David Watanabe’s Inquisitor for Safari has gone three… and free.
Would still like to see this for Camino (as Flock has this functionality inspired by David’s work), but David says he’s overcommitted and there’s simply not enough uptake of that browser compared with Safari. (Bah!)
Surely you’ve heard by now that Six Apart’s new neighborhood platform VOX has launched.
I really like it. In fact, it’s the first online “place” that my mom’s signed up with, who was shortly followed by my brother (who found me initially on Facebook and I cajoled him into joining VOX).
Now that they’re both on it, I actually feel pretty comfortable about them giving it a go without me chaperoning them along.
Don’t get me wrong… I mean, there’s a bit of complexity in VOX, but I kind of feel like, if they play around a little — with the teasers that incite you to actually contribute and connect (suggest a neighbor feature on the invite page is genius) — they might just get into all this “Web 2.0” stuff I’ve been yammering on to them about for ages.
So now, imagine going home for Thanksgiving and rather than having to explain “feeds” or “Flickr”, we can just follow up on posts that they read but never commented on… or photos of my neighbor’s that they liked… Imagine using VOX, with its facile design and attention to detail, to finally connect with folks who normally could care less about this stuff.
Yes, finally.
It’s funny, but lots of people talk about “designing for Grandma” or “soccer moms” or other supposedly technically inept audiences (though, who in reality are often just as — if not moreso — savvy than the folks making such comments). But I think VOX has gone further than many who have come before and have successfully built a product and a community that I wouldn’t mind introducing my mom to (in fact, I did just that) and who I wouldn’t mind taking her through so that I knew it made sense and so that she could get the most out of her time spent on it.
In fact — and this is critical — once she’s set up and off on her own, I trust VOX to not get in her way or insult her intelligence. Perhaps I’m belaboring the point, but there are just so many nuances that make VOX feel friendly and worth working with that it’s important to point out that VOX is, above all, an excellent example of applied restraint and the execution of clear intention.
The one geeky thing I’ll add is that I’m eagerly awaiting OpenID integration so that we can start pushing forward with making the experience of grassroots identity consolidation as easy and good looking as VOX.
I took a look at a little app called Zooom for the Mac that lets you drag an application around from any surface using two modifier keys.
It’s pretty cool, but could be better for the $7.95 price tag.
Like, what would be really useful — and would better apply to the app’s name — would be the ability to “zooom” apps in and out — in partial states of exposéd-ness… Ideally I’d press shift+option and dial back or forward on the mousewheel… and the app or window I’m hovered over would zoom in or out depending on whether I’ve scrolled the wheel forward or back.
Basically, I’m talking about a per-app Exposé setting — that would “release” the app back to full size if you double click on it.
What do you think?
I’ve talked about SoundFlavor, Pandora (also see Boy and Man), The Filter, neglected to mention MOG or beaTunes, but now there’s yet another way to get more “juice” from your music.
Tangerine, a Mac application from the makers of Voice Candy and Podcast Maker, analyzes track beats per minute (BPM) and compiles playlists based on the setting you choose — creating a consistency in tempo perfect for, as the creator points out, working out.
Of course what seems to be driving most of the excitement is the UI, which you can see here and below, analyzing my smaller iTunes library:
Not only is this app representative of a larger trend in Mac-app development towards hot and unique interfaces, but it also continues the recent slew of releases that help you get more out of your existing music library. No doubt eventually we’ll see similar types of tools for feeds, videos and friends, but for now, we’ll stick with those that make listening a little tastier.
Disclosure: Word has it people who blog about Tangerine get a free license when it’s released. I’d be happy to get a license, but that’s not why I chose to blog about it, though that has been a partial motivator in the past.
Pretty basic, but pretty awesome too: check out the new reorder-anything demo for a preview of what’s to come for 37Signals’ Backpack app.
http://blip.tv/scripts/pokkariPlayer.jshttp://blip.tv/syndication/write_player?skin=js&posts_id=90597&source=3&file_type=flv
play_blip_movie_90597();This is the kind of immersive experience that I think is going to make apps start to feel more like video games… Is it gimmicky? For sure. But does it reflect a new way to express activity and a more subtle and potentially more intuitive replacement visualization for those barbershop progress meters? I think just maybe!
Think Winamp visualizations come to life and then some:
So yeah, we’ve gone from flashing screens to creating a pixel perfect fluid dynamic model of smoke. You can adjust the colors on the fly as well as a few other geeky options. When you blow into the microphone, the smoke gusts, and as you can see, you can run your mouse through it to create wind. We’ll be including presets for Fire, Goo, Purple Haze, and Icy Mist for you to play with.
I’ve used K2 here on FactoryCity for some time so it’s cool to see it available on WordPress.com finally. Along with that, check out Sleepless, Brian “Like it Matters” Oberchurch’s choice.
Peter Merholz has blogged the release of Soundflavor, the first product released from Adaptive Path’s New Ventures project.
Lane’s written up a case study describing the process that was used to develop the app, notably using an iterative, design-and-build process, as opposed to using a documentation-design-implement method (kind of like the waterfall method).
Of course, I know quite a bit about this process, since this was also the first product that I helped design after leaving Flock (I, too, can claim that i made this, along with Dan Saffer and others, including Tim from Big Empty and the great folks at Soundflavor). In fact, I helped out with the initial spec, product development and design process and facilitating the brainstorming that lead to the soon-to-revealed relationship between the app and the website. Unfortunately, early into the development cycle, travel and other commitments precluded me from seeing out the implementation of the product, even though the final result is very much in line with my original concepts.
So what’s so great about Soundflavor?
Well, unlike other streaming services like Pandora (of which I’m a huge fan), it actually pulls music from your existing music collection and music shared on your local network with Bonjour, creating interactive playlists that vary in “flavor”, or similarity, helping you to rediscover the music that you already own or that the people around you own.
Of course, in addition to that, Soundflavor will recommend new music similar to what you already own or are listening to for purchasing and building out your library.
And, with the Playlist Creator, you can take Soundflavor’s work with you — simply pick a track, artist or album as a “flavor” and Soundflavor will generate a playlist with as many “flavored” tracks as you want (more feature details can be found on the download page).
Reviews so far seem good, and I’m eager to see their playlist-cum-mixtape sharing community launch (think deviantART meets iMix) — and hopefully, someday, Lucas Gonze will have his way (I rallied for ya, man!).
Anyway, I’m dying for the Mac version to come out — as the subset of tracks I listen to from my 22,000 track library is starting to go stale (as evidenced by my Last.fm account). Give it a shot and let me know what you think — since I can’t try it yet and would like to know, in terms of iTunes controllers, how this one stacks up given its pretty sweet featureset.
After getting a new tool for composing microformats, we now have a new technique for exposing those newly minted microformatted hcards.
Jon Hicks has created expose-mf.css as a browser CSS add-on that will reveal hcards inline, as opposed to external to the page, like Tails.
While there are some obvious bugs, this technique demonstrates how revealing embedding microformats in webpages can become a great tool for data discovery and manipulation.
Factory Joe 
