Well, here’s another one. And yes, I did take the weekend off with the rundowns.
rev2.org Daily Rundown #4 for 30th January 2005
- Amazon for iTunes/Google Video Store Killer? (RedHerring): Makes sense…
Rumors say Amazon’s working on one (video only). I think it makes perfect sense, and if they were to release one, it would no doubt catch on as some or all of their other products have shown. And as for the trust issue (*cough* Google Video Store), I’d trust Amazon single-handedly. - On Google UI: Although the whole article’s about something else, I’ll focus on one thing.
That is, Google’s engineering director’s comment:“I think the [user interface] of Google is as much science as art,”
Oh, please, I can make about 100 witty responses to that. First of all, “look who’s talking”. I would say Google is 100% science, and they just slap on a UI “because they have to”. Seriously ,their UI sucks. I mean, the search thing is Ok, and if that’s what he’s talking about I can’t respond to that but seriously, Google needs to look into hiring quality UI people for other things, such as their video store. So far, from what I noticed, they care more about functionality than how slick something looks. Just because you started off with brainy grads doesn’t mean they are all you should hire. That’s hardly 40% of what makes a good product. 60% is the UI.
- Travel and RSS (NYTimes): NYTimes has an interesting piece on using RSS for travel deals
I’d say watch this space. - Google’s New Toolbar Has Bookmarks (Niall Kennedy): Sadly, only of Internet Explorer.
From what I’ve read, people are impressed. It’s sad that it’s only for IE, but on the other hand, Firefox already has quite good bookmarking features (‘live bookmarks’ I’m thinking about). - I’ve been seeing quite a few new and unnoticed AJAX/web-based RSS aggregators lately, so here are some of them to those it might interest:
- NewsAlloy
- Gregarius (to be installed on your server [demo])
- Netvibes
- BenNews (unreleased)
- Inform
- FeedButler
- BackBase (to be installed on your server [demo])
- Newsvine Seems Impressive: From my perspective…
I recently got invited to the beta from the Newsvine team and it does seem to be some wonderful technology executed very thoroughly. I’m not sure if I’ll write a whole thing on this, but regardless of that, I thought I’d mention it. Oh, and if you want invites, I have 18 of them to give away to…the first 18 who want them. E-mail me or leave a comment.
