Winners of my to-do list's Loyalty award*:
No 3 is actually an afterthought because when the idea of this post first came to my mind, I was thinking of just the computer context.
*they're still here!
The name of Yahoo's first CEO is Tim Koogle*
*Got this from John Batelle's "The Search: Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture"
And it just keeps getting better...
Also, did you guys notice that Gmail storage is now in the 4Gig range? Again, the IMAP support is not available for everyone yet. I just checked my gmail and google apps and I still don't have it.
Links:
Love him or hate him, but there's no denying that he writes very interesting stuff. "Robert X. Cringely" on the Google - Apple collaboration.
I wrote many years ago that the best start-ups are composed of symbiotic combinations of hippies and nerds. Hippies have the grand vision while nerds mind the details. Each is less without the other. Think of Jobs and Woz in 1976 and now Jobs and Schmidt (or, more properly, Apple and Google) in 2007. Apple is driven by design, which is entirely subjective, even emotional, while Google is driven by the almighty algorithm, which is only following orders
(I mistaken referred to Jonathan Ives, Apple's Senior VP of Industrial Design as John. Updated to correct this error)
My Boss finally gave in after years of putting off his iPod purchase, but he pretty well made up for it in kick-ass-ness. Last Tuesday he got his kick-ass iPod Touch and showed it to our team as soon as he came in to the office (Yup, he still came.hehe. Peace Sir! )
Anyway, just some thoughts. When it comes to user interfaces, Apple is know for two things: something simple, and something flashy (and yet still simple). The success of the original, or should I say classic iPod, can be attributed to the first: Apple was able to make an interface so simple that almost anyone can use it without difficulties.
In fact, the classic iPod line's UI simplicity somehow masks the enormous talents of Apple's engineering, UI and industrial designers (hail to the king Jon Ives) in creating it.
As you would have probably guessed already, for this post, the second attribute of being flashy (and yet still simple) attribute will be all about the iPod Touch (and the iPhone).
The iPod Touch (and its iPhone sibling) has the slickest UI available in any device available in the market today, bar none. It's so easy to use because its really simple that things behave as you expect them to behave, and it's so fun to use because Apple has made it flashy enough that you actually see visual feedback on what you're doing with the interface in the classic apple taste. Okay, I will just stop trying to describe it here because as the cliche goes, words doesn't do justice.
A population of 1,000 random pictures each, created in October 2007. You allow the fittest pictures to survive. The higher your rating for a pic the more mutated offspring it produces.