end a long day.

I'm hoping that Apple will replace it, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

The switch to the iPhone

I bought an iPhone a few days ago and I have to say that it's an impressive little device. The thing that really makes the difference is the browser. For example, when I receive an email with a link to a web page I know that I can just click on it and go check it out directly on the phone. That's something I never did on my Blackberry Pearl.

The application I'd like to see added to the home screen (aside from IM) is a sports tracker where you could see the day's scores for your favorite teams. Blue Flavor has partially addressed that with their baseball Leaflet app.