UX Strategy Musings from Will Tschumy, Microsoft User Experience Evangelist

As long as I’m ending my long spell of not blogging, I wanted to also make sure everyone knew about the recently launched eBay Simple Lister application, powered by Silverlight 4 and built by our fantastic partner, Cynergy.  Check out the video overview here:

This video was taken at MIX10 this year.  Cynergy and the eBay Simple Lister were also featured at Sliverlight 4’s launch as well as Expression Studio 4’s launch at InternetWeek in NYC two weeks ago.

I was deeply involved in the project, co-leading it with my great colleague, Raj Ramabadran.  Working with Cynergy is consistently a great experience, and building an application like eBay Simple Lister was a lot of fun!  eBay Simple Lister is being rolled out to about 1/6th of eBay’s Casual sellers right now.  If you want to be sure to get it, check out http://pages.ebay.com/garden/srp/SimpleListerInstall.html

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-  Oh, and in case you haven’t noticed
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Following its introduction at last year’s Cannes Lions festival, Schematic’s high-definition, multi-user Touchwall has been updated using Microsoft Windows 7 and returns to Cannes in 2010 as a faster, more efficient technology platform.  In addition to reprising its central role as the information hub of the event, the 12 foot long by five-foot high Touchwall will be used to showcase the future of experiential, digital marketing as it debuts two, large-scale branded experiences created in partnership with Nokia and Dell.  The Touchwall will be centrally located on Level 1 of the Palais des Festivals, between the entrances to Debussy Theater and Grand Auditorium.

Personal Note:  I’ve had the pleasure to lead the Microsoft contribution of this project for the last 3 months or so (it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long!) – It’s so great to see one of our partners launch such a fantastic experience like this.  I wish I was in France to see it!  More videos to come at touchwall.cloudapp.net.

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One of the things that can be difficult as a Microsoft Evangelist is knowing about really cool stuff and not being able to talk about it.  Looking Glass is one of those things.  Ad Age had a great write up of it here: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=139199

Looking Glass is built on top of SharePoint, taking advantage of it’s advanced workflow, tracking and routing capabilities.  In addition, it also uses SQL Server for reporting.  On top of all that, the UX is built in Silverlight and extensible – you can develop your own visualization as needed.  Check it out!

Updated: Check out the more in-depth article at Microsoft Advertising

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After all the work that went into this, it’s great to see Photobucket Visual Search Win.  Check out the award site here.

Photobucket Visual Search is here.

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So this is a bit of a rant, I’ll admit.

Over the course of the last couple weeks, I’ve gotten some emails from friends and colleagues saying “Hey Will, did you know your blog is getting a malware warning on Safari on Mac?”

Alarmed, I clicked on the Google diagnostics link, and saw

Google provides these kinds of services through a variety of different affiliated and semi-affiliated organizations.

Notice the issue here? “This site is note currently listed as suspicious” “0 items of malware.” So why exactly is there this warning?  And why does it *only* show up in Safari? And why does the warning only happen on Mac?  And why does it only happen on the home page?  Lots of questions.

Ok, questions aside, next, I took a spin over to my ISP to see if anyone had hacked the site, uploaded anything nasty, cast a spell on the site.  After spending far more time than I wanted to reading through FTP logs, etc (why is it so hard to provide a graph of access over time?), digging through the file system, and just beating my head against the wall.  What had triggered the warning?

Still not knowing, I at least decided that I was convinced I was clean.  Time to head over to Google Web Master tools.  There, I selected my site, and asked for “reconsideration.”

Time passes.  This afternoon, I got an email from another friend warning me that Safari on a Mac was flagging me for malware.  Wondering, I logged back into Google’s tools only to find that I had a new message waiting for me.  Woo hoo, maybe there’s resolution, or at least guidance on how to correct the issue.

We’ve processed your reconsideration request for http://ux-strategy.com/ August 17, 2009

We received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site: http://ux-strategy.com/.

We’ve now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it’s in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don’t find any problems, we’ll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn’t appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take.

