Laurent Bridenne's web log about multimedia strategy, design, usability, technologies and much more... Multimedia

Alright, so like everyone else here, web 2.0 is the big thing. Everybody talks about it but no one can pin point it. It's a "thing". Not a customer base, not a particular online participation/sharing mechanism... I think it's all about USABILITY.


If blogs were too hard to write/publish, it wouldn't have been a big thing. If YouTube was too complex to view/search and upload videos, it wouldn't have been a big thing either. SecondLife? A bit too hard right now, so it's not taking off. I still prefer the SIMS video game myself.


A lot has happened for me over the past few months. Yeah, I've been hard at work, but I've been immersed into HOW to make things easier from a multimedia perspective. HOW to communicate and engage multimedia viewers versus preaching or giving a typical marketing pitch... I see enough of that everywhere.


Every single thing makes me think about usability. The ability to easily capture someone's attention and suck them into an environment where they participate and share online.



So first came my Bday... The PS3. I had my doubts... I still have a little bit since no real good games are out. I've tried them at all Blockbuster. Maybe it's because I don't have an HDTV but the gameplay/graphics aren't blowing me away yet. What DID grab me it everything else that the PS3 brings. The internet browser, the ability to play games with players from other continents, downloading games from an online store and viewing my pics on the big screen. Did I say Java was in there? ;-)






So anyway, it took me awhile to figure all the features, but when I did, I was really impressed. Then I was thinking... why didn't Sony play a short video tutorial on all the PS3 features versus reading an online whitepaper??



Also, I've notice some lag time playing Madden '07 with other folks... kinda cluncky... maybe they should start thinking about using an entire Sun solution (hardware, software, storage, services) to get this up to speed... if not.... I don't give the PS3 two years to live...