The End of Downloadable Applications?

For my last two years at Kazaa I was working on a brand spanking new desktop application. It was completely awesome but the details of that are not for this post.  This post is about what I slowly understood over those two years - that the time of the desktop internet application for consumers is over.

I 2004/5 I watched the emergence of excellent desktop applications like iMeem and Grouper (now Crackle). These had really raised the bar in terms of user experience and quality in media sharing applications. But it wasn’t long until they each started to re-invent themsleves as web applications.

This was during the emerence of the web we know today. The web that we own. The 2-way web. The web we use to connect with our friends. The web that doesn’t have the spyware, the hassle, the need-to-install-on-every-machine-i-want-to-use. The web that does have the capacity for massively viral effects, the web that is an application more powerful than we have ever seen before.

Check out the evolution of iMeem for example.

• 2005: Its all about the download
• 2006: The download is an optional extra
  
• Today: There is no download

They adapted to survive.

This is what I learned on that last project at Kazaa. We needed to connect with the web and, ideally, remove the need for an extra application.

Now it seems that even the biggest of modern desktop apps, Joost,  is in trouble.

Let’s see what happens next.

Evan Williams & the Universal Law of Simplicity

When designing software, the temptation is to add features. If the users aren’t loving our app as much as we need them to, it must be because we need to add that extra feature. That’ll get them! Rarely does this have the impact we desire, but the cycle continues and we add more and more features in the hope that, one day, we hit the sweet spot.We forget the universal law of simplicity.

One of the founders of Twitter, Evan Williams, presenting the powerful idea that less is more at LeWeb3 (LeWeb channel is here). Twitter itself was built around the constraint that the primary communication platform was SMS and that the web was just another interface. Twitter is dead simple to grasp. Tell everyone what you are doing in less than 140 characters of text. People can follow you and you can follow them. Following means you see what they are saying. There’s no video. No audio. No categories. No complex privacy settings. I don’t need to read the help pages because I can look at the home page and get it almost immediately.

There are a couple of powerful dynamics behind this that I want to talk about.

People not Features

Technology is a means to an end and not and end in itself. Users don’t put photos on the web because of the cool new embed feature, or the API that allows them to upload from their mobile phone. They simply and purely want to share their photos with other people. Great technology serves a simple need that people have. Twitter is an inspiration. It asks “What are you doing?” and we answer. In your app, what is the user trying to do?

Creativity: How it Works

Complexity is the enemy of creativity. In a former life I was a theatre director. I ran a course on improvisation at the West Australian Academy or Performing Arts. I began this course with a simple exercise in which I asked the group to form a circle (we do that a lot in theatre) and for a volunteer to step into the circle to do anything they liked. They had a infinite palette of possibility and the result was paralysis. Their eyes filled with fear as they free-falled through their minds trying to think of something interesting to do. Introducing constraints quickly changed the dynamic: “You are very heavy” or “This ball is precious” or “It’s dark”.  Constraints caused wonderful, creative moments to happen.  It’s a lot like “Tell me what you are doing in less than 140 characters”
Seesmic is bringing the universal law of simplicity to video which can be the most paralysing of all web experiences. I find that if I can film anything I like, wherever I like with my camera and then edit it in Adobe Premiere using After Effects to add titles, before uploading to YouTube I usually give up. It’s too much and I lose the most important thing: Something to say. With Seesmic, I press the big red button and do something. Awesome. I can’t wait to see some of the moments that come out of the Seesmic community.

Check out Evan’s presentation for some more great examples of how constraints can make great software.

Oh, and if you want to add me on Twitter, here I am.

Skype has 8.6 Million Users Online

This is me at Skype HQ in Estonia prior to launch trying out a console application of Skype while one of the developers walked off down the corridor with his laptop to his ear. It was cool then and its cool now.

I remember thinking how awesone it was when we had 5 million users online concurrently using Kazaa. But Skype has 8.6 million right now. It is a remarkable accomplishment.

Tools for 'Old' People

In my world at least, so much of new product development on the Internet is about making stuff for young people. As my hair becomes greyer, it is slowly sinking in to me that there are huge numbers of people that need tools for ‘old people’ like I do. For example, I just found this excellent product for families called Cozi. If you are looking for a way to co-ordinate your family’s hectic schedule, give it a try.

Ever tried trying to convince a non-technical person to try Google Calendar Cozi is simple and does exactly what we need and nothing more. The technology does not get in the way of the purpose.

Little Big World: Amazing, Magic, Next

The Problem with Meme Trackers: They Limit Thinking

The problem with meme trackers is that they are too good.

Sites like Techmeme (which I am rather addicted to), Megite and Tailrank algorithmically create one-stop overviews of the most popular discussions on the web at any one moment. We depend on them and fall into a new kind of mass-market behavior in which everyone thinks the same. New ideas that are outside of the current memes - especially big ones that take a long time to think through - don’t get the processor cycles in the brain. We are all busy solving the same problems.

The paradox: This is one of those posts which fails to escape the meme trap. LOL.

I'm all a Twitter

Me and Mick are giving Twitter a try. If you want to follow my mood, send an SMS to +14152838611 with the message ‘follow philmorle’. You can see my current moody at the top of this page.

Snocap Linx: Almost Perfect

Snocap have just released a perfectly targeted beta product called ‘Linx’.

When I discovered the Lost Prophets on MySpace, I was frustrated that I could not embed the MySpace player in my blog so that you guys could all listen straight away.

Linx lets a band embed a Flash powered playlist/player widget into any website including blogs, social networks, etc that lets users:

• Listen to samples of the tracks
• Easily purchase non-DRM’d MP3 files of all tracks via Paypal

Here is the embedded player for The Format.

It seems the perfect way to discover new music. Let the taste-makers tout your wares.

My only gripe at the moment is that it was a complete pain the arse to download all the tracks I purchased. I needed to download each one individually.

Channel Guide Comes to Podshow

I am interested to see the concept of a channel guide come to podshow.com. Its comforting to have information presented in this familiar way. It is useful to pick a vertical channel and press ‘play’. It is a good way to discover new content.

There is still much that they are not doing and it somehow feels a bit ‘old school’.