ExperienceCurve by Karl Long

Suffice to say, Hallelujah, i’ve pissed and moaned about my crippled iTunes music for long enough, this is a game changer with some caveats. If it is super easy to use, easy to understand where my media is, and is not too expensive. With amazons experience so far with ecommerce and even digital distribution this could really be it This will certainly put Wal-Mart’s DRM free offering in the shade I would imagine.

Via BoingBoing and Engadget

UPDATE: I just bought my first album via Amazon MP3 and i’m pleased to say even on a Mac it was pretty painless and more importantly nothing unexpected happened. I bought the album using 1 click ordering. It gave me a screen telling me I needed to download the Amazon Downloader

The app downloaded and I installed it, it ran automatically and opened a browser window prompting me to download the album, which then started getting downloaded by the app

and the result? It created a new folder called Amazon MP3 in my music folder, then the artist, then the album, filled with lovely little 256kbps mp3’s, then iTunes opened up and started copying the songs. Pretty sweet.

Now i’m listening to Amy Winehouse “Rehab”, such and ironic song.

Of course the only thing that would make this even better would be a Amazon S3 driven bottomless storage option that would enable all my devices access to my library, and of course would enable streaming of all my stuff to my friends ALA iTunes.

UPDATE: Gizmodo is reporting that Amazon MP3’s are watermarked to identify they came from Amazon, but not with personal identifying information like iTunes DRM “free” songs are.

When I did my MBA I specialized in “Design Management”, this is sometimes a fact I leave off in casual conversation because I get the inevitable question, “design management, what does that mean?” Well I often mumble something about design being a strategic resource etc. but I’ve never really developed a good explanation. The word design itself is an extremely broad term that can mean a multitude of things. I was just thinking about this today as I walked past the San Francisco Design Center… Guess what they do there? That’s right they sell furniture.

Anyway, a Stanford student put together this fun little video to explain a bit about design, I particularly liked his point about bad design is easy to point out.

For more on bad design you should check out “this is broken“, where Mark Hurst collects all kinds of images of bad design. it’s like Engrish for the design world.

Tip of the hat to David Armano at Logic+Emotion

“What is a story in it’s purest form? The power of the anecdote. Raising questions at the beginning, constantly raising questions and answering them.” Reminds me of what someone told me about great animation, the process of tension and release. I wonder if the same thing goes for games? On a side note, i’ve listened to Ira Glass for years on This American Life, but I had never seen him before, I must say his voice totally matches his look and demeanor.

The big message for podcasters is in part 3 where Ira talks about early creative works that are disappointing often lead to people giving up. To demonstrate he plays a clip from his eighth year of broadcasting and proceeds with some brutal critique, but the point being, he went on to create great work. Maybe the same goes for blogs? I know many people start and give up?

Anyway, great stuff for everyone in these clips.

And Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

Tip of the hat to coudal partners