Three years after the Xbox 360’s release comes a new version of the Xbox… software. In a similar move to the Zune, Microsoft has decided to focus on software upgrades for improving their current hardware. While some would say the new interface overhaul was unecessary, after actually using it for a while, besides being prettier, it starts to become clear why it was in a lot of ways necessary.
The main reason the change was necessary in my opinion is the amount of content that is now available on the system. What started out as a few downloadable games and videos has exploded into an extensive marketplace of game content, films (including access to Netflix titles) and television programs. The new interface does a good job of organizing all of it in a way that makes it all easily accessible. It does this in three main ways:
Primary navigation - Instead of the left and right ‘blades’ of the previous interface being used for browsing 4-5 main categories, they’ve been converted to a list in the top left corner that scrolls up and down. This allows for a dynamic view of categories that change as the user goes into a into a top-level category.
3D titles view - As categories are browsed, game/video titles are displayed below with cover art similar the iTunes coverflow except with a 3D perspective. It not only makes it a more immersive experience putting the user in the ‘Xbox world’, but takes advantage of the widescreen format. A few titles closer to the foreground are fully viewable while letting the user know that there are more in the distance to scroll to.
Information panels - When selecting a title or piece of content, a few things happen. The primary navigation disappears, the background color or texture changes and three information panels appear that are layed out like titles view except bigger as each one has specific actions to choose from. Breaking actions into individual panels creates smart grouping of options that turns a potentially long overwhelming list into almost a step by step process, focusing attention on certain categories of actions, each category perhaps only being needed at different times.
The new interface also allows for integration of new features that have also been rolled out into the upgrade including the (Mii too) 3D avatars that are a part of the environment, with the environment itself customizable with ‘themes’.
The well-named New Xbox Experience is a great example of interactive experience design making it a great improvement to the old interface with plenty of room for what’s become the core aspect of the Xbox 360, online digital media.
Details have been coming out about the next version of Windows, to be called Windows 7. Vista hasn’t gotten very good praise since it came out. Even though I’m a Vista user and do like it overall, it seems like Windows 7 is basically designed to make critics of Vista happy. And to make it up to people, I think Microsoft should offer Windows 7 as a free upgrade from Vista.
Let’s compare prices of the different editions of Vista when it was originally released compared to current prices:
The most popular edition, Home Premium (what I’m using as I type this on my laptop) has gone up in price while the most pointless edition, Ultimate went down by a considerable amount. Looking at that, two conclusions can be made. First, there should only be two editions, Home for $199 and Business for $299. And that pricing is reasonable considering the fact that most people just upgrade their PCs with the OEM editions anyway and it looks more competitively priced to the Apple OS which is $129. And second, anyone who bought Ultimate when it came out got jipped. My dad is one of those people, in fact buying two copies, one of which was for me to upgrade my home desktop PC.
Based on some of the initial features for Windows 7, it looks like some are fixes to issues with Vista, while others are improvements to things that are pretty much already a part of Vista. I’m not sure if the features are worth the upgrade cost, probably being $150-$250 (which is basically what Vista costs to upgrade from XP).
So for Microsoft to get some of its reputation back, it should 1) offer upgrade options from XP to Windows 7 for the standard $150-$250 upgrade price 2) offer Vista users a lower-cost upgrade for Home Standard/Premium and Business editions at half the standard upgrade price and 3) for those who actually bought the Ultimate edition, Windows 7 should be free via Windows Update.
In 1934, Paul Otlet published the Treaties on Documentation: The Book on the Book where he not only predicts the concept of a computer and the Internet, but more interestingly (to me), he envisions the use of different forms of media.
“These instruments taken as substitute for the book, will in fact become the new book. The most powerful works for the diffusion of human thought.”
While some people view television and certain things on the Internet such as YouTube as a waste of time, and that people should be reading more, I think Otlet was closer to the truth. New media is not a replacement for the book, but just another form of human thought that has the same relevance as any other form of media.
Sam and Max is a video game series that originally started back in 1993. It made a comeback a couple of years ago in the form of episodic gaming, releasing one ‘episode’ each month for a ’season’ of six episodes. It’s sorta like a tv show where each episode can be played on its own, but with an overall storyline that connects the episodes together.
Sam and Max is the first successful episode-based video game series. Part of its success is based its interesting plot and characters which is what made the original 1993 version a cult classic. And part of the reason the writing is such an important aspect is because of the ‘adventure’ format of gaming which typically relies on the storyline.
The way adventure video games work is sort of like watching a movie you can interact with at certain points. It’s a little more complex as it also lets you interact with the environment and your interactions don’t always have to be made in a certain order. But unlike other video games, your goal isn’t to earn points or shoot your way through levels, it’s to solve a problem. You watch the story unfold then interact with the environment and its characters to get clues on how to further develop the storyline. And that’s why the writing is so important. And with good writing is how the episode format can work, since it basically turns into a good television show you interact with.
The GTD method is basically a method for increasing personal organization. To me it meant somewhat more than that as it taught me about how just by changing my thinking about something could lead to really powerful results. If you’re not familiar with the book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity“, or its author David Allen, I recommend you first watch this video of a talk he gave at Google a while ago.
I originally heard about the GTD method a couple of years ago and spent almost a year and a half to finish reading the book. The reason it took so long was because I kept stopping to try and implement what I read in the book. It probably would’ve been a better idea to just read it and then refer back to it, but I eventually did finish it, at which point I already had my system working for me.
