Usability Shark

On Alien Planets (AKA Icelandic Adventures)

I guess the thing that I am doing with this now is to update it once a year with a post about travel. Go figure. Things change y'all, that's all I'm saying. 

Anyway - last September I went to Iceland with my good friend Shane and it was a fantastic adventure. I took a lot of travel diary style notes, so you can rest assured that while this is almost a year late, it is still a relatively accurate accounting of what we did and how many sheep we saw (answer: many). Enjoy!

Day 1: Mud Facials and Getting Lost

One of the things with international travel: you tend to arrive places at ungodly hours after having slept basically not at all. In this case, we trundled in the Reykjavik airport at 6:30 am and immediately got in a car to drive ourselves around. I'm not sure if that's a wise thing to do generally. In any case, we had a few hours to kill before our 10AM appointment to roll around in mud (more on that in a bit). We drifted about and ended up at a little seaside town. Relevant facts: it was rainy and it was cold and felt very appropriately Icelandic. Gray, but beautiful.

After this bit of side tracking, we realized we had no idea how to get anywhere because, being smart, we had not bought a map. We rounded back to the only place we can locate that is open (the airport) to correct this misstep. Even then, we were still running too early for the mud, so we continued with the meandering (although slightly more directed this time). We met a horse:

And finally: the mud. AKA: The Blue Lagoon. We sprung for the "exclusive suite" because we fancy ourselves wealthy now that we are adults. It's actually really nice, with a super swanky private shower and free drinks. There is also a valet who you can summon at will to bring you things such as: more drinks, tiny expensive hamburgers, even fancier versions of all the lagoon mud to smear on yourself. The whole thing is, in fact, a great way to relax after a long flight although there is moderate danger of falling asleep with your face in a pile of rejuvenating mud. We totally looked 10 years younger when we leave. (not really).

My: this mud is flipping amazing! Also I am really tired! face

After this greatness was a really unfortunate attempt at driving to our hotel in Reykjavik. It involved a lot of getting lost and attempting to find free Wi-Fi in order to get directions. It is not the sort of thing you should do on 2 hours of sleep and only rejuvenating mud keeping you alive. It is a miracle we find our temporary home. We forced ourselves to enjoy some sight seeing and a proper fish dinner before crashing out. Day 1: super duper successful with a side of driving nightmare.

Day 2: Horses, Elves, Wax Figurines

After dosing up on coffee it was off for another driving adventure to find the Ishestar Riding Center, our primary day 2 activity being "ride an Icelandic horse". We managed to get there on time just barely, and it was well worth the panicky effort. The ride was as awesome as you'd expect. Lots of great scenery and the unique experience of feeling very far off the ground and like you might fall off at any time. It's actually really cool. My horse was named Tonka and didn't try to murder me even once.

Tonka in Close Profile

Shane with his horse, Icecube the Fantastical

Post riding, we found our way to the scenic town of Hafnarfjordur. It was a neat place, but by far the most exciting thing was that they had an elf garden. I am pretty sure this cat is actually a cleverly disguised elf.

Elf, for Sures

Back in the capital city we determined that perhaps the most critical thing to do was solve our directional handicap once and for all. We did this by locating a mall with a Vodafone store and picked up a couple sim cards so we could once more lean on google maps instead of our own sense of left and right. It is by far the smartest thing we did this whole trip. 

After this we for once made it to a destination without making a wrong turn and got ourselves immersed in history and wax creepiness at the Perlan. Also, there were some pretty great city views from up there.

Later, we headed to that cathedral you see in the above shot. While taking photographs, we got approached by some native youths who proceeded to take pictures of us, taking pictures of the cathedral for some project I don't recall the details of. Also: some people were filming a movie out front that involved someone getting shot. It was a busy night at the cathedral for sure. 

If anyone knows what movie this turned out to be. Please let me know...

I believe we had dinner of wine and schnitzel after this, which is about the best way to end a day that I can think of.

Day 3: Road to Vik

This was an odd-numbered day, so it rained. Also, I woke with a sore throat which made for a rough start including the discovery that it is by no means easy to find cough drops in this country (I think it was almost a full day of trying various places before locating a pharmacy and paying 3 times the usual amount for them). While the day is pretty foggy and wet, we still managed to find some cool things to see as we made our way east. The first was in the town of Hveragerði where they have a fun little geothermal area, or rather a park that is full of boiling ponds of water and a lot of steam. It's pretty bad ass. There's even a spot where you can boil eggs!

As we headed further down the road we saw a 60 foot high waterfall basically emerge from nowhere along the skyline. It was still pretty rainy, but we are adventurous folk so we got as close as possible and also got exceedingly wet in the process. I regretted, with all my soul, wearing jeans, but it was still basically amazing.

The evening was spent at a place called Volcano Hotel. It was a bit removed from the closet town (Vik, where we acquired pizza for dinner), but very nice. I drew this while we were there.

My rendering of sheep is very accurate

Day 4: Vik to Skafatell 

Even numbered day, so it was sunny! Which was great, because our first couple of stops featured mountains, glaciers, some amazing rock formations, big crashing waves, and lovely blue skies. Very pretty, as you can see...

Here is Shane, risking life and limb for a good shot.

And here is one of those red roofed churches you see all over Iceland

Further along the ring road, we found another waterfall. This one was much smaller, but it also had a weird little grass covered shed nearby that I found super charming.

Our next big destination was the National Park at Skafatell where there is a really big glacier that later we will climb. It made itself apparent well before we actually got to the park proper. It rises up from the landscape like some alien thing, white with lines of black ash from the volcanic explosion from a couple years ago. From our hotel, we get a pretty excellent view of the top most portions of the thing.

Day 5: Glaciers!

 According to my travel journal we slept until 11am on this day. Just because you're travelin' doesn't mean you aren't occasionally totally lazy. We made up for it in the afternoon. Also, it's an odd-numbered day so naturally: rain, which is the perfect weather for climbing a glacier.

In fact, the rain scared off the other people scheduled to go on our hike with us, so we got a private tour with our hilariously charming Czech tour guide who taught us many things about Mouse Rocks, Moulins, how to drink glacier water from a stream by sticking your head directly in it, and how to warm your hands by violently spinning your arms around. She was pretty great.

Crampons: the spikiest of foot wear choices

Glacier Ice is predictably cold

This is a glacier mouse. It is mossy and when squeezed will leak very cold water.

Wall 'o Ice

After walking up a glacier in the rain you tend to be very wet and very cold. So you can imagine our  surprise when we got back to the hotel to discover that the power was out and there was limited access (ie: no access) to hot water. We did the best we could under the circumstances and with dry clothes drove longer than was reasonable to the closest place with power to get some dinner. That place was Hofn, the lobster capital of Iceland! I had bisque, and it was good. 

Day 6: Driving the Easter Fjords

 A beautiful sunny even-numbered day, which is good because we had to make our way around the eastern side of the country to get to Husavik by evening time. Luckily, driving is more entertaining when there's a lot of beautiful scenery to stop and gape at. Although that does slow down progress.

Stop number one was the Glacier Lagoon. You've probably seen pictures of it before, what with the blue glacier chunks.  It's really neat, especially all the seals. The seals were really cool. 

My friend the seal

Stop 2 was a scenic outlook with some more amazing cliff side views and crashing waves and what not. Beautiful, naturally.

