When Interfaces Don't Work

I've already commented on my thoughts on the Google Deskbar's user interface and human being's user interface. My comment in the last blog about the 3D Modeler interface reminded me of a recent piece of technology that also failed the interface test.

Scoble recommended Pandora... and he's absolutely right. It's just great. I use it mostly for dance music, as other types of music I prefer to hear the entire album as the artist intended, rather than single cuts. But the real problem is that it's sitting in a browser. Terrible! It needs to be a nice rich client that can sit on your desktop and persist long beyond a browser session. Does it really make sense that I want the music to stop just because I close my browser? No!

Layouts of Famous Buildings

Caught this on Boing Boing

Boy this is cool. As I've mentioned before, what I'd really like to see is something like this but for cities with simulations... who wouldn't like to take a shot at redesigning their city to reduce traffic? Any how, a particularly cool thing is how it's totally readable in 3D modeling apps, which really is the best interface for them. Very nice!

MSN is changing the way I live

I'm telling you, this is one of the first times that new technology has so profoundly changed daily life for me so quickly in a long time. Both of them come thanks to MSN.

The first revolves around the upcoming PDC. I was trying to figure out what hotel to stay at when I went to the LA convention center. I went to Virtual Earth, and typed in Los Angeles Convention center. A link comes up. Then I type Hotel. Within 20 seconds I can see every hotel in the area and immediately judge which ones I want to go see. The best part is that attached to each of the links is the address and phone number! This simply could not be easier (unless, i suppose, they had pre-defined links listed for indicating what other people had followed up their search with...). Check it out!

The second comes from the new search functionality on MSN Mobile. Maybe not my MOST hated thing about cell phones (but certainly up there) is the $1.00 that 411 on a cell phone costs. I have the Internet, this is absurd! With MSN Mobile, from my phone, I go to http://mobile.msn.com/search/default.aspx (already set as a favorite). I type a word, and my address, and it looks up all the items in the area, displaying the address, phone number and distance. Awesome! But even better, it SAVES my address, so I never need to type that again. Oh, now that is great. No more 411 for me... EVER.

This is also the first time I think I can unequivocally say that MSN beat Google. Yes, I'm aware of Google maps and Mobile.Google.com, but they lose in a head-to-head for the following reasons. Google maps doesn't (to my knowledge) let you overlay one search on top of the next search, and though the scrolling is nice, it doesn't have anywhere near the mouse integration (on the scroll wheel for example) that Virtual Earth does. Second, Mobile.Google is fine, but it doesn't save your location on your phone, which I view as CRITICAL considering I want to type in as little as possible. The only other thing that catches my eye is that it's kind of a weird URL... mobile.google.com/local instead of mobile.msn.com/search ... this is admittedly a minor point, since I'll probably set a favorite anyway. Both of you should remember who I am and my last 5 searches too... again, help me type less!

Great post on reviews at MS

Comment within the Mini-MSFT Blog

This is both the good and bad of blogging, wrapped up in a tiny shell. The people who you want to hear are able to post, and mostly anonymously, because the site is not affiliated with MS. However, it's tough to keep the signal to noise high and not have it turn into a bitchfest. All said, I think there are some great comments in there. This comment in that blog is the most profound:

The most pronounced change I've noticed in my 8 years here is this: when I came to MS, I felt like my executives and I were on the same team--we all worked hard and worked together to achieve common goals, for which people were rewarded in proportion to their contribution. This is no longer the case. The executives live in a whole other realm and see employees more as a cost than as a resource. Hell--this is true even with some middle managers.

If I were an executive at MS, I would be freaking out about a comment like that. If your employees don't feel you are on their side, you've got some REAL problems.

Talk.Google.Com

Google's Chat is Live

This so clearly points to the core strategy for Google. Make your data more structured and searchable than ever before. They will come out with a way to categorize and sort every bit of information that you put into a computer so you can search and use that data long into the future. Whether or not it's what links you click on, what you type in mail, blogs or chat, what phone calls you make to whom and so on. I don't think this is a bad thing(tm)... the company is just trying to help users make sense of a world where our data sits in a thousand different places. But you better be ready to buy into this philosophy if you want the full experience. They're not going to do anything malicious with it... but in order to give you what they think you want (total access through computers of everything you're interested in as quickly and as easily as possible) they have to know this level of detail about you. Fascinating stuff!