Grenzgenial

Google TV vs. Apple TV / Apps and the UI

There are some unsung revolutions coming up this year.

While Microsoft and the others are chasing behind to catch up on the mobile market, but will always remain one step behind with Google and Apple, both companies are already up into other things, especially TV.

So fresh so good. Google is here with the long awaited Google TV and I must say “Yeah I like it!”. 

While there has been some buzz around Apple’s TV, presented last month, but always declared a “hobby” of the company, I think Google TV has taken the right direction and introduced some really nice new features, especially one: Apps for TV.

While the idea of Apps, could actually come from Apple itsself (see the iPhone), Apple TV lacks to become the platform for Apps, the iPhone became. Hey you Apple guys, I think this was a big mistake and I think it is the real revolution behind Google TV.

I think, that its clear by now, that TV’s need some update and especially need their own UI and controls to interact with. It’s similar to how the iPhone revolutionized the mobile market, with it’s innovative touch interface.

You cannot just bring a classical webpage like Facebook to the TV screen, you have to modify it, to make use of TV’s features. (see my follow up guide on UI design for TV apps)

The combination Google chose is great, and is the same that Apple chose too, a mobile device, like the iPhone, with a rich UI as remote control and a TV as the screen for it. Apps for TV will have to be developed to render pages, that look nice on a big screen, while still being used from a cell phone device. (Googles Android and iPhone being a good platform for that)

Google TV (contrary to Apple TV) also greatly interacts with the “old” way of watching TV, making it a good start of migration to some sort of web based TV, that Apple TV is.

So while Apple TV is becoming more the “video recorder” substitute in our homes making it possible to rent and buy films, Google TV is becoming the “set top box” substitute, making it possible to connect to your Satellite, the Web and see webpages on your TV screen. 

So ok Google, I think you got it good this time! I think we will see many cool apps come out for Google TV in the next time.

Here is my comparison to what are the main differences and “killer” features:

Apple Tv vs Google TV:

Sources:

GoogleTV:

• classical: Satellite, TV 
• new: Web

AppleTV:

• classical: no 
• new: iTunes Store for TV shows and films

Stream vids to the TV:

(through vids on it from iPhone, Mac)

Google TV: no, yet?

AppleTV: yes

Stream from it:

Google TV: no, yet

AppleTV: no

Remote control it with your phone:

Google TV: yes

Apple TV: yes

Apps:

Google TV: yes

Apple TV: no

Why Windows Mobile 7 should be a fail (AGAIN)

There are companies, that will never learn. One of them is Microsoft.

I thought, I will never blog about companies and stuff, cause this blog is mainly intended to my writeups about AJAX geekiness, but the news and writeups spreading on the next “big thing” from Microsoft urges me to share some thoughts, about this “new” phone operating system.

What I see from the videos on Youtube is a far from complete phone operating system.

Rule No #1: Free Markets and the Killer Feature

Dear Microsoft, there are markets, which you don’t conquer being “fast”, but only having a killer feature. While Microsoft was not fast at all, since the iPhone is dominating the Market with it’s innovative design and features since 4 years, Windows Mobile 7 was anounced only last autumn. So while Microsoft’s decision was to launch Windows Mobile 7 in these months, it is still is to see if there is enough innovation in it.

Of course in pay markets also price plays a role, and Microsoft can surely be competitive, if they want to (by greatly reducing their profit). In fact Microsoft will not make any profit at all with Windows Mobile 7, cause there is already a cheap (cause free) OS in the market: namely ANDROID from Google!

I think, that from, what I see Windows Mobile 7, doesn’t offer any feature, that you won’t find on iPhone.

Rule No #2: Save costs by using a common codebase

Windows Mobile 7 seems to be built on Silverlight (Microsofts proprietary Flash software). This means, that developing Windows Mobile 7 and Windows are two completely different things. No common codebase (Silverlight) is bad for costs. 

Rule No #3: Innovation in the UI

I do not see any innovation in the UI: Despite some “Widgets” which you can put on the start screen, and which will clutter up the Home screen even more, than Apple’s app centric approach, I don’t see anything new! 

You must think, that this is the best Microsoft’s engineers seem to be able to come up with at the moment!

While with Windows the excuse has always been, that Microsoft can’t confront people with too radical changes in the UI (although windows made such changes, not for the better, by introducing even more substructures and even more complicated workflows), with Windows Mobile 7 they had the opportunity of a fresh relaunch.

Well, for me the conclusion is clear from what I can see this company completely lost its way to innovate.

Well, all this of course, doesn’t mean that Microsoft cannot improve, and that consumers won’t buy the phone anyways. People most often don’t even know, what is the operating system on their phone and Microsoft has good distribution and marketing channels, but I don’t believe they can do it with such a product.
Let’s see, what will be the consumers choice! 
Anyways I am waiting for the big Web OS re-launch next year. I think, that HP is doing really good in waiting the whole buzz this year, and then coming up with something mind-blowing for the beginning of next year. I still believe that WebOS is going to be the real competitor of the iPhone!

UI Design: Pagination: A common UI-Design mistake in websites and some workarounds

Today I would like to introduce to you a very common UI design mistake, still encountered in many major websites today.

Pagination:

While pagination itsself is a good idea and actually a very common technique to save load time and reduce server load, the way it’s implemented in many sites nowadays is just not user friendly at all.

For anyone who doesn’t know, what pagination on websites is, here is an example:



Pagination is a way of providing a limit and an offset  to the number of items fetched e.g. from a database and presented  to the user.

The problem with pagination is, that the user has to reload the whole page, thus having to deal with long response times waiting for new data and doing nothing. This completely breaks the user experience, which should be much more fluid and dynamic.

So how can we do pagination right?

A common technique used today to do pagination is the AJAX lazy loading technique. (I will explain this technique in detail in another blog entry so stay tuned;)). Such technique is applied e.g. by Tumblr.com to load Blog entries.

While I don’t see any good reason for webdesigners today not to use such techniques, they are still not very widely adopted. The AJAX and DOM manipulation needed is actually available nearly everywhere, even in very old browsers and even if users have Javascript turned off, sites can provide fallbacks to classical pagination links.

Most notably even big sites like Google and Amazon use old pagionation techniques. But this doesn’t make them more acceptable! Instead it’s just a sign of how old these pages actually are and how slow innovation is moving towards…

Fortunately there are workarounds available in form of browser extensions:
One of them is called AutoPagerize, and is written by a Japanese guy. (Fortunately Google Chrome has the ability to translate Japanese pages into something I can read and understand too; I really love to read the twitter feed of this guy in Japanese!!)

The extension is available for Chrome/Safari and Firefox.

With the extension installed you can now do AJAX pagination in all major sites, including Google, Amazon, etc.

It’s one of the rare extensions, that after having them installed you get this “Man, how could I live without it till now?” feeling. You “feel” the difference! Well, that’s what good UI design is about after all!

The way the extension works, is, that it comes with a preset of so called “SiteLinks”. SiteLinks are XPATH descriptions, which for a certain page define, where to find pagination links.

What’s even cooler is, that you can provide further SiteLinks to AutoPagerizer over the WeData.net Wiki. WeData.net also provides an API to post new SiteLinks to it in form of key/value pairs. So if a page has no pagination info available yet, why not write one of your own?