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.
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
Some of the best UX is the simplest. I downloaded Google Notifier, mounted the disk image, copied the binary to /Applications, launched it from Spotlight. Naturally, Spotlight chose the version on the disk image, not the local version. Well, look at the awesome dialog that resulted:
Not just reminding me to not run it from the disk image, I’m offered the option to fix the problem right there. I assume this is dead simple to program (unless launched from /app, show…), and I’d love to see it more often. It’s a perfect example of going the extra mile to exploit the sorts of things a computer does best. Even though it’s a small feature, this definitely gets an EPIC WIN.