Startup Diaries

Next Generation UI in Windows 7

Crunchgear has the scoop of many screenshots of current internal build of WIndows 7.
I won't go into the argument if the UI is beautiful or not and if it is better than Mac OS X UI. What I Wanted to talk about is a new concept in UI we can see repeating in most of the screen shots - The Wheel.

In a lot of the screen shots you can see a new way for the user to choose which application to launch or what option to choose. It's a wheel that you can spin and choose something from it.
What's interesting is that last week I was in a showcase of Microsoft Research labs, and I saw the exact same concept in a demo of next generation tablet PC.

The idea behind the wheel is that drop down lists, one of the more common UI elements today, are very hard to use when your device is a pen and not a mouse. It's very hard to scroll them and choose the exact option. It even get worse when you go to interfaces control by hands (like MS surface) and you need to select a small font option with a chubby finger.
Another problem is that you can't see all of the option very easily.

On the other hand, the wheel lets you see everything with beautiful images. You can easily do a circle notion with a pen or your hand to move it. In the demo I saw you, the wheel also remembered quick motions you did to choose specific options, to make your selection even faster the next time you use it.

So is the wheel going to be the next UI choice? Does this mean that Microsoft bets that in 3 - 5 years we will use pens and our hands much more on many more devices as a way to control applications?

The Twitter Issue

TechCrunch posted an item on the scale issues of Twitter, trying to justify the fact that they keep going down.

I have to be a little "bad" here and say that I totally don't agree. I will argue that twitter is actually a very simple queue application. A message goes in, and goes out to multiple recipients. It should be easy to develop an architecture that can scale this application.

I never used Ruby so I can't talk about it, but you can say whatever you want about Microsoft and still - to develop a scalable twitter on MS platform will be kind of trivial.

Yes. When twitter will get to 20 million people that send messages at the same time it will always be a challenge, and I'm the last one who will underestimate this challenge as we have our own scale issues in NuConomy. But if the latest numbers are correct, we are talking about 1.5 million users and just a few hundred thousands of active ones.

Twitter has been here for enough time for them to get the some funding, get more people and rewrite it on a scalable platform that will be able to hold ten times more users without too much of a problem.

Microsoft Name Gets Trashed

WOW. I can just hope and presume this comes from a spammer who bluntly trash and use the Microsoft name without permission...
This is one of the emails I found today in my inbox trying to sell me Viagra and other drugs...

Best Music Service Ever or The Future od Digital Music

As some of you know, in recent days I finally decided that I had enough with the closed platform of Apple, and went to buy a Zune.
The main reason is that I want to have a device that can synch easily with a subscription music service.

It's been a long time that I say that subscription music service is the answer that the music companies should go with. Think about how much money you are paying every month for iTunes for music you purchased and you will see that for most people, paying 10 - 15 dollars a month for unlimited music is a much more reasonable option.

Whenever I talk about it, I get people saying that subscription music services were out there for along time, but they never caught up. But everyone are missing a key fact - 90+ percent of the market have iPods that can't be synched with any subscription music service out there! iPods and iPhones can work just with iTunes (exactly why i turned to Microsoft Zune).

So here is how the perfect music service should look like:

• Unlimited music access and download up to 3 computers and 3 devices for $12 - $15 a month.
• If you cancel your subscription you may download and keep music with value of 70% of the money you paid until now for the service. You have to be subscribed for at least 6 months in order to enjoy this offer.
• Ability to download and stream music from the music store over WI FI. Zune already allows you to synch from your computer over the air (Why the hell I can't do that with iTunes and the iPhone is a mystery). This basically gives you access to all the music you want wherever you go, and this is something everyone will be willing to pay for.
• When you synch you will also get ads for upcoming concerts for your favorite bands. You can buy tickets directly from the device. Same for buying T-Shirts and other merchandise for each one of your albums.
  Besides the fact that this is actually a useful service for a lot of people, it should also encourage the music companies to go more and more digital and open, as they will get more revenue streams.

Now - Does this sound so difficult???
All the technologies that needed to do it are already there, the inly questions is who is going to pick up the glove first...

The iPhone Dilema

OK... now that we know for sure that the 3G version of the iPhone is coming out next month, the big question is of course - what the hell are we going to do with our current iPhone??

For some reason I have a feeling that Apple won't come out with an upgrade plan...

I mean, let's admit it... We all know that we all going to buy the new 3G iPhone, which basically make the current version to probably be the fastest gadget to drop dead. Compare to it, even the old Laser Disc have been with us for more time before making the room to DVD.

I guess this is the right time for a quick and clever startup to come up with a plan of what to do with all those first generation iPhones...

Kobe Is Still No Jordan

I still remember the last NBA playoff series of Jordan playing against Utah.
It was game 5 if I remember correctly when Jordan with a high fever decided to keep playing and had another amazing game of 30+ points, leading Chicago for a win.

Today Kobe Bryant played injured against the same Utah. You can admire Kobe about not giving up and deciding to keep playing throughout the all 4th quarter and the overtime. But with 1 of 11 during this time, reality is that he should have understood that he is not Jordan and let his other team members try to win the game.

New Address to my Blog

Hi.
There is a new home to my blog: http://www.inechmad.com/

If you are reading this through RSS, the address is still the same:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/StartupDiaries

My eLife Tools Review

After sucha long time without real blogging, I think it will be a good time to do a quick review of the digital tools I use on daily\weekly basis. Tools that makes life, a little more easy or fun:

• Netflix - Netflix is still my first choice for movies, especially for the ones I want to see on Blu-Ray. Still, since Hulu went live and you can basically see any TV you want on demand, I got to admit that my movies consumption went down.
• Twitter - No doubt the new rising star in my digital life. I never really had the time to play with it, but two wonderful applications made the use of twitter so easy and fun. Check out Twinkle for your hacked iPhone and Twhirl for your mac/pc.
  I would even go far and say that Twitter became almost a Facebook replacement for me.
• Amazon Prime - I still do 90% of my shopping just on Amazon.
• Hulu - No doubt Hulu became the first place I go to for all my TV needs. Not too many people noticed, but it actually has also a nice selection of old and cult movies.
• Snurl - if you blog/twitt a lot, you will love this small tool that shorten all the big and ugly URLs. There are many other services like this, but as this one is integrated into Twhirl I chose it.
• Safari - OK. For years I claimed that IE is better and a lot of the time faster. I was wrong. For many Ajax intensive sites, Safari performs much better. The built in spell checker, the great auto complete forms and bookmarklet capability is just a bonus.
• Netvibes - For a long time I tried to avoid start pages. But on Safari, Netvibes load time is really fast and I started to find it as a easy tool to get a quick look across social networks and blogs.
• Fring - Best kick ass iPhone application ever. Allows you to have a skype/messenger running in your iPhone while you are using other applications.
• iPhone - With the addition of Fring and Twinkle, suddenly the iPhone became a real social tool. My thoughts about replacing it are long gone. Now all is left is to wait for the 3G version