I’m not sure how new this is, but it’s really great. Since the content aggregated into Google Reader is time-based, and often becomes irrelevant quickly, it makes perfect sense to expand the usual mark as read functionality to include various time spans. Makes paring down a several-thousand-item unread count easy. Epic win.
Put on your nostalgia hats. After the spectacular letdown that is the Oregon Trail iPhone game, I decided to figure out how to play the real version I did as a kid. Long story short (too late!), I got a nifty Apple ][ emulator and got it going. I also found a verion of Jeopardy! from 1987 that has one truly great feature: forgiving text entry. As you can see in these examples, it takes into account that a correct answer might take a different format than the database has. My response is on top, the database’s version below in parenthesis:
Does it use a heuristic algorithm? I sort of doubt it. I have a feeling there are just hard-coded variations associated with each response. This flexibility surprised me. I’ve learned from painful experience that these sorts of things— even these days— often take the shortcut of comparing the string entered literally, throwing errors for all manner of “mistakes.” I think the classic modern example is a phone number entry field in a web form. Sometimes it wants (XXX) XXX-XXXX, sometimes XXX-XXX-XXXX, and so on.
The right choice in the phone example is to accept any format and convert it into whatever the data storage system on the backend needs, placing the burden on the computer, not the user. After all, this is what machines do best. Humans, not so much.
The Jeopardy illustration provides great fodder for any developer who balks at building smart input processing mechanisms: If they could do it twenty years ago, on a primitive (by modern standards) system, why can’t it be done now?
Forgiving text input: Epic Win.
I have found the absolute gold standard for sign up forms at Spreadshirt:
That’s it. One field. No fiddling with duplicate passwords, no CAPTCHAs, nothing. Enter email, and you’re ready to accomplish tasks. In this case, design stuff (like t-shirts) to be made on demand:
One click from “sure, I’ll try that” to getting to the meat of the service. It’s perfect. Why don’t more services do this? OK, I know why. But this is absolutely one place where taking the time to answer the question “What do we have to have from users to get started?”— and not being willing to take shit from developers who don’t want to go the extra mile to overcome technical limitations— can turn a routine, tedious experience into an EPIC WIN.
In the 21st century, Google calls you. So, I’ve been using GrandCentral for quite a long time, and have been sorta cranky they’ve not done anything to it since the aquisition by Google. Well, it’s been rebranded Google Voice, and they’ve added some fun features along with generally Goog-ifying the UI (by which I mean: making it boring visually, but simple and functional). Here’s some of the hotness:
I use GrandCen Google Voice for phone-spam, mainly. I’m perfectly happy to give out the number wherever, post it on my website, etc. knowing that if it ever gets out of hand, I can have it stop calling my actual phone, or go away completely. Naturally, I don’t pick it up unless I know who’s calling, so the ability to screen callers’ voicemails without having to dial in or listen to the webified version is, well, fucking awesome.
Yay, another free SMS service. Yawn. But wait! In this case, the sender is properly displayed (unlike in Gmail chat), making it something practical to actually use (and you bet I will!). Also (and naturally), the messages are grouped and organized a lot like Gmail conversations, another big win:
The slickest bit, though, comes with recording names & greetings. Instead of having to initiate it from the device, with clunky touch-tone menus and the like, the service will give you a ring and ask you to start talking. Hang up, it adds it. Seamless. Beautiful.
There’s a (pretty obviously credible) rumor that Gmail integration will be coming soon. Since I already pipe all mail into Gmail regardless of source, here’s one more step towards the beauty of Exchange Unified Messaging without the peskiness and complete impracticality of Exchange*.
None of this is earth-shattering technically, but the seamlessness and dead-simple operation take the UX of previously-fiddly operations to another level. EPIC WIN!
* = unless you’re a huge organization with a ton of money to spend and people to devote their lives to keeping running
In which I finally find a practical use for a QR code. This one’s easy and awesome. On the awesometacular web front end to the Android Market, Cyrket, each package listing comes with a QR code representing its market:// URL. So, find something you like, snap the code, and there it is, ready to install. Fucking. Brilliant.
