Apple is definitely going to buy. Google wants their “real-time semi-news.” The media won’t STFU about it. We’ll all be using it by this Christmas. And as Rand in Response says:

Twitter seems to be on the front page of everything but, curiously, has done nothing functionally interesting. They’re just sitting there keeping the lights on.

Not everyone is just sitting there. Some are wondering, “What’s next?”

That’s exactly what I’ve been wondering. The market is being flooded with innovative features by third party clients and the only innovation that Twitter has added to the fold — search — wasn’t even theirs: it was an acquisition. In fact, according to their blog they’ve only had five user facing updates in the past year, none of which would be deemed as “lighting the barn on fire” by a user.

So what gives? You could make the argument that their growth is because of their lack of innovation, rather than in spite of it. Keeping it simple allows users to focus explicitly on Twitter’s core value instead of unnecessary bloat, and allows the owners to focus on being swooned by the big boys. Even VIPs within the company want new features but seem unwilling to build them.

I get the impression that Twitter knows that the money is in search and is putting all their eggs in that basket. And they’ve done a good job of it: their search implementation is pretty damn slick. But that doesn’t stop me from pining like the biggest geek ever for something new out of them. I want a “groups” feature integrated into Twitter.com. I want drafts. I want threaded replies in my timeline.

But the feature I’d like the most is data interpreters. I’d love it if a link to a TwitPic is not counted against my 140 character count and is called out after my tweet. If a URL is from an approved source, strip out the link and treat the data appropriately. This would work great for video, audio, pictures, and locations. I’m dying to post a tweet from foursquare and not have half of my 140 characters taken up by the venue’s address.

Twitter could keep it simple and just provide a link to the appropriate data; but with the right API calls, third party clients could take the ball and run with this type of info. Maps, audio, video, and photos could be displayed inline or expanded with a click. In fact, Tweetie already visually indicates when a tweet includes a link to a photo.

And don’t worry about the redheaded stepchild in this discussion — SMS. This wouldn’t (and frankly, couldn’t) make that experience any worse for the 5% who still txt than it already is. Twitter could simply append the tweet with a “See More” link that routes the reader to the status’s page. People who get their tweets over SMS aren’t going to be clicking to view a TwitPic anyway, so a status link is just as efficient.

A feature like this would help bring the focus back to the message instead of the message being a URL. I have a hard time imagining the folks at Twitter doing anything close to standing still. The company seems to have the understanding that the premise of “140-character-messages” has a ton of milage and doesn’t need new features, so why change something that’s not broken? But features like this will reaffirm that in this medium, Twitter is the message. As Marshall McLuhan once said:

You should totally bake these features into Twitter.com. Now give me a massage…

So Twitter could continue to sit on their ass and they’ll still be the startup darling that’s perfect for many a company’s portfolio. But a little attention to the users might help with this retention problem that people are suddenly talking about. …actually, it probably won’t, but I’ll go ahead and try to convince you otherwise…

foursquare is a location aware webapp for your phone that awards points for various activities that involve going out & about. The reason I “play” is because it gets me out of the house and acts as a great friend-finder. Alice Tiara just posted a great write-up of what makes the game interesting:

For example, on Monday night, I went to dinner with a friend. After dinner, I saw that two of my closest friends were at a local bar. We met them there, and over the course of the next four hours, about 10 other people showed up, all of whom found us through foursquare.

For people worried about privacy, don’t worry; you only check in when you want to be found and only tell who you want to. The more places you go, the more points you get; and if you’re creative with it, you can rack up the points. Here are some tips that I’ve come up with that will help you to be the King of your burg:

• Only check in at new locations:
  You get 5 points for every new location checkin and zero points if it is a duplicate checkin within the week
• Rack up bar-hopping bonus points:
  You get a travel bonus point for every subsequent checkin during the night (after 4pm). I.E. 6 points for first unique checkin, 7 for second, 8 for third, 9 for fourth, etc.
• 7-Day Bender:
  Start the Tuesday before your championship run and hit a place each night. By the time the next Monday hits the starting line, you’ll get 7 “Bender” points for the first time you check in each night.
• If you’re bar-hopping, drink a pony glass of a dry stout:
  You could just not buy anything, but that’d be shady. Buy something that has nutrients, like a Guinness. Otherwise, you’ll succumb to alcohol madness (or so I’m told).
• Mind games:
  If your score is within striking range, people *will* compete with you.
  • Either come out of the gate on Monday and establish such a daunting lead that people won’t attempt to compete, or
  • Pull an eBay – Stay just below the top 5 for most of the week so that you’re not noticed, then swoop in on the weekend to claim the crown.

Part of playing a game is the necessity of agreed upon rules. foursquare doesn’t have any defined rules at this point, other than “Don’t lie about where you are,” and even that isn’t very defined. In an effort to get people playing under the same rules, I would suggest something along the lines of the following (please alter or append any of these in the comments):

• Must have intent to stay at a checked in location longer than 30 min.
• The checked-in location must be a public place.
• The checked-in location must be someplace in which you are capable of being social. (i.e. Not @ your coffee shop job or while running errands)
• Strong suggestion you buy from the establishment if it is a bar/restaurant.

