Heck, use the GPS to detect distance, the built in accelerometer to detect impact, and the built in network connection to upload your data in realtime to a web server tracking your workouts. Suddenly you know exactly how far you...
I hear this kind of stuff all...the...time on Slashdot. This place is such an echo chamber.
Here's the thing: many of the folks posting this kind of response don't understand the difference between "could" and "did". You "could" do a lot of things. You "could" make something more powerful. You "could" make a better MP3 player than an iPod. You "could" thoroughly instrument the shoe. You "could" create a big strap-on rig that will work on any shoe at all. You "could" do a bunch of stuff. Apple and Nike did make this connection, bring it to fruition and (the hardest part) market it. Whether they got it right and made it do all it could do is really beside the point.
If you (not you cgenman - I'm using the royal "you") want to get out of Mom's basement and into Steve Jobs' handicapped space at 1 Infinite Loop, you need to understand a couple things:
The iPod is not an MP3 player. (not just "not a very good MP3 player" - it's not an MP3 player). It's an entry point into Apple's service ecosystem, as well as a dongle for their music store. There are many better and more capable MP3 players. The iPod rules not because of the commercials, but because of the ecosystem. The iPod is just the agent, the face on that ecosystem. If you don't get this, you're not ready to play.
To matter, you have to deliver something. You don't have to deliver something perfect, but you have to do something other than describe how someone who has delivered something is doing it all wrong. They're looking back at you and...well...no they're not, they're busy delivering the next thing and not wasting time on people who don't deliver. Hey, I think Mom's gonna make spaghetti tonight!
FWIW, I think DRM in all its forms is a dumb-ass idea. Makes it too hard for the honest folks, isn't any hindrance to the pirates. It's the wrong approach to use with customers you wanna keep.
My take on patents: Patents are OK. Dubious patents (plenty of prior art, no "there" there, etc). are not. Software patents probably should not be OK, but I haven't seen a logical test that immediately makes me think "no software patent makes sense". If there's a single patentable example and the laws favor it, you'll have to change the laws to change its patentability.
I got a lot of responses to my post (more than I usually get), and won't take 'em all for response. I will take on this one, though:
No, not Web 2.0 at all -- Web 2.0 is about open standards, open-source platforms, user-generated content, public APIs, mashups, etc, all of which are a million miles away from a proprietary DRM-infested iPod/Nike link.
I certainly wasn't claiming that the DRM bit is "very Web 2.0" - that you think I'm claiming this shows not a lot of insight on your part.
However, it is "very Web 2.0" to have users generate your content (as you note), and to build communities around that content.
I don't think you or anyone else has a real lock on what "Web 2.0" means. Some web designers think it's about round corners on stuff. Some developers think it's about AJAX. I know a PHB who thinks it's about Sharepoint. *Jeebus!*
I think community and UGC are pretty good indicators that something "very Web 2.0" is going on. The software that uses this device for data ack is doing UGC and building community.
Actually, the sensor-in-a-shoe thing is pretty cool.
Sounds really dumb if you're thinking that your shoe is just talking to your iPod. That's not all that's happening.
While the shoe connects with the iPod to do data acquisition, and you can track your workout on the iPod, you can also share your workout stats with others, help build community, etc - sort of the antithesis of the "isolated runner with headphones on" kind of thing. Very Web 2.0.
Something very sad about this kind of crap - it makes it harder to tinker. Would Johnny C. Lee be able to do all of his extremely cool Wiimote hacks? (N.B. - saw Lee's presentation at UXWeek 2008 - "extremely cool" doesn't begin to do the guy's work justice).
..frankly Adobe (and other major software vendors) is one of the main barriers to adoption of Linux as a desktop platform.
I'm on Mac OS Leopard and the only thing it'd take to make me move to Linux is to be able to get the Adobe, Microsoft and other suites of professional applications on Linux. That's na' ga' happen. Wouldn't be prudent for Adobe, Microsoft, et al.
And Gdammit (beta), don't tell me that GIMP is just as good as Photoshop. Just don't. It's not, just not, just so very NOT. And there are a million other reasons that the other Adobe tools rock so thoroughly more than the best creative tools you can find on Linux.
So Flash - a product from a giant software vendor that you need serious power-tools to create well (yes, I'm quite aware that the SWF spec is open) - is broken on Linux, AND you can't get the power-tools to create it. I'll shed the tiny tears for Flash (which sucks, in most cases), and the big tears for Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks (new version is gonna rock), Lightwave 3D, MS Excel, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro and a hundred other tools that are must-haves within their disciplines.
They're concerned you might have a copy of the Constitution in there...