Sorta proof we were actually here

Stop 3 was a small seaside town which one of our guidebooks claimed was "the most picturesque town on the eastern Fjords. It was, in fact, pretty picturesque.

At this point we made a daring cross up a secondary road through the mountainous fjords. I say daring because our tiny car was clearly not really meant for this type of travel. The road is gravel and dust, narrow, and yet they claim one can go 80kmh down the darn thing. We maybe go half that at the most. It is astonishingly pretty, but I have no photographic proof of this because our focus was mostly on not tipping over a cliff side and dying a tragic death. 

Somehow, we did make it to Husavik in time for a late dinner in town. It's one of the best we had there in my recollection and included both Viking Beer and Bjork Schnapps, and I do not think you can get more Icelandic booze than that. 

Day 7: Husavik, No Whales, Waterfalls and a Lake

We had a grand plan to go whale watching in Husavik, but it's an odd-numbered day so we were basically banned from doing so. High winds shut down all whale-watching tours for the day. It is disappointing, and this is the closest thing to a proper whale I got to see in Iceland.

Hint: it's dead.

Not ones to be deterred, we decided on finding somewhere else to adventure. Our thought was to drive down the coast to some point on our map that claimed there were puffins to be seen. Instead, we mostly found rain. However, a spontaneous decision to turn south rather than north led us down yet another dangerously rocky road to find to our endless delight some really really big waterfalls. They're located in the midst of a rather dramatic canyon that cuts through Northern Iceland. With a drizzle still in the air and temps at around 36 degrees, it is well frigid but also a thing that has to be seen to be believed.

Hafragilsfoss

Dettifoss

Having acquired waterfalls, we then headed on south toward Lake Myvatn where we were due to spend our evening. We manage to catch some more geothermal activity on the way there as well as some of Myvatn's other-worldly beauty at it's best in the late afternoon light. Is it just me, or does everything look especially pleasing in the late afternoon light?

Day 8: Myvatn, Akureyri, and the Northern Fjords

Lake Myvatn is apparently known best for these big crater things that are all over the place. This is how we spent the morning of Day 8: wandering around big cratery type things that make the place look a bit like a moonscape.

Here is a big ole Crater

The next stop was yet another wildly impressive waterfall. This one is called Godafoss. There is a story about these falls that goes as follows: some dude who was in charge of things decided that all of Iceland should convert to Christianity. As a sign of this massive religious shift, he took their old idols and tossed those suckers right into the falls. Thus, Jesus is welcomed into the hearts of all Icelanders, I guess. In any case, the waterfall is amazing, sure to crush any idol you toss into it. Unlike in the states, they don't really keep you from getting as close to the edge as you dare, so also they are quite likely to crush a few people as well.

As close as I dared. Which was pretty darn close.

Having tossed our idols away, the next place on our agenda is the town of Akureyri where we had lunch, got confused by parking, and saw a pretty nice little church. 

Somehow, despite having mastered GPS, we made a wrong turn coming out of town and had a small detour for a bit. The thing I remember most clearly about the detour was driving past the same Santa's Workshop two times. Resituated, we eventually made our way through the Northern Fjords. Driving in this area is pretty intense, what with the extreme drop offs right into the roiling ocean. To add to the fun, there are also a series of very long tunnels through the mountains, some of which are one way. I believe the longest was about 4 km. It was pretty claustrophobic.

I drove through that! It was scary.

Stood in the road to get this one. Totally worth the danger.

At the tip of what is called "The Mitten" there's an amazing view of the Artic Ocean stretching out into forever. On the day we saw it it was remarkably blue in the early evening with the sun hanging low, the reflections in the water are just breath taking. It makes a person feel very small in the grand scheme of things.

The other amazing thing that happened at this juncture was that while trying to find a place for dinner we got waylaid by a sheep round up in action. Dozens and dozens of baaahing sheep filled up the road while a few folks on horseback trotted around clicking at them trying to get the unreasonable things off the road. It is basically my favorite thing that happened to me in Iceland. You may enjoy it vicariously through this delightful video.

 

When we finally managed to get around the herd of sheep and to a town with actual restaurants we found ourselves at a place called "Olaf's Hus". Perfect. In addition to the great lamb and fish dishes, we also met some interesting people. At the table next to us an Indian man and his hired driver ended up talking to us for quite awhile about things to see and do in Iceland. Turns out the guy was there scoping out locations for the Sierra Club tour he was planning. We talked about Route 66, Icelandic Myths (one of which involved a particular hotel with a glacier view that is apparently an excellent aphrodiasiac), and the Gallpogus Islands. 

By the time we made it to our hotel it was very late and very dark, but it was a rich full day. 

Day 9: Back to Reykjavik via the Western Fjords

Odd-numbered day: so it starts with the rain that has been chasing us around Iceland the whole time. Still, we managed to take a few shots at our little hotel before setting out for the drive back to Reykjavik. Our friends from dinner the previous evening had suggested that on the way we ought to stop by the peninsula so we could see what is supposedly the inspiration for Tolkien's Mordor. Despite all the rain, we can't resist the call of Mordor. 

Along the way we found some more craters and took a hike up along the rim of one. I suspect that this is not entirely unsimilar to what it feels like being on the moon, only with, you know, more gravity. Indulge me please.

Later on in the town of Borness we found a great place for lunch that had not only an excellent buffet but also locally brewed beer. We split a lager and a stout and it was great. 

On towards Mordor, but as you might expect, the closer we got the worse the weather became. In fact, it got so very dark and windy that eventually we had to make a rather un-Frodoy decision and turn back towards more civilized parts. 

We made our way back to Reykjavik by way of another very long tunnel which also cost 10,000 KR to pass through. 10,000 KR! 

Back at the capital, after checking into our final hotel for this trip, we figured we had earned a nice night out at some appropriately cool pub. Our first attempt was to check out an Irish Pub we found online, but they were not really serving anything in the form of food. So we stumbled around looking for something more our speed when we found quite be accident "The Lebowski Bar", themed on the classic Coen Bros movie of which I am a hard core fan. They feature a robust menu of themed burgers and a wide variety of White Russians - all tailored after characters in the film. In honor of the dude, we enjoyed a couple in addition to some burgers. A pretty great way to spend the last night in Iceland.

Day 10: A Stop by the Cathedral Before Flying Home

We made one last stop before heading to the airport to get back to America and that was a trip up to the top of the Cathedral. A few notes on that: it was appallingly windy and I felt for a moment like I might just get swept out one of those narrow windows and fall to my death. Also, it was great.

The flight back was pretty uneventful with the exception of getting to see how awesome Greenland looks from the air. Seriously, look at it!

Some Final Thoughts

I think everyone should check out Iceland. It's such a unique place, particularly if you are the type of person who gets excited by geothermal action, volcanoes, and rock formations. And who doesn't? I put together a couple of videos which I think are pretty good summations of the experience overall. The first is a collection of what amounts to different variations on water and steam during our trip. The second is a collection of driving footage I took with my mini-camcorder which was clipped to one of the visors in our rental car during the whole trip. I think they both came out pretty great. You can check 'em out below.

On Roadtrips and Blogging

Poor Usability Shark, you have languished untouched for so long. I have many excuses, all of which are certainly lame, so I won't bore my readers with them. It's rather nice they've managed to find this place after all this time afterall.

