The life of a minor minor prophet, not the rock


Sunday, July 20, 2003

Gregor J Rothfuss: "For me, the nature of the antiques market suddenly changed. No longer was it a local fair on the streets of Sao Paulo, where Paulistas could haggle over a painting, table or kitchen set. Now it was just another cog in the global antiques marketplace, facilitated by eBay and the Web."


11:15:58 PM    

Stopping the Spam

via the phone and physical mail


5:19:56 PM    

Selling your friends

Two people try to sell their Friendster network on eBay


5:14:39 PM    

Hugging the Dux

The case study our team submitted to DUX on the gesture based car music and navigation system we designed wasn't accepted but my design professor Jodie Forlizzi's paper was accepted.

The Hug: A new form of communication

Abstract:

 Recent advances in telecommunication and wireless networking technology have exploded the possibilities for remote communication between people.

We present a product called the Hug as a challenge to familiar telecommunication products. A visionary design born out of research with elders, the Hug addresses a very human need for physical closeness in remote communications. It uses the same network infrastructure as many appliances today, but places a new face on human product interaction.

other DUX 2003 case studies



Their research was partly inspired by a class project Rahul Culas, Saeyeon Eun, Kevin Lee, Linh M. Van and I did for Jodie's class.  We created a vision for a product called HiBear which functioned as an emotional conduit for connecting remote grandparents and grandchildren. 

 

More details on the project are in my portfolio, but one of our key observations was you can't change how busy other people are and so the goal should be to connect people who have free time together; in our case grandparents and grandchildren.

We have a beautiful scenario movie that tells the story of the product with still images, animations, and a voice over, but sadly the 2 minutes Director piece balloons to almost 700 megs so I can't put it on the web.  I wish we had done it in Flash.


4:33:12 PM    

Customers vs Users

Danny O'Brien: "One of my big bones with MS stuff is that it always makes me feel like I'm eating out of the trash bins outside a cubicle farm."

Danny does a nice job of explaining how this isn't done because Microsoft is evil, but is the natural and rational result of trying to grow their business.  Why cater to the enterprise? because that's where the money is.

This a great example of a distinction I learned from Joel Spolsky and Eric Sink. Your users, the people who have to deal with your software day in and day out, are not necessary the same as your customers, who are the people who give you the money.  

For example, when I worked at Princeton the home grown purchasing system was yanked out and replaced by PeopleSoft.  The secretaries, who were the systems primary users had no say in the design of the interface.  Instead it was done by a commuter of administrators including the chair of the physics department.  See the disconnect?


3:16:30 PM    

New acronym for the day
"FUI" - Fake User Interface
2:58:07 PM    

Blogger Dinner

It's my second day living in CA.I Love RSS. So, what should I do on Saturday night, unpack my apartment? Nah, I'm going to Scoble's blogger gathering!  It was quite a trip.  Watching Marc Canter and Dave Winer have a heated debate over pizza was really something.  These are two guys who can go all the way up and down the stack from code to UI to managing the business. It was excellent to meet them and get to throw my two cents into the conversation.

I talked with Robert Scoble and apologized for getting him Slashdotted.  He's in a tough position having to defend explain Microsoft's position to its most vocal critics and internally explain why blogging publicly, despite the risks, is valuable to the company.  He told me not to worry about it.

I got a chance to play a monster card game with Scoble's son Patrick.  I can't remember the name of the game but it seemed to be of the same genera as Pokémon.  Patrick crushed me.

We all sat around and talked over pizza, beer, and ice cream.   I got a chance to tell Scoble, Marc, Dave, Phil Wolff, and Niall Kennedy about my desire to forge a connection between weblogging and eBay and to increase the visibility of the eBay community.  I showed them pictures of the 10,000 people who attended eBay live in Orlando.

I think this is a great example of the multiple blogospheres that make up the internet.  Weblogers and eBaysians are both high velocity communicators, but webloggers (at least for now) are dominated by tech types, while eBay users are more likely to be AOL-and-email-on-a-dial-up people.  I think there's an opportunity for introducing these two cultures to each other.

It was a great time.  Thanks Scoble for picking up the pizza tab and organizing the event.

Other accounts of the evening from: Marc, Don, & Dave.


12:43:22 AM    


© Copyright 2003 Micah Alpern.

 

 


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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

 


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