April 2012
19 posts
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Microsoft has a foothold in content business →
Pretty good move by MSFT - Platforms are defined by the ecosystem and content is king. Content was an afterthought for Microsoft but with this deal, we are seeing a change in direction.
Enter Microsoft and its $300 million investment in what amounts to a spinoff of Barnes & Noble’s Nook digital media business, which includes e-books, textbooks, and all those digital newspapers and...
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A/B Testing Stories →
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LinkedIn iPad App
I agree that I tend to get little excited about cool apps and design. I downloaded the linkedIn app this morning and it is pretty fun!
From a website, they went to mobile. In that process they condensed the information and made the product focused that ‘got’ the mobile usage right. Information was categorized neatly and easy to get to.
Then they took the mobile app and adapted it to...
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Google+ Redesign Blitzkrieg →
From Engineer driven design to design for people. I liked what Fred Gilbert had to say on that:
“You notice, all of our shapes, all of our logos, have been softened,” says Gilbert. “There’s a difference between building something like an appliance and building something for people. For people, you want to build an environment that’s friendly. To do that we made icons that were fun.”
...
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Forrester on Cloud Services Market Size →
This report is nearly a year old and is here as a bookmark for me - I have been using this for last two weeks to project market, revenue and growth opportunities. That work is supposed to feed into lot of engineering benchmarks, planning and marketing efforts.
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Nokia Earnings - Sales down but Lumia is promising →
The number of smartphones — both Symbian and Lumia — shipped by Nokia to operators and other sellers fell to 11.9 million from 24.2 million in the quarter.
Some numbers on Lumia sales but from the tone of the call, the numbers are better than expected.
In the first quarter of this year, the number doubled to two million at an average selling price of €220. Nokia sold more than a million...
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iPad WI-FI vs Cellular Sessions
…the cellular-enabled variants seem to be comparatively unpopular, perhaps because of how quickly they are capable of crushing limited data plans.
Only 6% of iPads are on 3G or 4G. 4G sale is less than 2% so far (March 2012).
If I were to interpret this data against iPad usage timing which peaks between 7-11PM, I would say that people use iPad predominantly at home or as a companion...
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Find your poison →
Real design is about creating a thoughtful, engaging user experience. Aesthetic styling can be then applied to enhance the experience as long as it doesn’t get in its way.
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Nokia Lumia 900 - How is it faring after 2 weeks
I like Windows Phone 7 user interface. It is better than Android’s and is a different + bold take. I was watching Nokia Lumia 900 sales numbers and adaption rate. AT&T says that sales have exceeded expectation. There are no real numbers around it so far.
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Paul Roth, AT&T’s president of retail sales and service, said sales of Nokia’s...
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Google BBS →
I remember those interface…thankfully GUI saved me when I started to use computers more seriously in mid to late 90s.
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What is Design? - An Interview with Charles Eames →
What constraints?
The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem—the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraint as possible—his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints—the constraints of price, of size, of strength, balance, of surface, of time, etc.; each problem has its own peculiar list.
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Part 1: Netflix Recommendation →
This is a perfect post after a frustrating night trying to watch something on Netflix.
Streaming has not only changed the way our members interact with the service, but also the type of data available to use in our algorithms. For DVDs our goal is to help people fill their queue with titles to receive in the mail over the coming days and weeks; selection is distant in time from viewing, people...
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Where is that couch app? →
45% of tablet users use the device while watching TV. It is more of less same as smartphone users.
More distilled data here and here.
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Instabook or Facegram? →
One of the best analysis on why Facebook bought Instagram.
Facebook was scared shitless and knew that for first time in its life it arguably had a competitor that could not only eat its lunch, but also destroy its future prospects. Why? Because Facebook is essentially about photos, and Instagram had found and attacked Facebook’s achilles heel — mobile photo sharing.
It will be interesting to...
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Not Digital Moms but Moms in Digital Era
Once of the sessions I attended was on how to target digital mums. WD Pearce (UC Berkeley) had an interesting presentation. His hypothesis was digital is a tool to make her a better mom - it is not digital mom but moms in digital era. There is no separate segmentation as all moms are adapting digital gadgets and mediums faster than any other segmentation. She has 3 hours less everyday due to...
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“Netflix apparently have 400 variations of their application and they test it all...”
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How Amazon approaches product
Amazon doesn’t usually come out with any information. Liza Utzschneider gave a brief background on how Amazon approach and drives development of a product.
She suggested they always start with the customer and work backwards - listen to customer (not just for UX and features), invent on behalf of the customer and personalize it for them. As all companies do, she said that they look 10 years...
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The Digital Revolution: A look through Marketer's... →
I went to ad:tech SF this week to gain more insight into product marketing and branding aspects of product development. Gaining more business insights is part of my ongoing personal improvement plan.
Anyway, this report form Nielsen Research is pretty interesting.
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Engaging Sign Ups
I was discussing user experience around sign ups and how much is too much to ask upfront. We all agreed on asking very minimal information from the user upfront but there was a split on email validation. We agreed to let user into the app and restrict after a week.
Few weeks after I came across this website on gradual engagements sign ups by Lee Munroe.
If you need email confirmation (to...