So, good readers, you'll probably notice at some point that I am not saying much about usability, design or anything of the previous focus of my writing in this post. That's because I have decided that forcing myself to use this space for a single topic is one of the reasons I'm not using it very well. Maybe I'll write a post on that in general someday, but for now, I am going to regale you with an image heavy story of my trip through the American West that I took last summer with my fine friend Shane. 

Day 1: Seattle and the Overnight Train to Glacier Park

This posting is pretty delayed frankly, the trip began on a distant day, back around the Memorial Day holiday in 2011. I vaguely recall my flight to Seattle from Dallas being delayed and getting to the city of grunge way later than I would have liked, but at least I got there before we were due to get cracking on the major part of the trip. 

We didn't get much time to pal about Seattle, spending that morning collecting last minute road trip supplies. We did manage to grab a beer and some Gyros before getting a bus down to the train station. Yes, we start a road trip with a train trip because, my friends, trains are awesome.

I've taken Amtrak plenty of times back when I was in college in Baltimore. It was for a year or two my primary means of getting home for holidays. The overnight train though? It is so much nicer. I'd go so far as to say luxurious. There was a very nice porter who gave us champagne and treats, plus the ticket price covers meals in the dining car. All of this was fantastic, but paled in comparison to how wonderful the scenery was, particularly the closer we got to Glacier Park.

So there were rivers and mountains, and a bottle of Santorini wine. Even the rocking motion of the train served to lull me into a really nice slumber. Fantastic first day.

Day 2: Glacier Park

We arrived in Glacier East around 9:30 am and one step off the train pretty much confirms that this place is astonishingly beautiful.  Also, there's still some snow on the ground. 

When we picked up our rental car, the woman manning the counter suggested we purchase a can of Bear Mace. Just in case. At $50 we decide to risk the bears.  Notably, we never saw any. $50 saved!

In our newly acquired car, we meandered around the edge of Glacier Park most of the morning encountering some snowy scenery along the way. Mostly we learned that snow has the unfortunate habit of getting under the cuffs of your jeans and making your socks very cold and wet.

Once inside the park proper, the first thing we saw was a gorgeous view of Lake McDonald. Not to oversell, but even several months later I think it's one of the most beautiful views in a trip filled with beautiful views. The lake is just crystal clear, reflecting the mountains in the background. Utterly peaceful and breathtaking.

After finally checking in at our lodge for the evening we did a little hiking on the "Trail of the Cedars" where we saw some wonderful forest scenery and a fantastic waterfall. On the way back to our car we even spotted some Mountain Goats up high on the cliffs, a bit too far off for proper photography without a better zoom sadly. 

The tail end of the day featured a boat trip around the lake. It was getting pretty crisp, but still very beautiful. Also, Shane made friends with a sock puppet that was hiding in his jacket.

Post boat-ride was dinner at the McDonald Lodge which I'm told is historic. It's also quite lovely in general. I tend to run a trip around a combo of scenery and food, so I'm here to tell you that the sausage platter was awesome. Later on we tried some Huckleberry Beer that was not that awesome. 

Day 3 - A Long, Lovely Drive to Yellowstone

The length of this day's drive is a testament to our fanastic planning skills. We originally thought we'd get to Yellowstone early in the day but due to a combination of factors (it's not that close to Glacier, we kind of tend to stop every 5 minutes, we saw horses!) it took most of the day just driving down. 

Along the way we saw Salmon Lake and made friends with a Montana Horse wearing a cowbell.

By the time we actually made it to Yellowstone it was nearly 11, but at least we got to see some Elk chilling at a Catholic Church on the drive in.

Day 4 - Yellowstone, In Daylight

I had planned to go running in the morning at Yellowstone, but the unexpected freezing rain kept me from donning my sneakers. Instead, we got breakfast and bundled up for more sight seeing. 

We started out at Mammoth Hotsprings. The drizzle was seriously cold, but you could feel the heat coming off the springs which keep a continual cloud of steam floating through the whole area. The rock formations are a pretty unsual, but lovely, mix of colors.

After finishing up at the springs, we grabbed a quick lunch to take on the road and got started driving towards Old Faithful. Along the way, we made several stops  to see some waterfalls and walked around another hotsprings area while fighting the freezing rain. As a reward, we got to see a gray wolf pretty close and as a bonus, saw him hunting and killing what I think was a marmot. Maybe. Other wildlife spotted: Bison, Baby Bison, Elk, Ravens.

 

We did successfully make it to Old Faithful where we checked in to the "Old Faithful Inn", another historic lodge, that has a great view of the famous Gyser. Sightseeing for the day was concluded when the Gyser, 10 minutes late, finally put on it's impressive show. 

Back at the lodge, we wandered a bit and grabbed some wine for the next hour's showing of the Gyser. It's actually more fun to watch from the balcony while keeping warm with a glass of red. Later, dinner at the lodge restaurant included Bison Ravioli, which was delicious. 

Day 5 - A Troublesome Drive to Salt Lake City

Our plan for Day 5 was to leave Yellowstone and make it to SLC in time to catch that evening Bee's game (local minor league baseball team) wich started at 7:30. We're lucky at first that the south exit which had been closed the day before due to the heavy snows turns out to be open. On our way out we got to see some seriously fantastic snowy landscapes, and also a tiny snowman.

However, all this greatness hit a snag when we realized we had neglected to check out of the Inn. Both Shane and myself still had our keys in our pockets. No time to go back, we forged ahead figuring we could call and apologize and pay for new keys sometime later. We later did learn we could just mail them back. They didn't even charge us!

Once out of the park, we drove alongside the Grand Tetons for awhile and couldn't help ourselves from stopping more than a few times. I mean, how could you not?

Time was a little short, but we weren't worried until we reached a road sign loudly proclaiming: "Road Closed Due to Mudslide". Time for a detour.

 Despite the odds, we did manage to hit SLC and only miss the first 30 minutes of the game. After grabbing some ballpark hotdogs and SLC Bees T-Shirts so we could support our team, we settled in to enjoy the game. The Bees took it 10-0 in a pretty exciting match-up.

Day 6 - Driving to the Grand Canyon

The plan for Day 6 was the head directly to the Grand Canyon, but as we drove down we were lured over to Bryce Canyon for an unplanned detour. This one was very well worth it. On the way in, the Red Canyon put on a great show, set against a perfect blue sky.

At Bryce itself we took a good hike along the rim, and the canyon is nothing short of gorgeous. The colors are a mix of reds, greens and browns and with a flawless sky above. The view is pretty much perfect. 

Bryce was followed by no shortage of additional scenery as we continued to make our way to the Grand Canyon. We stopped at several scenic overlooks and took in a number of beautiful sights. We dawdled so much that by the time we hit the park entrance it was too late to see much save the very starry sky above and the occassional gray fox hunting mice by the side of the road. We made it to our hotel and crashed out immediately, for the next day was about proper hiking.

Day 7 - Grand Canyon

After a quick breakfast and some time gathering internet info we finally got our first proper look at the aptly named Grand Canyon. The name is seriously no joke, it is nearly impossible to take the whole thing in. Each turn in the trail makes you want to take another photograph.

We walked about a mile before catching a shuttle to take us up to Hermit's Rest, the farthest stop west along the south rim of the canyon. Here we saw more ravens, which is something this spot is apparently famous for, but more entertaining was this squirrel.

