« Craig-san | Main | Waste fifteen seconds now! »
January 25, 2003
HelloWorld
HelloWorld looks very cool indeed. (And look how cute, they list some user profiles. I love that the Museum of Jurassic Technology is one of the users.) Lots of interesting UI ideas here, as to be expected from the ex-MetaCreations designers. (Confusingly to me, Kai of Kai's Power Tools and other innovative programs is on the Board of Directors, but it's a different Kai (Gradert) who's leading Cooperating Systems.)
Except one: the geo-centric point of view is very pretty, but do most people really have contacts distributed across the whole world? I have people in Austin I talk to, and some in Berlin, Munich, Sweden, and London. The interface doesn't seem able to conveniently show 8 contacts in one city very well, and on a small map of the world, Berlin and Munich are pretty much indistinguishable. Of course, Greenland is unnaturally huge as usual. Maybe you could draw a map of the world scaled so that areas that are personally relevant are enlarged, and areas that aren't are evoked in a shorthand kind of way.
(Update: there's more interesting info in their Reviewer's Guide and short treatise on social computing. Both are biggish pdfs.)
Posted by Andrew at January 25, 2003 03:15 PM
Trackback Pings
Comments
Excellent idea. You'd think they'd have an information designer on board...
Posted by: PeterV at January 27, 2003 09:17 AM
The World According to America
http://www.torfnet.com/pictures/tnt/world_according_to_america.jpg
Posted by: Doug at January 28, 2003 10:06 AM