Product Thursday: Killing Google Reader

Yesterday, Google announced they’re killing Reader, one of their most beloved (if my Twitter stream is to be believed) products in their portfolio.

I use a few different apps/sites to keep up with the news. Here they are:

  • Google Reader
  • Reeder (Google Reader interface for iOS)
  • Instapaper
  • Zite
  • News.Me Daily Email
  • Twitter
  • Techmeme
  • Hacker News

I use each of these services for different reasons, and though I’ve developed a pretty good flow of how they each fit into my day, I’ve been longing for a better solution. I really wish that there was a product that tied these things together in one or two apps. What would that product look like? Here’s a quick stab and what I’d love to see for my two common use cases (daily “must reads” & weekly “discovery” reading):

Must Read: My Daily Use Case

  • Keep/read a curated list of the stuff I absolutely want to see on a regular basis anytime there are updates. This is the stuff I want to read no matter what and it’s mostly blogs of people who I engage with on a regular basis. (It’s what Google Reader became for me.)
  • Give me an idea of top posts in my social network. The news.me email from the Digg team does a good job of giving me stuff that I may have missed or not seen that’s highly relevant. Generally only 3-5 of these articles are really necessary to get an idea of what’s relevant in my network.
  • If there isn’t enough content on a daily basis, then don’t show me more. Let me get a few minutes of my day back.  This is a problem a lot of apps don’t consider because they’re looking for more engagement (which often times = shoving more content in front of you).

Discover: My Weekly/When I Have Time Use Case

  • Once I’m done with the daily read, open the floodgates and give me some variety. This could be seeded with content, topics and things I’ve shown an interest in (like Zite) or it could be powered by people I’m connected to socially. Ideally it’s a mix of all of the above.
  • If I’ve saved articles for later, show me these articles before letting me run wild exploring the ends of the internet.

The hard part here is figuring out how to combine these use cases in an app. Part of the power is in keeping them separate: the problem with apps like Zite is that I never know if I missed an article from a “must read” site and I don’t have an interest in discovering new tangental content unless I’ve finished the stuff that I know is relevant.

However, one of the big problems with these weekly apps is that I often forget to go back to them on a regular basis, and they often have content in them that I’ve already seen or seen elsewhere.  There’s a strong case for a reading app that unifies these two use cases or at least is aware of what’s been consumed in the other app so that the probability of duplicates is reduced.

The closest thing I’ve found to this approach is called Fever. It combines “kindling” (your daily must-reads) with “sparks” (the rest of the content you are interested in) to give you a smart reading experience.  The only problem? No iOS apps and it’s self-hosted. :/

Anyone else have other ideas out there? Seems that there are a ton of companies tackling this problem but no one has really hit the nail on the head yet (for me).  I’ve tried Prismatic and while I think the content it surfaces is pretty solid, I find the UX, scrolling and lack of Instapaper support absolutely maddening. Hopefully Digg (or someone else) does it right.

Note: I also realize this problem is completely non-trivial to solve, that my usage pattern is probably pretty niche and that this is not something I can really pretend to solve in a blog post. Flame away. :)

How do users hold their mobile devices? This article over at UX matters has some really interesting findings but still leaves a lot of questions unanswered.  By the time we completely understand how people hold mobile devices, we’ll probably have moved on to devices we don’t have to hold.

The data from this study is public so you can play with it in a Google Doc or Excel. Pretty neat.

Just watched this doc on The Pirate Bay. It’s so interesting to see the personalities behind one of the most important sites on the net. For anyone interested in internet freedom and copyright, this is a must-watch.

Product Thursday: Thoughts on Mailbox

Over the past week I’ve been playing with Mailbox, so I figured it might be a good candidate for my first product review on product thursday.

The main assumption behind Mailbox is that most people tend to view their inbox as a to-do list.  Though I’ve tried to shed that assumption in my own use of Gmail, it’s been hard. Mailbox is a welcome addition and really reduces the need for me to spend time on actively managing an inbox of actionable email.  Every part of the app is designed to get you to inbox zero, so those who want more functionality in their email might feel a bit limited, but Mailbox is awesome for staying on top of email and following up.

Some of my favorite details in the app (barring the obvious ones)

  • When you’ve cleared your inbox each day, you get a beautiful, relaxing image that is different every day. It’s a nice little touch that feels like a little “reward” each time you hit inbox zero.
  • Changing send-from address popup is easier to use than Apple Mail. It’s a list of email addresses to pick from that requires a simple tap instead of a swipe and a tap like Apple’s wheel selector does. I imagine Apple’s solution works better for those who have a ton of addresses, but I only have 3 I actively check so it’s a nice change.
  • Threading of messages is handled really elegantly. Gone are the days of tapping into a thread on Apple Mail and then choosing which message you want to see. Instead, messages all load inline and appear collapsed and greyed out if they’re already read (much like Gmail’s web interface)
  • Inline/focused replies.  I find the design of the reply/new message box to be limiting in a really good way.  Because the box doesn’t give me the entire screen to write a lengthy response, my emails are becoming shorter and more to the point.
  • Tasteful use of gestures. There’s a lot of debate about whether or not Clear’s UX is ideal, but I love it.  Mailbox’s gestures are built around very quick/easy actions for each email: archive (short swipe right), view later (short swipe left), add to list (long swipe left), and delete (long swipe right).  These have been really easy to pick up and the UI does a great job of making sure you don’t make any mistakes and accidentally delete things when you wanted to archive them.

And my least favorite parts:

  • Can’t change reply-from address like you can in Apple Mail (I do this a lot for mail that people send to my Cornell or Shelby addresses that I want to be directed to my Gmail account).
  • No easy way to find/search filters in Gmail. At this point I don’t really find myself missing this a ton, but it’d be a nice to have.
  • Push notifications are a bit wonky. If you have filters in Gmail which are set up to move mail out of your inbox, Mailbox may still badge the app that you have mail. This “false positive” can be a little frustrating especially if you’re compulsive about keeping notifications to a minimum on iOS, but I imagine it will get better with time. This is likely one of the reasons they’re letting people into the app on a rolling basis.
  • No iPad experience. Desktop Gmail works pretty well in conjunction with Mailbox, but I’ve found managing email on my iPad just isn’t fun anymore. Gimme that iPad app!

Well, that’s about it - not sure how helpful/comprehensive this review is, but hopefully it’s useful to those that are wondering whether Mailbox is worth the wait (I think it is)!

I have always believed Valve was one of the most forward thinking gaming companies. This talk by Valve CEO Gabe Newell confirms my suspicions.

Gabe’s outlook on the future of the living room isn’t too unexpected (maybe that’s because I’ve been thinking a lot about it for my work at Shelby) but his take on the economic possibility that Steam unlocks is one of the most interesting things I’ve seen lately.  I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise since Valve hired economist Yanis Varoufakis last June, but the second half of Gabe’s talk makes it clear that Valve isn’t just trying to understand their own in-game economies: they’re thinking about how these economies affect and change the real world.

For anyone interested in virtual economies, economic theory and ideas like peak employment and collaborative creation/consumption, this is required weekend viewing.

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