After taking a quick lunch we started the hike back east. Each outlook really does seem more impressive than the last. Later when I started to look through all these photographs it was literally hundred of shots of the same scene and I still could not decide which ones to share. However, the shots with the Colorado River visible below are some of my favorites.

Also, it's a requirement at the Grand Canyon that you take pictures of yourself looking like a dork. I think they kick you out if you don't.

Mission Accomplished.

We made it about 3 or 4 miles before deciding we best catch a shuttle if we wanted to see the sunset at Yavapai Point. Now, I have seen a lot of pretty fantastic sunsets. The best were probably in Santorini in Greece, but there is something really distinct about sunset at the Grand Canyon. The light playing off the rocks brings out the truly exceptional colors. I'm not sure I could capture the depth and dimension in any of the vast number of photographs I took, but I surely did try.

With the canyon now dark, we headed to the Arizona Room for dinner and drinks before collapsing back at the hotel. It was a lot of walking after all.

Day 8 - Route 66 to Vegas

Leaving the Grand Canyon, we made our 1st unanticipated stop at a place called "Bedrock City" just outside the park. This weird little establishment lets you explore an (probably unlicensed) version of the Flintstones hometown. I took a trip down a Dino Slide and had a great time. Also there were demon goats. High on Americana we decide to go the long way around and head for Route 66.

We made a stop in a town called Seligman which claims to be the birthplace of Route 66. If the number of souvenir shops is anything to judge by, then this is a legitmate claim. The best part of this particular stop is lunch at the Snow Cap Diner, which is basically all you need for a proper American Road Trip.

The last major stop on our way to Glittery Vegas was, naturally, the Hoover Dam. Famous for being big, and indeed, it does not dissapoint. 

We reached Vegas relatively early in the evening and check in at the Encore. Most Vegas casinos have themes. The theme at the Encore is: luxury. Our view from the 34th floor out to the strip was amazing and I have never in my life been in a nicer bathroom. These are the things I care about. 

After marveling at how nice the room was, we ventured out to take in some sights on the strip and to get dinner. It was wildly busy, being a holiday weekend and a bit overwhelming. The people making up the swarm are only so diverse, falling into a few major categories: young drunk club goers, gambling addicts, families on vacation, or retired couples. I think we looked odd in this particular mix. 

Still, the lights and energy is all pretty fascinating. It's a place you should definitely see at least once in your life.

Day 9 - Las Vegas: Daytime

Our last full day of our adventure was devoted to experiencing Las Vegas, and in daylight the view from our hotel remains pretty fantastic.

After grabbing some breakfast in the hotel we tackled the strip to go pick up our tickets for "O", a Cirque de Soliel show we'll be seeing later that evening. The walk was fun, with lots of great sights and sounds. The tickets were waiting at the Bellagio and once acquired we made a plan to bus it back to the hotel, grab some fancier cameras and head to Fremont to check out the old Neon signs.

On Fremont, people were ziplining down the main street. It was sort of crazy. There were also, as promised, a good number of neon signs. 

Post Fremont, we made our way over to the Pinball Hall of Fame, a veritable warehouse of Pinball run by a solitary and distant man who, notably, has no particular love for Doctor Who (the pinball game anyway). There were still a lot of fun games around though, and the place with all the noisy, clanging machines and blinking lights, is pretty fun.

After all this madness, it's back to the strip for a marathon race to our dinner reservation at Craft Steak. Despite the terrible traffic and a very slow moving bus, we made it on time. The dinner is pretty easily the fanciest I've ever had (and the most expensive), but it's very good and the atmosphere is lovely. Maybe not quite worth the cost, but hey, it's Vegas right?

Dinner is followed by a monorail (monorail!) ride over to the Bellagio where we're going to see "O". These are, of course, famously amazing performances, and it surely did not dissappoint. It truly is something else seeing it in person. The water theme and the intricate staging uped the amazement quite a bit. 

Post-show, we hung around outside the Bellagio to see several iterations of the fountain show. It's awesome, and very difficult to capture with a point & shoot camera. 

We wrapped things up with some final wandering about the various Casinos as we headed back to Encore with a few stops along the way to play slots so we could claim to have gambled. Then, it's one last, luxurious sleep before the end of this truly Epic Road Trip.

Final Thoughts

I love Road Trips by nature I think, and this it the most ambitious and best that I've ever been on. The joy of it is always in the unexpected. We may have planned large parts, but the small surprises are what I love the most. The random horses we met at a rest stop, a tiny snow man on a big Yellowstone drift, an abandoned Bedrock City: these are the things of legend! 

If you're thinking of ever doing something similar, well, I can't recommend that enough. Get in your car, see America. It's a pretty amazing place, over all. 

On Privacy and Security, Or What's up with Facebook?

 Unless you've been living in a cave thus embracing the life of a true Luddite, you've probably heard about Facebook's recent war against privacy. For the past fews months it seems as if every other day America's biggest social networking site has done something new to chip away at the already ill-defined sense of privacy within it's trenches. Here's something of a brief summary, in case you have been in hiding:

Awhile back, Facebook quietly made your status updates indexable by Google. In a bid to be Twitter, this feature surprised the user base that had never really realized that their statuses were potentially going to be public knowledge. Uproar occurs for a few days then dissipates as people quickly forget about caring.

Later, Facebook introduces a way for other websites to consume your data. That's right, Facebook quietly started sharing your interests and information with websites you may not even know about, generally without telling you. 

A couple of days ago, Facebook launched a feature to link all of your interests to actual pages, spamming your wall with new advertising, and sharing your information with those pages as well. In this case there was a opt out option, but it never really explained what the feature was to begin with. Opt out is hardly useful without proper knowledge. 

Learn about some of this at PC World

So what's the deal? Not long before all of this, there was a very public kerfluffle when Google launched it's social sharing system Buzz. Buzz made a relatively grievous mistake at launch, automatically making your whole contact list privy to what you were sharing on Google Reader and whatever else you linked into Buzz. It didn't at that time make it clear what was happening, and the fall out was pretty swift. People freaked out at a level that was somewhat astonishing. Yes, it seemed from this example, that people cared about their privacy. 

Some background on Buzz's launch.

Google and Facebook are hardly the only ones flailing about in this game, although they are the most visible. Netflix slipped into this quaqmire when the company was sued over it's latest recommendation improvement contest for allegedly outing an in-the-closet lesbian mom based on her movie watching history. Money management site, Mint, had problems when it announced that your shopping history, although aggregated and anonymous, might be sold to marketing research firms. Some people canceled their accounts with great speed.

What's interesting to me about much of this is how surprised people are to realize that what they are doing on the web is potentially going to make itself public. I myself have always treated Facebook, despite it's privacy setting options, as data that I would not be devastated about becoming public. That's me though, and I've been playing this game for quite some time. People unfamiliar with the internet, young users and older users in particular, don't really understand what's going on when they post things to the web. New users to Twitter are often surprised to realize that everything they tweet is public knowledge. At the very least people's grasp of exactly who is included in "the public" is pretty slim. Take the young guy who was offered a job at Cisco and promptly lost it when he tweeted: "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work." 

That's right kids, your employer and your mom are both part of the public these days. Watch your step.

