.oO Tailwind

Nearly 2 years ago here at LBi, we started working with Multimap to redesign their public .com web property.

It was time for their loved, but ageing raster-map offering to be dragged inline with, then new and innovative, Google’s ’slippy’ Maps.

With a raft of new features including drag, zoom, pan, hybrid view,all stuff we take for granted now, we set about defining a sharpened mapping proposition that worked for both Multimap users and advertisers.

It was a brilliant project, great fun, hard work and really quite challenging. The guys at Multimap (which sold to Microsoft in December last year) were all smart cookies and pleasure to work with. Personally I see it as one of the triumphs of the team I work in here at LBi. Not only was it great solution, it was a great learning experience and those two things make for great projects. Certainly satisfactory ones.

Stephen Barber was, and still is, ace on this project. Will Bloor was his usual unremitting creative self, Peter Jupp smashed the design and Mike McIntyre and Gavin Edwards aced some complex interaction and James Norton provided some wonderful interface development. It was also a pleasure to see Lorenzo in action, which doesn’t happen nearly enough for some of us here at LBi.

Well, enough spouting from me. Multimap.com has just been named as an Honoree in the Service category at this years Webby awards.

This is no mean feat as only the best 15% of submissions attain the accolade and this from a pot of nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 US states and over 60 countries.

Multimap is now owned by Microsoft, so expect to start using it a lot more as it integrates into all their properties. Exciting stuff indeed.

The guys I worked with on this project were:

• Stephen Barber
• Will Bloor
• Peter Jupp
• Mike Mcintyre
• Dave Dunlop
• Lorenzo Wood
• Darren Gerry
• Gavin Edwards
• Phil WHitehouse
• James Norton
• Marcus Alexander
• Suzanne Chapman
• Claire Freund

Amazon’s new eBook device the ‘Kindle’ was released this week.

I find this an interesting one.

It was very well covered yesterday on lots and lots of blogs with pretty much everyone saying it’s rubbish. The 400 or so reviews on the Amazon page are largely negative too, this is an interesting point in itself for Amazon.

Here is a video of the out-of-box experience as captured by Robert Scobble:

The packaging looks okay, quite cute for it to come in a ‘book’.

Here is a video of using it and experiencing some issues

I was watching the Amazon demo thinking things like ‘Wouldn’t it be good if you could look-up words as you read. Oh, it does’, ‘Wouldn’t it be good if it wasn’t based on wi-fi hotspots. Oh, it isn’t.’ And so on…

Featurewise, it’s quite nice. It ticks a few boxes and for this reason Amazon will shift a few I’m sure.

Then I thought about the product design and decided that it’s a lame dog. It has some weird, flimsy, asymmetrical form that looks a little like James Bond’s underwater Lotus Esprit.. A little 80s.

Kindle

Lotus Esprit

The interaction looks far too complicated and it smacks of ‘get it to market quick’. It could have been soooooo much better, so much more desirable, so much easier to use. Also it seems that the interaction itself is awkward, scrolling up and down aligning a little cursor with menu commands rather than selecting them.

However I am a fan of the electronic paper screen, it’s just a shame it couldn’t be tough screen, but then that would defeat the point right?

But this isn’t the problem I se with this device.

My main reasons this won’t be the ‘next big thing’

• People love books. A bookshelf says a million things about its owner and people love the tactility of paper, the romance of curling up under a reading lamp in a comfy chair and losing themselves.

  The books we read represent us in some way, they have ‘self-expressive benefits’ to quote ‘Aaker’. To have read, own and display works by Shakespeare, Brontë and Dickens says something about the individual. The collection of books one has says something about the owner. Why else would we all have bookshelves? Okay, so they are practical, but they could easily be hidden.

  The same goes for newspapers. It brands an individual to be seen reading the FT, The Independent, The Guardian, The Sun, The Daily Mirror.

• It has DRM and apparently spies on you . Has Amazon learned nothing? You can’t ‘lend’ books. PEOPLE LOVE LENDING BOOKS!
• The product design sucks and the interaction is a little fussy. Before iPod, listening to music, changing track, albums and artists etc was a little less-than-slick. iPod made it slick. The Kindle flashes as you do things. HOW ANNOYING! This is not slick. It’s slow.

  You have to pay for blogs if you download them but can browse them in the web browser for free. Weird.

• People don’t consume books like they do music. With music you flit between things. The Kindle can’t ‘do an iPod’ which changed the way we listened to music. It broke the CD model. The Kindle has nothing to break, no stranglehold to release.
• People don’t want another device in their bag. “Keys check, wallet check, phone check, blackberry check, laptop check, kindle…? Sod it I have my phone/blackberry/laptop”

The name Kindle is rubbish.

