Tjeerd Hoek was at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival last week to join the panel in a discussion on “How to create a kickass in-house design team“.

You know your customers and your products inside and out. You do the web design, the print design, the marketing collateral, and the t-shirts. You have a zillion ideas for how to improve this and fix that. You are the in-house design team. This panel will cover the key ingredients for success, measuring success and value, strategies for elevating design thinking, and dealing with challenges unique to in-house teams.

This is a barely 1:35min video clip posted on the SXSW website, but features Tjeerd talking most of the time about “How do we make design teams kickass? How do we measure that success?”. A full-length recording of the 1-hour-long panel should be posted on the podcasts page over the next few weeks.

I could so spin-off a Tjeerd fansite.

Update: I found some great blogs who covered this panel discussion. Here’s a few of the best.

• Angelique Rickhoff – Great dot-point summary
• Karsten Januszewski – General summary
• David Panarelli – Another short summary
• Sam Felder – Very long and detailed report

It was too good to be true, the newspaper experience on your computer, for free. When Microsoft set out to revolutionize screen readers with Windows Presentation Foundation, the New York Times jumped on the bandwagon and everyone loved it. But now, they want to charge for it.

The Times Reader was without a doubt, a significant leap from any past-generation screen readers. Screen readers usually reminded me of large blocky texts filling a page from end to end with no formatting and even less pictures, but the Times Reader changed all that. Fonts as smooth as a baby’s bottom, texts wrap and shape-shift like fluid water and as well as the standard Web 2.0 behaviors like search, tag clouds and sharing. It was simply a beautiful experience showcasing beautiful content.

Days ago, the New York Times announced that they will terminate the software beta on March 27, and will move to a subscription-based model for any access beyond that time. Even though most saw this coming, I still think this will not only dramatically reduce the number of people using the Times Reader, and if this trend continues, negatively impact Microsoft’s enthusiasm for on-screen reading.

Here’s a list I prepared earlier of why I think this is a dumb move.

• Multiple copies of an electronic New York Times – Besides the Times Reader, there is also the NYTimes.com website, and a New York Times – Electronic Edition, which is a digital replica of the printed edition. Even though some might enjoy the choice, but ultimately it means you’re missing out on content in one or the other.
• Paying for advertisements – So far, the NYT has not made any claims they will be removing advertisements in the Times Reader. For anyone who’s experienced the software, you’d know that the advertisements can be sometimes obnoxiously large (see right). But then again, the same can be said about the print edition.
• Competing with one-self, and a billion other news websites – Why would anyone not consider using NYTimes.com if they are already online? It’s free and it’s easily accessible from any computer, not just those with WPF/Vista. The reading experience in a browser is comparable, with font and font-sizes easily customized for readability. Best of all, it’s an open platform for even screen reader alternatives to reaggregate content from.
• Subscriptions do not appeal to target audience of early adopters – Any early adopter would tell you the best things in life are free. I don’t see why anyone should pay $15/month when there a billion news sources out there for free, even the three other WPF news readers which are still free (for the moment).

The Times Reader is great, but seriously, it’s not worth $15 a month. It’s not even worth $5 a month. It is a luxury, not a necessity. But not to say the Times Reader will flop, because it won’t – it is the New York Times we’re talking about after all. Even if they printed their content on toilet paper, people will still read them.

Hopefully, somewhere out there, a newspaper knows how to do on-screen readers right, and keep it that way.

Update: As reader Diego pointed out, there are two details I’ve missed out.

• For $15, you also get access to TimesSelect and Premium Crosswords – I’m guilty as charged here, where neither of those things interest me in the slightest. I’m not a fan of the idea of double-tiered reporting such as premium editorials, and there seems like a million free crossword alternatives out there – although they’re probably not as good. I don’t play crosswords, so I don’t know.
• Paper subscribers get access to Times Reader for free – The idea of having a printed copy for breakfast and an electronic copy for on-the-go is quite appealing, but the whole point of moving to an electronic platform is to get away from paper. However, this offer is not retroactive. For about $18/month, you get both the paper and Times Reader, but for $15, you get only the Times Reader.

Look what I found on MSDN! This neat animation comes from a technology demo made by Microsoft Japan. The particular demo (.NET 3.0 framework required) was produced to show off the functionality of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) in a 3D interactive environment. Unexpectedly, it had this interesting splash animation for Windows Vista with flying colors that come together to form the Windows logo, along with an unique soundtrack.

The interaction of colors and sound feels almost like a mix between the Sony PSP and Nintendo Wii start-up animation which both share a similar style. Maybe even the music in the background was an ‘alternative’ start-up sound? Certainly something as cool as this could have been used as the animation during boot to replace the pearl, but at around 8 seconds long, it might have been somewhat obtrusive.

I apologize for the jerky video capture. The real animation is actually very smooth, however, any screen capture softwares I tried couldn’t keep up, so here’s the best I could do.But please check out the video in the demo for yourself! Besides this cool animation, the demo also showcases the wacky and weird world of Japanese creativity.

