Piers Jones

Magazines on a tablet

With the arrival of hardware like tablet PCs people will be able to consume news and media in new ways that build on how they read print but take advantage of the capabilities of online.

I can't help thinking that the iphone user interface has had a major part to play in shaping how that might look for the next few years.

I like this concept  for reading magazine content on a tablet called Mag+ from from Bonnier and can imagine myself reading a magazine like this on the train. What do you think?

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

thanks to one man and his blog for finding this over a coffee

A summary of User Experience in 2009

For those interested in Product Development and User Experience, this is a good summary of how User Experience design has evolved from the Information Architect, Jesse James Garret. 

Its quite a long video and quite heavy on theory but worth the effort if you have half an hour to set aside.

Jesse James Garrett | UX Week 2009 | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Web Trend Map 4

Web Trend Map 4 Final Beta, originally uploaded by formforce.

A new version of the web trend map, just in and well worth a look.

Via information architects

Essential strategies for creating a successful web product from Dion Hinchcliffe

There is some excellent advice from Dion Hinchcliffe in this article outlining '50 essential strategies for creating a successful web 2.0 product'

Although web 2.0 is mentioned in the title I think these ideas could apply to most online products, especially "start by solving a simple problem".

I have a feeling that this is one of those reference articles that I may have to come back to from time to time. Its a great checklist.

The history of the internet video

Apologies if you have seen this already, but this 'history of the internet' video is well worth a look and very nicely animated.

I had never realised that the evolution of the internet owes so much to the cold war.

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

via information aesthetics

U.A.Tea

my own tea pot and cup, originally uploaded by perago89.

We introduced a new user testing session on our jobs service this sprint called U.A.Tea, it's just like U.A.T (User Acceptance Testing) but with tea and cake.

The tea and cake bit definitely worked to get more people along. We received some really helpful input prior to release of the product and it helps the team catch changes early in the process, or at least before we release the product to live.

What is cloud computing?

Its all in the cloud going forward ! Ten minutes well spent listening to various definitions of cloud computing from the leading thinkers in the industry. Thanks Jas.

Popfly mashups, dont underestimate the power of a good user interface

The recently announced MicroSoft popfly mashup and web page tool looks good. So far the reaction I've read seems to be that this is only for individuals and maybe small companies who lack development resource. Microsoft would seem to agree.

I don't see why it shouldn't be even more widely used than that. I'm sure that many people with a keen interest in online but who can't code (like me!) would love to get their hands on this type of service.

With the right user interface it should be easy to pull together mashups and web pages without having to spend hours with the code. So, why couldn't this approach be used in all businesses?

It would democratise creativity for anyone in an organisation that has an interesting idea and wants to try it out online. An element of collaboration and reuse is also good for innovation. It looks like a space to play with ideas in a framework which I imagine will be well tested and robust.

There will always be a need for excellent developers, especially for complex products.  However sometimes for ideas in the early stages you just want to pull content (API's?) together quickly, get them out there into the real world and see where the interest is. Popfly might be a good way to achieve those goals.

Of course I haven't tried it yet!  I've requested an alpha log in along with the rest of the world so will see how long it takes as I think it's a pretty limited alpha.

Where is my RSS?

I have been doing a little reading around GeoRSS.

It is looking increasingly important to tag your RSS feeds with 'Where' information,  or in Web 3 speak use an "RDF vocabulary for representing the latitude and longitude of spatially-located things".

Apparently Yahoo pipes can now use GeoRSS and can output pipes in a yahoo maps format or as a .kml format that can be used by Googlemaps.

So if you want your data mashed-up into more interesting forms on maps  GeoRSS looks the way to go.

 

Having  done the reading I'm going to have to set some time aside to see how I can start GeoTagging the RSS feeds from this blog to see what simple GeoRSS mapping applications I can put on top, like this one or this one.

UPDATE:

You can even read GeoRSS from within SecondLife