It’s exciting because:

• It’s a very cheap mobile bookshop
• The screen is a great step forward
• It has the potential to change the way [some] people read

Sure some will fly of the shelves, but at $400 it’s simply too much for £50 man. People will offset the amount of books they read and think it’s not worth it.

It appeal to the niche. The tech geeks, the academics but it won’t light the fire for my younger brother. As one reviewers says:

“If you travel a lot, or require rapid and accurate access to references (as I do), the Kindle is definitely soon to be a necessity. I am a medical student, and I loaded an entire medical library onto the one I’ve been beta testing”

Having said all this, I might get one… For research purposes of course.

Quick one this morning as I’m just about to leave the house to buy my sister a birthday present (too much information).

Two things, firstly Google is planning to buy Panaramio the geo-tagging photo service that you often see in Google Earth. It’s curious to me that they’re planning to buy Panaramio rather than build geo-tagging functionality into Picasa.

Very strange.

Also, check out the Street Level features now available in major US cities on Google Maps.

You can now zoom down to street level and drag/pan/zoom your way along the street and see building fronts all the way. Zoom in and you can even read signs.

This is cool and it’s interesting to think where this might go when you consider the Panaramio purchase. These pictures in Street Level are obviously bespoke, geo-tagged shots commissioned by Google. But Panaramio opens the doors to user generated content filling the gaps.

I can’t see Google paying for the shots in my home town, so maybe UGC via Panaramio will will that gap.

The gap between online mapping services and 3D virtual globes continues to fuzz.

[Xposted: Frankandpat]

I caught this posting over at the official Google blog, you can now view sunsets from around the world simply by switching on the Sunrise Earth layer within the Discover Networks list.

from the Google blog:

‘Many of us aren’t lucky enough to experience one of nature’s most glorious sights—the beauty of the sunrise—every day, let alone on demand. That is, until today. Now there’s a Google Earth layer that brings the sun’s ascent right to your computer screen, and Google Earth aficionados can also see video vignettes drawn from Discovery HD Theater’s “Sunrise Earth” program’

Go check it out, it rocks my disco. Watch the sunrise at Stonehenge, in the rice fields of China or at the Mayan temples.

Hello. How are you doing? It’s been a while hasn’t it?

I hope you all had great Christmases and I apologise for being away for so long, Januray has been the month that never was. Where did it go? How warm was it?

Anyway, I was shown this ‘thing‘ the other day that reminded me that I should never be too busy for my blog and that I started it with a view to sharing wonderful things.

The Delicious library is a piece of software that you download and it allows you to use your iSight (or ugly usb peripheral if you’re not on a Mac) as a barcode scanner. Hold up a book in front of it, show it he bardcode and Delicious Library will find the ISBN information from Amazon and add the book and an image of it to your virtual shelf. ALl the useful and interesting book information is drawn down from Amazon and it employs that iTunes icon that suggestes ‘buy more from this person’. It’s amazing how subtle that little arrow thing is, yet out of the context of iTunes it still works.

Anyway, here is a screenshot for you:

You can use it to scan music and DVDs too.

Wow. Bonkers.

I love it when stuff like this works. It’s magic!

To use it in full costs $40 which is a MASSIVE shame, but the demo gives you 25 imports, which for my money is not enough to get you hooked. Personally I think this sort of thing should be provided free by Amazon. It’s a fantastic way to build up a better undestanding of your customer base based on tapping into the inate human desire to log things, record them and share them of course!

I have this personal issue where I often ask people to buy me books or films for birthdays and Christmas etc. But they never know what I have and don’t have, this would be great for that, its a far nicer way to browse what I have and view my Wish List.

Come on Amazon, buy up and distribute this sucker!

During my day I stray upon, or I am sent lots of links to cool and interesting things. So I thought that I’d start posting the good ones here.

I’ll try to do this on a weekly basis to keep the interest up for you and promise to cover interesting products, websites, business initiatives, technology and whatever else comes my way.

I apologise not, for the odd breakdancing clip. None today though I’m afraid.

Nominees for the 2006 weblog award - Not this year methinks.

I’ve just migrated from my old G4 Powerbook with Starving Hamsters to a shiny new super-fast Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, which I have to say was an incredibly easy experience.

I was kinda worried that setting up my new machine would take a while, to copy over all my data and to set-up all my widgets, plugins, apps etc but it was lickity split quick and altogether a very pleasant experience.