Huh?  What the hell does that mean?  Well, I’m so glad you took the time to send this extremely informative response.

So now I’m caught in limbo: the one avenue of appeal the site tells me pursue, provides a useless non-answer, and yet I’m still tagged in Safari on the Mac. Kafka, I hear you laughing.

Update: Also known as #fail. Now it it fails only if you’re running Leopard on a Mac – works fine in Show Leopard.  Fun.  Thanks Apple & Google.

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I’m hosting IxDASF at Microsoft’s San Francisco offices Tuesday, August 25th. I’ll be giving an hour long demo of SketchFlow, Microsoft’s new rapid prototyping and ideation environment.

There will be food, drinks and give aways. Check out www.ixdasf.org for more information. Looking forward to seeing you there!

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One of the reasons why I love being an evangelist is figuring out how we get great projects done on our platform – this one has me particularly excited.  I’ve been leading the project for the last 6 or so months, coordinating between our great clients at Photobucket and our fantastic design partner, EffectiveUI.  Photobucket, the world’s largest photo website, is launching Photobucket Visual Search today, powered by Silverlight and Windows Live.

http://photobucket.com/visualsearch

From the very beginning, Photobucket recognized that images are almost always social – it’s why they became the defacto standard for image hosting on MySpace and other social networking sites. Photobucket is always looking for ways to make the social experience more rewarding – in this case, they turned to Microsoft for help.

So what does Photobucket Visual Search do?

At its most basic level, Photobucket Visual Search lets you search Photobucket, well, visually. Just type in the search term, and see the results flow over the page. But what if I want to see related images? Here, Visual Search starts to show its value. With a simple click of the related items pulldown, you see terms that are related to the current set of images.  A click lets you see a larger version of the image, but still allows you to move through the collection of images easily. What if I want to share these images I’ve found? This is where Photobucket Visual Search really shines. Because Photobucket decided to integrate Windows Live Messenger into the application, sharing an image with any of Windows Live Messenger’s 320+ million active users is as easy as one click.

Wrapping it all up

It’s really exciting for me to see so much effort finally launching – we’re really looking forward to the response of the community.  More than that, it’s also really exciting to see another major web presence adopt Silverlight and Windows Live Services.

If you’re thinking about a new RIA and want to discuss Silverlight, let me know by contacting me at william dot tschumy at microsoft dot com.  Finally, if you’re thinking about doing something social on any platform, be sure to check out dev.live.com – if you even think you might want to make your site social, live gives you lots of different options with almost no extra work.

Check out http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Jun09/06-16Photobucket.mspx for more!

UPDATE:  Check out http://blogs.msdn.com/angus_logan/archive/2009/06/19/photobucket-adds-sizzle-and-sharing-via-instant-messaging-to-photo-search.aspx Too!

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-  Speaking on launches – if you haven’t used eBay Simple Lister, what are you waiting for?!

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Photos from Zune LA

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Photos by: Angela Daves Haley 310.560.0172

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Check out the winning solution:

Amazing what can be done in a week.  Nicely done, Archetype!

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After all was said and done, Archetype won both the judge’s accolades and the people’s choice at the Phizzpop Design Challenge LA last Friday the 20th.

Archetype’s “Resonate” solution combined a desktop application that allows artist management to merchandize singles, albums etc.  For Artists, it shows them current sales, and upcoming events.  It also allows them schedule upcoming events.  Finally, for fans, an immersive concert experience allows them to share the experience, even if they’re not at the concert.  Maybe most impressive was, despite only having a week to work, the working mobile video upload and transcoding.  Archetype shot cell phone video, uploaded it live, only to have it show up in their solution!

About the Judges

Archetype was judged the best by:

Jim Mainard – Head of Production, Dreamworks

DJ Pooh – Frequent collaborator with Ice Cube.  Writer, Rapper, Director and Producer

Jason Turner – SVP of Web Properties, Rhino Records

Rick Barazza – Sr UX Architect, Cynergy Systems (and member of the Winning Phizzpop Team from last year)

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