A lot of these privacy missteps, both on the part of the companies involved and those kids foolishly posting public photos of themselves shot-gunning beer at parties and then wondering why they didn't get that plush job, is simply a failure to grasp what's going on. These are mistakes, and much of the time, the companies are quick to take corrective action. Google responded to the Buzz complaints within hours. Netflix canceled its contest pretty promptly. There's one company though that seems to flaunt it's issues with privacy, and that's Facebook.

Facebook wields a lot of power. It's the first social networking site that's really collected such a vast and diverse user community that truly actively participates. Each user is a font of delicious information about interests from movies, food, books, tv shows. Each status message is another bit of data telling Facebook where you like to go, what you like to do and who you like to do it with. It is a marketing company dream database, and we are all quietly working to make it more impressive everyday. The truth of it is, Facebook does not really think of us as customers of their site but as unpaid employees entering data in a constant stream. Thus why they are so alarmingly cavalier about how they handle that data. 

The cynical among us have know this for years, but what's sneaky about Facebook is the front it puts up. It somewhat slyly pretends to care about your privacy. There are account settings where you can set the privacy level for any number of aspects of your Facebook posts, but here's the problem: how easy is any of this to set up? When it comes to UI design, I'd be the last person to give Facebook any awards, but far and away the most confusing part of the deeply complex interface is the part that ought to be the most clear: how to ensure that your data is protected. 

There is this concept in usability called an "evil interface". When you've learned enough about design you aren't just capable of delivering designs that are easy to use, you are also capable of designing interfaces to be purposefully obtuse. A naive designer makes mistakes, and evil designer doesn't make mistakes so much as he or she makes your life difficult because they do not want you to accomplish the required task. It is in Facebook's best interest (at least from their perspective) for your data to be public and for them to be able to sell it. Given that, what reason would they have NOT to make the privacy settings confusing. 

EFF has a great article about Facebook's Evil Interfaces, that I highly recommend.

We designers are told from the very beginning that we need to design interfaces that are transparent and easy to use for everyone. I'm often in my work struggling to take a step back in order to try and look at things from the perspective of a technology novice. It's an ethical responsibility as much as it is a skill to do everything we can for our users, especially when it comes to something as delicate as private data. 

So should you quit Facebook? That's up to you, naturally, but you should be an evanglist for your friends on Facebook. Many of them won't really know what the truth of this is, and Facebook certainly isn't going to tell them. It's up to us really, so spread the word. When I publish this post, I will almost assuredly share it on Facebook. 

On the iPad and Tablet Computers

So, it has a silly name, but other than that, what is going on with Apple's proud new offering? The apple tablet has been a mythic object for years and years, with fanboys waiting with barely contained, or not contained, desperation. Apple was supposed to bring us a tablet that would change the world, like the iPhone before it. 

Firstly, I don't doubt for a second that 1. the iPad will be successful or that 2. it will end up being a game changer. The more pertinent question is whether it deserves to be a success and whether that changed world will be a better one. The iPad at first glance is an enlarged iPod touch. The form factor and user interface has all the same glitz, shine and attention to detail that went into the iPhone, so it will likely be a pleasure to use. Still, the iPhone OS is a notoriously closed platform, and the question has to be, is that something we want on a tablet?

I don't actually oppose closed platforms on principle like some folks out there. I'm a huge fan of my iPhone, and part of why it's such a flawlessly executed interface is because the platform is closed. That said, I don't use my iPhone to accomplish work. I use it to check wikipedia for facts on the fly, call my parents, IM with my friends and play games while waiting for a flight. It's a pocket device and so a lack of certain features has never struck me as an issue. I'm trading off flexibility and some functionality for superior design, which is fine by me.

However, once I've got a tablet in my hands I'm starting to expect something a little more. A tablet doesn't have to be a fully functioning high powered laptop, but even Apple themselves are billing this as something you can work on. They've built a custom version of their iWork platform just for the iPad. I'm sure it's a beautiful experience, but anyone who works with word documents and spreadsheets and in general, has a job, demands a little more flexibility from their on the go computer. Primarily, anyone trying to do real work is going to want a device that multitasks, which the iPad does not.

Imagine the frustration of working on your important spreadsheet and not being able to smoothly navigate between it, your data loaded up on a word document, and the web? Instead you'll have to shut down one App in order to view the other. It's clunky, and it simply seems shortsighted for a tablet computer. 

And what about Flash? Yea, maybe, in several years time Flash will be a thing of the past as HTML5 becomes dominate, but right now, Flash is a huge part of the web. I've seen a number of jokes across the web showing mockups of the iPad displaying popular websites with that little blue square plugin-missing icon where normally rich content would be displayed. It seems hard to argue that a device that doesn't support Flash could be the ultimate web browsing experience.

When I first heard about a potential Apple tablet, what I envisioned was a touchscreen optimized version of OS X. That's an operating system that features both fantastic usability and flexibility. Also it has flash and can multitask. A real winner in my book.

It is disappointing to me that Apple didn't deliver a device that would really be a useful netbook with the kind of excellent usability that we've come to expect from the Mac operating system. Instead we have a device that may be a Kindle-killer with it's low price point and new iBooks application, but is far from the powerful tablet computer a lot of tech geeks were hoping for. 

Maybe I'll be proved wrong. Maybe I'll pick up this device and fall in love and accept all these downsides while in the thrall of all it's shiny top notch industrial design. As one of my favorite bloggers and celebrities, Stephen Fry, said:

There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking, still no Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute you use it. I cannot emphasise enough this point: “Hold your judgment until you’ve spent five minutes with it”. No YouTube film, no promotional video, no keynote address, no list of features can even hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and interacting with one of these magical objects.
- Stephen Fry

I'll give it a chance one of these days, when I can wander into a bright white Apple store and fuss around with it myself. On that day, I shall surely let you know if my opinion has changed. 

On 2009 and What Felt Important

Gentle Readers, I've been astoundingly neglectful of this blog in the past month or so. It's outright shameful. Still, there is a new year on the horizon, and as is tradition, I'm making a resolution to be more mindful. If only so you won't forget me completely, and also to keep my mind relatively sharp.

So this is my vaguely half-hazard year in review. I've decided to do my own HCI spin on a top ten list, although I'm opting to restrain myself to a top five. Do not consider this anything like a real, honest heavily researched and counter-checked listing of 2009's hot trends. What this is instead will be a list of the five topics and trends that I, just myself, found significant. This is my blog after all, and I shall do with it as I please.

So, in no particular order.

Number Five: Social Networking and Blogging Simplify and Expand

Those of us who grew up clicking at keyboards and learning HTML had perhaps grown used to an online world that was populated by people exactly like us. In a way it was a comforting thing, but the world seemed to explode this year thanks in large part to efforts to simplify how we interact on the internet. The biggest arena where we saw this at play was Twitter. Demographic studies showed us in no uncertain terms that Twitter was a comfortable place for older users less familiar with technology. Why? Because it is absolutely simple to use. 

Traditional blogging too, has become so simple to set up with sites like Blogger and Typepad making it so easy to set up a blog that your grandmother could swing it. In the old days, blogs required a certain amount of html knowledge and for optimum results probably some PHP to get set up. Not so anymore. Even everyone's favorite love it or hate it social networking site, Facebook, started trying to simplify its overly complex UI this year with one massive, if ill-received redesign and a new streamlined way of handling privacy settings.  I anticipate that we'll see this trend continue for awhile before it reaches a crest and complexity starts to weave its way back in again a few years down the line. 

