Mozilla Labs posted a demo video of the Firefox Mobile on their site today and it's highly innovative using just a single-touch interface — providing yet another great example of how limitations can incubate innovation.
The interaction design is really sweet. For more information, check out the detailed description of all the features on Aza Raskin's blog. (Aza is the head of user experience at Mozilla Labs)
I never really got into buying songs online. When iTunes Store first opened, I bought a few albums from it because I own an iPod, but very quickly I was deterred by the fact that I can't even play my iTunes purchases on my Squeezebox because of the DRM-protection.
Annoyed by the situation, I subscribe to Rhapsody Unlimited, which let me cue up pretty much anything I want for a low monthly subsription fee of $12.99. When I find something I really want to own, I just go buy the CD and rip it to MP3 so I can play it anywhere.
Then Amazon introduced Amazon MP3 Downloads, and it changed everything. Really, what's not to love about being able to purchase DRM-free MP3s encoded at 256k? I thought that the 1-click and ship to feature was evil in getting many books that I probably do not need then.. that's until I discover the even more instantly gratifying 1-click and download MP3 :)
Just when I thought that there can't be anything better than 256k DRM-free MP3 downloads, I discovered Beatport yesterday. Beatport offers 320k DRM-free MP3! To top it off, it even offer WAV (16-bit 44 kHz) and 192kbps M4A!
Little did I know, the site was actually launched in 2004, and the latest version as seen above was released in August 2006. Beatport focuses on electronic music specifically, with an eye squarely focusing on DJs and electronica lovers. In other words, it's made for me.
The content is top-notch, and I am able to get to a lot of remix tracks that I would not otherwise been able to get my hands onto if I were to browse on mainstream music sites (such as those described above).
I don't know how I managed to not know anything about PicLens until today.
PicLens is a browser plug-in which transforms image streams into a full-screen browsing experience. I installed the Firefox extension this morning and I'm in image surfing heaven moments after.
I have been on Flickr for a while now and have accumulated a lot of contacts over time. All of my non-friend contacts on Flickr are folks that I have made a decisive choice to maintain contact because I respect their photographic creation. 1000+ sounds like a lot, but when you consider that more than 24 million people are active on Flickr everyday, a thousand is actually quite a small amount.
While my intention is to be amazed by my colleagues' work, the paging mechanism + thumbnail clicking has also become rather annoying overtime. I tried using the Slideshow module to go through my contacts' photos, but the 200 count limit imposed by Flickr still create some problem.
PicLens does not impose image count limit to any browsing. The browsing model is also so fluid, transparent and intuitive that require zero learning-curve.
With this tool, I did something I have never done on Flickr today: 1. I browsed through every single image posted to my contacts' recent photos. 2. I browsed through the entire photostream from a contact I recently added.
There is no way I could have tolerated this process if I were to do this in Flickr's native interface. It has also replaces the need for flickrleech now, which I must say have served me quite well before PicLens.
But PicLens does not only do Flickr, it also does Facebook, YouTube, Google Image Search, Yahoo Image Search, and the list goes on... I tested it on Google Image Search and had the first tolerable experience on Google Image Search today.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. — Mark Twain
Plane: $2 million Parachute: $7,000 Tandem jump + videos: $270 Jumping out of a plane + experiencing the thrill of your lifetime: Priceless — See-ming Lee, 2007-08-17
Until I have time to edit the video and compose an awesome dance track to replace this raw footage (shot by Oren Peri) which contains a bit too much SML dorky moments, here's your chance to see me dropping out of a plane 15,000 ft above ground and flying tandem with Steve (Utah) Webb — a skydiving pro with 7,700 jump experience — for the thrill of my lifetime.
Note: Those shaky and some might say 'creative' photographs polluting my stream are the results of my camera being high-jacked by amateurs <sigh>... This is one of the reasons why I don't like people using my camera. Obviously, if you see me in the stream, I didn't take that photo!
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