Update: Thanks John for pointing out where to get the video! It looks like the original video file was cached was available right under my nose the whole time, now I feel stupid.

Update 2: It looks like this animation and soundtrack was not produced internally by Microsoft. Most probably by the same developers who made the technology demo, Bascule.

Stephen from AeroXP has snatched an exclusive from Microsoft’s killer deck of concept videos showcasing Microsoft’s vision for the future of computing. This particular 6-minute long video was produced in 2005 and focuses on the scenario of ‘real-time collaboration’.

The story involves a scientist who was snowed-in on return from his vacation, forcing him to work as well as give a presentation to 900 other scientists all from the hotel room. It’s a story we can all relate to.

The technologies this demo utilities includes smartphones, mobile connectivity, cross-platform communication, Tablet PCs, virtual office synchronization, collaborative editing, professional networking (think LinkedIn), VOIP, internet shopping and remote presentations with video.

This is also a particularly ‘red’ concept with most technologies glowing a warm shade of red for all consistency purposes, or perhaps in 2010, red becomes the world’s favorite color.

Continue reading →

Picture credit: Neowin

Today, Microsoft’s Aaron Coldiron and AMD’s Pat Moorhead awarded Audrey Murphy the meta prize for the Windows Vista Vanishing Point puzzle game which concluded over a month ago.

Audrey and her husband Ryan won the “AMD Signature Chip Bonus” otherwise known as the meta puzzle by correctly guessing the real name of LOKI, an abbreviation for four fictional characters which were the game-masters behind Vanishing Point. This bonus prize, which has a priceless value, gives the winner the opportunity for their name to be forever immortalized (until you upgrade) on 1000 AMD Athlon 64 FX CPUs.

She and 476 others share a prize-pool valued over $500,000 including the grand prize for a trip to sub-orbital space provided by Rocketplane XP, not Rocketplane Vista I might add.

As per her request, AMD has also inscribed the names of two community websites, Neowin and unFicition which were easily the two leading communities which showcased amazing talents and willingness to collaborate on solving some of the most intricate puzzles ever devised.

Aaron Coldiron, Microsoft (left); Pat Moorhead, AMD; Audrey and Ryan Murphy (right)

Bleeding Edge TV was also on-site to conduct one of the most unscripted and awkward interviews I have ever witnessed. The 11 minute interview can be summed up by Audrey as “are you serious?” when asked to “tell the story”, who later shook in laughter.

The games’ organizer, 42 Entertainment has also published a full list of all the winners who’s eligibility has so far been confirmed, one of which I even go to school with.

To further the evidence of a Vanishing Point game sequel, AMD’s Pat quipped, “are you going to sign up to the next one we do?”. As a result of all the success and publicity generated from this first attempt at such a unique grand-scale game, I have no doubts Microsoft and AMD executives were quick to jump on the idea of milking a successful marketing stunt with only such a small investment compared to any other form of advertising.

This is quite easily another success story for 42 Entertainment who’s been on a ball lately.

Update: Microsoft’s Aaron Coldiron says,

“I know there is a lot of interest in this, and we are really happy with the results of Vanishing Point. It was amazing to see the community come together to solve the puzzles and to send someone to the ultimate vista. Right now we don’t have any additional information to share about future plans.”

Earlier this year, Peter Moore confirmed to Bloomberg Microsoft’s plans to add video gaming capabilities to the Zune by July 2008. Today, I found several Microsoft Careers job postings which provides more proof of Microsoft’s intentions to make the Zune a casual-gaming platform as well.

As the posting for “Software Development Engineer in Test” posted on the January 4th 2007 states,

Zune needs you! Do you love music, movies, gaming? Are you passionate about delivering cool consumer experiences that span the entertainment space? Do you like the idea of being on a start-up team? Come join the Zune effort and help build the next generation of portable digital entertainment. Be a part of this start up team which will reshape the way people engage with their games, music, and videos. Have fun every day on this fast paced, ultra creative team and help Microsoft go big in this space!

Another posting for the role of “Branding Manager” posted on February 14 states,

Zune, the new entertainment business at Microsoft, will define the next generation of entertainment – a new way for people to engage with their games, music, and videos. Imagine if you could connect to your entertainment wherever you are, on the TV, on your portable media device, on your mobile phone, your Xbox or at the PC-your entertainment at your fingertips. We’re the team that’s creating and executing the business plan and partnerships to make this vision a reality.

Gaming on the Zune could be much more exciting than just Tetris and Sudoku. With the Wifi-connectivity built in to the Zune, I wouldn’t doubt games will take advantage of the social capabilities such as multiplayer, trading games and even XBOX Live integration. Just as much XBOX Live Arcade gave breathed new life into arcade gaming, the Zune could take advantage of the same idea and deliver high-quality but simple to play and ultimately fun games on-the-go.

But for most games to work, the Zune needs more than a D-pad and clicker. Guess we’ll have to wait for hardware rev 2.