A reminder from the uber-popular Flipboard iPad App: design and UE/UI can alter an entire experience. Using Flipboard, you can read Hacker News as a magazine... and its beautiful, fun and social. It is the same content, just presented in a very different way. And just as it's a reminder - it is inspiration to (re)consider product design. Hacker News via Flipboard iPad app:
Hacker News via web:
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As we await the long-rumored and supposedly forthcoming Facebook bar, Facebook developer Matt Kelly used Greasemonkey to bring Facebook Likes to any web page. The browser extension does two things... and each very well: "Facebook Like adds the ability to Like any page on the web. Also, if you click the plus (+), it will show you Recent Activity and Recommendations for the website you're currently on."
It is simple. But, as we saw last week with the Microsoft Outlook / Facebook plugin, the addition of basic Facebook functionality and its social graph is a powerful addition to traditional formats. And as we have seen with Flipboard, Facebook's social graph is a powerful navigation mechanism for content. The Facebook Like extension builds upon each... and I suppose is a taste for what's to come.
A close up of the activity panel when expanded:
Dogpatch Labs San Francisco resident LearnBoost announced today that they have raised $975,000 in seed funding. LearnBoost is an online gradebook for teachers. The product is remarkably slick, integrates with Google Apps and functions both on web and mobile (including the iPad). Congrats to the team. What is LearnBoost? LearnBoost’s product allows teachers to manage their classroom by offering an amazing gradebook and software for managing and creating lesson plans, tracking attendance, maintaining schedules, integrating calendars including Google calendars, seamless tagging of Common Core State Standards, and so much more.
Who are the investors? LearnBoost raised a seed round from leading venture capital firms such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Atlas Ventures. LearnBoost’s angel investors include Naval Ravikant, Bill Lee, James Hong, Karl Jacob, and others. Full TechCrunch coverage is here.
... So when does iOS 4 arrive for the iPad?... And why is the gap between releases (iPhone vs iPad) so significant?
I ask because, even as an active iPad fanboy, it really bugs me. First and foremost, I generally do not like using two related devices (my iPhone and iPad) on more-distantly related operating systems. It is tough to explain why it is annoying - particularly when they shared the same OS up until just a few weeks ago.... But for a company so dedicated to user experience and fluidity, it is strange to ask users to navigate between different experiences. And that takes me to point two: iOS 4 is so markedly better than its predecessor that it really is difficult to return to the old form.... even on a device I passionately enjoy. I use the iPad almost entirely as a productivity device: email, web, documents, content, etc. And that really is where iOS4 shines: email is dramatically better and background applications make everything more efficient/productive.
Ultimately it is difficult to complain because both devices are great and I am spoiled by the new operating system... Which will make its way to the iPad eventually.
This is one of the more creative and fun Facebook Connect implementations. Predators - a surprisingly good movie, promise! - launched a Facebook viral campaign in conjunction with their national launch two weeks ago (opened at #2). In theme with the movie, you are able to "blow up the heads" of your Facebook friends... Which also makes this the bloodiest Connect implementation (at least that I've seen). It lacks some polish but I give credit for the creativity:
Using your Facebook friend list, choose which friends are privileged enough to partake:
Then you have the option of sharing the results via the newsfeed and your friends wall.
The key to driving clicks through the feed are: visuals, catchy content and personalization. This has all of those... Wouldn't curiosity drive you to click the following post?
Last week I wrote about email as a vehicle to drive user engagement. Here is another good example from SlideShare. Earlier this week I posted a presentation on paid search best practices from a recent Dogpatch Labs event. That day the presentation made the front page of slideshare.com... And they immediately delivered an email notifying me of the popularity. Its not a new concept (Digg for instance is great at this) but its an example of powerfully conveying accomplishment and driving engagement via email. And in this case (and in Digg's) their content rotates so frequently that is quite compelling:
At Dogpatch Labs, we try to host at least one event a week - whether it be formal or informal, social or academic, large or small. Last week we hosted a session on search engine marketing best practices. It was led by David Rodnitzky of PPC Associates. The session was called "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Search Engine Marketing" and David's slideshow is included below. When able and appropriate, we try to include presentations from Dogpatch Labs events and post them both on DogpatchLabs.com and on this blog (such as Facebook Connect Best Practices)
The Wall Street Journal's Venture Capital Dispatch blog recently covered Dogpatch Labs: At Dogpatch, Polaris Unleashes Its Inner Angel.
"Venture investors who want to get close to young Internet entrepreneurs are trying a variety of strategies, aiming to get an early look at start-ups that might one day need a significant amount of venture capital.
Polaris Venture Partners, a well-known Boston-area venture firm, entered the fray with Dogpatch Labs, which it bills as “a frat house for geeks.” Launched in San Francisco about a year and a half ago, the labs have expanded to New York and Cambridge, Mass., providing a temporary home for entrepreneurs, many of the working on social media projects.
Polaris, a multi-stage venture investor that historically has made a significant number of seed-stage investments, so far has backed six companies from the labs." ... read entire piece here...
Last week YouTube Mobile adopted HTML5... it wasn't long ago that Apple touted YouTube as the iPhone's original launch partner (via a native application). Their adoption of HTML5 is yet another indication that it is fast becoming a standard for web experience and portability. This alone is newsworthy... but I wanted to quickly showcase YouTube's example of their 'pop-up' unit: - it appears immediately on load of a YouTube page - it is big, bold and interferes with the video's viewability... and is therefore noticeable - it directs users to add an icon to their iPhone's homescreen... which is an effective way to convert a pageview to an iPhone icon - it is part of an emerging trend to point directly (both visually and through language) to actionable items