Number Four: Collaboration is Hot, Wave is not

In the enterprise space, collaboration has been a hot topic for several years. When a company spreads itself out across the country and across the world, it becomes critical to find technology that will lessen the burden of that distance. Microsoft's Sharepoint platform has been a go to solution for a long time, but other players are always raring to get into this race. So entered Google into the arena with a lengthy video preview of a system they were billing as a true collaboration solution: Wave. There was a lot of excitement surrounding that video and people were salivating for invites for months. Then, we had it in our hands and the general reaction was a confused "what do I do with this?" from the public. 

Note, if you are one of the 2 people left in the world still looking for a wave invite, I have a ton. Comment or shoot me an email if you'd like one.

Number Three: The Smart Phone Battles

I feel like this is the year that we all universally decided we needed smart phones. Credit for this probably lies heavily at the feet of the iPhone, who brought elegant usability and smart marketing to the consumer side of the phone business. Before, while some folks used Blackberries for personal use, the market for smart phones was really centered in the business market. Now, the hottest market for these devices is personal usage, and it is an all out battle for dominance amongst the big players. We saw RIM put out the Storm in an effort to crush the iPhone's dominance, Sprint offered up the Palm Pre and later Google's Android mobile OS started to infiltrate the marketplace. 

Part of what makes this fight interesting to me is how the UIs of these different systems were handled in marketing efforts. It's safe to say, I think, that the iPhone puts a lot of effort into making the interface simple and fun to use, and in it's advertising for the phone it focuses directly on that aspect of the phone.

It's pretty different than the more functionality focused or in some cases plain esoteric approach of ads for other smart phone offerings:

Number Two: Innovative Input Devices

It all started a few years back with the Wii and its tremendous success. This year we saw rival gaming companies Sony and Microsoft announce plans to release their own radical departures from traditional control systems. The full body input system Natal is probably the most cutting edge, and it's natural that these experiments tend to happen in gaming first, but when you look at it, we are seeing some pretty impressive work done in more traditional spaces as well. Microsoft's touchscreen table Surface has been used to great effect recently and by now with our iPhones, iPods and various other devices we are all familiar with touchscreen interfaces. It wasn't that long ago that the usual way to interact with your phone was with a clunky physical keypad of numbers. 

These newer input and interaction methods will eventually find their way onto your desktop as well. Just take a look at the work being done at 10/GUI on multi-touch for the desktop, and be amazed at what the future of your office desk might look like:

Number One: Games for Everybody

Before the Wii, video games were the property of an admittedly diverse, but all relatively hard core group of enthusiasts. The term "casual game" or "casual gamer" was not much used, and if it was, there was a bit of derision to it. On the opposite side of the fence, a group of people continued to view video games as tools of the devil and murder simulators. It's relatively amazing that in this atmosphere Nintendo was able to conceptualize a system like the Wii that brought video games a new, more warm and fuzzy, appeal. In the end this is good for both sides, and the popularity of video games has continued to increase as the years since the Wii roll by. In fact, this year it seemed that so called "hard core" gaming systems were starting to embrace the casual gamer more than ever. In particular, I'll call out the newest Prince of Persia game. In some circles this ubisoft offering got a lot of flack for reportedly being "too easy". And yet, the game still performed exceedingly well, because while it might have been easy, that lack of frustration meant that a lot of folks who are newer to games and haven't been training with their controllers for 15 years were able to jump right in and really experience and enjoy the game. 

This is a trend that, I dearly hope and believe, will continue. The way for the game industry to stay ahead is to continue to broaden the market share, and the way to do that is at heart a usability issue. There needs to be a way to let everybody enjoy video games. A good friend sums up the accessibility problem in video games much more thoroughly, and engagingly over at Pixel Poppers.

Conclusions and Wrap Up

All in all, it's been a busy and interesting year online and everywhere. Usability continues to be a huge influence all over the map. It isn't just something affecting our work on the computer, it touches just about every piece of our day as technology becomes more and more ubiquitous. Here's looking forward to what 2010 has to bring to the table. 

Best wishes to you and yours!

On Folksonomies and Taxonomies

Any site that collects large amounts of information benefits from having some classification means that helps users find what they are looking for. Take the library, for example, if you are seeking a book on say, zoology, look no further than the card catalog and you'll find all the books you need within the carefully constructed taxonomy of the Dewey Decimal System. Categorization keeps us from blindly hunting through haystacks in search of needles.

We've gotten used to the Dewey Decimal type systems of the world. Traditionally, even on the internet, the best way we could think of to categorize information was to put the power in the hands of skilled information architects to create taxonomies by which we could organize our piles of information. Now though, enter Web 2.0 and the tag.

Firstly, some definitions.

Taxonomy: a particular classification arranged in a hierarchical structure.

Folksonomy: a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content.

Taxonomies are old and reliable methods for organizing content, folksonomies on the other hand are a new breed that came about with the advent of social bookmarking sites like delicious and photo management sites like flickr.

Both methods have their strengths and weaknesses, so now, when you're creating a new site that requires robust organization you have a decision to make: taxonomy or folksonomy or both?

The Taxonomic Approach

Taxonomies are managed. That means they have a strict structure and are completely predictable. When well designed they fit all of the content required of them and make for an easy navigational structure.

Sites like Netflix, Amazon and eBay generally benefit a great deal from using a taxonomic approach for organizing the content. A clean hierarchical structure makes for a clean navigation.

 

One of the reasons these sites work is that the information being organized tends to fit very well into defined categories and furthermore, those categories make immediate sense to the users of the sites.

That said, there are always places where these schemes fall short. It is up to a small group of people to define these categories, and from time to time where an item fits in the scheme is not terribly apparent. Sometimes, an item appears to fit in more than one place making it harder to find. The overlap between, say "Crime Thriller" and "Drama" is not trivial.

You can overcome that by placing items in multiple categories, but there's always an issue here with anticipating how users are going to see things. Putting together a proper taxonomy is time intensive process that ideally utilizes interviews with the user community. Not everyone has the time or the money to do taxonomies correctly. A bad taxonomy is almost worse than no organization at all. Think of it as searching for needles in 500 haystacks all claiming to have needles but that actually just have hay.

Folksonomies: A Saving Grace?

In an effort to avoid the pitfalls of a bad taxonomy, it's easy to think that folksonomies are the way to go. In this approach, you leave it on the shoulders of your user community to gradually build it's own unique organizational scheme. As content is added or discovered, the users are meant to tag that content with meaningful keywords that will help other users find that content.

The approach works best when users are adding the content themselves. On Flickr, I upload an image and quickly add some defining tags that will help the community locate it, and similar files.

 

Tags can be extremely powerful, but they don't necessarily solve all your organization problems. Relying on a user community to drive organization leads to some pitfalls. For example, there is no team in charge of managing the scheme and so there's high likelihood that you'll see misspellings, variations and overlapping tags that can make finding just the right piece of content quite difficult. Say I'm looking for cat pictures, but the perfect image hasn't been tagged "cat" and was instead tagged "kat". The possibility of my locating the image is small without expending a great deal of effort in my hunt.