That said, you always ‘lose’ a few things on the way and I am gutted to have lost my FlickrExport plugin from iPhoto.

I had this little plugin that gave me an extra tab on the iPhoto Export dialogue that hooked me up to Flickr. It was great because it allowed me to add tags, descriptions, create photosets, define privacy settings etc and it was free.

I went to download a new version from Sourceforge and discovered that they want £12 for it!!!!

£12?

For a plugin?

My God. You are kidding right?

No..?

If it was a couple of quid I’d have bought it but I can’t help thinking this is a bit out of line. I appreciate that the guy needs paying and I’d gladly do so for such a useful tool but this price is ridiculous especially on top of a Flickr Pro license.

I’m held to ransom!

I have no choice but to scour the web for an alternative so if anyone sees anything…holler!

Wow - has it really been that long since I posted?

Cripes that’s not good bloging practice.

What is it they say? Post every four days to sustain interest? Oh well, if you are still here, thanks for not leaving and turning the lights out.

the truth is my daughter has not been so well lately and we’ve been suffering the twilight awakenings. Those with children will know what I mean. Mmmm 2 then 3 then 4 then 5 am. Oh then up for work at 6!

Joy.

I’m also in the throws of a pitch just now so I have a stack load o’ stuff on top of my day job all along with the added loveliness of annual appraisal.

Either-way you’re not here to hear me vent my spleen are you?

No. Thought not.

But before I forget, a quick congratulations to Carl (an old University mate) who’s recently become a father. Welcome to the club fella! Enjoy!

Blackberry Crackberry
So, I’ve had my little Blackberry for over 2 weeks now and the jury have a verdict.

All round good wholesome stuff.

I had various fears about being constantly contactable and turning into one of those ‘huh? what did you say?’ idiots, which I think I’ve avoided (please advise if not). Instead I’m able to bat away the unnecessary stuff with ease and drill into the more important emails as and when required.

Of course the real problem is information saturation, I simply receive too much. This is further compounded by poorly written prose that buries points and hides actions and questions.

However, my little Blackberry has helped me prioritise my email, the only gripe I have is that I seem to receive lots more spam. This is because my Outlook filters are applied at the desktop on my Mac and so I don’t have the same spam protection on my Blackberry.

No, I’m happy ‘how I am’ thanks you and while your offer of cash from Nigeria is tempting…again…no thanks. Oh and the watch, stock options, Viagra etc…? You can keep those too.

The calendar is a God-save as it stays up-to-date which my synced phone didn’t an the fact that I can send sms messages and make phone calls is also quite rad.

Browsing the web is rubbish, though blogs obviously work well which is great.

The UI takes some getting used to though, but you soon teach your thumb to work the wheel and widdle its way round the keyboard soon enough. You discover movements that you didn’t know you had - just watch a seasoned ‘Crackhead’ and you’ll see what I mean.

I’m sure its not doing my Bass playing any good though - the thumb movements are unnatural.

I wonder if they dish out black belts for this stuff, they should do for phones:

There’s a bunch of services on the web nowadays that are targeted at introducing people to new music. What with the advent of my own musical saturation (some 60Gb in my pocket right now) and juggling listening to music and Podcasts of varying nature, finding new tracks has become quite a task, particularly as I’m one of the most time-poor of the time-poor. Kids. Pah!There simply isn’t time anymore to go to gigs, clubs, listen to various radio stations.

That is until you actually start investing some time in some of the great services that are available. That said, there are still some fundamentals missing from the overall ‘Service Design’ of these services but we’re on our way.

I’ve been investing my time in using Last.FM as I know that it’s one of those services that only has value once you’ve used it for a period of time. There are a number of these things out there, Last.FM, Pandora, MOG etc..

For those of you who don’t know what Last.FM is you can view my Last.FM profile. The aim of the service is to help you discover new music via your current listening patterns.

The service utilises the ‘Recently Played’ playlist from your iPod and/or iTunes player (of course it works for those Windowy type things too on Windows Media Player). It creates a number of different charts based on your behaviour, most listened this week, ever etc…

Then it does 3 things to try and recommend you new music. Firstly it gives you ‘Neighbours’ or people with similar listening habits, I’ve been a Neighbour with a guy from Scandinavia called TipOne for ages now as we have quite similar tastes in music. I can look into my neighbour profiles and manually look fro artists that I haven’t heard of in their charts. Chances are, I might like something if I can be bothered to sit there listening to it.

Then there is the ‘Recommended’ section of your homepage where Last.FM places things you might like, which personally I always ignore, forget to look at and when I have it’s been a rubbish suggestion.