Interested in where my Higher Ground Laptrap bag fits - seems like it'd be pretty close, but there is a zip-pocket on the outside of the laptop compartment, and you can tuck CDs in pouches in the laptop section.
Nice bag, btw. No, I don't work for 'em. Also available in leather from Shaun Jackson design.
NO UI designer is smart enough to know what users will do when they get hold of your designer - because it's not a problem your designer can solve with smarts. You MUST test prototypes with users.
Sometimes you need domain-SME users (all I'd want if I was doing a medication dispensing system or an Air Traffic Control system).
For many non-mission-critical things (phone number entry and validation is a perennial...developers always want to screw this way the fsck up for users), you can get some Joe off the street or some Jane from your cube farm who haven't seen the prior iterations of your design. Chances are if you can make it work well for Joe and Jane, it'll work well for your domain-SME users too. Testing with Joe and Jane beats testing nobody at all by several light-years.
(Important tip: Make sure you tell Joe and Jane that THEY are not being tested, and it's not possible for them to make mistakes with the design - anything they do with it is fine with you. You must make clear that you and your design staff are effectively the test subjects - In working with the design, Joe and Jane are testing you to see how well YOU have done).
Suggestion: read "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. It's a very short read, all signal, no noise, and the best first book on Web usability out there. While much of the book's advice is web-centric, it can be generalized in great part to application design - particularly on testing.
If you test, you can bring numbers, science and analysis to the table to buttress your arguments. It's a good way to trump "we've always done it that way" and "expert" opinions that have nothing substantial behind them. You can estimate and demonstrate success before you write a line of code.
Remember:
- Design - Prototype - Test
Not perfect? Repeat.
There's a lot more you can learn. I recommend Bruce Tognazzini's "Interaction Design 101" 3-day course from Nielsen Norman group (offered recently at Usability Week SFO 2008). He teaches a method you can use to solve the problems you're describing. NN/g also has a worthwhile DVD on paper prototyping if you haven't seen or tried it before.
Actually, I believe McCain didn't vote on the FISA bill. I looked at the roll-call for a few minutes looking for how my own morons voted, and noted McCain's absence. Not like he voted AGAINST, though.
I hate Obama's cave on this issue, but he's also campaigning actively in my state, and maybe he's got coattails enough to throw Saxby and Johnny out next time around (a few years hence, IIRC).
But you have to realize that the economics differ greatly when you think about "stocking" and "renting out" tangible assets like DVDs via Redbox, Netflix or even a Blockbuster store and "stocking" and "renting out" or even "selling" digital assets.
You don't have to have the digital asset back. It's cheap to "inventory" every movie a studio has available for rental if you can do so in digital form.
The long tail theory of making everything available long after "hits" profitability works a lot better for digital assets than for tangible ones - assuming that it's possible to sell or rent the digital assets.
As a member of both Mensa (something I don't normally mention - just wanted to see if I could get in...) and Slashdot, I'd love to see a bathe-and-groom-off at the next joint picnic!
They've got one of these beautiful planes at the Udvar-Hazy flight center, near Dulles airport (Outside Washington, DC).
It's worth a trip well-out-of-your-way to see the thing - you can get right up close to it, and it is astonishingly attractive; moreso for being so secret and rare.
There's a whole bunch more good stuff at Udvar-Hazy - a great aviation museum.
"Too tough" might be construed as: "Too tough to overcome Ubuntu's mindshare with a product as well-designed for the desktop. Sheesh, that'd take a lot of money and we've been spending ours on the server end".
...is what my brother A., an editor at the major daily in a midsize east coast city calls it. You've sold ads, no matter what happens there's going to be a paper printed over night, so you'd better get busy and fill it with news. Doing so gets extremely difficult when everyone who makes interesting things happen goes on vacation in August.
It's quite fatiguing for newspaper pros, and they have a lot of resources to back them up - wire copy not the least of it ("wire copy": that's "old-school RSS" for you younguns).
Bloggers coulda' learned this in J-school. Some of 'em did.
The consequences are the journalism equivalent of the effects of the devolution of power that's occurred in every other facet of the "digital revolution".
Designers "get to" set their own type now, and that means they "have to".
Authors now "can" publish their own books, and for many, now they "have to".
Bands "are free to" use alternate distribution channels for their music, and increasingly this means they bear their own promotional burdens.
It's the same with the recording, photographic and video industries, graphic arts, virtually every other trade that's suddenly put the means of production in the hands of the proles: "you wanted the power, now go to it, buddy!"
Slashdot Mirror
I hear this kind of stuff all...the...time on Slashdot. This place is such an echo chamber.