The system could be as basic as working with simple lists of things that need to get done daily, weekly, monthly or “someday.” It could also be done using just pencil and paper. In my case, I started with an online Wiki tool called PBWiki. I later switched to using PBWiki just for my ideas and “someday” projects and moved on to Ta-da Lists for my daily, weekly and monthly tasks. I recently replaced Ta-da Lists with voo2do which is based on the GTD technique and is designed specifically for working in that way.
Like I mentioned, an aspect of the book that was important to me was how it talked a lot about paying attention to your own thinking process. This ultimately leads not only to being able to organize your thoughts, but to also being able to follow through with them and analyze their results for better further planning. At least this is the way it worked for me. I found that as I was getting my thoughts out of my head and into my system, I was able to accomplish things in a logical way that lead to better focus of my upcoming goals.
And as I focused more on my thinking, I was able to better handle information consumption. Until reading the book, I didn’t realize how much of an issue it was for me working online all day with information on everything available at my fingertips. I was always good at finding the information I needed, but now I’m also able to control it in a way that works for me.
Since there is so much talk about change, I figured it was about time I made some changes of my own. This site and blog will undergo some changes within the next few weeks.
The first change is a long overdue switch to use WordPress instead of the primitive blog system I developed. With this also comes commenting which was the deciding factor for the switch. A somewhat related change to this is this blog’s XML feed which will go through Feedburner. Please bear with me through the glitches that may will occur while I’m getting both of these setup.
The next change will be the content format of the blog. Up until this point, there was no regularity for blog posts. You can now expect to see a guaranteed post at least once a month. Along with that, I am considering trying out a ‘magazine format’ for posts where there will be certain ‘issues’ of related topics. This means a different way that articles will be archived and the possibility of series of articles about one topic.
This post is a little overdue, so since I’m sure many of you have already visited sites like Engadget for CES coverage, I’ll keep this short. There are three areas that I thought there was a lot of focus which we’ll be hearing a lot more about this year.
In another step closer to TV going online, these new set-top boxes could be replacing your cable box:
Slingcatcher - A product that was a big hit last year now offers HD
Netflix and LG - Could be the ultimate movie-playing device
Vudu - Server and receiver for downloading and storing movies
One problem these boxes solve is multi-room support, allowing for viewing selected media throughout the home. Of course a fast reliable internet connection is required.
Smart Devices
Another use of your internet connection is for networked devices that respond to online data or data networked from your computer. Your future home appliances won’t just have a computer chip, they’ll also be connected to the internet.
Also worth pointing out is the evolving technology in touchscreens and ebooks.
In the last couple of years, I’ve gotten used to subscribing to blogs as my main source of news and information. Mix that with listening to most of my music through a portable player and it’s gotten me thinking about how I consume media.
My primary music player is a Zune, both as a portable device and on my computer. The software allows for a service of paying a monthly subscription fee to download any amount of music to listen to (through the Zune software and player, ofcourse). What if instead of buying albums as I do currently, I just subscribed to the Zune service and downloaded any albums I wanted at anytime. It would be much simpler and in the end cheaper. I figure on average I get about 2-3 albums a month. If each album is about $15, it would be cheaper for me to just subscribe to the Zune service at $15 a month to get those albums.
The biggest problem a lot of people struggle with and is the idea of owning their music. It’s why albums still have top sales and why individual downloads are more successful than the subscription model. But what about instead of getting music, we just listened to music, where instead of owning the music we liked, we just had a list of it and played it from different places, be it online or off a hard drive or other music device. If we thought in that way, our library of music could potentially be limitless and there would be less effort getting to it.
Now what about other forms of media? Cable TV shows are part of your cable subscription. Plus there are packages like HBO and other film channels. For movies, there are services like Netflix. Videogames have a service called GameFly that’s similar to Netflix. Even books have something called BookSwim. They each have their pluses and minuses. I enjoy all these forms of media but there are times where I can go for months without doing one or the other. Being subscribed to them seems like a waste. But I guess the real problem is finding the time to enjoy them all.
Note: I ended up subscribing to Netflix during the writing of this post.
As I started reading a blog post about a desktop app recommendation, I realized I needed to change out my desktop wallpaper (I usually look for a new one about every 1-2 months). By the time I finished the article, I thought about how desktop wallpaper can be distracting sometimes.
I went into my desktop settings looking for alternatives when I came across a Solid Colors option I never really paid any attention to before since I was always focused on loading the latest graphic I found.
After about a day of having just a one color background (screenshot above), it feels somewhat refreshing. I think I’ll give it a try for a while. Maybe use some color themes from online inspiration sites and do a different theme each month (with a different color from the theme each week).
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Three years after the Xbox 360’s release comes a new version of the Xbox… software. In a similar move to the Zune, Microsoft has decided to focus on software upgrades for improving their current hardware. While some would say the new interface overhaul was unecessary, after actually using it for a while, besides being prettier, it starts to become clear why it was in a lot of ways necessary.
Details have been coming out about 
Google’s Android mobile phone platform is 
In the last couple of years, I’ve gotten used to subscribing to blogs as my main source of news and information. Mix that with listening to most of my music through a portable player and it’s gotten me thinking about how I consume media.