I mean Kasabian - me…? Have a word with yourself.

Then there is the Last.FM Player which I think is AWESOME and may end up costing me lots of money. I can listen to a variety of radio stations based on my habits. ‘Recommendation Radio’ does just exactly that, it plays a constant stream of things I might like. I can tell it ‘No, skip this’ or ‘Yay, love it’ and it will continue to filter accordingly.

It has all the usual stuff you’d expect, tagging etc (though this has only become easy for mac users in the last player update - well done Last.FM).

I’m finding new stuff all the time using this player which is cool - theor problem is, I go elsewhere to buy it as the buying experience is more integrated, sorry chaps.

Another slight issue with these services is that you have to use them for a while before they start showing you any benefit because you have to build up your habits. I think they should try and make use of your historical data because it only starts building your profile from the day you subscribe, yet there is 5 years worth of usage on my iPod and in my iTunes.

They could seek to introduce

Come on Last.FM this is obvious isn’t it?

Then there is Pandora, the front end of the Music Genome Project. They claim to have spent on average 30 minutes deconstructing over 10,000 tracks into over 400 attributes. They mark up the musical DNA track-by-track against facets such as tempo, vocal tone, arrangement, composition, instruments used, genre, etc.

In-fact, I can’t do their attributes any real justice sat here on the train on the way into work - they really are complex and detailed and herein lies the power of the service. Each track is analysed in the truest sense of the term, unlike comparable services who may use broad relationships between artists, record labels, genres, albums and tracks - George Clinton is Similar to James Brown. Pandora compares the DNA of each track.

I’ve always found this a limitation of the Gracenote CD DB ( a central repository that defines what classification/genre music belongs too), it’s generally always at an album level, yet many albums I have are mutliple genre and not everything outside ‘Western Culture’ is called ‘World Music’.

With Pandora, you sit there and listen to the player and filter tracks out as you feel it. The profile you develop is based on what you like and what you don’t like. I wonder how much serendipity they throw in?

I mean, just because I always listen to hiphop, it doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t like some Indie?

Lastly, there is Mog. From what I gather so far, Mog is just like Last.FM and as I haven’t used it yet, I can’t really qualify it. Other than to say, what I find interesting about these type of services, Flickr, Last.FM, iTunes, iPhoto even, is that the more time I invest in using them, the more tied to the service I have to become.

My inclination to trial Mog is inhibited by the fact that I’ve already started dealing with Last.FM and I can see no easy way to transfer or make use of this data.

They own my metadata.

I’m locked in, unless I can easily get out.

Which I can’t.

There’s a tip for service designers, make sure migration from existing services is possible because though your shiny new photoblogging tool might kick Flickr into touch, I’ve spent so much time building my profile, moving is not desirable. Even if it’s better.

Hi - and sorry for being away for ages. I’ve had one of those months where everything seems to be happening at the same time, lots of client work, conferences abroad, company merger, freelance work, new baby at home, 3 birthday parties (myself, and my two daughters) and sadly a family loss.

So anyway, I’ve not long got back from the Euro IA conference held in Berlin where I was a speaker and my colleagues were presenting posters. I ran a workshop session with 200 people with a colleague of mine (Jason Mesut) and the others had posters up on:

• Agile User Experience Design - Andy Braxton, Matt Shannon
• Using Comics to describe holistic user experiences - putting the Zap & the Pow into User Experience - Stephen Barber, Jewell Niccolls
• Creating the Perfect Client - Jason Mesut, Iain Hinchliffe, Bersi Kueper
• Design Patterns in Practice - Natalaie Currant, Sarah Morris

Our workshop was called ‘Wicked Workshops’ and we did an energetic session on how best to prepare and frame a workshop session. The aim wasn’t to stand there and bestow a whole host of workshopping techniques on an audience after lunch on a Sunday (man - could there be a more difficult time to run a workshop?). No, we introduced people to the concept of EPIC-Fun.

Our view is that ALL workshops, neé, meetings should be EPIC-fun. And anyone who knows anything about any good business tools, knows that they all need an accronym (yes - in jest):

• E - Engaging
• P - Practical
• I - Inclusive
• C - Credible
• Fun - well, what do you think?

I’m not going to duplicate the content over here as we set-up a blog to discuss our framework afterwards and it is over on Blogger.

Please feel free to join in the discussion and give us your view of what constitutes a ‘Wicked Workshop’.

BTW - I hate Blogger.

..and BTW again, I’m SO not an IA! I’ll summise my thoughts on the conference on Monday.