Here's the thing: many of the folks posting this kind of response don't understand the difference between "could" and "did". You "could" do a lot of things. You "could" make something more powerful. You "could" make a better MP3 player than an iPod. You "could" thoroughly instrument the shoe. You "could" create a big strap-on rig that will work on any shoe at all. You "could" do a bunch of stuff. Apple and Nike did make this connection, bring it to fruition and (the hardest part) market it. Whether they got it right and made it do all it could do is really beside the point.
If you (not you cgenman - I'm using the royal "you") want to get out of Mom's basement and into Steve Jobs' handicapped space at 1 Infinite Loop, you need to understand a couple things:
FWIW, I think DRM in all its forms is a dumb-ass idea. Makes it too hard for the honest folks, isn't any hindrance to the pirates. It's the wrong approach to use with customers you wanna keep.
My take on patents: Patents are OK. Dubious patents (plenty of prior art, no "there" there, etc). are not. Software patents probably should not be OK, but I haven't seen a logical test that immediately makes me think "no software patent makes sense". If there's a single patentable example and the laws favor it, you'll have to change the laws to change its patentability.
I got a lot of responses to my post (more than I usually get), and won't take 'em all for response. I will take on this one, though:
I certainly wasn't claiming that the DRM bit is "very Web 2.0" - that you think I'm claiming this shows not a lot of insight on your part.
However, it is "very Web 2.0" to have users generate your content (as you note), and to build communities around that content.
I don't think you or anyone else has a real lock on what "Web 2.0" means. Some web designers think it's about round corners on stuff. Some developers think it's about AJAX. I know a PHB who thinks it's about Sharepoint. *Jeebus!*
I think community and UGC are pretty good indicators that something "very Web 2.0" is going on. The software that uses this device for data ack is doing UGC and building community.
Actually, the sensor-in-a-shoe thing is pretty cool.
Sounds really dumb if you're thinking that your shoe is just talking to your iPod. That's not all that's happening.
While the shoe connects with the iPod to do data acquisition, and you can track your workout on the iPod, you can also share your workout stats with others, help build community, etc - sort of the antithesis of the "isolated runner with headphones on" kind of thing. Very Web 2.0.
Something very sad about this kind of crap - it makes it harder to tinker. Would Johnny C. Lee be able to do all of his extremely cool Wiimote hacks? (N.B. - saw Lee's presentation at UXWeek 2008 - "extremely cool" doesn't begin to do the guy's work justice).
Here's one of the evil shoe hackers Apple's trying to target.
Honestly, is Apple trying to completely destroy its brand?
you are the first person outside of my family that I have heard it from.
Not an Iggy Pop fan I guess?
Interesting point (and a bon mot: (p)rebuttal - I like that)!
Searching Slashdot with google shows this one:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=68278&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=6250650
But most of the comments along this line are (p)rebuttals as you note - good insight.
This attitude does show up in places other than Slashdot, though. Here's a couple:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/655841/using_gimp_to_edit_images_as_good_as.html
http://grimthing.com/archives/2007/01/11/Gimp_vs_Photoshop/
..frankly Adobe (and other major software vendors) is one of the main barriers to adoption of Linux as a desktop platform.
I'm on Mac OS Leopard and the only thing it'd take to make me move to Linux is to be able to get the Adobe, Microsoft and other suites of professional applications on Linux. That's na' ga' happen. Wouldn't be prudent for Adobe, Microsoft, et al.
And Gdammit (beta), don't tell me that GIMP is just as good as Photoshop. Just don't. It's not, just not, just so very NOT. And there are a million other reasons that the other Adobe tools rock so thoroughly more than the best creative tools you can find on Linux.
So Flash - a product from a giant software vendor that you need serious power-tools to create well (yes, I'm quite aware that the SWF spec is open) - is broken on Linux, AND you can't get the power-tools to create it. I'll shed the tiny tears for Flash (which sucks, in most cases), and the big tears for Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks (new version is gonna rock), Lightwave 3D, MS Excel, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro and a hundred other tools that are must-haves within their disciplines.
They're concerned you might have a copy of the Constitution in there...
Interested in where my Higher Ground Laptrap bag fits - seems like it'd be pretty close, but there is a zip-pocket on the outside of the laptop compartment, and you can tuck CDs in pouches in the laptop section.
Nice bag, btw. No, I don't work for 'em. Also available in leather from Shaun Jackson design.
Paper Prototyping is the way to go.
NO UI designer is smart enough to know what users will do when they get hold of your designer - because it's not a problem your designer can solve with smarts. You MUST test prototypes with users.
Sometimes you need domain-SME users (all I'd want if I was doing a medication dispensing system or an Air Traffic Control system).
