Toys and Delight

Stilly wonders If I would break his fingers in this post. Ha! Not meaning to piss in anyone's pocket (where did that expression come from? Anyway, like most of us who aren't a little twisted I don't want to) - but as a long time reader of Mikal's blog, it was Stilly who prompted me to start blogging in the first place. And as usual he's absolutely right - TOWER is an excellent place to work, and my job is hard!

I upgraded my mobile phone to the Sony Ericsson K500i today. It's a very nice thing, that is really quite a lot of overkill considering I primarily use it to talk to people who are in a remote location. Mind you if I end up lost in the desert, and find I need to take a VGA photo of a coconut and e-mail it to my Mom, while playing 3D Splinter Cell and MPEG4 streaming videos out of a speaker phone, I can do that too. Mp3 ring tones! Now I get Jack Johnson's Inaudible melodies intro when people ring me up. So If I sound mellow and distant, it's cause I'm probably thinking about surfing... could also be the crack.

I also got an iPod mini as part of the deal. Yeah, It's just an MP3 player - but it's soooo cute!*
Another classic case of how industrial design and marketing can trounce the market. There's an old business model that says if you can move in next door to a business, and do exactly what they are doing, just better in every way, you'll be able to make a tidy living. The same is true of User Interface in software. If you spend a bunch of time trying to delight the users, instead of just making it possible for them to use whatever you're making, you'll probably win. Users will tolerate crummy functionality if it's presented in a stunningly attractive way... And they'll chuck out a really functionally rich app if the interface is clunky. Man, we're a fickle bunch...

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston just broke up. I was really devastated for about 3 seconds, and then I realized I couldn't give a shit.


*voice goes all high and girly