Even if you could guarantee that every tag was spelled correctly it won't take long for a folksonomy to grow so large that it becomes unwieldy. For awhile when this concept was first introduced you often saw on sites employing it the Tag Cloud. Clouds were interesting, showing you the popular tags using font size to bring the popular ones to the fore front. This worked fine for some sites, but once there are so many tags clouds become relatively meaningless. Given the sporadic ways that users tag items it isn't uncommon to see a folksonomy that has 1000 tags, each corresponding to a single piece of content. Such an organizational structure does not really assist a user in locating anything. It would be just as easy to search a list of each item as it would be to scan the tags.

A Combined Approach

Ideally, it may be that the way to navigate the issues inherent in either approach is to push taxonomies and folksonomies together. Your taxonomy might not be perfect, but if you allow users to add tags to supplement that taxonomy it gives the community another route to the information. In addition, such an approach actually can work as a means to gather important feedback on your taxonomy itself. Those tags users add in to help you out are bits of invaluable feedback that can be used to fine tune the schema.

Regardless, each website has particular needs that have to be carefully examined before any one approach is decided on. As usual there isn't really a strict right or wrong way to do things. Everything relies on context.

Now, I might just need to go and create my own taxonomy for future Usability Shark postings. I've done a little internal debating of my own on whether it could be helpful or not. I'm leaning now, towards yes.

On Google Wave's Complexity and Usability

Over the summer, Google released a rather astonishing video of Google Wave in action. All across the internet enthusiasm was at an incredible high. Google Wave was going to be a paradigm shift of a collaboration suite. It was going to surpass email as the way people communicate with each other. I work a bit with collaboration software, mostly Sharepoint, so I was particularly interested in where this might go. Thus, it was with excitement that I acquired an invite to Wave.

Now, I've been scooting around this interface for about a week attempting to figure things out and I've come to a few conclusions.

The first: Google Wave won't replace email

Why not? It's far to complicated. What makes email a powerful medium is in actuality it's pure simplicity. The learning curve for email is almost trivially small. Wave is chock full of features, but in a sense they are features that are simply more than what the average person requires and that is a barrier to entry. I want to stress though that this is not so much a criticism as it is merely an observation. Wave probably isn't seeking to solve the email problem.

The second: chat is necessary for real time collaboration

I hadn't realized this before, but in the process of attempting to plan a trip to Greece with a friend using Wave as our platform I found the lack of a true chat interface unbearably frustrating. While you can "ping" a person in Wave, that ping merely acts as a mini wave. It's fully featured, which is absolutely overkill for a quick chat, and is also saved as a separate wave from the one you are currently working on, meaning the chat information and any decisions made there are separated from the rest of your collaboration work. 

I think for Wave to really take off, it needs to have a true chat feature, one that rather than being a wave is truly optimized for chat. For me, the lack of this was so frustrating I had to supplement my work in Wave with chatting over Adium. 

The third: There really needs to be connectivity between Wave and other Google Aps.

You're welcome to attach documents to your waves, but there doesn't appear to be a way to link in Google's already relatively successful collaboration suite. Prior to using wave for our "Plan a Trip to Greece" project, my friend Shane and I had both a Google doc of information and a Google Map of places we wanted to visit. My enthusiasm for Wave was damped when it became clear I could not capitalize on this existing work within the application. I could drop in a map gadget, but I'd have had to build my whole map again from scratch.

It felt extremely limiting to not be able to bring in work completed in other places, especially considering that those other places are ... well ... Google.

The fourth: this interface is wicked confusing

I have general faith that this will improve with time, but there are a lot of little things about the Wave interface that make it frustrating to use. I won't detail all of them here, but here's a brief sampling:

1. Why the funky scroll bars? They're a little clunky and it confuses me a bit that they didn't just use standard scroll bars which work perfectly well.

2. In a long wave, how can I jump to the unread changes? Right now I can't find a way to do this. If the changes are spread throughout the wave, it's extremely difficult to move through it to find the relevant changes.

3. Nested replies get quickly out of hand: one thing, having to double click to even find these features is messy. Another, those nested replies seem to not always show up where you expect it to. As they grow, it makes following them a bit difficult. I think they perhaps would have worked better showing up in the style of notes in Microsoft office revision mode.

Conclusions....

Wave might yet prove to be a paradigm shifting project. Niggling usability issues are a part of any release like that, so it doesn't concern me overly much. However, the lack of Google Docs and Maps integration surprises me and makes me wonder how long we'll have to wait to see what I view as very necessary new features.

One other thing that came to mind as I was playing with this... will the masses, who aren't perhaps looking for a robust collaboration solution, find themselves driven to use Wave at all? I have my doubts. Most of us in our day to day lives don't require that much complexity and jumping right into it is an overwhelming experience.

On the other side of the fence we have gmail kind of quietly doing its thing. More and more it seems to me that it's gmail that could really take off as a collaboration platform that everyone can start using. Already it has integrated chat with the email client, and it's starting to build in a connection with Google Docs as well. It's a way of easing users into a more robust experience by trickling the features in over time. Not a bad approach, although maybe not a paradigm shifting one.

Some references and other opinions on Wave:

1. IT Pro agrees, Wave won't replace email

2. Mashable's opinion is generally positive

3. Louis Gray thinks Wave is way way too noisy

4. Some thoughts at CNET

On Rating Systems and User Motivations

I've been a neglectful blogger and now, I'm going to spurn writing about tagging in favor of discussing ratings systems. Primarily because I recently encountered this really interesting blog post by the fine people at YouTube. The sum of what you'll learn in that post is this: the vast majority of videos at YouTube are rated 5 stars.

Relevant quote: "Great videos prompt action; anything less prompts indifference. Thus, the ratings system is primarily being used as a seal of approval, not as an editorial indicator of what the community thinks about a video."

The general intention of designers when they put together a rating style system such as the one at YouTube is with the idea that ratings will be used as a way users can judge content. Unfortunately, if all your content is either not rated at all or rated 5 stars, users won't get much out of those ratings.

This isn't a universal issue though. Some sites use star ratings with great success. Take Amazon and Netflix for example. Users of those sites are diligent about rating the content and sometimes will spend time on the site for the sole purpose of rating. Why are users willing to spend time rating movies on Netflix but won't take a couple of seconds to rate videos on YouTube? The answer has to do with user motivation and the inherent selfishness of users. Now, do not take umbrage, there's nothing wrong with being a selfish user. It's the job of a site designer to encourage you to act otherwise, and if they fail, it's no skin off your teeth. Carry on.

What's important for us, the designers, is to recognize and be aware that users are inherently selfish and will be highly unlikely to engage in activities that do not offer them a benefit of some kind. No one rates videos on YouTube, because the act of rating a YouTube video does not provide you with any benefit. The only people it could, in theory, assist are the submitter of the video and some small percentage of the user community when they browse for the video. But you the rater? You don't get anything.

In contrast, if I go to Netflix and spend some time rating the movies I've watched I can actually see the recommendations improve. The more movies I rate, the better Netflix's recommendations turn out to be. Thus, I have a good motivator for continuing to rate the content. Luckily for Netflix's user base, my ratings also benefit the rest of the community. Amazon works the same way. Ratings work out exactly the way we want because there's a clear benefit to everyone when it comes to contributing.

So what if YouTube took a page from that book? What would be interesting to see is if they instituted a recommendation system that actually used those video ratings to pull up similar videos relevant to you, the selfish user, would people start using the rating system differently?

Not easy to test without some significant work, but my inclination is that yea, you'd see some changes over time.