The rules would only be necessary if you’re interested in competing in foursquare. You can still get use out of foursquare, even if you’re not competing for Kinghood. I would suggest that competing is opt-in for users who’ve read “the rules” as defined and agreed upon by the userbase (ticket).

Other ideas for foursquare that would make me dork out:

• Allow users to optionally enter home address and places of work – I’d love to let people know when I’m at home and at work, but don’t want to collect points for these locations. (ticket)
• Mayoral voice – Give the mayor of a venue the ability to write a welcome message when a user checks in at their location. (ticket)
• On the users “History” page, show which users who were also checked in with you when you visited. I’d love this page to act as my social diary. (ticket)
• Add the ability to optionally display your Twitter username. There have been times in which I’d wished I was able to communicate with another user, but couldn’t. (ticket)

All this being said, this only works when you have friends using it. I’d have a lot more serendipitous moments if I had more friends playing the game with me…

Great student project by Thomas Nilsson

The Loudness War Analyzed

The music industry makes records louder and louder and have pushed beyond reason in an effort to stand out amongst the rest of the radio. This drives me nuts. Every time I listen to a Lily Allen record, I can’t stand the fact that the drums are distorted to make a buck; and I particularly can’t stand the fact that the people who perpetuate this problem know about it, but deny that it’s a problem in the first place:

“Somebody told me about [people complaining that the Guitar Hero version of Death Magnetic sounds better]. Listen, what are you going to do?… …The Internet gives everybody a voice, and the Internet has a tendency to give the complainers a louder voice. Listen, I can’t keep up with this shit.” – Lars Ulrich

I don’t know how he can honestly mean that when they guy who mastered it is embarrassed to be associated with the album. Make sure to also check out the Wikipedia entry on this topic.

Fez

Ohhh! This looks fun…

LEBRON!

Lebron James may end up having the greatest basketball season in the history of the NBA this season. And the funny thing is, he’s still got flaws in his game: His post-up game; Spotty outside shot; Stands still and dribbles too much. I’m betting that he’s going to end up being the best player to ever play in the NBA. Case in point:

I guess Jimmy Kimmel is pretty good at it too…

Takeshi’s Challenge: The Meanest Video Game of All TIme

Back in 1986, actor/director Beat Takeshi, a man who doesn’t like video games, wanted to show people how foolish they were for liking video games by making the most annoying video game of all time for the Nintendo. For example: A level where you must sit in front of the TV and hold the select button for 60 minutes. Apparently it’s coming to the Japanese Virtual Console on the 31st of March.

In a similar vein, Penn & Teller created a video game for the SegaCD in which you must drive across the Nevada desert in real-time for 8 hours in order to get “1 point”. There’s a torrent available for the brave.

Concept for Energy Consumption Visualization on the iPhone

Dear Future, please make this for me. I just had a $600 energy bill and need your help.

Old Growth Media and the Future of News

After Clay Shirky’s great write-up on the death of the newspaper, Steven Berlin Johnson of outside.in wrote a nice peice on a posibility for the future of news. If only someone could figure out this investigative reporting and war correspondence problem…

Walk This Way

GOOD Magazine’s guide for reducing your water footprint. I need me some low-flow toilets. FYI: Getting local WA State apples in Seattle doesn’t use as much water because of the lack of transportation.

Measuring the Design Process

The best thing to come out of web-design icon Doug Bowman’s resignation from Google is this well thought out article by Scott Stevenson. Doug on his departure:

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that.

This particular point set off Mr. Stevenson to put into words concepts that I’ve always been aware of, but have always struggled to articulate as well as he did in his post:

The most contentious point between software engineering culture and visual design culture is the question of whether important things can be always seen in absolutes. The engineering approach values measurable, reproducible results which can be represented in a graph or a checklist. Unit tests and benchmarks illustrate progress. [...] Visual design is often the polar opposite of engineering: trading hard edges for subjective decisions based on gut feelings and personal experiences. It’s messy, unpredictable, and notoriously hard to measure. The apparently erratic behavior of artists drives engineers bananas. Their decisions seem arbitrary and risk everything with no guaranteed benefit.

Through out my career, I’ve regularly been in similar environments; and one of my biggest problems has been figuring out how to hurdle that divide. I feel that part of my role is as a visual taste maker. You might test to find the most crowd pleasing shade of blue at the first pass, but I might come up with a blue that might not be your instant choice, yet will grow on you when taken in holistically. Like Henry Ford said, “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse.” There is a point with visual design where logic starts to breakdown in ways that only experience can answer.

Hand Sewn Vinyl Atari Cartridges

These are huge!

Small Talk: Twitter Powered Weather Visualization

The coolest way to find out that the weather is shit in Seattle. The site uses Twitter status messages in various vicinities to draft a picture of not only how crappy it is outside, but what people think of it. Make sure to use a modern browser.

Tweetbook: Twitter user publishes his life in tweets

I don’t think that I tweet enough to get as thorough of a journal of my life (and thank the Maker™ for that), but I love the idea. I post too many shortened URLs for it to make any sense. Maybe one day…