one thousand galloping horses, by jason falcone

Change of place, change of format

Wed, 02 May 2007 12:32:22 -0500

I’ve decided that a blog format isn’t the right fit for my content, so I’m working on building a new site.

You can find my new home at www.jasofa.com. Stay tuned for a full site experience in the coming months.

bubbl.us for brainstorming

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:25:49 -0500

Heard of bubbl.us? It’s a handy, lightweight mind-mapping tool. I find it most useful when I have fragments of ideas in my head and need a fast way to explore them, but it’s also good for organizing data and re-envisioning relationships.

MP3 Player Controls: When small and clever become too small and too clever

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 17:27:25 -0600

I was out enjoying the nice weather with my flash-based iRiver MP3 player and came across an interesting discovery - the controls suck if you’re running.

Here’s what they look like:

Note the 5-way joystick which toggles left, right, up and down for volume and track changes (it also pushes in for selecting things in the menu system). Very neat and very minimalist, but there are two huge problems with this design.

When in use, the control orientation is wrong.

In the picture I’ve shown the MP3 player sitting on its side, and the controls (up/down for volume and left/right for track selection) map well to the orientation.

But the clip on the back runs the length of the player. Clipped onto a waistband, the controls actually turn sideways forcing you to push up for the previous track, down for the next track, forward for volume up, and back for volume down.
It’s hard to make precise motions while you’re running.

The tiny joystick requires pinpoint precision to move, and it’s ridiculously easy to accidentally push down when you mean to push forward, or back when you mean up.

It would’ve taken about 10 minutes in testing with an actual runner to discover this, so it’s clear that iRiver didn’t consider (or chose to ignore) the likely scenarios where customers would use the product.

Never the devil’s advocate, I have a simple fix. Here’s the revised design:

So far it looks very similar to the original layout, so let’s discuss differences.

First, there are dedicated buttons for each action - volume up, volume down, next track, and previous track all have dedicated buttons to reduce likelihood of a selection error.

To further reduce errors and increase blind use, the volume buttons have ridges running along the width of the buttons, and the track buttons have ridges along the length. This allows an intermediate user (who has gotten used to the ridges) to differentiate between buttons by touch alone.

The final difference is in the ability to adapt to different orientations. In my design, the button control wheel can be rotated to accommodate the position of the MP3 player in relation to the body so that no matter where the player is worn, the control wheel can be rotated to map correctly (i.e. volume up will always be the “up” button).

I did some investigating into other flash-based, activity-oriented MP3 players to see if anyone had done a better job. Although some companies sell designs that avoid the clumsy joystick, almost none seem to have considered the intuitive mapping of controls to player orientation to the user.

The first human inhabitants of the Americas may have originated in Europe.

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:04:35 -0600

Last night I caught a fascinating documentary on Nova about the peopling of the Americas. Although there are no conclusive findings, one standing theory really struck me.

It posits that the first Americans came from Europe (France and Spain) via small boats, leapfrogging their way from iceberg to iceberg across the Atlantic ocean.

There are several proof points. The first highlights similarities in product and process between the spearheads made in ancient Europe and the ones made in the Americas a bit later.

The second points to a genetic attribute found in the mitochondria that is shared by the American Indians and some peoples in Western Europe (American Indians also share DNA ancestry with East Asians).

Scientists are still debating and researching, but I found the potential implications to be troublesome:

If American Indians were descended, at least in part, from ancient Europeans, it means that the conquest of America by the modern Europeans had them destroying their not so long lost cousins.

It’s a kind of irony and tragedy that only humans can produce.

New Service: On Demand Product Information 411

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:16:52 -0600

Concept:
A telephone, IM and/or SMS service that allows users to contact a specialist who can provide product information, pricing, comparisons, and reviews. Types of products could include consumer electronics, automobiles, appliances, or almost anything.

Market:
Shoppers who may be considering a purchase but want additional information to make an educated decision, want to confirm the claims of a salesperson, or who may be in an impulse buy situation and want to feel confident about their choice.

Design:
Service would use a single name or number to provide access through any medium. Process might go something like this:

Customer contacts the service and is paired with a specialist
Customer provides product name or serial number and specifies the nature of the request, which may include confirmation on competitive pricing, comparison to other, similar products, a summary of user reviews or just product specifications.
The specialist may consult the manufacturer’s website, or any number of publicly-accessible product review sites such as CNET, Tom’s Hardware or Ars Technica.
The specialist may provide info during the original call, or may opt to call the user back in 5-15 minutes once all necessary information can be gathered and synthesized by the specialist.
If it’s a callback scenario, the specialist will reconnect with the user and provide a report based on her/her own analysis of the available information.
The user can then make an educated and confident purchase decision.

Open issues:

How do we charge? Bundle it with a mobile plan, charge per call, or offer an annual subscription?
What legal issues and disclaimers must be considered to absolve the service of liability if something goes wrong with the recommended product (lemons, manufacturer defects, etc.)?
Any legal issues with using information from CNET et al to inform a recommendation that is then ‘sold’ to an end user?

Battlefield 2142 booster pack Producer says, "No new boosters."

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 13:04:57 -0600

Firingsquad.com had an opportunity to interview the producer of EA’s upcoming Battlefield 2142 booster pack, Northern Strike.

The discussion involved the typical cheerleading and repetition of feature information that has been available for a few weeks, but there was one big bombshell dropped in the latter half of the interview:

——
FiringSquad: Can you talk about any future booster pack releases for BF 2142?

Kristoffer Bergqvist: As we’ve been listening a lot to the community’s concerns of dividing the player base when releasing exclusive content there currently are no more booster packs planned for Battlefield 2142.
——

Although I am reluctant to do so, I must channel WoW players for a moment…

QQ more, Mr. Bergqvist.

Concerns about playerbase fragmentation have been around since BF2’s expansion pack (and persisted through BF2’s boosters). I cannot believe that EA/DICE is acting like those concerns are new, or that they haven’t had time to address them.

I also cannot believe that their response to a very reasonable, long-running desire among players is to stop trying - or, at least, talk like they’re going to stop trying.

No booster packs doesn’t necessarily mean no new content, but wouldn’t DICE want to acknowledge that? Because his response absolutely doesn’t.

Frankly, this whole thing reeks of, “Blame the customer.”

His response makes it sound like it’s our fault for wanting a single, unified playerbase and a game that integrates new content elegantly. They speak as though it’s unreasonable for us to expect new content to build on the original game, not replace it.

And in another universe they might be right. But here in the really-real world, games as old as Planetside and Ultima Online figured out customer-considerate new content integration more than 5 years ago, so there’s really no excuse for not anticipating this need or being able to work it out.

I’m disappointed, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t expect this in some way, but as an idealist I’m hoping that they work it out and give us a nice Springtime surprise.

Trying to speak their language.

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 12:43:42 -0600

My cats follow me around the house making a startling variety of noises - clicks, chirps, meows, yells, screams, grunts, whistles and, occasionally, something that sounds like a laser blaster from Star Wars.

But the moment I look at them and make the same sounds they stop and stare at me like I’m insane.

Figures. I’ll never be cool.