We could probably extrapolate the general theory at work here to a lot of other features and applications. The key take away is that if you want a user to take an action, you have to provide reasonable motivation no matter how small and quick the interaction appears. For example, most discussion forums are populated mostly by lurkers, only a small percentage contributes. Designing better motivators into your design could increase participation and lead to a better overall experience.

It's food for thought, in any case.

On Interconnecting Social Networks

I have a large number of accounts at various types of social networking sites. Partly this is due to my curiosity to see what's being done, how it differs from other sites, and what makes it special. Sometimes it is due to actual, genuine interest in the site's concept or content.  Here's a listing of sites I actually use with some frequency:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Livejournal
4. Flickr
5. Librarything
6. Ping.fm
7. Google Reader
8. Google Groups
9. Delicious
10. Linkedin
11. reddit

That's a lot to keep track of right there. I also have languishing but existing accounts with:

1. MySpace
2. Digg
3. Orkut
4. Yahoo Groups
5. Plaxo
6. FriendFeed

Why am I bringing up this increasingly daunting list of sites? Because in my life it is starting to become something of a usability nightmare to handle all these various accounts. Certainly, I could make my life easier - pick a site and use it exclusively - but not one of these sites gives me everything I want in one package. Furthermore, there's no one site that all of the people I want to connect with use. Thus, my problem, and a continuing problem for perhaps everyone who makes much use of the internet today.

Facebook has been making something of an effort to bring your different social networking accounts together in one place. In theory, I should be able to share a news story on Google Reader and have that update reflect in my Facebook news feed. However, that connection (as well as the connections with other sites such as Flickr) has over the past several months proven to be at the best of times not particularly usable or smooth and at the worst times simply broken.

This is where things for the user become really frustrating and complicated. I'm in Google Reader and I find a story that I just need to share with my friends. It's a one step process to get everyone following me in reader to see it, but what of my friends on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter or what if I'd also like to post it to reddit. It's time consuming and takes too much effort to:

a) decide where to post the story and

b) get the posting accomplished.

I have a vision of something much more seemless, that sits above all the other sites and acts essentially as a manager or your activity. Ping.fm, but with a broader use case.

Pause for a second, and I'll chat about Ping for those that have not used it. Simple set up - create an account and link in all your various other accounts. Once you've got that taken care of, you can post status updates to Ping and they'll be automatically sent to every account you've linked in. Having this in my life as at the least made posting status updates easier. No longer do I have to maintain different statuses for Twitter vs Facebook.

That's great, and I do love Ping. However, it doesn't solve the use case above of wanting to share out say - an interesting piece I read in the NYT. True - I could limit myself to sharing links as status updates, but that is not my general style. Additionally, it won't link in reddit or Google Reader which don't have a concept of status updates.

What about FriendFeed then you say? FriendFeed and Plaxo are great aggregaters of content posted at a variety of sites, but they don't feed the content you post there back out to other places. Aggregaters are great, and they can make life a bit easier, but it doesn't solve my problem.

No, what I want to see happen is a site where I can manage my various account and set up rules for how an action taken on one account will reflect in another. For example, a possible set of rules for a given action:

When I "share" an article in Google Reader take the following actions:

• Share the same article in Facebook
• Submit to reddit if the article URL is not already submitted
• Add link to the article to Delicious

There are a lot of possibilities here. What actions could be taken when I post to Flickr or Librarything? Perhaps I could even have a browser plugin that would let me adjust the rules on the fly for certain content.

I think this concept is a long time coming. It's relatively unreasonable to assume that users will at some point decide on a single site and stick to it. There is almost assuredly always going to be this wide array of sites that we play with and update, each with particular strengths or particular audiences. I don't want Facebook to become my RSS Reader, but I do want it to play nice with Google Reader. I don't want Twitter to become Flickr, but maybe I want to let people know when I post new photos without going out of my way.

Individual sites can make a start at this, building Facebook applications and Twitter bots and the like, but I think you won't see a real solution until someone takes the initiative to really bring sites together in a happy playground.

Something to ponder.

Next time, I'll speak to a related topic. Tagging people in Facebook statuses and how that may interfere with, or potentially enhance, @replies in Twitter and how it all works together with Ping.fm.

In the meantime, enjoy this battle of the social networking sites:

On Mental Models, Multitasking and the iPhone

Amongst my software engineering friends the most frequent complaint I hear about the iPhone is that it does not multitask. That's a true statement, but what interests me about it is you don't hear complaints about that from the vast majority of iPhone users, only really, from engineers. That observation got me thinking a bit about the difference between what a user perceives as multitasking vs what a software engineer considers to be multitasking.

Upfront I will tell you this: none of my meandering thoughts on this have been researched.

What I suspect might be the case though is that a not insignificant portion of iPhone users don't actually know that their amazing little devices aren't multitasking. Why? Well, from their perspective they themselves are multitasking all the time with the device, especially if they have push notifications turned on. Consider the following use case:

A woman sits in the airport, a little bored waiting for a flight, so she pulls out her iPhone. She pops in her earbuds and fires up the iPod functionality before moving over to Safari for some web surfing. She runs across a video, which she clicks on which moves her over to the youtube application. When she's done she hops back over to Safari for more browsing. Along the way, she gets a phone call which is pushed to her attention. She answers it, chats, and goes right back to browsing.

From an engineering perspective, none of this is really multitasking. Each application, with the exception of the iPod which can run in the background, is loaded one at a time. Contrast this with the Palm Pre which can have all these applications running at the same time.

So why aren't more people annoyed that the iPhone works that way? Why aren't more people jumping on the Pre train for that tasty multitasking?

Short answer: that woman in the airport already IS multitasking from a user perspective. Her mental model of the phone and how it functions is completely independent of the engineering of the device. She sees herself as simultaneously listening to music, surfing the web, fielding phone calls, watching videos and monitoring her email. It doesn't get much more multitasky than that.

It's tempting for those of us who understand the guts of something to think that users ought to see things the same way. I've read through threads of conversations on this topic where critics of the iPhone call the users of said device flat out stupid for not seeing this particular limitation. But really, what's the problem? Does the user's mental model have to match up to the physical model for the device to be truly usable?

No. It merely has to closely approximate it in a way that is seamless for the user. The iPhone may not actually multitask, but it offers an illusion of multitasking that is good enough for the majority of its users and there is nothing wrong with that. 

Up until a point anyway. Enter Google Latitude.

Latitude, if you aren't familiar with it, is a web application that can track a user's physical location and publish it out to the user's various followers. A fine stalking application for those who want to be stalked. It's most useful when it can run in the background so the user does not have to take a particular action to trigger the application to do its thing.

When Google introduced the application for the iPhone they launched it as a web application (get it here) and at first that seemed ok. But, but, the iPhone doesn't multitask does it? That means Latitude can't run in the background while we go about our business of wandering off, checking email, playing Snood, and reading restaurant reviews on Yelp.

Google Latitude rather broke the delicate mental model that was keeping some users happy.

It won't surprise me to see more special cases like that start to arise. Eventually, Apple may well have to reinvestigate some of the decisions they've made with the iPhone's engineering. Maybe they'll even switch from faux multitasking to true blue multitasking. They've demonstrated that they listen to complaints about a number of things, so perhaps this too will get fixed if it truly does require fixing.