For many non-mission-critical things (phone number entry and validation is a perennial...developers always want to screw this way the fsck up for users), you can get some Joe off the street or some Jane from your cube farm who haven't seen the prior iterations of your design. Chances are if you can make it work well for Joe and Jane, it'll work well for your domain-SME users too. Testing with Joe and Jane beats testing nobody at all by several light-years.
(Important tip: Make sure you tell Joe and Jane that THEY are not being tested, and it's not possible for them to make mistakes with the design - anything they do with it is fine with you. You must make clear that you and your design staff are effectively the test subjects - In working with the design, Joe and Jane are testing you to see how well YOU have done).
Suggestion: read "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. It's a very short read, all signal, no noise, and the best first book on Web usability out there. While much of the book's advice is web-centric, it can be generalized in great part to application design - particularly on testing.
If you test, you can bring numbers, science and analysis to the table to buttress your arguments. It's a good way to trump "we've always done it that way" and "expert" opinions that have nothing substantial behind them. You can estimate and demonstrate success before you write a line of code.
Remember:
- Design
- Prototype
- Test
Not perfect? Repeat.
There's a lot more you can learn. I recommend Bruce Tognazzini's "Interaction Design 101" 3-day course from Nielsen Norman group (offered recently at Usability Week SFO 2008). He teaches a method you can use to solve the problems you're describing. NN/g also has a worthwhile DVD on paper prototyping if you haven't seen or tried it before.
Bet the ISS astronauts would love a visit from those hot Japanese fairy twins... ;)
OK, but for Chrissake I don't want to wind up looking like Michael Keaton...
he just went from being fired to Fed-pound-you-Penn
Where he'll doubtless learn what it's like to be gruntled
Actually, I believe McCain didn't vote on the FISA bill. I looked at the roll-call for a few minutes looking for how my own morons voted, and noted McCain's absence. Not like he voted AGAINST, though.
I hate Obama's cave on this issue, but he's also campaigning actively in my state, and maybe he's got coattails enough to throw Saxby and Johnny out next time around (a few years hence, IIRC).
Actually, your attempt to read the site caused its superposition to decay into a site that's Slashdotted.
About 50% of visitors from Slashdot will see the non-Slashdotted site.
But you have to realize that the economics differ greatly when you think about "stocking" and "renting out" tangible assets like DVDs via Redbox, Netflix or even a Blockbuster store and "stocking" and "renting out" or even "selling" digital assets.
You don't have to have the digital asset back. It's cheap to "inventory" every movie a studio has available for rental if you can do so in digital form.
The long tail theory of making everything available long after "hits" profitability works a lot better for digital assets than for tangible ones - assuming that it's possible to sell or rent the digital assets.
...a space elevator we can wrap fish in!
As a member of both Mensa (something I don't normally mention - just wanted to see if I could get in...) and Slashdot, I'd love to see a bathe-and-groom-off at the next joint picnic!
Mensa won't take SATs from later than 1/31/94 as an indication of your IQ. That says something about changing test difficulty...
It's more important to take a deep dive on user experience (from interface to interaction design to backend software capabilities).
The pretty should go on at the end.
To give incentive to the hardware manufacturers, we need a distro with the widest possible user base, not some fringe OSS purist crap.
Doesn't this sound like something Steve Ballmer might say? Why so dismissive of the wellspring of so much Linux development?
and it takes 5 tires to get it right.
Gotta agree - Americans love that full-size spare...
Somebody set up us the hub!
They've got one of these beautiful planes at the Udvar-Hazy flight center, near Dulles airport (Outside Washington, DC).
It's worth a trip well-out-of-your-way to see the thing - you can get right up close to it, and it is astonishingly attractive; moreso for being so secret and rare.
There's a whole bunch more good stuff at Udvar-Hazy - a great aviation museum.
"Too tough" might be construed as: "Too tough to overcome Ubuntu's mindshare with a product as well-designed for the desktop. Sheesh, that'd take a lot of money and we've been spending ours on the server end".
Turkish Spam KISS YOU! IT KISS YOU!!! It loving sex with all the womens of the world!
...is what my brother A., an editor at the major daily in a midsize east coast city calls it. You've sold ads, no matter what happens there's going to be a paper printed over night, so you'd better get busy and fill it with news. Doing so gets extremely difficult when everyone who makes interesting things happen goes on vacation in August.
It's quite fatiguing for newspaper pros, and they have a lot of resources to back them up - wire copy not the least of it ("wire copy": that's "old-school RSS" for you younguns).
Bloggers coulda' learned this in J-school. Some of 'em did.
The consequences are the journalism equivalent of the effects of the devolution of power that's occurred in every other facet of the "digital revolution".
It's the same with the recording, photographic and video industries, graphic arts, virtually every other trade that's suddenly put the means of production in the hands of the proles: "you wanted the power, now go to it, buddy!"