It’s really nothing that new. Companies like FedEx have been connecting physical things to the web for years. Most of the examples are similar though – they involve scanning codes and updating systems to keep customers up-to-date. Another notable one is Domino’s pizza tracker. A system that lets the pizza makers scan barcodes at certain parts of the pizza making process to update their customers on the Web.

Recently we’re seeing an increase in activity here that goes beyond scanning codes, and it has me giddy with excitement to see where it goes. Poke’s Baker Tweet is a prime example of the physical Internet. Put simply, it’s a physical box located in the bakery that sends messages wirelessly to Twitter to let followers know what’s fresh. The guys who built it actually started a company called Breakfast who, from what I’m told, is all about creating experiences like this.

Another good example of this is Nike’s Chalkbot. A machine that took tweets and messages from real people and plotted them in chalk along a portion of the Tour de France.

I think we’re going to see some really innovative stuff this year, most of which will be connecting virtual stuff with real stuff. Last week, Andy Sandoz over at Work Club posted an interesting article that touched (sorry) on what it may be like if Facebook had a physical ‘Like’ button. I’d love to hear of more examples or thoughts on this.

This acts as a proxy for understanding the minimum level of resources and process it takes to do something. The larger the company, typically, the longer it will take them.

Lately, I’ve been using Joi Ito’s quote as an adjunct to my empty box test. He states:

“Want to increase innovation? Lower the cost of failure.”

This is the simplest and clearest articulation, I’ve read, on what large companies need to do to innovate.

When most companies realize that it takes them X weeks to ship an empty box, their reaction is “we must become more efficient”. What they need to do is lower the cost of failure.

Here are my thoughts after spending 24 hours with the Kindle.

Ordering

I bought the Kindle with accompanying leather cover. Total cost: $352.99

Order placed November 23. Order Arrived November 24.

Packaging

The Kindle arrives in a pretty simple brown package.

Kindle Packaging

At first I was underwhelmed but I really like the “Once Upon a Time” on the side.

side of kindle box

Here is an unboxing video….

The Amazon Kindle Arrives at Teehan+Lax from Greg Washington on Vimeo.

After opening the box this is what you see.

That text on the screen is not a sticker. That is the screen! It is incredibly sharp and crisp.

USB Kindle

You need to charge it fully by connecting the micro USB to the supplied power connector.

I’m not going to cover a full tour of the UI since these shots exist elsewhere online. But here are my initial thoughts.

* Purchasing content is easy. I bought a book on Amazon.com and it appears on the Kindle within 60 seconds. Buying content from the Kindle is as easy. Great experience!

* Reading is effortless and little to no eye strain. I read for about 2 hours last night and had no problems.

* When you hold the Kindle your fingers naturally rest on two buttons.

Kindle with Fingers on Nxt Page

My natural inclination is that pressing on the left button will go back and the right will go forward but that is not the case.

Kindle with Fingers off

It’s not a big deal but I miss hit it a few times.

* My biggest issue is something that I would never have thought of until I used the Kindle. When you read a book you make note of where you are spatially in the book. You are always aware of if you are 1/3 of the way through or 1/2 or near the end. The tactile feedback of weight in your left or right hand is an important cognitive clue, it also helps your brain position passages and narrative in a physical space. I can go to a book I read a year ago and know roughly where certain passages or parts are. “I know it was in the first half of the book”.

* With the Kindle I was aware that I would need to mark passages I may want to remember. There is a very robust notes and bookmarking feature in the Kindle. You can highlight passages, makes notes or simple bookmarks. The problem is to do this, you need to enter a menu, navigate a 5 way controller and then select the passage. It takes not only 10 or 15 seconds of time but more importantly you consciously need to stop reading and do this action. It is disruptive to the experience.

* The keyboard is ass. The buttons are really tough to type on. Maybe in the future I will type more notes and use it more, for now it’s just in the way.

* The Kindle arrives with your name and Amazon account programmed. This means there is zero setup when you turn it on.

* You get a Kindle.com email address. Sending PDFs to that address will add them to your Kindle.

I will try to cover more about the Kindle Store, newspaper and magazine reading in another post.

Huge congratulations go out to Teehan+Lax’s own “Peter Nitsch”:http://www.peternitsch.net/ and “Greg Washington”:http://www.marc-gregory.com/ for taking home Best Canadian Developer and Best Canadian Designer at the recent FITC awards. We’re honoured and privileged to work with such a huge collection of talent – these guys included. Here’s the complete list of the “‘09 FITC Award winners”:http://blog.fitc.ca/post.cfm/fitc-awards-2009-winners-announced.

Ok, so it’s generally our policy not to blog about something that’s already gotten exposure on sites like Digg (let alone made it to the top ten), but for this one I’ll make a quick exception. Google just “added”:http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-in-labs-undo-send.html an undo send button to its labs suite (or as TechCrunch “calls it”:http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/19/gmail-gets-a-panic-button/ , a panic button).

This is the kind of “feature” enhancement I love. It’s a natural, yet subtle extension of how I use mail every day, it’s lightweight and unobtrusive, and it’s grounded in an aspect of human experience with email that’s so familiar and fundamental but ignored until now. The word I’d choose to describe this kind of feature is “humane”.

How many times have you sent out an email, just then noticing that you forgot to attach the file you were writing about in the first place? How many times have you forgot to copy someone, or realized you were addressing the wrong Steve, etc., etc. directly after hitting ‘Send’? For me it’s too many times to be a coincidence.

Often when we write emails—especially critical ones where pressure is involved—we get into a very focused, depth-first mode of reasoning. This makes it hard to see mistakes that would otherwise be obvious. My hypothesis is that as soon as we hit send, there’s this cathartic moment where pressure is relieved and we are suddenly able to reason more broadly, or in a breadth-first way. It’s only then that we notice the embarrassing mistakes we are now going to have to write a follow-up email to address. (There’s “evidence”:http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/emotion_design.html to suggest this is the case, by the way, and I think it’d make for a great applied research topic.)

I’ve been waiting for a panic button in my mail app for a while now. Apple’s Mail got something like this (there’s a little cancel button next to the outgoing message progress bar in the Mail Activity), but I think it’s more for server-side issues and other technical stuff. I never have time to cancel my outgoing messages—there should be a 5-10 sec buffer between the time I hit send, and the time the message goes out, as in the new Gmail feature.

TripIt, a travel service that creates a single, readable online itinerary from your flight, hotel or rental confirmation is the first site I noticed doing this. To register, a user simply forwards a hotel, flight or rental confirmation email to plans@tripit.com. The site automatically registers you and replies with a confirmation and link to your new itinerary. Brilliant. (Note: TripIt also provides the classic registration form as well).

What’s important about this is that they’re reducing a psychological barrier to entry. Most people using Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Gmail, etc. feel signing up for yet another online service is an annoyance. After a while, another registration form can feel like a burden. Email-based registration avoids this barrier by rolling registration and the way you interact with the service into one action. For example, the same way you use TripIt is the same way you sign up, by forwarding emails to plans@tripit.com.

Of course, form-less registration doesn’t fit for every solution. While flushing out the IA for ImageSpark, our home-brewed creative inspiration tool, we decided upon the classic email/password registration. The reason being that the core interaction with the site isn’t done through email but rather integrated browser and desktop upload tools; For ImageSpark, there was no gain in baking in an email-based registration. (Although we hope this won’t stop people from using it.)

A service like Posterous however, which uses email to create and update a blog, is built on avoiding forms at all costs. It makes sense than that your first email registers you and initiates your first blog post, all in one.

I’m pretty sure we’ll see form-less registration grow into a design pattern as new services emerge. And I’m looking forward to using it, so long as the situation is right.

Limited access to television, icy temperatures, and no amount of distance, held anyone back from watching Tuesday’s inauguration of the 44th president, Barack Obama. Several sites proudly played host to the most web-friendly presidential inauguration to date, spiking internet traffic levels to 54% above normal.

CNN streamed the live ceremony alongside an impressive Facebook tool, which let users update their status, and toggle between viewing live status updates of their own friends, or the general public (consisting purely of Obamania). You could call it a success, an average of 4,000 users updated their status every minute, and CNN reported over 1.5 million status updates through their portal alone.

Meanwhile, not one minute was wasted updating the White House website, literally. By 12:01, the site was Obamafied, and the blog page already flourishing with updates and recaps.

At the Obama-friendly T+L, we were lucky enough to get a mid-morning break to pile into the boardroom and watch history unfold. It was especially exciting for us that the ceremony that captivated millions of people around the world had a much higher priority online, compared to in the past.

We even had some friends from the Globe and Mail join us for a story.

Just released LinkedIn Applications… so good to link my Slideshare and our Blog right into LinkedIn. This should have happened months ago. I would like to connect my Twitter to it…

I am reasserting my Valentine’s Day post that RIM should buy LinkedIn.

Check out this site for the Dutch Air Force. It’s not in English and therefore you’ll have to click around to really experience the site, but if you have the time to mess around, I suggest you check it out. Everything from the 3D transitions, the video integration, the photography… really well executed.

Credits
Concept and Project Lead by ARA
Design and Flash by Momkai
3D, Flex and Flash by IND

Source [cpluv]